Dust Can't Settle

How I wish you’d extend
warm hands in a cold winter
slim fingers ‘round my neck
like a noncommittal noose
loose sliding from grip
the world sleeps behind us
our illuminated backs
wasting the sun

Dust can’t settle
where the light creeps in.

By the nape of my neck
lifted limbs softly dangle
in the mouth of a hunter
smelling blood in the snow
I will give you this doe
apathetic, red speckled
on a promise you’ll throw
whatever’s left in the fire

Dust can’t settle
where the light creeps in.

Epitaph

I can’t bury us where
we’ve always belonged –
six feet under (six thousand
long miles) with a pinch
of your kisses and
all my conviction
scattered
in the spaces
where you liked me to be.

If I could just return
all your poetry – a gesture
you make in your moments
of madness; the hourglass
web that cradles you.
How can I miss you
so wholly, at all?
In our long witching hour,
your vacant half-three

breathtaking ghosts
sputter from your
cigarettes – you spoke
of that skyline like it
actually moved you – what if
(let me move you!)
I could be
your haunting

No, I’m not ready
to bury you.

Villanelle

She spoke of ghosts when I was young
Of heartbeats swallowed by the walls
Yet I could smell the devil’s tongue

My eyelids fluttered as she sung
My Playboy mommy, us her dolls
Songs of ghosts when I was young
 

Us little girls once prayed, once clung
To her long legs to break our falls
Yet I could smell the devil’s tongue
 

One breath of her collapsed my lungs
Nightmares born from her shrill calls
One ghost alive when I was young
 

From my dear mother’s mouth, she hung
Those pretty dripping words for brawls
The sting, the smell of devil’s tongue
 

With steadied vengeance I once flung
blood from my lips to make her small
I learned of ghosts when I was young
I learned to steal the devil’s tongue

Cadavers for God

The dawn cracked upon my eyes

but had no yolk, so I blinked through
the bland fogginess with no real hope
of redemption. I no longer feel the pull
of direction as I navigate my way
to the culprit. Demagnetized
with heavy crosses to bear

guess I’ll file for unemployment.

The North drove me insane for years
upon years – wrapping myself in bearskin
I felt the arms she chose to never wrap
around me. So I’d flee to
the East for my reincarnation
but they said I’d need the exorcist first.

I’ve lost my divisibility, I think,
but leaded hands don’t know much
about nothing. Us wanderers steal
precious space from the rest

But we’re great cadavers for God.

Phoenix, Arizona

the desert brought

my greatest harvest –
__________

the other man’s dust
rose swiftly
from the dunes

all the grainy details
blinding me
as one

the calm post-storm
under-
whelming.

__________

at first, I could’ve sworn
you were a mirage
out there –

the seeds you carried
birth barren plains
from rough hands

the peace on your face once dishevelling.
__________

the longer I’ve
lived here, the more
primal I feel. The more

at peace with the
pieces I could never
really settle

Even indigenous
to the art
of becoming.

Midnight’s Cartographer

pale earth, dark sky
reversed – these fingertips know
these hills pressed close above me,
the ivory spanned
in plains across my chest

you often leave this night
brighter
in your half shadow.

I shake
as your lungs pound against
these ridges, these ribs
I once drew, plunge
into the hollowness
of each collarbone
waiting to be filled
with my breath

when this land grumbles
in hunger, I know just
when to brace
for the shake.

you are an endless map
to be filled, my love
an earth unalike
to discover

and I: an unmarked night
a sky with mismatched stars

with constellations to give you
moons I wish you’d name

Adam

I saw you in
our poison apple, in love
with a different kind
of dream. Our skins – bereft
of life – slithered ‘round
our thinning ankles in a
single, tender coil,
abiding.

You never feared it –
I know that now. How I loved
your kaleidoscope eyes as they
danced in this small room and yet
somehow always found me. How

I loved the way
we merged, our braided limbs and
molten eyes, yours ever searching
for that sanctuary awaiting –
spiraled patiently, reluctantly
on a small patch of carpet.

Oh, how I loved you,
how I loved you raw.

Crawl back in that decrepit skin
as if it cradles you
to sleep. I saw past
your stale horizon, to a pulse
and flame, carved gold; to a
labyrinth of beauties and fears
that bring a man like you
to tears. But crawl back

into your sinner’s cage
if it holds you tighter than
anyone could. I’ll set this bed
alight, I’ll watch you slink away – I’ll
lie down in our dear relic,
an ever-burning rib.

Disembark

She left me silently in the morning
and only once she was really gone
did I wake up. Maybe I knew she was
there all along, hiding for her grand reveal,
hoping to make the two of us
swell with our pride as we stood
patiently by the gate.

But she could hear what you
were thinking, my lover, so she
waded away from me unwillingly
with hopes we would find her again.
I hope I find her, too – that I will
one day take her into my arms
and thank her for leaving me so that
I never had to choose to say goodbye.

She could hear
what you were thinking, my lover,
but as she slipped away, I lost
the part of you within me, I lost
the sense of completion behind
your stone cold eyes, I lost
the beautiful feeling that you could
one day love me, I lost
that gold horizon, the chance
I’d ever love myself.

Moon-tides

It was on this day that your Lord had made
that I reclaimed my tender mystery. My destiny
shook beneath me, settled itself between
each of your folds, shattering against the shore
as a collective sigh, one wave. And to think
you thought you were something
without me. To think
of a lover’s stroll along the coast
without the clamoring voice that I gave you,
of the angry release you inflict upon the earth
until I strip your high tide away.

I do it all with a whisper, what you attempt
in Triton’s scream. To dance our waltz
you chase the curvature of my hip,
navigate each intricate step through
desperate fingers in my hair. You take pride
in this slavery, swell with joy as the corners
of my mouth soften, a smile to break
the barrier between earth and sky –

my permission that molds us to one. So
with clasped hands, intertwined, with the hunger
of fiends – your sea foam illumed by my Luna’s light,
my moon, ever brighter, because it’s touched you.

But be wary, my seamen, when the smile fades,
when the moon woman wanes, retreats to her sky.
Be wary when I fade for your new stillness
will haunt you, left alone to your devices, nothing
in my wake.

Le Premier

in the iron, we are clad
we were won by something mad
that drinks fools empty. in the earth
in the fire, in the wind, that
sweet, sweet water
we are still what we once were. in the

moments that I find you,
when I sink, dissolve inside you
i am breathing for
your name. but my wind
it cannot reach inside the part
of you that preaches
false desire

i can pick us up as ghosts
who left their entrails in the hallway
where i met you. i’ll show
the heart of every haunting
the beating of the drum
pounds soft inside you. but when

i crawl back in your bed, hold
your head between my hands
i’ll know i’m holding something less
than the man who reached inside me
grabbed my lungs and eyes to blind me
and ripped my air straight from
my chest. if you see me

softly ringing the bell that sculpts each
wasted second in your memory
get on your knees, say your hail mary’s
pray that i’ll still be here standing
in the ruins of our love. that love

erupted life inside me, built a fortress
from thin air, put the poetry in the words
that i once spoke, and as I stand
here stone in stone weezing heart
and broken bone i can’t help but think
that you might be the one.

The Lover of a Ghost

I’m the lover of a ghost swallowed
by Arachne’s famished aspirations,

by her beguiling professions, her
ever-soft asphyxiation
her sweet gossamer grip, the shackles
seeking love requited. I have

heard his faded testimony, I have seen
him take the choke. I fell upon him
with my midnight veil, and in the center
stood my eye— waxing, approaching full

bleeding out my soul’s conviction.
And in my lightness shone his chains—
his spider’s art, her labyrinth web
and spoke the moon to a dying man,
“I promise to help you live.”

He begged for me to wane, he pushed me
through the velvet night. He almost loved
Arachne’s bites and chains, sweet throbs
of fruitless guarantee.

Yet I’m the lover of a ghost who spins
his own web of indecision, I’m the lover
of a man who can save anyone but
himself.

Landing

I came to you many miles above the world,
caved into your touch, shuddering in the wonder
of merging with another, of the nuances of fate—
flying intertwined for a reason.

Miles above the world, your heart beat
as you watched me. I could feel it through
your chest, pressed against you in our seats
molding to your body more and more
with every sigh, wishing that we never had
our separate destinations.

We weren’t ready for the divergence. To pass
through the barrier between earth and sky,
to touch firm ground, marked dark with borders
and names, the ground where you were known
as one distinct life and I was known to be
distinctly, painfully another.

You’d later haunt me with your softness.
I remembered you while in the grip of another,
tossing my body exactly where he wanted it,
pushing and pulling for his selfish release.

I thought of you, of the way you loved how I blush,
of the way I eased into you and you eased
back into me, of the satisfaction it brought you
to gently bring me higher. In your lips,
I briefly tasted what’s as bitter as is sweet—
recognition beyond my bare body in a bed,
awareness of how little my silhouette really says.

I crave you, the way your eyes drank me in.
I crave the tinge of fear in your voice
that reminds me I am loveable, I crave your
endless questions that remind me
you can hurt. I know I could’ve touched you
with the same care you touched me, I know
how much I could’ve given you
in the fewest precious hours.

But you stopped the fight we once believed in
for us, for the coming together in whatever
way we could. I understand it, all your caution,
our one heartbreaking difference:

I wanted you, to escape my lonely for a while,
and you don’t want me so your lonely never comes.

Forgotten, Awake

I fell through the world and landed
in a poorly lit dream, where androgynous
shadows dared I sort them from the rest
through my kaleidoscope eyes, with
bated breath. This is where
I found you, in a world
where the negative spaces do
the talking and all the figures
with no mouths smirk in the dark—
knowing I am blind behind
vanity’s pleading eyes, knowing
that the beauty had a youthful beast.
This is where I found you and
this is where you’ll stay, once I
grow up, grow away from this
self-loathing sin and begin to
be forgotten, begin to
fall awake.

A Kiss For a Kingdom

I can never know the art
of loving you when
I keep molding all love
into art. I bleed
on these pages until
my pulse whimpers
and stops, until my heart
will kill for each little
breath it lost when
I spilled on your lap
this red ink.

I’ll keep writing, I’ll keep carving
in bitter fool’s blood.
It keeps me alive
in my desperate hunt
to haunt you, reminds me
of all I’m willing to give
to sculpt you into
what I need you to be,
to somehow create
my own divine control.

And it all starts again
(with this same paper and pen) —
I take the kiss that you give me
and weave our new kingdom,
I take all this self-loathing
and give it your name.

Glass Messiah

I have a crown of thorns twisted in my side, its
bleeding and festering
and somehow healing me from
the inside out, wrapping
its arms around each
muscle and vein, stretching
and squeezing until
I stop. I stop
fighting back, stop asking you to
make me holy again, stop
begging you to give
me a reason to pull
this tiara out of me, wash
it with some holy water and
wear it on my head
like the messiah
I was meant to be.
I stop bathing my own
feet, kissing my own
footsteps, weeping
in my own untimely death and all
because I’m not as satisfied
as Jesus was to be
naked and forsaken.
I can’t pretend to love myself
well enough for you
to love me, too. So please
leave me on a dirt road,
make sure I’m shoeless.
Break both my legs
and say, “walk.” Break me
beyond recognition,
enjoy the clamor of
shatter. Fuck me up
so badly that I have no
choice but to start
from the ground up.
Douse me in self-loathing,
wrap me in the ugly truths,
believe that I shouldn’t
be believed in.
Because I’ll never make myself
into anything until
I’m absolutely nothing
to you.

A Nautical Room

Your sweet breath swells
into mine, fills a sail
softly undulating as if
the winds of the world
waned away. You blow

heavy on my back when
the sound of your
discomfort fills the room;
you slip into
my sheets and watch
them billow above us,
giving half-satisfying
direction towards a
horizon lost. So we

sail on, buck up,
tie our shoes and wait
while sea water slaps
against the hardwood floor
and the breathless coastal fog
hovers above our bed. So we

wait for the instant when
I can make you better, wait
for when ecstasy isn’t
a curse, wait for
the moment when you can
finally love me, wait
for the day
I raise mast by myself.

Untitled (prose piece)

The moon swayed against her bare back every time the wind pushed with enough vigor to weave her body left. Its light hugged the swell of her breast, swiveled down her side unevenly. For a moment, she was fully exposed in the paleness. Then the wind would rise up again and the broken pendulum would shift left like before, swallowing her body in darkness. She eluded both the dark and the light, unable to balance herself on the grass below her naked form. So she swung back and forth, left to center, dodging the shadows for the light before involuntarily swinging back into the black again.

She was used to this inconsistency; the artist in her could sense it from simple moments like this one. Everything became a metaphor once she acknowledged her thirst for one. She wanted to believe that her inability to stay still was somewhat uncontrollable, like the way the beads of a kaleidoscope fall with the slightest movement, like the wind that eased her sideways. So she spent a good part of her evenings on the grassy hill behind her house, rising and falling with each breath, swinging left to right inside of the evening's unpredictable beat.

This is the woman I fell in love with. A woman who defined herself by the world surrounding her, a woman who eased her way into the universe as precisely and delicately as I eased my way into her mind, into her open body. This woman was poetry that flowed in the perfect places-- her hips melodically dipped into her waist and rose up again, billowing into the fullness of her chest. Her eyes were the punch line that killed, that broke the immaculate curvature I knew so well. Sometimes, I'd find myself lost in her softness, wrapped in the overwhelming effect of such subtlety. I'd watch her write in bed, following her lips and her hair and her spine and her fingers until she'd catch me staring and stare right back, breaking her general sense of tenderness with something staccato and poignant. Her eyes reminded me that she had meaning; she had a distinct and riveting pulse. She existed beyond me; she existed beyond herself.

And then she fell in love with me in return. She let herself succumb to the warmth between us and melt, molding inside of my every breath. She abandoned each curve that she loved, slapped her arms lifelessly around my ribs, dropped the look in her eye that once kept me hungry. All of a sudden, her pulse walked in step with mine.

I was lost—slithering away from her on a buttery track that she had kneaded with her own hands. Each touch became a more and more obsessive attempt for completion; she searched my body with her fingers, frantically seeking any trace of herself in my skin. And as she slept, in her only gentle moments free of desperation, I realized that she had cascaded into the most beautiful loss of self that I had ever seen.

Syncopation

I told you to put your head there
on my chest
as we lay in our bed.

I wanted you to hear my heart beat
and seamlessly float into
its rhythm,
our rhythm
of delicate sways and boundless ease
with no name and face
and age, no
latitude and longitude.

I wanted your heart
to not be alone for a while,
to follow.

As you sleep, I collect
your snores and sighs
in a jar under our bed. I swallow them
like water, gulping you in
until morning, when
you insist to once again
become plottable.

We split, we multiply.
Into all of our moments
without one another, into all of our
feigned strengths,
embellished and worn,
adding distinct recognition
to each syllable of our names,
differentiating.

I climb into this bed—
our bed—
and watch the demarcation.
I watch you lean into
my body and consume
the smell of my skin, I feel
your palms stretch
underneath me, their
desperate hunger
for completion.

We have diverged and we
have merged, monogamous
in a moment, synonymous
in an experience.

I hate myself for loving
how you love me
whatever way you can.

To Drink

The stains it left on my body leech
the artistry out of me, chafe
at my skin from the inside, brand
my face with a number, leave me
here for dead. And while

suspended between life and
the chance to live without you, I
ricochet between your palms
with no life at all. There’s
nothing here to excavate, no breath.

No lips, no lies, no justification
for the way these words rise up
to my chest and stop when
you give me a few foreign tears
to swallow. “Rub your throat,
baby, gulp down your pride
and let the breath and the heartbeat
drown with them.”

So I drink you in with half-assed prayers.

I drink for the way the house sounds
when the sound of your unease
floats away. I drink for the smell
of your skin in the morning
before you have the chance to
come clean. I drink when
you need me to, when I can feel
your cries swell up in my lungs
and escape my body in sighs—

I drink until I can’t drink any longer.

I Want To Howl

I want to howl—
to wake you from your half-masted sleep
and force your white flag up or down.

I want to peel away the sky
and find an unwritten metaphor
for everything I could never explain,
and then maybe re-carve all
the lines on my face so that
you could help chisel them away.

But I’m tinged red
from the numbers on the clock,
binding me to the sadness I never feel
from the look on your faces
when there’s nothing left to say.
I’m bound to the familiarity a child feels
while clinging to her new mother’s skin,
and to all of the sickening sweetness
that chains me to vacantly belonging.

I have never felt bound to you.

I want to howl to the moon and the earth
and the stars
and I want them all to howl back at me

because one idle moment and I’m
howling at the sea,
wishing it had worked
to keep us from the shore.