in this theater of roses
I am covered by my nakedness
terrible living of the day
from the underbrush
a hesitancy
pours
one step beating lights below this platform
I dance through an unhinged night
where the breaking occurs
dread in the aborted word
mouth
with a slate tongue
shard
for the master of bared faces
nameless
you have pinned your burnt lips to the morning inscription
spilt vowels from pigeon wings
fractured
and come home with salt and blood thread
from the absence
I close the gate to my children
their stomping and blessing
latch on shattered glass
whisper red mornings
cast stones in ash
coiled and glazed at my feet
bridge voices in the water
I am your dark
kiss
the creation
of seas where the dead
float
upright
tilted mouths to scream
the winter grave
of night swinging through your hands
an unmarked
heredity of the hard-thrown flood
the absence of origin
lone player
singing on the trumpet’s edge
beside my night
to hone the winter prayer
what was between us
was a demand for names
when the warmth of blood
of wild dogs
was the dream of a dance
with sirens heavens
and the clotted leaves
and the clearing
mutations
between my fingers
over and over
hands red in repentance
tonight’s wings
are blue
first among voices
hovering by the night stalk
meager boundary
between us
stamp of the foot
and here I lie
thick dust and the night rhymes
in the ruins of each
spitting tongue
parched accent of the hard dirt
were you to believe
in junction of light then
I would die
the thousandth time
along the way I dropped you
and you lay
apart from creation
midday sun
severs
my tongue
you reach to the birthplace
of gods
along the way
I have misplaced you among red tulips and the mist
surrendered dayfall
to white breath
ritual of circles
I hollow your name
above faces in the stones and dirt
blood-drops
near the open cage
snow harvest
my arms
know you
gray stars
frail hand of god
on the buried
cup
in this terrible
chair
my summer hands
touch your lips
abide the early fog
wasp without
her nest
ferry
of death
I dig in the ruins
for absence
ignite your canceled breath
again
I have forgotten
your face a mask of the wary night
in millions
of grains
of sand
II the sifter
Daybreak haunts
across from where the shining lies
casting
on watersand
canvases of block and paint
swearing away the memory of early dusk
resonant blue
element of the dark
I beat the steel frame
gate unlatched
I exist for the breath-pause
dug-down words of the dark
for the doors that crack
when the keys
splatter in porous wind
I cover myself in blue
night endless call
to my bones
I lay by the fire stone
hide the unburied dead
in my throat shrieks the beast
the shuttered dark
flees behind my back
I am the sifter of soundless
echoes
brushed with dirt
and crumbling
bits of names that stuff my mouth that wound
my tongue on the falling
scent of sky
edging towards the blue
I set the night against
my ribs
tilt of heavy
rain