much has been written about the moon; the sway of her hips the rush of lace as her hem laps against rough solitudes and the constant study of drowning far from masked horrors and swashbuckling hands of clocks i often delve the earth and soak in the keen outer distances to remember this simple truth; how lovely you are you, ancient starlight on my empty pages
i found you butterfly haggard in tungsten darkness
wanting to throw the switch:
every wishing well would vomit disco silver
and scoop you into nothingness
i wonder who died that night, often
a burr against my skin, your laughter hides everywhere
i don’t fall, my bones don’t break, brittle chatter safe beneath scars
wishing for soft lightning, anything but the rough bark of the morning
god took you, and left
my love
something pulls at me like a tide;
perhaps to collar me,
insist my lungs can navigate
a depth, a darkness, to you
suddenly the hunger remembers
to plunge hotly down down down
down beyond twilight
down beyond colours swallowed
among silent scuttle crunch thud
visceral entombment of raging senses
a foot trapped, caught, reeling,
bubbles escape carrying screams
arms flail (they could be stumps/coral/schools of silver fish by now)
the frantic mosaic of final moments
the search for air
is the search for you
i will collect you in my arms
all of you
as you wish
from the merest shadow you may call me
i will leave through
the sound of a coin
on a marble step
we bought the flood
a small small river of blood
a trickle from a tickle
it’s ok, really ok, he sighed
with his eyes to the moon
open wide
his tongue glistened
like a pearl
we listened
to him talk of a girl
who lives there, way up there
lighter than air
shiny and fair
with words in her hair
she is weighed down
by her crown
weigh down
way down
trees stand like my bones
they laugh my footsteps
and dress me in the morning
my mouth swims among roots
a world and its history pass through
the open skull of my heart
it whistles
our sweet verse
as if pebbles underfoot
the sky sings a coarse lullaby
we sit
stubborn and thick
in the clenched pipe of time
unable to pass us
it seems strange, now,
thorns have cleared a path for us;
clouds bulge
in dark promise
oh, the envious hymnal breeze!
how it wrings its wrists
in heavy handed disbelief
a cathedral of trees
holds you and me between earth
and spangled evening
our geometries slowly converge
the unknown looks away in fear
as the pulp of our understanding
sweetens the ink of our verse
intertwined
from broken shells the bird steps
from her beak night screams
missiles of ancient light
weave the moon
in my dream of spirals
we meet on the stairs
at the shoulder of the world
may i? i ask as i gather you in my arms;
in our cloak of words
our filigreed cocoon of thought
here, in our dawn of skin
we shine softly
and spill from a thousand kisses
through an open window
i imagine i watch you,
walking barefoot
through the afternoon
your hem dances,
sings the rhythm of your feet,
you smile
at wonder that rushes you with small hands
you drink it in to give yourself
there is a gull-down sadness folded in your beauty
a blue tenderness in the lilt of your wrists
a lock of hair to lift from your cheek
and those brown eyes
our last goodbye
fell to the floor
in a simple cup
filling the room
with fragrant lava.
through explosions of tears
we swam as refractory fish;
away
in a dissolving world.
jonahboat 