Year of the Minotaur

A vampire’s rage

was throwing a party

amidst my insides,

and light seemed to

wreak a ferocious havoc

on my brain cells,

just as much as the dark,

in the year of the

Minotaur.

A huge sigh

of fucking relief

hit her chest

when the hungry haunted

fed forced her poison,

oh to finally

end this freak’s

suffering,

grabbing her

by the teeth,

and dragging her,

sputtering blood

and tinsel,

through

Jack the Ripper’s

streets of

grisly London.

She sat on the frostbite floor and

prayed,

to no one in particular,

bled oil and ink,

drank far too much

so that the room spun

like a pinwheel,

tried to throw up

the emotions so intense

they overcame her sight,

she shook

from the venom,

stapled her mouth

shut

as to not

wake the neighborhood

with her screeching howls.

I met her doing

balancing acts

down abandoned

railroad tracks on

the outskirts of

Flint, Michigan.

She was humming

a somewhat familiar tune

which took my

sensory glands

back to the night

a few months after

my dad was dead and burned,

and I cut all

my hair off,

at 4 in the morning,

with a pair of old rusty scissors,

in the upstairs bathroom,

with the lights off,

and the panic of

being human

quelled for a brief moment,

and I went back to sleep,

dreaming of sex and angels.

Sizzle

Thrashing your bones

back and forth

like tidal waves,

I confronted the

space between us

with a growl through

clenched teeth,

and gave my secrets

away

to the delicate horizons

behind your eyelids.

I'm gonna make

your veins pulse

electric chatter,

sex and fire

bellowing out of my mouth,

down your throat.

And every time you burn yourself

on kitchen stovetops,

in steaming showers,

or dripping candle wax

down your fingertips,

you will smirk 

and sizzle. 

Buried Anthem

Maybe,

just,

these broken down

dusty

words

could hold me a little longer,

for I have been up since

what they call

man’s dawn

and I am so very weary.

Doctors and,

doctors

and,

doctors,

giving us

frowns upon tears

as they walk into bleached bellied

hospital rooms

with puppies and rainbows

painted on the ceiling:

you may not get a chance

to witness tomorrow

so say your goodbyes my dear.

Cancer wasn’t only

taking its time

to sneak in and out

of the brain cells in

my brother,

slow pain,

taking him away from me,

cancer fancied 

killing me too,

as collateral damage,

though strange

no one seemed to see

my soul

drained from me

as I watched untold horror

unfold,

and then laugh at my

silent sobs in the shower.

And friends came,

two by two,

speaking tired odes of

too busy to bother,

scared of their own mortality,

I suppose,

thus rushing away

like the rain to the gutters

after a storm.

So,

my dear kind poem,

I write you out,

blessing your pain

and despair,

clutch me tight

in the everlasting night

until some sort of light

shines within me. 

Licking Fire

The crow’s urgent call

woke me

from my haunted staring

into air and time

bleeding by.

Fits of such a violent melancholy

kept me in a perpetual state

of holding my breath,

waiting for the sorrow to subside

as high tides do

after the ocean’s

been weeping in chorus

with the moon.

Could I not just drift

inside your head for awhile?

Forget my woeful weary,

the horrorshow I’d seen

played out in the daytime.

Mmm though at night,

I watched death and the engulfing fire

that licks her lusty skin,

she flits and twists round,

ripped up fishnets held together

by bobby pins

and a loose t-shirt that fell off her shoulders,

making crop circles

on my clean carpet

with her dirty bare feet.

Between you and me,

she was such a tease,

and I loved it.

After she had her fill of me,

slipping out into the dark,

and just as I was closing my windows,

he snuck in between

my mouthing nighttime syllables,

shaking self loathing,

crawling into my bed after

visitation hours,

and I couldn’t help myself,

craved to hold his shivering bones

together

until the pain he howled out subsided,

his tears drying on my cheek.

We swapped no words,

just breaths and skin,

for that cold boy

who had lost his way,

again,

tossing in the storm

that he blamed me for,

though in truth,

we were just two hurricanes

bumping into each other,

ravenous desire

to feel something,

anything,

besides that dank suffering lonely.

It occurs to me

that I had the habit

of falling for broken angels

sewn up inside

with grit and smoke.

And do you mind?

Stop trampling through

my dreams,

stumbling amidst the scenes,

hungry and impatient.

I beg you for a moment

without your tongue’s wet stutters

gnashing  and lashing out at me.

Twilight took great delight in sinking in between my legs,

just to hear me moan. 

Days of the Heron

In the days

of mumbling saucepans

and sanity,

I was a heron,

drinking down dirty daydreams

and lavender teas,

slurping loudly

through my pointing bill

in coffee shops

while the regulars stare,

squawking out stories

on the subway,

ruffling my

untamed and unframed feathers

like the jostling sounds of newspapers

by the old grey men scrounging round for

the stock market stats

and sports scores.

I tend to creep

in and out of people’s habits,

smuggled in with the groceries:

cinnamon toast and juicy grapefruit,

standing awkwardly

in the cobweb corners of rooms,

watching contagious

interactions,

hearts bleeding in rhythm,

then slip softly

between the window panes of

dark purple bedrooms

with swords hung on the walls,

red dining room spaces

where the piano sits,

uncaressed for years,

yellow kitchenettes

collecting dust on the picture frames

of happy faces by way of trips to the park

on a fourth of july,

and moldy peppers

in the bottom door of the refrigerator.

Oh,

and if I could just

be held by the night,

it sinking in between

my shivers

till the yawning dawn.

I took myself

away from here,

in the eerie morning hours,

after getting out from under purple fleece covers

and giving up on sleeping.

Careful tiptoes,

out the window,

face to the forest line

til she sings in my ear,

into the moon’s naked riptide,

inhaling one beautiful

burlesque breath,

exhaling storms of ice.