Consequence

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is closer.

.

Our legs taking us to a strange space,

creating a different itineration

of the story written.

.

Today I feel the burn,

scar tissue hardening a resistance

to the phantom pains

.

of parts and wars

lost long ago,

.

the fox holes, the lost self,

the toxic gas, and the darkness

birthing the new itineration.

.

Wounds nestling in my throat

in the air itself

the oxygen I breathed

in what was left of my lungs,

during these lost days.

Tomorrow whispers in my ear.

A seductive mistress bearing me,

lifting me, long tongued

.

out of a stuck past.

.

The shadow and ash

of quenched flame,

haunts my broken vision

spectacles married to a past

.

gone from the physics

of our birthing construct.

.

Liters of let blood,

pool into crevices of cracked

cobble stoned streets.

.

Painted sienna,

painted crimson,

skies the color of arterial blood.

.

I meditate on a dusty

smoke filled night,

thinking of this death, life.

.

The sheen of red

reflected in dreams

tying me to lost days

.

the sacrificial liquid

of a hard birth, and the colors

of the after effect

.

staining the dying of the past self

and the recreation of my own physics.

.

I cannot tell the difference

between flashbacks

of choke filled gas

.

and the smoke

from my cigar, etched

across a half-baked moon.

.

Tomorrow, feels a bit farther

then she did before.

But the scent is still there.

.

I feel this new breadth,

tips of new fingers,

the caress of a new wind,

.

a shifting and churning

time piece freshly constructed.

Framing the physics

of a new story, so I get up.

.

Midnight

My aussie, and I cradled each other,

both intertwined

in the brush and debris.

I could feel the moon,

.

with her starry children,

gaze longingly

at the deciduous earthiness,

chaining us to the grounded

.

rhythms of a world

at the edge.

.

The scene, spirit, scent

and the silent spaces

were all we had to keep

breathing.

.

This is surrender,

a giving and a parting,

a letting go.

.

Just, keep breathing.

.

Sacrificing sacred baubles

of an increasingly foreign shore

to an old god,

.

breathe.

.

The scar tissues of dead battles

of night terrors,

paths lit with pyres

fueled by the tears

of the lost self

.

where I sat trembling,

.

I see the physics of worlds crack

at the weight of the delusion.

.

Desperately holding gently

to thin untangling threads

frayed with the surrealism

of the innermost false self.

.

The rituals feel foreign

to what is left of who I was.

.

Sometimes, surrender is emancipation,

while victory feels dormant.

This weighty frontier recycles

such remnants, and discards.

.

Who I was,

is not close to

who I am,

.

lying prone on a darkened street,

gravel roads,

cracked blacktop

framed by trees bleeding hues

.

of sienna, of amber.

.

I lay transfixed, staring at crows

dancing around shadows,

through needles,

forests purified by charred undergrowth.

.

Kissed by the soft hand of death

grounding me on firm soil.

.

Reclaiming the dying person,

who never lived.

.

Tomorrow, moments away.

.

Myth

The past exists as a myth,

a strategic death laying hidden

behind a fading sun,

a dying star.

.

A fertile ground

facing forward, but

.

no memory

of rays nourishing

.

flowers not in bloom,

plants not in season.

.

--

.

She is still here, she grows,

She sanctifies my dedication

to the new construct,

to the new itineration.

.

she knows she is why

I will always be in love.

.

She continues living an old story,

still breathing like new wind

through her young lungs.

.

She is the reason

our sun once rose,

.

those days once burned.

Why we survived the evening,

and the descent.

.

She breathes evergreen,

eternal in my eyes.

.

The glowing of fading orbs,

suns, setting fire to cascading

mountains drenched in dying light.

.

The twilight of the love

once burning,

in the story of my worn body.

.

The past fertilizes

the stories we live,

the steps we take.

.

The past bleeds while it passes.

Silence, whispering

breathing, beating,

.

the final muscled rhythm

of a weakening heart

of a wounded animal.

.

The past, lost in the mist

clouding the forest

of our lives,

.

moving us

beyond the earth,

.

shaping our worlds,

coloring our perceptions,

.

of memory,

of projection.

.

All dead things stay with us.

.

While the thing itself

is gone,

.

the becoming

is not. She is here.

.

I feel it in her kiss,

in the reach

of plants, busy growing

.

their tendrils from the garden

of her love.

.

--

.

We grow, like vegetation,

new growth,

into what we become

.

for tomorrow.

.

--

.

But you. Are not a myth.

You are baked into my bones.

The blood and marrow,

the crushing weight,

.

the pain and coming emancipation,

after the height of the fall.

.

The breaking and crushing,

the mending of broken skin,

the churning suffering

of a fated life,

.

birthed new.

.

The cycles of suns which birth us

daily, the death

.

of that single star

enflaming the hillsides

we eternally ascend

and descend.

.

While you were the morning

of our beginning,

.

you will always be the mourning,

and the night.

.

Hands

The night was long,

the mist of fall morning

extinguishes the fires

of a summer, loitering

.

too late, past the appropriate

amount of propriety.

.

My shoulder’s sink,

weary of carrying loads

a body shouldn’t carry.

.

I can’t reach your hands,

though the invitation is clear,

I try, arms outstretched.

.

I see your palms, sweaty

with anticipation of a merging

skin against skin. I intuit

your needs and feel

.

the changing season.

Limbs, wanting to experience

a climate different,

.

to fill the hollow spaces,

between our most profound

of organs, each yearning

to touch palm’s desire.

.

You feel the acceptance,

I feel the attraction.

The moments between

the mating of each

sits heavy, as infinity bleeds.

.

Apotheosynthesis

We crossed paths

at the open mic,

after the lecture

about Beowulf,

.

and the foundations

of English literature.

.

An hour about treasure,

heroes, and the monsters

they couldn't live without.

.

You stood regal

at the lectern,

established, fatherly.

.

My dad would like you.

.

Envisioning conversations

at the dining table,

pass the mashed potatoes,

and when are you going

to settle down?

.

Words eclipsing

the half-devoured moon,

a night with syllables

drenched with latte

and electricity.

.

I saw hazel eyes

and me pulled in.

Being consumed

like that moon,

.

sitting heavy above

us both.

Words hitting hard.

.

I felt it,

I felt you in them

you in me.

.

I couldn’t wait to get home

opening the book,

.

I would become

an expert on old English

literature. Read every essay

on the subject, everything.

.

You were breathtakingly handsome.

Older, but in the right way.

Dangerous, wrong

but not too wrong.

.

Like making out

with the guy

you just met.

.

In the back row

of Coriolanus

at the Shakespearean festival,

.

but I wouldn't know.

.

Wrong enough for the flame.

Implausible, but real

and smoldering.

.

Cindered enough to require healing,

and emotional support,

.

from my boyfriend, of course.

.

It would be safe,

but hot enough to tell my friends.

.

Texting into morning,

as dawn breaks beautifully,

against the resistance

to this anticipation.

.

Smoke settling

from a dangerous night,

ending star drenched

with cataclysmic fury.

.

When I woke

in your condo

after the conquest,

you were gone.

.

The absence cratered

me inside, but I knew

our true orbit.

.

I lingered, playing

with my phone on your bed stand.

My thumb swiping up

my thumb swiping down,

.

in that millennial compulsive fashion.

Waiting for validation,

waiting for something.

.

I still draped under sheets

hiding my nakedness,

body drenched in sienna.

.

You the painter

I the canvass.

.

I the prey

You the hunter.

.

But was it the other way around?

.

I feel you still there,

with me. An apotheosynthesis

of something different

than before, now alive.

.

Borderline

The night I tried to save her

I learned, the people we love

cannot be saved.

.

I don’t remember too much,

of the evil things we had done.

.

But the consequences

are birthed, throughout

all these days.

.

A changing

of the lock,

breaking the chain.

.

A golem, construct

coming undone.

.

I felt the death,

I felt it go,

like the Deschutes,

In the spring.

.

Rivulets of dark,

of pain.

.

I felt it go.

.

The illusions, the absence,

the comforts of my life,

.

A tide, flowing wildly

off the precipice,

of the incarnation.

Out of this creature

.

coming undone.

The eating, the devouring,

the expungement.

.

In the forests

of the La Pine wilderness

dying things,

.

they don’t stay dead

for long.

.

Still, I felt it all go.

.

I saw my own apotheosynthesis,

I saw it burn.

.

In a pyre, wood enflamed.

Legs first, then body,

up in flames.

.

If I think too hard,

I feel the sacrifice.

.

I feel it go.

.

The night I died,

I opened the door.

I saw her and I

lying there.

.

Like a Dali painting,

the cracking,

the bending,

the hallucinations.

.

Like a mad jester

on the floor.

.

She and I remain there,

sometimes.

.

Still dying,

still death.

.

Some of me, will never leave.

.

Once complete,

I stood like a silhouette.

Remains painted on a tree.

.

On a high desert hillside,

I saw my mirage,

a rainstorm quenching

the burning flames

.

of my apocalyptic death.

.

A biblical vision, mirage set,

a stoney backdrop,

a dry barren landscape.

.

A liberation from a story

that no longer belonged to me.

.

I slouched, bleeding,

escaping the derision

of phantoms and ghosts

plaguing nights,

.

envisioning strands, strings,

filling a tapestry

symbolizing what was lost,

.

dancing through dreams,

tying me there.

.

You were a Magdalene to me.

.

Taking what was left

off the old tree.

you found me.

In your compassion,

.

mounted at the center.

.

In the temple

of our sacrilegious therapy,

.

Seeing unbroken pieces

I filled the shattered core

with parts impervious,

.

projections, amalgamations,

essence of someone,

a mirror.

.

Filling the cracks,

the bleeding.

.

In this consecration

.

I saw midnight turn,

I saw day begin.

I saw the sun rise,

.

breathed again.

.

Finally, the world bent

a different way,

.

a strange direction.

.

I feel you,

I feel your essence,

I feel parts of myself,

.

the small things

surviving the flame.

.

I cannot tell the difference

between the self,

and the apotheosis.

.

I gained something

with the gift,

placed upon the alter,

of this foolishness.

.

I feel cracks in the glass

of the lost-self healed

by this audacious dream.

.

I feel birthed again,

into what I’ve wanted to be.

.

As the beginning closes,

I sleep peacefully.

.

After infinity bleeding,

I wonder maybe I didn’t die,

in that hospital room.

.

Lying on a lone mattress,

cradled by naked walls,

hallways, with no exit.

.

I never left the space

I entered but could not leave.

.

Sometimes, I see

the day I almost died.

The great deconstruction,

untangling of things,

.

the long goodbye.

.

On this morning,

as the sun burns

as the wind shifts the game,

the table is reset.

.

Maybe, this wasn’t the end,

maybe, you didn’t save me.

.

But this must be where

saving begins.

.

Dragon

I have claws.

Blood dried, dirt encrusted,

they are dangerous, they grow longer.

Still,

.

I love what there is to love.

.

My light is planted firm

and rooted, and I

.

mounted at the center.

.

But my dark,

is dispersed in a private arena,

personal, ancient, and Roman.

.

Shades of battles and ghosts

of past selves

stand crucified and bleeding.

Still,

.

I slay the dragon

.

outstretched before me,

Shadow black and disastrous.

.

I am the dragon,

I mirror myself,

.

I slay myself.

.

I devour and am devoured,

and we are infinite.