Bliss, the closing warmth of
tangled arms
                      looping legs.
My head upon your chest
as the rain
            patters
            down
and we drift
          off to
       sleep

Hear the voice of their god as they twitch
Somnolence and discomfort prevail
Silent bones in a crumpled display
Peaceful corpse of a deadly poison

See them locked in the pose of defeat
snoring nose- still’d eyes- silent voice
Thousands frozen in corpulent time
As they wait for their planes to arrive

seething, as the sour fruit
bleeds its poison along my tongue.
leaden with the weight of memory the heart--
but twice too much.
a day? an error? a mood? the regret of--
but twice too late.

t'was not mine own tongue what spake those words. I know not why from me they rode. but while I may not know the origin the result; still mine to bear. the responsibility still mine to own. The regret--
but twice too much.

As alone I walk these emptied streets
the only rhythms heart and feet
I all around am sure I see
myself amidst the trees.
But no it cannot be, says me,
I am no scarecrowed bag of bones
whose clothes hang slack
and innards seep with leaves.
I am a man, methinks I say,
a human living breathing man
with no such predilections wrought
for suicidal sentiment.
It cannot is not mustn’t be me,
that body hanging limp in-tree,
that bullet ridden slumping form,
that sorry teenage lover-boy.

watch them dance.
see the way the blood trails behind?
vivid footprints, declarations of madness,
a history lain in red paint and black ink
a story, seeping from an open palm
to pool with indifference across the college-ruled stage.
watch them dance.
the impacts, do you feel them?
those collisions of thought and language
wherein reason is sought through brutal force,
berating the ears as they skate and
sprint across the plastic tiled minefield
of truth and bludgeoned metaphor.
watch them dance.