My moods move houses,
braid your spouses hair
(Watch out),
and I suddenly remember,
everything I am,
everything I’ve ever loved is coming back
to me.
God gave you an
unfinished smile
to pay for
and you are
lucky God makes
pacts with
predators.
I am what?
I said your
mouth is dripping blood
again and you lied
about what you
are.
“forms”
Sometime late January
you spent the night with a woman
watching the moon grow.
come take me in my own abattoir
I unrolled my tongue
ready for a messy kiss and out spilled
someone else’s lung.
I had created a dalliant and forbearing
stockyard in my bed to occupy us.
I’m red-hot and full of other people
You were outside in a corduroy jacket
counting her freckles as stars
as I was slicing the outside of someone’s arm
to crawl inside for warmth;
wait for us to duel it out
in the morning.
I was biting the inside of my cheek
to taste victory
and she was on top of you,
crowning.
I had been waiting to show you
self immolation.
You had been waiting with kerosene
and some promises to hold
my pretty ashes
hostage.
“fidelity”
“do not seek closure here.
endings have all passed.
you are synthesizing. Girl,
you are just beginning.”
–responses from God during meditation, Wed 11:01 pm
I believe in altar.
The opposite of destruction
isn’t creation; it is
stability, longevity,
ground.
It is mired in the Earth.
It is steadfast.
It is wings
with purpose.
I had insisted on burning every
bridge, every baby,
every body that came from a fit
of fervent execution.
Play Oya,
the moon dared.
I hoisted myself on the stake and
displayed my plotted empire in pieces
dancing to the flicker of my
ardent fire parade.
Previously, my life had
been of lingering malignance,
but it had no fangs to suck
the bleak from my veins.
I turned black
and sidelong
with every corner.
Now, I am
moving in giant
fit of blaze:
I am the forest catching wind.
I am the scream of the first tree falling.
I am the silence of the spark’s eventual dim,
the mess in between;
the burst of orange, the hara kiri,
the gray cloud of obscurity
where nothing can breathe,
where nothing can leave without
serious damage.
I am the stampede that warns you.
Everything that tried to stay in the comfort of
my pine bosom;
gone,
lay slain at my feet.
And me,
incendiary and flying,
rising from the ash in a
crown of bone
and teeth.
“the stakes”
“You call one wolf, you invite the pack.”
–Bulgarian proverb
Part 5: The act of maiming things
“Everything has happened.”
–Sylvia Plath
apodyopsis inflicted
and I can’t lick it
so I imagine you unfold
like paper origami
one more time.
finger your jeans and
you spill open.
I lick your cheek and
feel you bite the side of
your mouth in halt and
can you remember
the times you fanged
your way through bra hooks
and brunches, never-ending coffee
and one-liners?
something the other ones taught you.
stiff congratulations or how are you and
that’s wonderful
followed by
nine months of inimical
silence.
I move quietly quickly
distort you into something
palpable.
my hands move
clumsily.
I keep you in amulet
in my pocket and I queeze you when I am
nervous.
you are licked,
smoothed with assurance,
rubbed.
you’re the botched swan
I frame proudly;
me, robed in black flowers
and loaded rifle walking
out of mid-February
with you tucked in the crook
of my arm.
you become loosely creased
looseleaf reduced to a crumple
floating to the floor
without altar,
a harmonic little
m o r e
in my palm
on your way
to the tile
where I gently lay
you leave you
altered without prayers
once more.
leave you twisted
in want,
deformed.
“warning forms”
kiss her fingers and say:
you are a jungle.
I stretch,
yawn,
and out falls a
knuckle.
What does love feel like?
she asks.
I turn,
cough,
and out falls another.
kiss flowered mouth through teeth
and say:
like a wet machete
ripping through the jungle
“camouflage”
I drove through
all of middle Earth
to get here;
to lean into the sharp points
of middle hurts.
In true poet’s parlance,
I am nothing but
death rehearsed.
Death reversed.
I am nothing but
kamikaze and the
soot palms that steer it,
a blaze of worst thoughts,
typeface and colossal remorse.
I smile to show you
some white in this
hot, red place tonight.
I’ve got my cat suit on,
solid shoulders, strong,
curved back and a heavy head
that is full of
it a blue cracking
heart to match.
I say where?
and you say
nothing.
Smile to show you
my canines.
I come over
wearing everything I
own: a pack that stalks
and stays together in lunge,
a freshly oil-stoned
suit of knives and
the bled-dry opaline
home that I nest in,
my cozy coronation robe:
my clanking vest that
announces my arrival to
your home.
it is me
wreathed in
all my men’s
bones.
“the red book”
daturamoon.com 