romance

i saw the edge of sidelined Death
working against the worm of consistency
and meager apportioning of sugar
into that vessel
that held only saturnine tears
before mankind sullied the porcelein
with discoveries of meager means.

used to know what "you" means
before spectral shattering
of that awful term
by the hammers of Love
that beat us into the proportion of each other

i don't need a damn dram to survive on
i ate the last cookie
and you didn't care
and i didn't dare tear you from the glowing green patterns inflected in leaves like life
because i wanted you to know flowers there instead
of all those awful night-based creatures
that rove over stalks and shoots and vines deep in the fall of twilight
which made me fear
like a young child
the beginning of reformatory schooling
just for pressing my palm to some frosted glass window
to say hi to a nun.

well call me red sherrif
under a banner of blood
for i would fight your curse
until the last iron sword broke
beneath banners raised to the sun,
all those medieval archeologies
roving in the dead fecund earth
and smelling like dead wine
finally pressed there
at my funeral
as well received as an archer's arrow in a pot of tea.

old yore,
the countings of Love
in crystalline measure
like sugar
instead of us two worms
dressing up for the act to carry us through sacred sacrament
like misaligned nuns and monks
penitent to the edge
instead of to the violet blade of Romance
pressed into my white breast
like a yearning song of blasted obsidean flame
kept kindred there
in hopes that you won't leave
and that i wouldn't matter
beyond the glancings of well-hewn armor
beneath the catastrophe they called meager salvation
where they left us weak in the hospice
tended to by lilacs
with the firmament of yearnings in our marrow
for those times of old oleander, spring, rust-earth scent and daffodil tallow.

our children, were they blessed?
or did they carry on half-witted and slow
like bludgeoning victims
looking for the blurry outline of the cross
amid all those natural patterns of haze
that had melded our lives together finally
in the dew of morning's old oak?

untitled

in the halls of darkness
where old armors rotted
like the nonsense of prescriptive literatures that had been contextual only to their time
opened a hallway of gold
that men and women
could not set their feet upon the floor
for fear of laying sordid
in their own mental parameters
for at the end
there lay massive tales of blood
lazily and caked with hair
upon a doorway sign
that said only "Excuse."

wild animals scurried in and out
like habit without clockwork
and the sign of an eye
lay shot at and beaten
into the gold of stone
resting as some indominable hallway
because believe me
we lost our brothers and sisters
so we would not leave it's signage unscathed
as the cowards with pale memory were wont to do
when they heard the machines ticking and chortling
in great clatter
as they approached with weak raised limb
the end of their lives.

what lay beyond the hall
could only be described
by the woman who lived without fear
and walked tested by moonlight shivers
through dreadful swamps of history
down that pattered gold
and out in the open air
past the cockroach machinery
and through an empty field
into the utter bliss of Death
that approached like white light sans heat
to denote her footprints and dance
but not upon the lines of literature
nor in the echoes of dead song,
through only a matter
of golden note and cello
harmonious like the Universe's center
a golden tree placed their in commemoration
of her archer's bravery
that flew straight with an arrow
to the slick sweet end.

Samantha

time in flesh
out of joint like a bad science fiction novel
moving through coils of reptilian images of snake bodies
and seething for want of violet flowers.

used to know
what to do here
in terms of this writing
seemed convinced
that I could write with S. Awan
but she ran away
as opposed to falling
into that dark star known as Death
and all I have in memory
is a scrap of lace
and the coordinates of Nova Scotia
along with some ruminations
that if she is still walking the face of this green Earth
then she may be deaf, hiding or lying.