Rite of the Totem (collab with Rianne & Daniel Christensen)

Sunlight mottled sheen on a borrowed car,
I drove to fetch your mouth to mine,
No longer exists, having fired back
From beds of earthen berm and out
Into the cosmos of colors and ice
Tails trailing a torpedo of rock, your
Eyes burning with lust premeditation,
Affixed to me with newness of
Adoration, no longer exist,
They have pressed out ten thousand
Layers of film, as years of sand and wind
Scoured away their gilding, into a face of
Untold seasons we have not
Shared, your arms have shed
Skin after skin into someone else’s
Bed, like a thrush nest overtaken by a
Predator, their scent so alien,
My nose cannot follow,
Even when we share the dream
Horizon, instead, following the specter
You left at the river swept pier,
Warped from rectangles into green
Swathed bulges and red nails
Thrust up into caltrops,
Where you last tilted my face down
Into a kiss you knew was
Goodbye, but I,
Fool that I remain, only tasted
Your warm soul rising through the
Window box of your heart like a
Sapling into early sunlight
 
Globe light haloes the ragged
Curtain pressed behind the bed like
Your sweat soaked hair after
Thrashing me at table hockey,  
Drinking my rum and soda left
On the bar, cubes melt into a
Film, prescient of ice caps, chins
Dashing into a salt
Sea, there are soot circles on the
Shelf where I’ve thrown away empty
Bottles standing like mile markers,
For times we laughed and hurt
The fuck out of each other, stupid
Drunk with youth and spooling
Away hours in dust phantoms that
Were swept by on a breeze,
Between gusts of laughter,
And thusly,
Took up no permanent residence,
I want to hold your breathing
Body again,
While your heart beats its back to me
 
There is a path out of this pillbox into
Strange and lurid places, my
Feet have yet to find, where smoke
Rings are making a warbling
Orifice across a dim lit room, beer can
Stains placed just beside the
Coaster, a face slapdash with too
Much rouge and eyes that dance
A bulge beneath turquoise
Mascara and do not care a
Whit for anything but the ash
Cylinder of a cigarette, burning like a
Guillotined neck between a knobby
Impasse of digits, a blood stain pool
Behind a game trail, leaves fresh with
Aortic spray, an auburn-skinned
Form sliding into waters sizzling with
Salt and morning sun that holds
Out a promised burn, hands gently
Cupped about a glass into
A smile, a bus stop
Sandwich discarded as the doors
Close on a foot heel,
But, first,
To roll the stone over this tomb,
Bric-a-brac collected yearly like
Shore weed, left in a box by
A door, reading,
“Donations accepted,”
Find me here, first, but
I hope, in some distant
When,
Find me there
 
He opened a brown paper bag
a flaked missile imbibing hissing
nightcap after nightcap
necromancing fingers tapping against glass
Prophet of dream, I ask, How many syllables of bird?
drawing cosmic longitude
into latitude of strangers
 
We shared the same womb
though we were not identical
even truth is forgetful sometimes
only one of us stood amid
two halo moons
peeling old prose off dead nails
wearing our names
 
Rhododendrons hold out their hands
wintering away
through paper mache moments
youth enveloped spirits
stood at my doorway
Hellenic hymns still speak
you had return a holographic image
to cajole us
into sorcery
 
Invocation of belonging,
No one belongs here more than you.
Rosary tongue rolls into my mouth like prayer mats.
 
In the timelessness of time paradox,
The sun rains memories into revolving pulpits.
Distant as a corpse from their heart left to science.
 
Upon a Communion trail the bread is stale,
Love’s barrel bleeds into DNA vineyards.
Mary Magdalene waits in satin groves.