Old Poems
“A Dream”
I. He runs as I follow
higher into a space of silence.
Office desks and papers
surrounding my unquestioning compliance
Where he sits unaware; another man I do not know.
The silence marred by expectation.
Stripped bare; fists and blood.
I open a cabinet and step through to
alleviate the screaming.
What was whole has been used
and I don’t want to remember.
II. They surround me as I look seaward,
the sky a haze of blue fog.
Adjacent are three as they walk
and the water carries their footsteps
forward, unhesitating.
“Tell me how to do that.”
She leads me wading
and I begin to step
unbelieving.
III. I stand inside a burning house
with no destruction
and there is a him
and a her.
The bay window alludes to arsonists
as they run into a night that no longer sees them.
This damp towel in my left hand,
and a burning wreath.
Extinguish.
Where there once was flames now there are bees.
Immediacy.
A burning hallway
and memories.
Algor Mortis — Death Chill
You can escape from the warmth, but the cold
it chills the heart as
chaos consumes the soul. At least then,
we know what dying feels like; how it
rusts the body from the inside-
out.
Rigor Mortis
The skin knows, and holds oceans
of emotions, seas of memories, seeds
of flowers of trees that wilt and fade
and slowly
break.
Twenty-Four
where the cells still seek harvest.
Putrification — Decomposition
The shell takes itself, melting,
moulding, mourning. At first,
Nature’s finest, then,
green fades to purple where the
bruising ensues. Finally the body is
as black as night. The living
senses disgust.
The shell inflates; creates
a sense of sight, a pulse of
dark, an escape from light. This bulging — the
exclusion from a lack of beauty, the tongue
unable to speak, unwilling
to stay. Tumble words — from which no
sound emmanates.
You are loved.
Coffin Birth
Unborn children who were so
close
to touching light, to living life,
have lost everything. Thus the
coffin becomes the cradle, the
day becomes the night.
Seven Days
Third degree burns are the only thing
close enough to brush the fingertipes
of death. The skin too blistered
to remain.
One Month
Dead pieces of the person fall,
and keep falling. Biting,
clawing, scratching —
the floorboards are clean. Even the
hair that’s left just turns
and leaves.
The skin too dry, internal organs
liquefied. The body
swells until bursting open,
and the structure is all
that remains — the cage
of a body
that can no longer stay.
“Solace and Stones”
She offered me solace and
all she gave me were stones.
In the midst of this battle
she carved braille in my bones.
Midnight fell and
swallowed me whole.
She darkened the edges, poured
sulfur on my soul.
In the womb of her oceans
the salt dried on my tongue.
I detoxed the poison
and the smoke in my lungs.
So I offered her solace,
and I offered my love.
But all she gave me was silence
and the cosmos above.
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