Enshrined

I fiddle the six strings
and they resonate in your echoes.
I breathe in the lull of nicotine
and trace your veins in midair.
I touch a nerve with a bleeding pen
it’s frozen at my fingertips.
I count your wrinkles, kiss your calluses
and I melt, I melt into emptiness
I paint my skies in dark afterthoughts
and your hues fill my palette again.
I see, I dive, I crave, I dream
only to have you seep in through my seams.
I find what I’ve lost, I hold the missing piece
only to bury it in you once more.
I stretch across an empty bed
warm in your thoughts, cold in your absence
I toss a coin to let things transpire
but it’s me that falls again, head over heels.
I caress your hair, I try to pen your ink
and instead wrap myself around your being.
I’ve built you a shrine within my crux
Out beyond the reach of everything else.

.

Your name,
it is wedged somewhere in the deep
in a crack between my ribs
where the arteries meet.
If I say it, I cannot breathe.
And then it rises, swiftly,
from trembling vocal chords
doing a loop-the-loop within,
caressing the throat
circumventing its course
through my tongue
and in a heart-stopping instant,
emerges the crowning jewel of phonetics
a beautiful whirl
a resounding spell
sheer perfection in three syllables
nine letters wide,
an inflection garbled in pride.
For the life of me,
I can't imagine what is so special
except for the fact that it is
your name.

Verbal

Standing.

at the edge of a precipice

on the threshold of insanity

a footing that's as good as none.

Hanging.

my words on a silver string

surpassing the sheen of pearls

like a noose around my neck.

Reading.

the poetry on your fingertips

while my ink stains the pages

darker than ever before.

Drinking.

from the cup of possibilities

drunk on daydreams

draining the dregs of being.

Metaphors in the morning

A cup of tea at the crack of dawn.

A crack so loud, it wakes them all.

A miserable dove on a quest to nest.

A holy cow on a sabbatical.

Paisley clouds on a solar mission

play with the spots on idiot’s face.

Clinging to the awning, swinging in the breeze

rusty cobwebs mourn the old spider

Light and shade, bloom and rot, picture and prose,
it all comes and goes.

Lullaby bye

There are ants in my pants
snakes in my shoes
tumbleweed on the windshield
and demons on the roof.
It is black,
so very black
a roomful of invisible nudes
and dying embers,
rocket scientists
fading into the stars.
There are shards of glass
and shamen in my brain
nails in my coffin
and peace within.