The Archive
Stowed away among ripped pages,
a thin thread of dust-inflicted wisdom.
A man with a stone-chiselled face,
beard-like clouds in ascension
.
I met him mid-forest
my brows a suture-clogged skin
You’re the spilt blood of your forefathers,
and the grass that formed the new body.
Squeezed between his pale teeth,
a covering cast like a masquerade.
I know you are here to dance,
the thread between life and death
Sickness is your vacuum cleaner,
the smoke on which death chokes.
Coming and going is your play,
this dying edge of my time.
My mother raised her hands to the sky,
where the clouds glided like hanging altars.
Where I soak in the warm gash of fresh pain
chewing new mutilation like a jewel.
The Agony of the Beautiful
At sunrise,
the day is like dusk,
and the night is purple;
Even the sky has no smile
when darkness departs,
leaving it with the moon;
On a sunlit day,
there is one touch to eternity,
through our fingertips;
But the sun blocks
the surface of the sky
and the moon is far away.
If the light can fight for us,
we will stay cool, stand still
we will wear smile-like lipstick.
I know my shoulders are weak
to carry the sun when it falls,
I know I cannot run.
But watch me if I can stand
and walk and pray,
I can mumble and sing.
Then the sky will be light
and I will carry it along,
I will run; I will stand.
I will sing of my haemorrhage
when I lay under the earth
crushed, and I am no more.
The Departing
We are leaves
hanging on the branches of a tree
many hours deflower into minutes,
seconds, paeans of timelessness,
and we become the soil,
lying flat on our blades, or dead.
We were the pride of the tree,
green, fresh, and luminous,
sucking the nest of the sun,
watching the flies hum;
we made carpets along the road,
and breathed the songs of dying.
If we stop breathing,
or break up with the living,
the ground is waiting to consume
the remnants of our giving,
which is the gift of a life
spent entirely in departing,
Flights, Issue Nine, June 2023
Flight of the dragonfly 