The Hangman's Two-Step Shuffle

The hanged man
did his two-step
shuffle,
met me in his
labyrinth gardens
near that talking Sphinx
in Egypt.
He smiled his
cheshire grin
to the moon and
then back again
to me.

Lime lips
and prison walls
let go of themselves,
cascaded downward
to free the spirits
mad with sex and death,
roaming the planet,
get wet

and dissolve.

Mantra Muse Me

And mixing
wounds and words
in the midnight,
I lingered on an
epitaph
that glistened in
the moon and
listened to the raven
and the mockingbird
repeat your name
over and over
like a mantra.

If we could howl
and awaken,
intuition building,
breathing,
heaving,
we would rise
to help and heal
this screaming earth
and her surroundings.

Could I just
rub up against you,
slow slight touches
early in the morning,
kissing down your back
at all hours,
as the clock ticked by
in different languages

and hushed tones.

Call me hurricane


The air was
wet and slippery,
moss tastes
and blood.
I wanted to
burn with you,
retrace out footprints
to the bastard church steps in Helsinki
where the content
old men sat
by the frontal lobe door
etched in color,
smoking their pipes
and laughing
while telling far away stories,
jazz leaked out of
the pours in the wood that
sighed beside them.

Lift me up
magic,
and drown me in that
twilight song
you used to sing
as you watched
the trees glow red and become
shadows and
fly away into
the night.

We,
the cave coven ones
must emerge
through the earth,
our howls
rapturing the sky
with fire,
fingertips light
down the spine.
I was the harlot
that bait you and
ate you,
twisted bones
with blood together
and summoned forth
the riptide.
Call me hurricane.

Tempted Phoenix


In the midst
of a memory,
I jolted awake,
the piano stuttering
apologies,
licking fire off my skin,
we soaked into each other
and thus felt the world
thump out its own language
of lust to breathe
even in the midst
of such a harsh madness.

The mirror
took great pleasure
in melting down,
for a night,
into the sink
to mix with the hot faucet water
that burned
to be tasted.

I must learn
to electrify myself,
resonate vibrance
from within,
unmask the caves
and deep moist marshes
I know are there
and set free
the tempted phoenix.