blades of snakegrass

turn back slender hands that may shatter between the smooth pads of your fingers 

turn them back to the beginning 

I slip out of skin as spirits slip from sleeping bodies

I slip out of sleep as lithe legs slide from stockings after mass

 

have you kissed the knuckle yet

have you knelt at the foot of your bed

aching for the past 

I found a ouroboros twisted into a double helix 

hung from a branch and buried 

behind cascades of Spanish moss 

I unhooked its jaw 

pulled the tail from between its fangs  

and when it finally had room to speak it whispered 

careful where you're standing, girl

once this was a seafloor

all your mountains underwater

you'll find their fossils in the caves 

keep your footing, keep your mind 

you never know when either 

will falter without you noticing 

once I was a serpent, grand enough

to swallow you whole

now I am less than the length of your arm 

see how decompression makes pitiable monsters 

of us all

I returned the snake to its rightful place 

hidden in long blades of grass

knowing it will only revert back to its previous state

after enough time has passed 

careful now, this was all ocean once

keep your footing 

lest you sink

Desire I

"For the life of me, I can't understand you."

she smiled widely

it was the first time he ever saw her show teeth

it took up her whole face and lit her eyes with an immortal joy. 

"Good," she said, laughing. "Very good." 

There's nothing stronger in this world than desire 

she holds the reins somewhere in an opaque fog 

I saw her twirling in darkness past the edge of the observable universe

dead stars in her hair 

what is beyond beyond? she seems to ask 

I don't get to see her often 

always a little bit further than I have the 

drive to reach, you see I... 

I am always disappointed, forever looking away

it's better this way

holding her hand is an insurmountable weight

there's not a soul in the world now, 

to be so tempting as to break open the gate.

fine by me 

I sail in a glass chalice sea,

a tiger shark in a koi pond

starving, suffocating 

not a soul so tempting as to break free 

it's all a beautiful game of charades

all a play

the dealer's dealing the same card over and over 

the trick is up their sleeves and everyone I've seen 

doesn't have it 

the only strange magic 

that has any power over me 

flattery bores me half to death,

yes why don't you tell me

about my eyes again?

how they look lost but profound

as if all I have to say is within them

so I need not ever make a sound?

so many words, people offer

words and painted pictures of an 

illusory love, imaginary future 

the art of suggestion is a powerful one 

but i will be controlled by it

no longer 

I am not so incredible, I know

I am no royalty, no king 

I come from a line of derelicts and 

degenerates

who can't fall asleep without a drink

no, I am not a dream

but I have something most don't

or perhaps that's my game 

the side-eye, the dark clothes

the silence 

the theatre of 

I know secrets that you don't

I've seen spectacles you'll never see 

you can guess, you can wonder, 

but I'll never reveal anything

I am happy the way that I am 

languishing in the serene pleasure 

of anhedonia, an eternal apathy

great enough to dance with Desire

somewhere in the fathomless deep 

I do not wake up in the middle of the night with a loneliness

I can only describe as aquatic 

the kind you'd feel 

looking over the rails of a balcony

and out at the sea 

while everyone else inside is asleep 

why does all I touch stop at the skin?

or am I the one who portrays shallowness?

all I seem to be able to find are 

costumes of human beings, 

is it because

I've been playing a role for so long that 

I have locked myself into an 

eternal comedy? 

For I can not stop laughing at all I have claimed to love 

all of it,

how silly of me. 

I'm not angry 

not at them, not at the world

all my bitterness has burned up

there's only ashes in my Ace of Cups

though 

she does hold me, at times

in her delicate, vast hands 

I am turned small 

to marbles 

in the pond of her palm and 

Desire, the all-powerful sorcerer knows

how to conjure up the only dream that

could sway me to live under her thumb

she shows me thunderstorms and music

incomprehensibly kind eyes, a thread

of mercury in a block of gold

I can hear myself, ever-curious

asking my many questions

"Do you think in poetry? Do you wake 

in the middle of the night with a loneliness 

I can only describe as aquatic?

are you eternally fatuously in love with the sky? 

do moon beams make you cry, do you wish

every day, that you could fly?

have you thought about learning how 

to fly a plane only to talk yourself out of it

because you're hopelessly afraid of falling?

are you disappointed in everyone or 

are you deeply disappointed in yourself

does everyone fall short of worthiness or

have you always fallen short of being worthwhile? 

Do you want to die during the morning or at night?

If they come for you will you run away or will you stay and fight?"

I hear her smiling,

they'd answer every one, dear, and they'd

ask even more 

and they'd make you furious, so furious 

and you'd be grinning through your rage

you wouldn't understand them at all,

and better yet they wouldn't understand you

and when they put their teeth to your lips

you wouldn't be afraid of forever anymore. 

isn't that what you want, small one? 

someone to share early orange dawns with?

someone to sit with you in the dark

and feel you as both separate

and a part? 

I curled up, comfortable

in her palm for a few moments 

before rolling off. 

"No, not really." 

I always give her vast hand a few pats 

before walking away. 

"It’s not worth it.”