King Tree

The tree clawed through the granite bloodstream.
He ripped and tore to be above all others—
became king.
King of stone barren precipice,
Majestic but alone.
He now knows why wolves howl so long.
His skeletal fingers crackle up the night sky,
Fragment stratosphere, and section stars.
But they cannot reach.
For here ambition must remain dream.
Nothing.
And nothing can blot out
The strewn map of convoluted cracks
Through which iron roots traveled to create the leering white face.
The moon remains a mirror
Of sunbeam past-
Beauty and joy into somber silver,
Glittering coldly over dark waters.
Listen to the gentle waves
Deliver rigid truths—
Whitebleached driftwood
To crash against the stones and reflect the light
Of the moon.

When the Romans Come

I wonder what it will be like?
Walking over that final crack on the farthest sidewalk
With brown grass invading through its recesses.

Breathing has always come so easily;
The chest always contracts and expands
Contracts and expands.
Organs slither together like piles of worms,
A living paper bag is draped over it all
So we can laugh, cry, kiss, understand.

This grey temple buried beneath my hair
Is somehow capable of holding incomprehensible fires–
Warmth and agony,
Soft golden soul, and bright angular spirit–
How strange.

But when the Romans come
Where do the luminescent lovers flee to?
It is difficult to see very far in dark waters.
Is it forever cold and clammy when we leave our ghosts behind?
Maybe the journey never happens;
Light, as glowing embers,
And with closing eyes,
Fades.
Or perhaps the sea is a sky through which we must fall,
To reach heaven’s glass green floor.

Like falling in love I should think,
You always wonder what it will be like
Until it finally happens,
And you know it is not like the other times
When you were not quite sure.
It is either a long dark cloud or the very sun itself.
The rain comes often enough,
Sighing into life with the wind through the pine trees,
But so also does sunlight streak through the dim shadow
To gild the loam and tree bark
Into living kingly halls.

The depth black phantasm in the closet,
the enigmatic void,
Makes these sparks all the brighter.

Endlessly

To love endlessly.
Purpose in wandering the stars
Feeling the burning between my fingertips
The ice within my throat.
To feel eternity wash over me,
Deluging from that vastness that cannot be comprehended.
To be enveloped in love
Like imperceptibility passing through my flesh
Leaving gloom behind for gentle icicle lights.
I wish to scale the pillar of fire
Stand upon its heights like a lone wolf
Howling songs to the Almighty
That He might know the beauty of what He has given,
To let Him feel through my strains.
Then I shall leap off
Into the blackness only to be caught from its clutches,
Caught by the hand with a breath.
I find freedom and captivity within love
Enslaved by ardor,
Reveling in death as a door in the white wall.
Coronas of passion shine from the high glassy seas,
Fear abolished as I tread the heavens alone yet so full of presence.

Mourning Sunset

He taught us to be happy,
but we needed to learn to be sad correctly.
So he fell asleep to a requiem lullaby,
because gravestones are the greatest chalkboards ever made.

He was my crutch,
my fifth limb.
I needed to learn to walk on broken legs
to feel the bone protrusions for my own good.
So You swept him out from under me.
I failed to recall that there is a joy meter,
It must be fed pain coins on the hour
I needed reminding.
If good things last,
then their goodness fades
like laugh lines at the coming of a long expected frown.
Surely I did not want that to happen?

Reasons fly like flurrying snowflakes
landing at random
as perfect pieces to the wrong puzzle;
pairs of ones that never add up to two.
Perhaps when we go beyond width, length, and height
everything will equate so flawlessly,
but this is the day when mathematics fails us all.

You are a Washing Machine

You probably put fresh paint in your pockets each morning because everything you touch is in color. You are happy like those Green Sundays you sometimes make and as unpredictable as chain lightning refracted off a clear glass marble. With one blast you broke all my mirrors but I am very clever and have put them back together with black mud and now I get to look more contorted than ever. So now that I see me in washed out lighting fractures I have been able to realize that love must always lead to hatred of something. What if that something is me? I think I know the answer. See how it shines dull and shadowed, like a cumulonimbus cloud or like black mud? Because your love is like beautifully distressing Communism where everyone gets one tablespoon. I’ve tried to sneaking more but the words and jokes always come out as garble once I realize how silly I am. Then I am revealed as a snail without my shell always having a constant slimy reminder of everywhere I have been. But knowing what you have lost never helps you get found. I will ask you to help me find, and here is my start: How deep are you? Because I’ve been wading for an awfully long time. Waiting for you to pull me down to where my feet can’t touch the bottom anymore. It would be dreadfully lovely to drown.