I blooded my love by a cold autumn moon :: a choka

Drop by drop something
precious slipped through fingers that
daren’t not grip tighter
to save the last red
so red, scarlet lifeblood that
drained away staining
the water that sustained, fed,
Filled the veins, art’ries,
Tributaries of hopeless
Dark fluid rushing.
Break the dam. Slice the skin. Let
it all run away.
The humours run, sickly thick
plethora drained, slate scraped clean.

When Breathing Hurts

A breath slices; slivers of time

breaking at the bottom of

an endless day.

Absence weighs and

words like glass shards

fall, musical, scattering light.

Lust marked, invisible

indelible, penetration

so tender and violent.

Wrapped, bitten,

reddened; loved

so hard only dust remains.

Smelted and cast

scraps become a whole.

Wicked through leather

soaked with sweat,

burned again.

Prey, Fallen

There was a first look,
a glance that caught with
the finest of sticky strands
Tiny, wicked spider’s trap

Dawn revealed the weave
Droplets collected
Ley lines pointing to a dark,
wicked heart.

Snared. Wrist and ankle.
Caught. Dark, shuttered soul spinning.
A throat bared for teeth and bite,
prey made ready
offered
surrendered.

The Time Collector

Skies streaked with
Blue smeared by
Black tinged purple.

With falling, curling
spiraling feather soft
blows
- no – brushes
- no – kisses
wait.

wait. . .
breathe.

try.

Hear that?

Yes?

Pinging, tinging, blow
by blow fall of heavy
raindrops salty with
the heavy load of
summer’s retribution.

Today is not
was not the day.

That day. Never.

Once, twice. . .

Stop counting.

The hourglass filled
with sand
then water
then sanguine wine.

Taste me. Savor
the brackish edge between
surrender and mettle.
Metal?

No.

My mettle, once a thing of the softest
copper; hammered, bent, molded
moulded, wasted, smelted, cast and
drip, drip, dripped onto stone floors.

Even copper tempers.

A thing once giving given.

My spine now metal, mixed and hammered
bent, folded, into many layers until the
strongest thing yields.
Until the edge shines bright and honed
in a burning light.
Until the melted wax flows, accepting a mark.

Your Bloody, Blooded Blade

Wet your knife

Whet your blade

get it sharp and fine

and pare that lie down to ribbons

Blood your knife

feed the steel

only the sharpest edge for

this surgeon’s careful work.

Shave the truth until

it falls in filmy thin curls

wisps of reality twisting

for your oh so sharp will.

Wet your knife

your blooded blade

ravenous steel

devouring truth and lies

Careful artist, scalpel

in hand, palette knife so

razor sharp, slicing

colors into night.

Don’t feed me truth

excised with sanguined

fingertips from a

tapestry of deception.

Tide

I am parched,

thirsting for the tide’s return.

When did I become naught but

tidal flats, soaking up the brief

visitation of pleasure and satiation?

In the receding echo of waves

I am sated; replete with fulfillment.

The sun beats down; the mallet

drumming my taut skin until

it shivers with heartbeats and

lust’s empty ache.

I am dry.  Wispy sand that

swirls with exhales.

I am empty; fine lines darkened,

crevices dull gleaming in noon’s

bright eye.

Where is the tide?

 

 

Perfect Pain

Fine needles pierce with

every inhale

a reminder of the void

left, fine, fissioned beauty.

Agony, blissed and beatific,

each moment that passes

waiting, trembling on

anticipation’s infinite edge.

This.

This is it.

A healing that hurts as much as

the breaking, knitted back together

with the sharpest of tiny

tiny needles.

Spectrum

Follow the rainbow,

they said.

That’s where you’ll find it.

I listened, tracing the arc

of that ribbon across the world

walking away from the sun

and into a storm dark and

hungry.

You found me there,

lost,

wandering,

searching for an impossible

pot of gold.

“Don’t look up,”

you said, “the rainbow

isn’t there.”

And I listened, tracing the arc

of your hand through the air.

I found my rainbow;

reddened flesh,

orange where a flashlight shown through my fingers.

Yellow when I basked into the clean, warm sun.

Green, blue, purple,

twisted together in the healing

marks of your hard, harsh

kiss.

A spectrum of living written in the

vellum of my skin.

Layers

“Read between the lines.”

Simplistic instruction.

Lines are just layers on edge.

Turn and look again, see the depth.

Red lines left behind,

blurred at the edges, soft,

a faint blush along a geometric fault.

Ignore the faulted input, see beneath

the singular shape to find the

heartbeat plumping flesh,

nerve endings echoing with embossed

curves of a flower’s promise of a

peace never sought.

The weight of years press memories into

clean, black and white delineations.

Harsh strata shouldering soft into fine

stripes, standing out like welts,

treasured memories bruised into

pulverized white dust, sparking in

the sun as the wind blows them free.

That Dusted Bottle

Lust, stolen and hidden
away to ferment into a
poisonous intoxicant
Kept, aged, hoarded
In some cold shadowed
Secret place.
Taste me.
Surrender your
faculty for the bliss
of one drunken,
realized moment.