Someone must console these lonesome daughters

No written word or ballad will appease them

---

“anxiety” (2012)

subdermal

the ice that shifts beneath my skin

fiery fingers crawl like spiders from my veins

licking at the air in wide gasps through a garish, gaping maw

in in more more

until a vacuum surrounds me

and the pressure pushes my soul from my every pore

it filters through my skin and disperses like spores

like a disease; sperm careening like hellhounds for the wincing ovum

announcing itself like a pestilence

like a foul blister on the heel of the world

awaiting the miscarriage, awaiting the perversion

so thick, running through the fingers of a mourning Lord

pooling at the feet of the One True God

who put His faith in me

and delivered me

to suicide.

I know that God is in the radio

Check, checkin' the stations.

---

"Listening" (2012)

That purest of ecstasies
Cascading from the stereo system
Washes over every part of me
It kneads its rounded palms
And sharped knuckles
Into my temples
It pulls at my limbs
So I may better receive
The holy vibrations
The glorious resonance
I feel these waves breaking into me
Crashing against my skull
I am in love

Creep down the alleyway

For you.

---

"and the music swells" (2012)

this love
is profound
like the sun
brimming
over the
horizon.

a cosmic
moment
so unfathomably
encompassing
you cannot
help but
be enveloped
in its warmth
and be
blinded
by its
brilliance.

my heart
is filled
with your
spirit.

my eyes
shimmer
with your
delicate
being.

my soul
is alight
with the
fire of
the sun;
a love
so intense
that it grows
with every
moment.

I am
enlightened
by you
as you
are enlightened
by the earth.

There's no one to stop you

You can do what you want to, whenever you want to.

---

"Against the Membrane, Pushing" (2012)

Waiting for a sweetheart
Fingers scrape the bottom of the barrel
Feel the grooves of the grain
The wood soaked with fermented grapes
The wavy winding signals bend the past into a circle that spins in place and shakes off the water spraying all over the kitchen
Palm pressed firmly on the hot plate
Lay my head against the gunshot wound
I want to hear your heartbeat
I want to know you're there
I want to sink into your life

Follow me down to the Rose Parade

Lonely moments yield strange and intimate art.

---


"The Spoken Word" (2012)

Here I am
Covered in cat hair
Maybe in love
Staring at myself in the bathroom mirror

I take the glasses off
The artist unfulfilled
The spoken word
The cynic

My hair
Tousled, dusty, black
My face
Contours receding as my stomach shies away

I spend the night alone
Watching dreams float past my eyelids
Looking in the bathroom mirror
In someone else's house
I see the man and not the teenager
The man who sleeps alone

Gone at last

I had a really fascinating conversation with Evelyn Fisher, and my thoughts on the matter produced this little poem. (Click on her name!! Click it!)

---

"The Unbroken Line" (2012)

The unbroken line
Does waver and quake

It shakes and stirs
Aroused by the autumn wind

It loses its vivacity and gauge
Thinning in the fading hours of twilight

It streaks in veins
With the bleeding of the hand that wrought it

It regains its composure
As the next hand bows to the jagged rhythm

Beauty in imperfection
The unbroken line does warp and bend

Well, the wind keeps a-blowin’ me up and down the street

With my hat in my hand

And my boots on my feet


I got a real gal I’m lovin’
And Lord I’ll love her till I’m dead.


---


"Born-Again (A Rose In Summer)" (2012)


Now the colors flow freely,
In my blood and in my tears.
You stir those bodies in me:
Unborn children of dejected self-denial,
Daughters of depression,
Sons of withered dreams,
That sunk into the pavement,
Writhing in the heat of that summer sun.
My soul crackles and erupts again,
Light splintered through the rubble,
And I spasm from my lethargy,
In the most glorious ecstasy,
I've ever felt,
In my entire life.
Dead dreams in me climb skyward again,
And offer me that cool summer shade,
Where I may lay my head on,
The Goddess Mother's breast,
And hear the heartbeat of the land,
And of the people,
But never need to shade my eyes from that relentless summer sun.
You have made me exhale,
A breath held for too many years,
And while I cough and while I sputter,
The release is worth the pain of exhuming,
The starving artist pounding against my ribcage.
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
For sparking life in me again.
One day,
I'll repay the favor.