Umbriate Press Poetry

I stop and let it drip

from my body:

a tongue not my own.

This language is more

fierce, desiring, hard as when

the moon just sits

there in the night sky

silent, staring, like death

asleep while in its mind is

mine in my dream

floating where it tells me to go.

The animals start to come

into my world, then leave as quickly

as a first love.

Moss begins to grow

over my eyes

and shade burns through

to the core of memory.

There is light somewhere

although meaning prefers to hide behind

the glare.

Constant freshness of morning

On the side of the mountain

Along the field of slums.

Leave the carriages

Of wasting spirits

Themselves behind a hintertime

Passing under the sun

Hung low and lost

In the inescapable labyrinth

Of age.

The dusk calls out my name

as if night were less easily

enraptured than the longest day:

the bliss of madness

plays no favorites.

---

We have this way of transgressing

and no other

more distant from the

wandering that our bodies

cannot ignore.

Is there shame in this,

our looking far and wide for what is near?

It’s like we have trapsed across a landscape

imagining to hover above its mud and morass

when truth tells us

the dirt on our feet is what is beautiful.

A gesture of love
Removed her shirt
So I thought
Till the blinds drawn
On Her pale smile
Signaled to the slight puddle on the floor
The stench of disappointment
Wafting picture of primitive silence
Stiff as the body 
Only hours before warm to me.