Come drink violence
and suck the marrow of dark distemper.
Sink teeth into skull
and gnaw the socket
where once a soul lived.
A kiss and a lie
burned in my cheek
by the scalding moon,
oozing flamelike and raw
from dark mountain prisons,
the red glow of future horrors.
Rush now over the cliff
and deep to my throat
thrust down my turning head
and cull useless tears.
A river of char
burnt by stricken time,
and the means of death locked away.
So that all is left to its own patience,
but to cry and curdle,
and turn its head from the moon.

All sympathy for silver
and a coin for dark swaddled moments.
The single face
of a thousand dark women
weeps for freedom.
So step from slow pasts
into lighted halls
of burgundy and tea.
Once deepened in woe,
Once adrift on sinister seas.
Your lips graze my cheek
and your teeth my ears.
Fill my navel with oil
and leave me when cold comes.

Dark demon whispers.
Foul murmurs of harm
and of the silent river.
Go take it
and give yourself up.
A doom of calamity,
feline and ebony.
Stalking with blind arms
and the uneven lungs of the sea.
Gone as youth
Gone as friends
and as the mother’s creed.
A house of jade bricks
sacked by southern thieves.
and crushed under dark-haired legion
and golden-haired desire
unto the end of all light.
Drawing unabashed
across sinister prarieland
and then gone in dark whispers.

Drink deep the silver silky draught of your breath.
I tumble over in the void
your hand in mine
your weight on my chest.
A flash and a song
and the memory of an age.
And I the wolf of amber angst
impaled on your spear
bloody and snapping,
my life pooled underneath.
And I maimed and frozen
buried under leaf and snow,
the knife rusted in my side.
And I the lone crow
plucking forth my own eye
and circling high
into the risen sun.

A finger on my jaw
and all falls away.
Grinning on shallow haunches
and the lithe trim of indifference
A single thread
vermillion long
laid on enamel fields
and a cat in your bed.
I cry over days
skimming a riot of ripples,
stones of eternal weight
float heavy on the river.
And a rose moon
sardonic winker
and spiteful jabber.
Like a child
Like chitinous black ants.
The wave rivets us
and our skin a blur
my hand lost into deep bones
boundaries loose and emerald.
Deep punched
Fluid bodied
I spin into the void
and see you.

Your touch an ocean and an ocean my breast
silky dark and the booming gravity of the void.
I cannot contain it.
My phantomish husk powerless.
As well hold the sea in my cupped hand.

If yet I live,
eyes stacked
fingers locked in my rusted beard,
never will I feel the kiss of eels
or the bread of old wisdom.
If yet I live,
bent low
a shadowy thing in forests aflame,
will you touch my elbow
and sing the deepest sadness?
If yet I live,
not once but thrice,
not soft but long and into the dawn,
and your face catlike and strong.
If yet I live,
three days a gift
and the fourth day gone
to fly and never touch the burning earth.
If yet I live,
I will swim in the mud of agony
and touch the sun
and show you my heart.
If yet I live.

A pact I struck with devils unseen.
Spiraling towers of amber ash
laughing with the tooth of agate
and the ebony horn.
It is false,
a lie unto the cloudy stars
with a tongue of heavy brass.
Shudders of pitch and a sigh of tar
drip heavy from my mouth
as I barter soul for serenity.
And all I did was for you.
And it burned you to ash.

Scorched and smoking husks of grass
and I weep for one and eleven.
Not remained, not smoke like the birds
and the burnt stalks.
But dragged and left in that place.
Indiscrimination of the black cloud
of the driving flame,
the empire of the inevitable.
And the callus on my thumb burns.
Can you hear the smoke
or the hollow of smoke
in the shadow of fleeing children?
The sun burns us all, both you and me.

And where is the silver star
hid deep in the freckled sea?
Slayer of past lives,
reach me and grasp my spine
two-handed, to hold me true.
I see but your face.
I hear but your voice.
I smell the scent of wish
and crush my soul
and dream I am far away.
Eyes opened to the awesome expanse
and thoughts to the vast possibility.
I toil as a bee on a flower
reach for the grey star
and feel the sun again
sigh and sleep again in peace.