21.03.026

(Desire Path)

The first day of Spring

was the last day I drank

the first time we’d spoken

in over five years;

the last time I thought I might again

be able to hold your hand

in mine.

(and I did not)

Instead, I held the wound open,

inviting you to step inside

and like the cat you’ve always been,

you teased, flirted as you hedged—

sniffing at the softness within.

Never coming to rest.

Again:

that internal echo, aching

space only having grown

emptier year to year:

intercostal cathedral,

buttressed by bone—

I know, now. I know.

Never again to step foot or heart

in that home; no way together-forward—

the paths diverged too long ago—

I will not bushwhack my way back

to the too-tame tended garden:

meticulously maintained, never overgrown. 

You cannot, will not meet me.

I stopped the stillness, my weeping—

the staying, my calling-to-be-found—

and I moved. Damn it,

I picked my own sorry path through,

learning the names of every plant along the way,

knowing (now) which ones will poison,

which will sustain—

ornaments and flowers will not do me, anymore.

Nothing potted, please— not-a-thing contained.

I’ve no need for rows, nor for “weeds”;

so, still, they remain.

I do not pluck; I leave, I wait

for them to explain, to show me:

belonging.

I am learning

(now)

to stay my vibrating hand.

The woods (still) contain clearings,

dappled spots of softness, within.

Still: mine invitation

for wildness.

I do not expect your availing.

Still, still.

Sodium and Steel 12.03.026

Carrying too much weight.

The cushioning towards my center tore,

gave out. Through body, and horn:

it took more

than a year’s worth to begin

to make it right. Left

only with this Self, my dual decades of rage,

and teeth eroded, splintered, crumbled and yanked.

Ghosts of bone and necrotic nerve-cores.

It took too long: two long

decades, of cadence mangled and re-formed;

decadence forgotten, trashplastic wrappings and feelings forlorn…

But here,

here we are.

Pre-equinox;

nighttime invernal bite of the air—

cherished pleasure, sacrum to throat:

where?

Here we are.

The cars breeze by, slower at dark;

like fat fireflies, the jets overhead stream under stars.

Crunch of reeds stops as I stare:

water black, still but for the passage of Northern Swans

returned for what will be new blooming.

Sodium lamp hums; I sway.

Breathe.

Invernal Solstice 2025 (05.01.026)

The Lake

took my grief, my heartache—

and as guilt blossomed in my chest,

it, too, dissolved in waves.

She nullifies the noise of cars,

the blind fury and indignance of their captive pilots,

screaming aloud or silently

to be recognized, to be held.

She does not deserve such sorrow and rage,

but I realized, then: size, and age;

for how many eons, generations

has she absorbed and absolved?

Am I maybe so small?

Do I deserve this embrace? 

Will the mass of my hurt be the final drop,

or will she take and take, as I Take and Take and Take?

I am so lost, until I feel

her landlocked tidal changes

greeting me each time with love and patience.

I am never not welcome (here, maybe anywhere).

How can she hold all of this?

How can she take so much abuse—

like so many human matters: unjust, unfair.

But my God, I need her

like I have needed no other human.

Ever.

I worry for her future.

A worry I will not let her take.

07.12.025

 

I want you

to cause God’s name to bloom

from my open mouth;

Tláloc’s lightning to proliferate

through mine iron-bearing vessels.

Glitching, blipping

In, and Out:

phalangeal tracings leaving

dopamine in their wake,

ascending a ladder

of spinous processes,

sacrum-to-crown somatic

piloerections; the chill

of invernal airs intaken

proliferating bliss throughout

a body to which

I can only, momentarily,

lay claim.

Please,

let me continue

to believe;

please,

allow mine

worship-at-your-feet;

please, I beg:

do not permit

me to leave.

I ache to see

it oxidize:

the gunpowder glinting

in your eyes.

11.11.025 Lies, Heavenly Bodies (God Is Gracious)

Bursting sugared lime inside you—

fleshy inguinal citrus—

tart and piquant, aching sunshine:

there were nearly tears in your eyes,

saliva dribbling dissolute chloride

from out your O-pen’d mouth:

suff’ring, longing commingling

as aetherous nobility with ionic sodium—

volatile white metal.

How can Pleasure be, lacking Pain?

Bite down on me:

black-peppered strawberry.

Alignment of suns,

meridians of energy;

autonomic plasticity;

co-regulation frenzy

of you-and-me.

Curled phalanges, eyes rolling

back into beckoning cephalic blackness,

to where only He bears witness.

Every motor neuron firing:

tension,

clenching,

hypertonicity;

embrace,

regress,

((guarding))

release me.