From The Sill

My potted plant sits 

On the faded oak sill 

And gazes intently 

From three stories up

With far more

Than three stories 

To tell

Cobbled stone leaks

Of brothers and sisters 

Alike, under lavish decor

Of swirled gangrene,

It watches, intent

And with awe,

The blur

 

And when one says

"Come" and another

"I shall", Echo locks

Arms with the pane

And holds against her

Chest, a lost form

Of mirth

And it looks on

As still worlds cross

And look to me,

A beacon, a dance

Of flooding pastel.

I sit, a potted plant,

And watch.

Opal In Bay

She carries opal wrapped in bay leaf,

A pleading pulse for plenitude

Sharply cuts her high cheek bones

Until they swell a hellish halocaust, 

Tarring severed jewels

Resting on her face

A hand? Primordial cries from the basin of existence,

Souls of sunken sirens of hell assimilate into her eyes,

Dark now, cold as Styx, requiring more than coins to pass through.

Poison limbs splinter, screaming, cinders, shouting (silently)

You again?

Cracking, 

Shooting up hope with an equally potent drug, 

Hope.

Her feet tread light, 

As to not stir the shadows

Of her past steps. 

Her hair martyrs for wind, 

Tinted temples of crossed vines and leeching ivies

Reaching, stinging, throbbing, clawing, sharply up the curving terrace, 

Neck tensing as they lap up against her,

Darkening in shorebreak,

Nipping on innocence.

The dove before her is smoldering, 

but she gathers the feathers for flight,

Because soon, she knows,

The canons of her life,

Will become memory,

And the opal, burning a hole 

Through a right hand 

That was never entirely there, 

Will dilute into clarity,

You again? She screams.

Silently.

Embalming Roses

Whisper your palms upon thorns, 

As honey drips, drips, drips on scars,

Lush satin embalms the raw pink seams

Budding from moisture and the marred.

Shuttering, hallowed out faces,

Through xylem, exoskeletal rain, 

Blankets blooming from oil,

Shrouding the skin with pain.

Tunnels, limestone unlit,

With torches to tell the time,

And petals, stiff with the blessing of tar,

Once flush with color and brine.

All stops, emblaze, the beats emanate

From the rose embalmed and soul innate.

Lost Wax

Cataclysmic tempests gnash, pull, tear,

At the manes of the spoke-turns.

The most dangerous game, hunted

For pipes and hallowed serotonin -

Crawl, fistfuls of sand, diamonds

At the masthead.

Fission, fusion, melting through the salt

Flares, sun-spot, granulation

Crepitates beneath concrete bedsheets,

Scintillates under pacified minds

Who fail to accept the estimate

Of open moorings

Left in the bay.

But I'm sane

(Throat coated with codeine dreams

Scratching to reach the surface)

Please believe me

(They're clawing at me, repousse 

With flesh and gold)

Hear my voice

(I hear it, can you? Lost in

The catacombs, winding

Through past, serpentine)

Cold blood, or is that water?

Hold me. Caress me.

The child flicks the marble.

It doesn't stop rolling,

But the statue appears.

The sage and the archangel,

Venerated for wisdom

Healing crack visage.

Temples pounding

Sacrificial chants

Checking my pulse. 

I am the wanderer over

My own stream, corrode

This sheath, corrode,

Dripping hands, arrows,

My only direction.

Golgotha, stems

The wingéd South

Reaps carousels from Fata Morgana.

My halbirdier marches

Stag, follow the cast. 

The Arbor (Lace)

Forth into arbor.
Every movement entranced. 
Circuitous lulls dissolve themselves 
onto thin, silky lace.
The web envelopes the coastline - 
Ethereal in origin and the present,
The connectivity tactically, carefully
Navigates amongst the leaves.
Evanescence latches to absence
As dew blossoms into shade,
Baptizing the rocks below.
A zenith sways with the hydrangeas, 
And lapses of time
Bitter the salt water breeze;
These wait for Asclepius, 
And for the Peonies
To shudder in the warmth.
And these lapses
Prick the finger
Through purple velvet,
And a bead of blood,
Carefully, tactically,
Surfaces.

The controlled beauty;
A stain,
Until the arbor
Becomes tangible once again.
A deep burgundy drips slowly, softly,
Mesmerizing the ghosts of the lace.

Contrapposto

How relaxed
Can a stance
Be?

Alcyone and Morpheus

Am I entranced, forlorn night fall?
Son of the morning star,
Faint as Aeolus, whispered me,
Blowing through my malachite shawl;
Faint as a whisper that's withered away
Blowing through my malachite shawl.

Stones are rounded by force, my dear.
Sea-glassed son of the sky
Covered my flesh with a gentle veneer 
Of porcelain and marble alike;
With auric pulses preserving my name,
And a voyage no longer alive.

To be Calypso, to embalm -
Honey and silver wine.
Preserve my lapse, ethereal falls,
Beneath the robes of the divine;
Limply drifting, the white lilies sink,
Petals rush in with the tide. 

Your plumes will cradle your father, my love;
Seven dawns will be still.
And through your malachite shawl will come
A dilating tranquil revere
For the smoother stones, captured in space
Between your flight and fear.