spiral staircase, hanging vase

new park, shadows, spigot, face

tucked within bony embrace  

steam ship, steel bowed, gently winding

new lights, old vows, new vine crying

cupcake corset, onion scabbard

neatly peeling, gently lathered

and I will run ‘cross this desert of untied strings

flickering, wavering, suggesting hope in simple things

your thin, long shoulders in my palms

on our vision ship through endless qualms

I lay panting, gasping, and flailing.

beating the stillness out of myself.

hardening myself for a revolution nobody believes in.

how long will I comfort myself in Your absence?

When will You restore my warrior-soul?

I am screaming for orders.

I am screaming in fear.

crying over my spirit’s tomb.

how many tears until You notice?

how many seizures until Your embrace?

I beg my goat-hearted prayer for integration.

“am I really all the things that are outside of me?”

“am I really all the things that are outside of me?”

“am I really all the things that are outside of me?”

locked down and shut up in my room again

winding the rivers together at last

I writhe on the delta and sour as they pass

forever the known ones fall under and spit

by first light of autumn their kindling remit

and stretch non-withstanding across open arms

by fire of a moon-scape upended and harmed

untwist o sweet cavalcade!

unpin my requite!

all harbors forgotten

undo my delight!

fall forward and scramble

your notions decried

my tyrant your bough breaks

my hands held untied

where lion-fisted rumors fold
beneath your feeble, trembling wrist
a kindly snake with hands to hold
your dreams conspire to resist

a lock-pick heart is saying sooths
its seed soaked up within your tomb
across the prairie by ourselves
to bed down into open womb

this fault-lined space
this gravied place
where sores re-lace
by mist embraced
where if you come
mute or displaced
or sour of face
you’ll come alone

a thin mist begins to condense, inviting the night to unwind
alone under the porch light, his jacket produces a cigarette
the backyard quietly admits a firefly as its counteroffer
the two lock eyes and glow for several moments in turn
blithely acknowledging their distaste for the situation at hand

meanwhile in Brussels, a faceless hand caresses her flawless breast
as she discovers pleasures unfathomable to the learned man

a camera so sharp it remembers your thoughts
turns a toast for a new year that will never come
as we wind up
and we think back
we buy the priciest lottery ticket
and scratch the wrong number off
for the thousandth fucking time
alone in our own room
wondering why the traffic light outshines the moon

you contemplate color
and the nature of sound
its every undulation our only connection
compressing the air at the impulse of your lips
to plant my barren point into your deafened ears

I was attending a college set on top of a waterfall. It was obviously a small school, and it was heavy in the sciences. I don’t remember what I was studying. Classrooms were scattered around the rock landings and cliffsides in the epic natural setting. I was surrounded by frat boys and Urban Outfitted hipsters giving eachother high fives. I privately felt constant tension between attending social functions and kicking it with the homeless people that lived in a disheveled building under the threat of demolition. In fact, it was hardly a building so much as a wooden skeleton left over from what I assumed to be flood damage. I remember feeling like I had an obligation to protect the structure for sake of the people who inhabited it, aware of their frailty and in ways preferring their company to my schoolmates’.

The dream spanned a few days, and several of my friends from college made appearances. Many of them were studying science, and several of them were greying or losing hair despite their youth. Most of them were concerned with little more than establishing committed romantic relationships. Then my aunt, uncle and grandmother showed up on campus, and we immediately proceeded to attend a lecture in the student hospital’s Operation Room. It was my responsibility to see that everyone was properly dressed out in scrubs, bouffant caps and shoe coverings to protect the sterility of the O.R.

I soon became fed up with what I was doing, and found myself at a party where others were dancing to records and drinking to excess. I remembered that I had something to be concerned about, but I was distracted with socialization. Internally, I flipped between merriment and concern, and eventually recalled that I knew a violent storm was coming. No one had told me about the impending storm- I have a keenly accurate sense about changes in the weather. I was concerned with the dilapidated edifice I had obligated myself to protect.

The dream faded as the party drew on into the night. I was having a blast, and the more fearsome the storm outside became, the better my night got. Somehow, the party became more fun as the contrast between what was going on inside and outside became more clear.

what would it do to you to drink it all down? would you have to hold your nose to forget the flavor?

it’s a feeling too powerful to embrace- understanding that to know it is the only requisite for its existence- as surely as gravity pulls. somehow I always knew it, though i could not comprehend it. it was shrouded in the maelstrom of pain I was born to bite into.

it is real and it is winding its vice-grip around my entrails and teaching me to sing something i can’t put into words. this guttural, deep and incomprehensible humming of machinery planted behind me before i was an idea.

now, for once and at last, i am on the front line.
I am david.
I am david.
I am david and Goliath will fall.