Previously Published in Epigraph . . .

To Spin Or Not To Spin

Static transporter taunts me

infinitely across a room of mirrors,

reminders of necessity.  Cold

motivators of perpetual movement.

Door closed, the only out is miles

away and in the exact location.

Prisoners present, assuming the position,

wait for instigative whistle.  Detonation

of energy, blur of sneakers, knees, 

sweat.  Somewhere blisters form, calluses

burst.  Nothing stops

but thoughts.  Body is reduced to motion's 

machine.  Automated

muscle memory propels past will.  Desire

to stop, exhaled repeatedly.  An hour

flies into another signal.  Release.

Door re-opened.  Legs hesitate, stumble,

begin to remember the feel of solid ground.

Previously Published in Envoi Poetry . . .

 

Hemophile

I am not vampire.  I do not desire

to taste or feed.  Disgusting

sacrilege.  I worship the vein,

the sacred vessel embracing brilliant

blue corpuscles.  The accidental cut,

oxidizing blazing red rivulets.  Running

ruins to be remembered, retracted

as effigies of the essence

of everything.  Renfield's eloquent

echo:  The blood is the life.  The blood

is the life.

Previously Published in Envoi Poetry . . .

Building a Braintrust

in a wallless house.  I borrowed conceptual

confinements from the depths of my past.  Disappointments

cling, lending their shallows and shadows.  Falty 

furnishings for future guests.  Guess

their solid

                 arity dissolved with my conscious.  Objections

to pre-conceived ideologies have been wavering

through the windows.  I recognize

their wanderlust.  Breadcrumbing

has no place.  Here,

the company line in mute

                                         able parameters.  Mark

your moments in chalk.

The outlines are soulless but significant.

Every body [of brilliance] must have a believable point

for provability.

Previously Published in Envoi Poetry . . .

The Chase

I tie a word to a kite, string

                  up

it, chase it       over

                                and through

sky's river.  Rushing

clouds batter, edges fray, fade.

Body begins to lose

ground.  Refusing 

                              the pull

                              of gravity,

I pen a new law, send it out

into the wind.  They meet, mate,

match wits.  Neither wins, but the idea

glides

     slowly                     back

                                         into my fish.

Previously Published in Ends of the Earth . . .

Tasting Feathers

felled from murders

of crows, I am Raven.

Beast of black.  Imagination's 

carrion.  I devour flock and

flight.  My vision,

crossed caws cruel.  Talons

torture, tearing tendons and beaks.

An amalgamation of claws defines

my throne, still bleeding.

I reign in their dark

echo, as a self-

appointed god.

Previously Published in Em Dash Lit Mag . . .

Hearing Loneliness

In bed I lie, feigning

sleep.  My mind, ever alert, begins

to pick apart the night.  It starts with

          a drip

          ping

          faucet

I cannot bring myself to stop,

merges with the metronomical ticking

of an alarm clock that has been

rendered unnecessary.  The not-so-

static noise of TV infoercials, that sad

semi-silenced soundtrack, a constant

din lulling me into complacency.  Groan

of over-sized springs, my side of a double

bed that knows no form

other than my own.

 

Previously Published in Em Dash Lit Mag . . .

Baby Turtles and [Busted?] Condoms

The perfect surprise:  soft green flippers

peddling past my toes.  So determined to get

their goal.  Like you, my serpentined seraph,

so feral in your pursuit of . . . everything.  You

desire the universe.  Forcing your own parameters

over and through the norm.  I am just

another niche you style.  Placing me

on a shelf [re-]labeled:  contained.  I forget

to mind that you forgot to aerate my lips.

I embrace the staleness of this slower suffocation.

Preferring its welcoming numbness

to the consummate barrage of [in]consistent

image projections:  your full frontal flashes

confronting me daily.  (Come nightly they haunt

me.)  Until I too am reduced to [focus on] a pile

of discarded . . . tissued . . . knocks.

      *Em Dash Editor's Choice Award -- June 2013