Between Earth and the Underworld

Laudanum bottles
burst and rain down
from the skies to cut
and paste a lover’s overdose

She can’t get enough.

It flows a fount into
her mountain mouth
equipped with temper,
open,
devouring

She distinguishes
from the breaking distance
and the “space”
that was naively needed
for peace.

Invalid

A pass code corrodes
the tongue and
corrupts the lungs
from whence it comes
like climax

A passage denied,
she will have to pay
some fare,
with her
hands and hips
her hair or thighs

Her earthly wares
a sacrifice,

With Charon
she shall lay tonight

Took Red

I don’t care, as long as it’s good. I feel easy, though I know that shit makes it hard for me to say that. Regardless. I feel easy. It’s what’s going on around me that’s hard–it’s death and love and fear and longing. It’s curiosity, hellfire, guilt, exposure. It’s the unveiling of undeniable duality that runs the ebb and flow. It’s going back and forth through time. It’s fish swimming in circles. It’s ghostly children telling me their mothers were with him when he went. It’s fluid built around the heart. It’s all my past selves playing hide and seek with me now. It’s feeling warm in someone’s arms. It’s a smile through all that darkness so a set of white teeth show through the obscure. It’s dropping the blue pill down the drain. And it’s me wanting to be something I’m proud of. It’s me trying to just get a grip. It’s me ripping off the skin to see how things really go. I’d like to have all that come without me knowing. But I’m aware and there’s no off switch for a third eye, I’d say. And I took The Red.

Away

I just want to flee–to Barcelona or Brazil or Belize. Anywhere but here. I have no form of payment but one set of gypsy eyes. Would you take that? Can he hear me? They’re probably laughing. But we’re all here making oceans. Is he in that water? Can he hear the waves? Will he follow me down? I will wait for you in dreams.

A Standstill Ceremony

You feel it
deep down in your bones
I know
cause you feel the way
it flows and shows
the current goes conjointly

I see it surmised
in goodbyes and sunsets
that took-
too long.

I stretch and disjoint
the river elbow
to fit the cast we molded
for recovery signing

And the vines grow wild,
intertwining round
a point

We planted the sleep of Hemlock

Up our legs it snakes up
for 3 delicate moments
of morning

For enough dynamism
to assist
in the final consecration

from which he will never
wake up
from which he will become
its manifestation

Orange

sleeping

In Loving Memory
Jason A. Smith
1979-2009

Now this is my own
but the place I’ve always rented
will never become a home

It consists of strata
that kill as much
as they feel like bliss
a maelstrom bittersweet
it’s sugar cube hale

I cannot
I cannot deal with the heat
of blood I heard
dripped like paint
from your corners

the moss and the fates
of 13 ghosts for turning
where you went
I burn with you

All the illness
in your veins returned
cannot not stop me
from placing
round your neck
a lei stranded in love and longing

like I am stranded here
in voiceless song
where everything is echo
and nothing new
can be spoken of you