double speak

enormous, the language of love
gorgeous
eternity repulsive
essential beneath
a moment of whispers
i recall a vision
"please mother"
through smooth frantic blue
delicate sweet deaths
flood the forest
silence bleeds my ears dry

intoxication

drunk honey girl

a smear of blood

heaves from me

like some engorged moon

i worship her tongue

i trudge through screams

of beauty

white black void

aches a lazy beat

the urge went where it must

i heard skin sing

hot iron

shot rust

from my honey veins

parting

this is necessary
this parting
waves between us
clapping
a loud audience
a standing ovation
encore!
encore!
no applause
for the second act
an act of purging your scent
from my jar of honey
a sharp clap
boxed up against the wall
i deafen myself
to the bees
the stings
no longer plump my skin
this parting of bones
but not my loins
no longer cleaving my heart
congealed blood
pungent with discord
cut out in cookie cutter shapes
i play my part
in your play on words
the tangled knots
that hang me dead
no longer swinging
from the rafters
i asked for cake
you gave me bread
crumbs of uncanny sizes
replicas of sand

bathing

sweet nectar
and soap
from a green bottle fly
does not yield
does not cleanse
this water
will not die quietly
the surface broken
a mantle piece
candle wax
and sour milk
a bath of molten winter
frigid with rust
so i must
go beneath the mirrored pool
sticky honey
blood red with sin
mixed with bleach
i scrub the sky
and hope to wash my eyes clean
of ashes
my past
has passed me by

jaw dropping

old jaw
dropping
dropped to the floor
the gnarled wooden floor
red oak and rusty nails
the old man's face fell off
beside himself
his eye rolled neatly into the knothole
near his head
stiff whiskers
knobby knees
down to the floor
angry splinters
another head fallen into the stone sky
rang his bell
aloud
but not his cry
his face gone
ashes in an urn
no cats to scrape the shape
no wife
for him to return
marbles for eyes
skin of cloth
a damp lily left in his socket
no more sight
no light
a dead moth
flew out
of his mouth
ears deaf to the swallow
not in his throat
but to the sky they don't sing
here anymore
not since the year
that the day ended early for him

meeting a monster

it was not fortuitous
my arrival
an open mouth of a monster
waiting to devour me whole
in the bowels of the beast
i met myself
wide awake
no room for a tete-a-tete
too many words
spoken aloud
hung in the air
crowding the space
miniature steel rooms
full of metal
meant to squeeze
out my life
a sponge
so malleable
left twisted and dry
does not exculpate me of sin
a bone crusher
an incubus
meting out nightmares
forcing them through the patina of my skull
stuffing agony
into the old mattress of my mind
ragged ticking
stains of a child
seep across the worn fabric
soaking my skin
imbuing the husk
stretched over my bones
i genuflect
sobbing
begging for mercy
and sleep

magnetic

little wishing pills
i throw down my well
i call a throat
dissolving my heart
to sleep
colors of old film
soft and grainy
fill my gut
a crankshaft
starts my eyes
heavy lids
fall like shutters
welcoming darkness
and then
then
the spark
of an old battery
rusted
empty cells
my mind drained of charge
the positive and negative
married like lepers
repel one another