a searing gash
the world still lives through
Sep.11~
as phoenix proudly rises
from ashes, life resurrects.
I keep coming back
as if, one day, I'll find
the illusive angle,
that moment of perfect alignment
when the river, the clouds,
the trees and all
that is manifested
will break open and reveal
what is really there,
when what holds everything
together ruptures
and spills forth the sublime.
I get a sense of it sometimes
at dawn when the sun
breaks through the clouds
in a blinding burst of light
and in the quiet of evenings
when a birdsong pierces
the forest with sound so pure
it seems to open a gash
in time before closing
over in a sad covering
of silence. I am granted
only glimpses as if more
would be too much
for me, composed as I am
of stuff made of this world,
its blunt chemistry.
We licked ink from our open wrists,
a contract signed in salt and longing.
Our syllables stitched into sinew,
each verse a gash we chose.
You crawled inside my name,
built a cathedral from my echo.
I slept in your apology,
a pillow soaked with dreams that died in the cradle.
What is marriage if not mutual decay?
We baptized ourselves in entropy.
In every moan, a gospel;
in every silence, a dirge.
We made a sonnet of ruin,
willingly,
gladly,
dying syllables on each other’s tongues.
I walked into a room and did not know it well
yet, feel I should, for I have been there many times,
not a liminal space, though sometimes this is so.
But this time, oddly, somewhere I should know and be.
Should I recognize those strange eyes that gape at us?
Some duty that I should as duty stares at me.
Yet I know them not, nor the paintings in the hall.
The not familiar couch where lovers once had lain,
its crimson redness gash against the dreary walls.
Was this with you, or in some other life I had?
Are you even here or I? Truth, I do not know.
Discipline
is not the gash,
it's the flame
you agree
to reside beside.
It requires the band
to be held taut tight,
in an unrelenting
challenge of will.
It is not the strength
of demands
that keeps it switched on,
but resilience in wake
of striving.
Having compassion
for slips of self
is not surrender
nor judgmental.
It's the little gives
that firms the grip
to tug in light
of flame.
The subtle thread which mends a laceration
is woven through fresh, tender flesh to bind
disreconciled horizons, disentwined
by words sharper than the knives of damnation.
Then, even once that painful separation
is closed, there’s still so much left to attend
to,—wash the wound, put bandages, amend
echoes saddled with righteous indignation.
A stitch is but the means of tying tight
the gasping gash; but time alone can heal
the skin which suffers the ego’s trauma.—
Slow bonds, forming from the wrecks of the drama,
will join again disjointed sides, and seal
the split. The scar will long remain for sight.
Streetlight dander. Jawbone asphalt.
Blink razors carve her iris script.
Rib stars ovulate in feral grates,
mechanical tongue juts a bloodline breath.
Keystroke ruin writes in collapse,
a waveform lodged in sternum glass.
Lipsticked rodeo—a gash in faded denim
Banana-knuckled hands torch filterless ghosts.
Tree-call through copper root systems.
Wire-pluck storm,
vapor chews the stock market
Cancer caught in molar hush,
brined in citrine static.
She opens her throat like a coin purse.
Spine bows in semaphore.
We dismount the edge—
An incisor cusp,
the confession still blistering
beneath the flesh of no language.
Post-its, coat the
Brain I keep controlling
sticking to my skull
Without holding their notice
Maybe I have spiraled out of focus
Leaving all my thoughts to obliterate my homage
It's really you on my mind
Your carving words Into my eyes
Leaving notes on my spine
As I gash into my thighs
It’s really you on my mind
I scribbled nonsense on your veins
You doodled through my tangled mane
As the pages ripped
Between words and skits
Our seats became too distance
Too far to send our visions
Of the present we desired and the past we wished to admire
etched on crumpled stained paper that was soon to be waste
Sprawled across an abandoned place that was meant to house the unworthy and the disgraced
The ship of dreams
Opulent surroundings
Fancy bed linens
Luxurious dinner plates and tablecloths
Gleaming virginal utensils
Dazzling crystal chandeliers
Polished walnut woodwork
Gold gilded fireplaces
Wardrobes ready for furs and dresses
An experienced captain
Eager staff
Bustling activity
Musicians, artists, businessmen aboard
High ranking officials, wealthy industrialists, celebrities
Cruising flawlessly in clear blue sea
A haven and heaven during the day
Easy sleeping and dreaming in the evening
J.P. Morgan was disappointed to have to cancel at the last minute
Four glorious days of sailing
Around Midnight April 15th, 1912 the Titanic struck an iceberg
The chunk of devilry slashed a three-hundred-foot gash in the hull
Haphazard evacuation ensued
First lifeboat could have held sixty-five people
It left with twenty-eight
The dream ship broke in half after filling halfway up with water
In two hours fifteen hundred people died
The majority of them froze to death in the North Atlantic
a blood-letting sun
sets as slow as an amber tear
in a shot glass
dotty is lost in oz
ruby slippers
run on a treadmill
of long summer evenings
avocados turn brown
drowned by a late light
a vein is open
watching eyes water
over a crimson gash
a gush
bleeds out
into a hoodwink
then sinks inside
a darkening cowl
an infant
wails
in a witch's
scrawny arms
none see
the birthing knife
aye! ye sing
nay dance!
demanded
o' the demon
in brighten'd tar
but wizen'd burr
gave sudden slip
did gape ‘n gash
‘pon cracken'd jar
fell he into a
midden pit
so ran the blood
‘n blood
did pour
‘n flood the pit
until it seep'd
to earthen soil
return ‘n weep'd
back to crop
o' hopeless toil
renew!
renewed!
sent demon blood
from whence
it came
this sermon
told
tar = Tarpauline coat
midden pit = pit for domestic waste
They struggle with a violent grace,
the bawdy cries of a bandoneon,
the open gash of her torn stocking.
They both understand
that naked desires come last,
first there is this ceremony,
the ritual goading
white flesh and dark shadows
must be rubbed
with an urgent blood.
This bar is a plaza de toros,
a place for the lace mantilla
to be torn away,
a dance floor for broken nightingales.
They are cheap wine,
but they know how to pour,
crushed and tied as they are
to the pressing moment.
The gap in her stocking
seems to reflect their deeper wounds,
holes where hope died,
and nothing they seek now,
can ever fill them.
A snaking mouth sloughs two spines,
the rattle of small vertebrae
and delicate teeth.
A woman learns to ride them, feels
the trombone slide of a dragon’s tail.
A man lifts tugging fingers,
not wanting to fumble
as ill-illuminated aluminum rails
bite.
The zipper knits together lusts
or shuns and strips a thought away.
Body bags become bodily prayers.
It is a widening gash gleaming -
lip-gloss for unpainted desires.
Zippers may squeeze a tight throat,
or close an open face.
Buttons are collected or lost,
though once in a while rescued
from a box of other tangled trinkets.
In Sparta, we take care of our own.
We will die before we are done.
Shields to bash, spears to gash,
from hell to oblivion.
We fight for Peloponnesia and the Polis
with blood and phalanx,
till the battle is won.
The women are warriors
who also bear us daughters and sons.
Should she die in childbirth
then a warrior's funeral comes that one.
We will put them up
to match any warrior of the Amazon.
This is how it shall forever be, how it has always been.
If we are no more on this earth,
then for each other we will live on.
Lovely, you’re lovely—
Your heart is full of lovely.
You are growing within my life;
All without of you just pines.
My lovely, my inward gash before others recoils so tight—
Only you can veil my heart in your lovely sight.
Your known Rosetta failed my dark—
Colored you instead on every scar.
Rending is the undone kiss—
Left, in the pain, alone this.
For the chains I’m bracing under this mask—
Please, save me forever, please stay, please last.
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