Writing

Appleflesh

Dredging words with a sluggish brain and a sluggish will
It is simpler to give up and lie down.

In and out of sight, language takes shape into great black birds, vanishes.
Strong arms and stronger faces wrap memories within a mountain of skin.
Eyes looking onward while seeking that soft spot below and under and in.

Unlucky enough that with a million wings I would not fly but to jump anyway,
knowing there is no comfort where the body lands, its busted appleflesh browning in the sun,
but finding life in the fall itself.

A Visiting Echo…

…of a cry made a lifetime ago
that was shouted at the peak of a rusted swing’s arc
against a distance too vast and a silence too long
from within an unfleshed chest

In a room too close with a silence closer still, is an echo.
Fading.

So much time spent…

…enduring that pounding chest
as frustration slathered like a wild thing and
impotent desire could not free itself and run.

Knowing the air is thinner outside than it is in,
though, there is some physical trickery that holds the flesh together.

Now it is time to paint yourself into the world
as that undefined space that is called self, or soul, or some such
will never quieten until the soot and ash are scraped off
against the pebbles of some waterless shore.