Self-actualization

I

at the foot of your shadowed stone breast 

my toes breathe moss and mitochondria 

grief oozing into spored mushroom clouds 

purple smoke stroking the cilia of my throat

hair spooling into pink silkworm spit sap 

II

i breathe in emerald gooseberry embers 

lungs painted shades of jade and juniper 

fingertips sprouting velvet infant ferns 

i can hear your headstone heartbeat 

moth wings beating against peach flesh 

III

nebulas flower my 

saccharine stomach    shell 

constellations rupturing 

       spinal       cord             syrup 

names     of     lovers        eclipsed

    in        liquid        lunar             flesh

i       trace         the        sky     map 

meridianed    in       my       skull 

   meteorite       boned         memories 

   incanting        home

IV

thimbled violets glow gunmetal green 

from ripped veins of neon stardust 

chest-corpse cracked in

ambered clouds 

of bent earth

and i am

raptured

sky

V

i           have become 

amphibian canyon 

coral desert 

driftwood crystal                         rubied islands

metallic moonlight 

     hemp heartbeat

petrified parasite 

spiderwebbed gold                                                                              jaded reptile 

thistled tundra                                 oceaned wildfire    

nebulous anthropoid

Grieving a Friend 

choking

wood-dust sediments my lungs still heaving beneath black velvet 

  cleaved   the 

       by                         weight 

                    gunsmoke   you as whisky wraiths haunting my spine

                      you   left                  writhing 

          the         you    in   dreams of dust and decay

           ally       the 

           the       mirror

        soldier       above                    your

           you as the viridescent acid licking my skullbox         final

  I      artist   snarled                  words

          could                                             curls                    ringing

not                                                                              in

           save me from the gum-rot of grief, lichen growing on my scalp    

       and                                   a                                ears

       you                               swarm   

  wandering                          of                                I’m

    campus                           cicadas                        proud

        at                              smothering                        of

     dawn                              august’s                         you

         lemon

       I  blaze and blister and burn for you

          are

                                                     yesterday

Remembrance of the Body

Trauma is a stone lodged in my throat

Carving memory as it sinks earthbound

Through pestilence flesh and contagion

Blood, divulging my body's secret history

Betrayed by blighted eyes, corneas bent

In darkness, I lament youth and grieve 

Innocence, ripped violently from a tongue

That longs to taste crucifixion's nectar

I am mapped by thorns lodged betwixt tendon 

And thigh, skin blooming black, battered by 

Grief’s sickle, flesh swallowed in decay

I gasp for rapture only to inhale immolation

Revulsion seeps enamel, deepening the 

Rifts of my jaw, hatred pooling in the bed

Of my mouth, the taste of cruelty steeped 

In vitriol, I expel venom from crushed teeth 

Anatomical infirmity hungers the soul, bones

Stripped of marrow, transmuted death dust 

Leeching a lineage paralyzed through pain 

My body, the harbinger of fate 

God of Sleep

watercolor light prisms 

into a gray expanse 

sleepless civilizations quickening underfoot

an urgency

 a dormancy 

an anticipation 

the land of dreaming awakens 

slumber-starved 

calling home those who left for another life 

gates webbed in the luminescence 

of stolen flesh

frost-veins reap silence 

from deadened night

coveting the heat of decay 

bodies silt-tombed 

a season of memories sealed in severed bone

we have all wandered the wasteland of dreams

sand sifting through shuttered eyelids 

lost in the moon-glow of the endless

Self-portrait

What if you could taste the moonstone 

on my glitter-glass tongue? 

Feel the thistle budding behind my knees 

its milk-sap sickly-sweet? 

What if you could make love 

to loneliness the way I do? 

Like a summer storm 

left shattered and aching 

or dream to life amaranth skies 

veined in amber and gold

Would you thread your fingers 

through the pelt of Death 

lick the honey from his hide 

as I do? 

let his eyes butterfly your spine

cleave tendon from tissue 

a dead doll coffined in silk

Could you pluck glass 

from the spleen of mercy?

feel it eviscerate your fingertips

bone shards slit marrow-deep

                           What if you worshipped rivers

cankered with corpse-rot

drank the decay of moth-rust 

How much grief 

could you vessel?

 How long 

before rupture?

Fighting Extinction 

we collide

and tangle 

and curl into one another 

bodies starved 

desperate and uninhabited

we search the night sky 

for remembrance 

stars becoming dreams 

smoldering in darkness 

we burn and blister 

and rage in silence 

embers breathed into the lungs 

of a dying Earth

we cry beneath waves 

of salt and sorrow

chests cleaved to receive

the souls of the dead

we hunger and yearn 

and devour hope 

children lost in the abyss 

of an indifferent world

Angina 

(Intermittent chest pain caused by insufficient blood flow to the heart)

desire is necrotic             failed flesh

an abscess  learning to be human

drained of savage         impulses

dreams and wild tempests     chained bone-deep

loneliness sutured           in our cerebrum

cells screaming release from           failed remission

wanting too much         from the future of   

forever ravenous         unsated yearning 

we ache in   in hungered absence