Snake

How do I withdraw the venom
seeping in sordid silence
that courses in virgin veins
and makes every breath
a searing, tender pain?

I saw your smile in a mirror--
Now you love another reflection.
How do I pick up the bloodied pieces
of years of dodging and deception?

To love quietly is to be sorely bitten
to love alone is to be smite and smitten
feeling the silken pleasure of poison--
falling from too noxious a vertigo
once you've discovered
where the heart has to go

Scream, expand
expend
until the seams of teared tears
begin to rend

I loved you, I love you
dear, so beautiful,
friend.

Last Night at the Meet Market

Grey skies this morning at the meet market,
and I've become the cruelest of butchers
the most savage of peddlers
the most seductive of merchants.

Give me a face: I'll give you a price
that's all I let you become:
pretty wrapping paper and stickers.
Thank you, I'm sorry. and
Cha-ching. 4.25 for Stew Beef, aged 21.

Bells.
Evening Vespers,
Nightly whispers.
I wished for change,
and now I've got it.
not necessarily what I meant, but
it's more than enough to buy the cement
to seal myself off from your tears
as you leave this sterile store
wanting more, more and more.

When did we let our hearts get so heavy?
I feel my teeth chewing on your tender tendons
and I remember that your strain
becomes my scarring pain,
not the pleasure I sought
last night in my flight to label
this boyish, bovine fable.

This is my beef.

Poems

Just to flesh out more content for the blog, I'm going ahead and importing some of the poems I've written in the past year. Some I still edit and touch up from time to time, but I'll go ahead and post the ones I feel more confident about.

On Manhood, for Nicholas Ahrens Townsend

Stand.
You will have proven
That you may run
to the barren ends of cities unknown
to the edges of loneliness uncharted.
And you will be stronger--
more dense than wilting hearts
more giving than the turbulent tide
of those silent, icy nights
so many moons ago.

Embody, engulf
that growing flame of freedom
that sparkles in your moonlit eyes
that surges in tensed veins
now unprovoked

Will is the strongest of woods.
Sever your own branch
from cruel patriarch beguiling,
from his gnarled tree
of destitution, inspid silence

You are your own prophet
for you map your morality,
the amorphous shape of destiny,
in palms of a love brightened
by the ages of a darkness once cherished.

I am proud of you.