Poetry
Contact Cement
We shared so many firsts,
I wasn’t ready for lasts.
I sat in the tub and scrubbed away your goodbyes,
hoping to wash it away
so I could meet you again.
I scrubbed until I was raw,
and bandaged myself up.
The wound festered and and formed a cast around my skin,
cementing me to the floor.
I spent hours in a shop,
crafting a clay mask to cover my own,
but the fire cracked it, from the brow to the snout,
and fell apart in my hand
when I tried to put it on.
This body is not immortal
Half spoken prayers wrap around the foreheads of the misguided,
etching its verses in their temples,
as the crown of thorns pull closer
This body is not immortal
on our hands and knees
we hemorrhage as our stigmatic wounds
bleed our devotion
to a false idol.
Visions of crying saints forever trapped in a mass of clay and pigment,
Helplessly clinging to a pseudo rosary
made of wolfs bone and impiety.
A foreign tongue chanting prayers embedded from the pews,
mistranslated verses helplessly strewn on the lips of the misguided.
This body is not immortal
Bathing in divine wine and the garden of eden
You close your eyes and succumb to the flesh of a fig
white lilies with crimson spots float within your porcelain bathtub,
The final offering to Dionysus stains the ends of your fingernails,
purple hues running as chains down glowing hands
This body is not immortal
To who do I owe this exquisite devotion?
To the Moonshine?
Or the nasty obsession inside me?
The query clings to my shoulders
As crystalline tears curve with my cheek.
A nasty mold festers in my throat,
and swells shut
These damn saints cursed these brittle bones and collapsed lungs.
This body in not immortal
Empty wine glasses hung haphazardly from obscure surfaces with chipped edges,
from our nights together,
velvet glances and pointed smiles,
intoxicated on our hatred towards our history
This body is not immortal
The gift was mine to give.
Anti venom coursing through our overzealous pulse
we tried to throw gasoline to quench the flames.
Dark trenches of a hallway rolls for eternity,
frantically growing and swelling with shadow
This body is not immortal
Blacked out X’s on the back of my hands
to make peace with my red sister who dressed up in the alley behind a cathedral-
A vigilant ambush of moonstone and myrrh,
my promises are lost to a lost messiah.
I ramble to no end and trace past IV scars,
thorns catch and rip but all we could do is watch the world pour.
This body is not immortal
Late night hospital visits and the taste of saline stings my tongue like a hymn
Recalling past restless nights,
shuffling unsteadily home with a dagger half in my arm,
half in my throat.
Dear Mary, the holy mother
these haunted memories will you mend?
Pray for us sinners, now,
and in the time of death.
Father
Outside my father’s home,
I sat and rested in the road,
and added the faint encounter inside a dusty tome
and resented this useless father that I’ve been bestowed.
I moped down the road and plunged into the stream
sinking to the bottom, face down
hiding under a rock where the moon couldn’t beam.
Not worrying whether or not I would drown.
I was jostled awake when the waves pushed me to the riverbed,
and coughed out the stones from my throat,
watching them fall out filled me with dread,
knowing now that I would stay afloat.
A string was cut, connecting me to someone I’ve never know,
assuring me now that I was truly alone.
Oregon
Fog covers the butte
that sits just outside my home,
peaking out at me.
The mountains roll on
like a carpet on a floor.
Just rippling on.
A field of color
sheds its delicate petals,
landing on my cheeks.
Red and white mushrooms
grow from the side of a log.
May be poisonous.
Rain hits my window.
A soft hum of my rooftop,
luring me to sleep.
How can I leave this
mountainous and peaceful home,
this place that I love.
False Idols
To those who seek truth,
stay quiet and just observe.
Do not try to preach,
for the truth is in the trees
and is not made to be owned.
Hollows
I had responsibilities.
“I’m sick.”
“What’s wrong?”
My head snapped,
I had crossed a line, I’d also changed.
He looked at me gravely.
“I’m disappointed in you,
You are not sick, playing hooky.”
I would lose me forever.
I am nothing, no more
I carry my old burdens,
I carry them wherever I go,
It’s impossible to get rid of them. I am fill’d with,
I will fill in denial.
None shall be dear to me.
You paths worn in hollows with unseens existences-
pierced facades
you and iron shells.
