Heavier than Breath ★★★★

I have words in my head
that I don't really have words for
a yearning for expression that only manifests
as a shrug and a sigh from my native tongue
I feel like I'm not from these parts
like you haven't seen me here before
there builds an empty midnight listless
seeping up through soft earth or toes or floorboards
an estranged tickling sadness
not the kind of fevered heartache that buries you
that swallows you in its engulfing mouth
in a maw lined with teeth made of spun agony
frothing in saliva like carnival glass and unpleasant memories
it's not the kind of feeling that grips your heart
with hands like a vice
squeezing you until you feel like you've lost
every ounce of breath in your desperate lungs
no it's the feeling of wading out into warm choppy waters
feeling the pull of the surf gnaw at your feet
summoning you forward
it's walking out into that deepness
until you can no longer see the shore
and knowing that you are completely alone
it's wading out into a sea
of cocktails and faces and tiny white plates
and being surrounded by blackness
it's being surrounded and knowing
I am completely alone
no one will find me here
the rocks and the sand and the silvery white surf
of my metaphorical interior
have become draped in this rolling breathing dark
like velvet and black holes
like the moment you first become aware
of the concept of death
I wear the shroud and the shawl of this feeling
but there is no fear
for there are no great serpents here to bite at my heels
no traps to catch me and bind my thrashing form
there is only nothing to drag me into that deep abyss
in fact it would be so easy to drift
so comfortable to sink
to slip my body into a sheathe of satin and feather and pillows
to dissolve my limbs and absolve my presence
to float and to wait and drink down the promise of inevitability
until I found some semblance of solid ground
or perhaps instead make some nest in the mangroves
exchange heavy arms for something more fluid
and learn to breathe an air so thick and heavy
and with so much weight
yet my thoughts already have so much weight
slipping from my grasping tongue like pebbles and anchors and sand
the water seeps in and washes away my words
lapping away at the things that tie me here

Untitled ★★★

I want to drive a spile into your heart
Force you open to me
Press my lips to the metal
And drink down your love
I want to crack open your chest
Fan you out like inverted wings
I want to press my face
Into the soft flesh
Feel the warm wetness inside of you
I want to open my mouth to your wounds
And suck on your sore bones
I want your soul
To run down my throat
Thick and visceral
I am consumed by this hungry yearning
I want to feed on everything you are

The First Gentleman ★★★★

Of the four gentlemen

I was introduced first to bamboo

Watched the length of it rise from his motions

His hands thick around the handle

As the white drank in the blackness

Later he brought me to a garden

Some place I've lost to memory

And showed me the small copse

That some unknown hands had kept

He brought home some fallen stalks

And with me made a walking cane

I marveled that a thing so thin

Could so easily hold me

Those narrow poles

With their thin green leaves like sparrow wings

Are to certain people in places I've never been 

A symbol of summer

Of willpower tempered with flexibility

A symbol of virility and life

And I try to remember him as strong

As powerful and kind

Not as the sadness and the sense of being lost

That worried down his hill like shoulders

And has come to slip into my own life

Like echoes written in blood and kin

And not as it was in the end

As so much weight slipping through me

Without a way for me to hold it back

Without a way to bear the weight

With only old drawings

And hollow sticks

Weighted ★★★★

There is a method used
To keep curtains
Prim and straight
To keep them from billowing in the wind
The owner takes weights
Metal plates or stones
And sews them into the hem
So that the bottom is pulled down
Succumbing to the irrefutable claim
Made by gravity

I have of late
Found around me this feeling
Like I am wearing a cloak
That wraps around my form
Falling from my shoulders
In soft waterfalls of fabric
But it's not a comforting thing

It yearns for the ground
With the weight of the stones
That are threaded into its seams
I am full of gnawing thoughts
They condense like drops of water
Like frost in winter
Forming tiny knots
That grow and build and compound themselves
Until they drag at me
Sinking me to the earth

Yet as much as I feel the urge
To let my body collapse beneath them
They also make it impossible
To sit still
They dig into my sides
So that I shift in my seat
Stir in my sleep

And now the whole world it seems
Has become so heavy
As if the very air
Has become a heavy curtain
A weighted sheet
That brings me down

Untitled ★★★

The minute hand and I
We have a lot in common
Both sitting still and motionless
In a box we cannot escape
Bound by wires
Under the scrutiny of others
I feel I am sinking
Sliding
Into endless loops
Binding myself
With ever-tightening coils
Of vacant mediocrity

Worry Stone ★★★★

You aren't an idiot

You make it so easy
to slip the locks from my tongue
Open the latched doors
And touch sunlight
to the dusty rooms behind my courtyards

But if I pour out my thoughts 
Like rice or water or shiny river stones 
You'll catch too much 
You'll put it together 
Like patchwork and jigsaws
Weave your threads with slender fingers
A skein of curious contemplation

There are scars on mine
My fingers, my hands
My thoughts

Would you notice?

Would you care?

I fear you'll hear the words
I'm not speaking
The words that wear me
That I wear like weights
You're too clever by half to not see it

Not by now

Just when did you learn me so well?

But you're comfortable like an old blanket 
And I want to let it all come unraveled 
I'm tired of walls and hidden things
I want your words 
Your words as a knife 
for your fingers to wield

And sometimes I think
it might be ok
For you to carve out a place for yourself
In the hollows
And sew yourself in

But no
I ache more for comfort
Than release

So instead I sew myself shut
And I worry the words
That I want you to find
And pray that you don't

Recoil ★★

Sleep is an uneasy thing
He dreams in muted colors
When he sleeps at all
A world unwinding in garbled images
Dripping from his stems
Flooding his roots
Feelings adrift between the taste
Of liquor
Of kisses
Of blood
Like copper coils and wishing pennies
His veins digging into the earth
Draining into the soil
He winds himself
As he twists in the sheets
Wrapping himself in his cords
Tearing himself apart