A Correspondence with Death: From

The day of death is
everyone’s
There is always someone’s lament
Every day
Even the horrifying can suffer

I do not trust you humans
in masks
made out of each other’s skin
It is always of no matter
if I find you smiling or not

I am your last kiss
I will remember it as all the others’
Every day I am someone’s
I am the reason you speak
to one another

Some Desert

Limbless, sucking on orange leaves
I am fractured in nine holy pieces
Careless bones swim in blood
pointed toward some desert,
some sanctuary
But not everything has worth

In the dark, even poets may smile
with only bones to tether to,
their phantom pains pacing
The dark is irreparable
I pray in the desert, laughing
Prosodic breaths

A Hex

My hex is made out of water
I will corrode you
so very gently
Freakish terror and lust
pour into your lungs
unnoticed
I am as large as all history
and freely present fear and love
interchanged, both in color
There is no such thing as control
I am of water
born in a long howl, and
I corrode you!
Throwing leaves in air
staining summer’s end
I addict you
to the sound of my voice,
gentle spells to steal sleep
kept in glass bottles
Are your lungs empty yet
As you lay dark
basking in the fears
I’ve convinced you are real

A Correspondence with Death: To

Sweet, awful Lover
Pay me attention, turn me into stone
with lyrical plagues and refused apologies
Stunning and sharp, we spar before the embrace
Your silent fondness always unannounced
and I kiss you, trembling
already at my own wake
Lover, darkened
Your mockeries are deemed as truth
You say finally, I am beautiful
as I falter, inspired by the notion of escape
But there is no real struggle in the end
and you live in marrow, plague ready
We embrace and its grief spreads in a puddle
Sweet lover, adoring no one
It is you who is gruesome
It is you who created solitude
Drink of my blood, hide in my hair
I was born to lay in your arms,
still bones in dreams
I choke on crumbs you bate with, and sleep
It is you who lives inside all fears
This is your bloodied, timeworn undertaking

Demons

But we all share the same demons
barbaric and gaudy, all the same color
They tear apart intestines
They do not respect that which is delicate
We offer up memories and fear
to hide the scent the famed heart gives off
Yet no way is there to outrun our fiends
Empathy is a snail’s sweaty trail
Solace leads them to yet more prey

Yes, I know, I feel it too
There is a hole in my side where my kidney was
They’ve stolen it and are joking
I didn’t even know how to be afraid
I hid in caves and behind trees
as if there is a way to turn from them
They tore out my teeth once,
a strange, seismic heat
If there was no love, they’d never find anyone

They live in the moment, these villains,
between compromise and manipulation
We share these brutes by smiling, and gazing
at one another, with song and in rhyme
They can smell our veins
And we are left breathless, our delicate smiles stolen
They hide between our hesitations
Our fears, abyssal, to them is great clear air to breathe
We sweat toward one another, daring them