C U-Flame-Go

Beauty is the beast that my caught eyes by the tail. Wet fireflies cover land
and glint their glass lights.

my vision-rhythms
sharpen—burns her
orange with knife shadows—

Feel the Bengal strobe.

Midnight spreads
its body out soaking
in the jungle’s steam; laying root,
v
i
n
e
s
grow to taste
the blossomed peach.

Dawn heals shadows enough
to mute
her flight
in amber
camouflage.

A Monster Wrecks Again (I Missed You for Six Months)

Winter started in July
and the season lasted six months.
I would pull up the drive
hoping that spring would arrive each night.
My head netted with lucky stars,
shining to get there before midnight:
love without two people.

I would ride up the driveway slowly
each slow inch I crawled,
on all four tires,
a broken lock-ness serpent,
slimed in deep sludge,
I hoped to conjure you in stony detail.

What a beacon you once were
before we crashed down,scattered wreckage blown
into separate, distant and snowy woods.
the surviving wreckage in my neck
looked like me in boxers and a t-shirt
watching TV Land reruns.
floating on a vessel,
of chilly medicine and cold past-times,
without a thought of warm bathing or shaving.

That sharp ghost of you,
looping winds through icy branches,
dulled as I wrote my life with it.
I wrote faster to quietly wear it down
the friction brought the quick thaw.

The water rose in this frozen home of shared memories and trees.
Jesus walked across this new sea to me
I jumped from vessel to vessel faster,
of medicine and past-times,
praising him in the salty,
storming air while bailing;
praying to walk across the tempest water too,
after almost drowning.

But even while I walked with Him,
crawled on legs and tires,
jumped from vessel to vessel,
of medicine and past-times;
you didn't manifest.
So, I missed you clenched

from the constant hit of waters

for six, slow months;
before emerging from the wreckage
open-eyed and almost human.

Copyright 2009