Fingers Crossed and Prayers to God

I have been absolved
left every heartbeat as unopened prayers to God
save me forgive me save me forgive me save me
allow me to wash away my sins
cross and re-cross myself: head chakra root chakra
a daggered line pierces my heart chakra
it bleeds light
my eyes bleed tears, head bowed
in submission. I am higher than myself
vertigo visions warp my outlook
—I’m okay—
salvation for those who ask
and I begged; finally resolved to save myself one breath at a time.

Stardust

We stumbled home drunk on honeysuckle blossoms. Our feet paced constellations with familiarity. Above us owls retreat telescopic eyes away from waiting dawn. Only the sun could wake us from our diversions; the moon isn’t as abrasive, nothing to prove. We have undressed our skins to prove our existence to each other. Our veins are translucent or our eyes are x-rays or we are made of a million stars. I like to believe that you alone are composed of seven galaxies; heavenly. I always knew you were extraterrestrial. An extrasensory perception, I dreamt you to life: Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood…My hand tenses to draw you across the sky, drawing me into the darkest recesses of a black hole. Your breath brings me back from my midnight musings to your thinly muscled arm linked in mine, the unbroken mass of our shadows, the soft petals of honeysuckles caressing our ears; us dreaming a better us to life in the morning when we stumble from an unmade bed.

Wish You Were…

For S.W.


Imagine you had the guts to be me
your heartbeat as deep as your breath
be a woman, unsexed
sexualized to nonexistence
tarred angel wings, tilted halo
devour green apples

share the pieces with your lover
like the rib she was accidentally made from
swim through her hair
call her by name

brand yourself
allow others to brand you
limp through it, pass the pain, until the swelling goes down

the virus will never go away

wake up every morning knowing
and choose to live anyways.

~

The power of a wave is measured in its crest. The way it beats the shore like a middle school bully, is just a cry for attention, no skill involved.

Versus the Uniform Directive

There are hairs gently brushing the back of my neck
like fingers curled
around something they enjoy: favorite food favorite drink
favorite body
body part
body language
the hairs sing my body electric
tremors set loose along my spine
nape to hollow
charged along the crests of each vertebrae
a wave
all nature and uncontrolled
like those hairs
that always seem to cross into freedom gently
to remind me who I really am.

So She is Written

I started to write this poem, but then you called
your sultry voice like honey drizzled
against my eardrum. Lost in the thickness of your words
I realized you were the poem.

Simpler Than I: Self-Portraits

I.

There is graphite and skin

caked beneath my fingernails; I'm either destroying

or creating--

The talent comes in doing both

at the same time

II.

A lone dread swings across my face

dissecting my vision

My concentration falters hypnotized by the falling.

III.

My heart is on showcase behind

barbed wire

sometimes it strains erratically against its boundaries

and I drown internally

IV.

There's a poem sleeping on my spine

out of reach of my itchy fingers

I'd scratch for it until I drew blood

and in my bloody picture I'd see self revelations

V.

Thorns and roses grow wild

on my tongueinter

weaving in monstrous beauty

VI.

I look past my reflection

to my shadow piecing itself together

she always proves herself simpler than I

Continental Drift

We tell time by the movement of our shadows
and mine is shifting ever so slightly away from yours
through tangled lines of miscommunication
you misspoke or I misheard.

Our truth will be revealed in fossils.
Our voices imprinted on our petrified teeth,

We wasted fifteen millennia letting this rupture widen
now we’re deformed masses
or metamorphic rocks forming moreso to our molds
or breaking them.

Moving past each other our frictions scars the surface
erodes a little of both our composures

Decades from now life will be less shifty; cooling from our fiery formation years
I will peer across this divide: a deep-seated trench of misses; at you
your surface a scar I barely remember.

Dark Matter

Aidan reads bedtime stories under a nightlight from distant galaxies
an imagination sublime
he, too young to be forced into the confines of language
deciphers the stars from God script;
despite his limitations, into expressions of his heart.

His father lives within the confines of the ordinary
holds Aidan’s hand on the walk to school
all the while trying to fully capture what it is to be a man
to explain it to the son of a man
who was never his father’s son.

Aidan never thinks about his invisible grandfather
his father bends light to his form constantly afraid
of his ability to follow his father’s deformed path

—unseeable—

His father walks carefully
leaving what he finds of the universe spread out before Aidan’s wide eyes
marveling at his ability to piece together the shadows of the world
how he curves the fabric of space in his miniscule palm
and presents the world with an image
a moment where the secrets lying behind the universe of his eyes
take form
in incredible elegant strokes
to a picture of his father, a man
the most reliable hand he has.

Annular Rings

The natural light angles through an open window

little five finger smudges

streak downwards, vanishing growth marks

they are taller than they seem.

We are older than we look

our reflections, pasts outgrowing futures.