She meets me where I am.
Cold and bloodied soul, cracked and soiled,
entrails rotted by the toil of living
as we are.
She too is scarred and beaten,
burn marks from the “radiance” of Life,
patches of bruises stick sickley to the skin
as a cat’s yellow eye.
She’s been through so much,
as I have too.
Yet, she reaches for me with gentle hands,
takes me into her tight embrace,
a loving mother to a child
she is destined to meet.
And I weep and I weep and I weep,
dampening the connecting space of our souls.
The weight of her grieving heart
a glorious prayer made true
by nature’s vicious cycle.

The itching bugs me 
more than the
scars ever will 
so I scratch 
chasing a relief 
I know will never come 

Sh sh sh
Quiet please
I have a headache

Thump thump thump
Heartbeat in my head

Please go away
Leave my head
Go back to my heart

Sh sh sh
Quiet please
I need to go to bed

I think there was a part of me
who knew her
before I knew the sun setting
wasn’t permanent. Maybe
even back to the seventh day:
God rested, and in God’s dreams,
she was tracing with her lips
the line on my chest
that my brassiere cuts into
when I wear it too long.
And God did not wake up
from this nightmare,
because it wasn’t one.
It was good.

When I close my eyes,
the light from the stained-green glass light bulb
still illuminates my skin.
She is drawing circles
on my chest. I do not
touch her. To touch her is to shatter
what we have left.
She made that clear from the beginning.
“I don’t need you to touch me.
I just need you there. To feel
your heartbeat. To hear
your breath hitch. To taste
you even after you’re gone.”
I don’t know if she remembers, but 
sometimes, I smell the damp air,
and I remember how her tongue tasted.
It lingers, and I wish I could compare the two.
Though, now, I wonder if her taste would burn
like alcohol, or holy water.
For her, I would burn again.

I am tired. 
Not the tired of muscles or minds
but of marrow,
the kind that comes
when the world forgets how to be gentle.

These storms don’t knock anymore.
They split the sky
like something breaking loose
from deep beneath remorse, and
the air hangs heavy with things
we won’t name.

I remember
the creek curling like a secret
past trees thick with birdsong,
light skipping across water
like laughter I could see.

I want that again—
the frogs, the ferns,
the quiet language of dew
on the shoulders of dawn.
I want the hills to hum
the way they did before
we asked too much
and gave too little.

I need rest
not just sleep,
but the peace I imagine
exists when the land
is whole,
when wind is just wind
and not warning,
when rain doesn’t raise the creeks in minutes
causing them to engulf everything in their path,
when heat and drought don’t crack
open soil and parch plants.

Let the world soften.
Let the wild things flourish.
Let us find a way
back.

How can we float along in the coal dust
ground into the streams that branch
like feathers across your palms and run
through the caverns set below your eyes
and the valleys of your brow as if it were
a speeding train heading toward the river
barges, behemoths bound for green pastures
and rolling golden fields—their wheat
heads bowed in a majestic breeze, praying
they grow tall and strong, and that the harvest
blade is quick, sharp as a snap of light
caught on a filament—a bright canary yellow
burning away the eons with a song 
as it sheds the hell from which it sprang
like a skin.

I joyfully gulp my mood stabilizers, antipsychotics,
and beta blockers.

But my cholesterol pills,
those are hard to swallow.

The letter “E” lives at the crux of it all,
the confluence of all those words
& phrases that swirl like dervish
between meaning and chaos,
Bert & Ernie.
There are two types of “E”.

Encoded, Enciphered, Escaping
from the prying eyes of meaning.
This “E” is the high-frequency keyed
lock, the secret keeper & rubber duck
of the whispering void.

Enfold, Engulf, Exhale, Explain
the code breakers, betrayers
of the hidden, dragging bits and fragments
of images to the side of meaning where
Bert sorts & paper-clips them by topic.

Once they speak their truth
it will become something else
that grows in every other reader,
eternally.

It is the summerest of nights and I walk onto the dance floor sward; I’ve been waiting for this all day. Kentucky-June humidity traces the line of my legs, the curve of my throat. Touches everything with sweetness. The band is assembled- fox, rabbit, bat and bird. Moonrise keeps the time, deer pour the punch. I smooth out the folds of my dress, ready.

Lightening bugs show up and out and off. I am admired and admire in return, accepting an invitation to join the sway. One little gentleman alights my hand, tasting sun-salted skin. Flashing and flushing and fluttering we bow to each other. I blush peach as his kiss buzzes my lips with light.

I kiss back                                              
and smile
we shimmer

Adventure awaits!
The tree beckons to conquer and wave at the sun.
The neighborhood knights ride in their trusty steely steed
in quest to slay the dandelions.
Onward, into the yellow beastly toad! Its tongue slides onto the ground
to meet the monkeys behind bars, screeching to be saved.

Night falls. We must depart and rest.

A blue rectangle beckons to conquer and befriend the digital moon.
Adventure awaits!