Teethe and Flower

Gravestone

What if I am killing myself

just to become something new?

What do I bring with me?

Will I miss what I leave behind?

Do I continue to punish myself,

or is there gold in the hills beyond?

Will my epitaph always read:

"Where you see X's in my eyes I see stars,

and a smoking hole where my brains used to be.

I feel hollow forever."

Beneath the stoney sun that blocks my eyes,

breathing elemental fire,

grey and lonely,

on this warpath,

I pray someday to say,

"that used to be my gravestone."

Dig in the winter earth

Dig in the winter earth

among sleeping worms

and dreams of grass

lain low in the soil

deep, deep

below the snow

and the promise of the sky

thick with clouded memory,

all gray stasis and infertility,

reflecting the world

deep, deep

below the snow

as it stands in itself,

frozen with the worry

that the spring to come

will bring no flowers.

Come scratch at my door

Come scratch at my door

dark mood woman,

this morning heavy with rain

and false promise.

Try not to let you in,

but the fingernail dance

on the pine

is something I can't abide.

So when I welcome you

in your gloom,

just don't leave your trace

on anything I own.

Noticed something about you

Noticed something about you

as I lay supine along the floor,

staring into the ceiling from below

dead to the world as my bones

rattled silently inside my skin,

full of holes like a sieve—

it was wasted on you,

you were high and complete,

a shining example flying

around the sun, in love

with all created things.

And that was when I noticed it—

you don't bend before you break,

and you shatter like tempered glass.

Honest scum

Honest scum

tripping down the flower line,

sending postcards on a wire,

dirty water in the lungs.

Love, I'm hobbled,

torn up and used

like a condom wrapper,

sitting in the gutter

where I belong.

Rain, rain down

Rain, rain down

a million days and nights,

the unnamed city

with lights for eyes

drowning in it,

the fever unbroken,

the promise unkept.

This wide-eyed schemer

has loosened the rain

from its screws

in the stratosphere,

let it fall and fall.

Unmake me

in your eyes

wet with rain

and the tears

you have shed

watching it

fall and fall.

Vampire

Wrapped in the arms of sleep like a vampire's cloak,

soft and billowing,

all dark like velvet—

like a vulture's wings

that crowd around and cover

all the exposed nerves,

the bad wiring.

Wrapped in your arms I am suffocating in silk,

drowning in drunken reverie,

and slipping forever across the surface

of a night ship at dawn

that cradles its cargo

in the vampire arms of sleep.

Leaves running down the muddy river

Leaves running down the muddy river

in a flurry like a painting,

all washed out colour and brushstroke,

gasping at the air as they're sucked down

by the weight of water and gravity

into a hole they will never leave.

Wave after wave

Wave after wave

after wave

unrelenting,

lights fractured in the eyes,

a torrent of open wounds

plucked fresh like daisies

from the tumult, the cyclone,

the freewheeling dervish of pain

now encroaching,

wave after wave

after wave

unrelenting—

how sad you look

in the wake of it,

tears breaching the floodlines

like an illegitimate son,

practiced patience worn thin

like a ragged sweater

in the face of it,

wave after wave

after wave

unrelenting—

you need to see this,

the bite given freely

to the limbs borne skyward,

and now where are they,

please believe me,

I can't take anymore, it's

wave after wave

after wave

unrelenting.

Raped by indifference,

Raped by indifference,

sordid story from a whorehouse

and then—

a calamity of crows flocked at my grave

to peck at the cold dry earth,

contagion swarming in their guts

and they mean me no harm

beneath this fingernail moon

of an August night.

In the lonesome places—

In the lonesome places—

sad-eyed soul

drifting

in and out of

dreaming,

and a cold wind blows.

Dark blue 3am bedroom drift,

this cold wind penetrates

to the bone,

and a lonesome place

comes home.

Some shape beyond the pines,

Some shape beyond the pines,

a shade,

a shadow darker than the pitch of the night

(at one with the flora and fauna,

the smell of the trees permeating the air,

the temperature cool and dusky),

expands and contracts with its breath,

crawls along the black horizon,

and moves in silent forbearance,

patient.

Waiting.

This heart is fallow beyond recognition,

This heart is fallow beyond recognition,

a withered thing weakly pumping

blood gone thin with oxygen—

hollow and anesthetized.

Shriveled and dull

though it may be,

it is all I have left

in this world.

Ashen spire alchemy

Ashen spire alchemy

drawn within a druid's robes—

collecting bones at dusk of day

in sandy reach beyond the veil.

(I can swallow my pride, I can,

and lay down my sword

at the feet of a foe

much greater than I).

Ashen spire alchemy

drawn within a druid's robes—

suckling pigmeat under the eye

of the pink moon rising in the sky.

Our teeth in a system of wires,

Our teeth in a system of wires,

so strange and stranded like hair,

and our breath so cold in this machine—

tell me your secrets here,

your frequencies, your telepathies,

and all the ways the world has let you down,

so I know how to reckon them

with the system of wires

and the feeling in our guts

every time it powers on,

lighting up like a new sky,

so bold and uncanny

it feels like dying.

What will be the end

What will be the end

if time has its selfish way,

slipping up on crocodile teeth

and pushing fingers in the mud—

now fast to the beginning

where the teeth are set,

breathe in,

and now fast to the brittle end,

and there is your pound of flesh,

breathe out.

(An inch to the end and now the fingers are stuck

and we're tired,

naked,

and poor.)

Moon against me

Moon against me

in a drowning so complete

it pools at my feet,

settles its hands

along the swollen tide,

bathing in the murk,

imbibing the wine-dark waters,

and casting its spells

into the cool night air.

This moon is against me

in all its dreaming

and inscrutable ways—

strange shapes in candlelight

thrown up against the wall

of my troubled mind,

and it's up and down

with the waves

in the dark.