Rush And Pull
The reservoir, an open mouth.
I saw events unfold in triplicate, I couldn’t move
The sun struck your screen.
The rush and pull of pistons ceased and broke the ice covering
Frozen still I watched the scene
A car underwater
The accident, I swam
A thousand blades through my hands
I cracked the glass of the drowning hatch
And held my breath.
Twisted in your safety belt and tangled in your hair,
I grabbed your wrist and pulled you out
And held my ear to your chest.
Loved
I felt my bitten tongue and tasted iron,
swallowed blood, the sickly sweet ardor
Spiraling above, a flash of teeth and ire and lust
Pinioned me aground.
You’ll leave this world as you came
Separate, luminous and still.
You’ll leave this world as you came
Loved, leave your body on the ground.
I buried my fingers in the fur
Felt the pull of follicles
Break the skin: “Oh great fate!”
With laboured breath I scrambled to my feet
With a taste for the kill
Choler surged with every beat.
You’ll leave this world as you came
Separate, luminous and still.
You’ll leave this world as you came
Loved, leave your body on the ground.
I felt my bitten tongue.
I have seen the embers take flight,
And float upon the smoke born of the fire.
Brother, bring the cloth and cordage,
And levity will raise you from the ground.
My Head Is A Vessel
I will dress you with the cuts and scrapes of rough hands,
And sculpt the frame with each dull hammer blow,
To see myself in the brassy tone.
I heard the clicks of typewriter keys,
Printing the words that were yelled on the street,
And echoed off wall and television screens,
So the flashes came quick and the friends came quicker.
As my lungs filled like balloons,
I exhaled the beautiful sound,
Like a ghost it danced around their heads
And the singing filled the room.
Their breathing slowed and their eyelids grew heavy,
Weighed down with weary slumber,
The sleeping sickness pulled them under.
Tearing valves from limbs, desperately to wake them up,
To force the sleep from eyes, tired from this cloying tune.
Pulling keys like teeth, desperately to wake them up,
To force the sleep form eyes, tired from this cloying tune.
(Can you hear the sound? Surely you can hear me now)
Bare Teeth
I appear as concrete and glass with a taste for copper and wine,
Settling into the landscape, we collect in the streets
Growing upwards, hair turns to wire, antennas trained on the sky,
The night comes and all I see is satellites.
(We shine)
We shine with irises like ivory, light pours into our eyes,
We sing parades and bare our teeth, until our necks become masts.
Sam, Isaiah And The Wolf
“How have you come to be my son?”
Words that spit so easily from my father’s tongue,
I swear I heard him hiss the words that swept us off our feet,
Hand in hand we stowed away, water-witching into open fields,
Corn cracking in our ears, ground softening between our toes, waterlogged.
The river found its way to us.
And on a rowing boat, fingers clenched around oars,
Fighting the ebb and the flow of the current,
Tired, our arms stretched like rope.
At a stone’s throw, the mill’s red walls glowing, invited us.
With each step, the floorboards creaked below us.
The still was broken and fingers touched lips,
As we breathed sawdust, thick at the back of our throats.
Burning eyes, bloody nosed, teeth like piano keys.
A wolf paced the room,
We smelled hunger on its breath,
Frozen as statues with fear in our hearts,
The beast shed its claws,
Springing from the floor.
Isaiah fell.
Great Famine Family
I looked down at my feet where the seeds refused to bloom,
Or lost the fight to blackbirds’ beaks,
I mustered up the courage (to walk back inside)
I fell down bent double, three pairs of eyes following me to the ground
Counting stitches on the shoes of my killers.
Washed in salt and dried in dirt they made my bed below the earth.
I felt the soil shift from beneath my body as the roots wove and set underfoot.
Feel the blades beneath your feet once more,
Lay down your head and know that I’m below.
