Machinations

Words are plastic, 
shapeable by the speaker and the listener, 
and as such are somewhat less than the thoughts and feelings that we wish to convey by them. But here across space, 
where the silence of your smile 
and the taste of your skin are distant stars in a twilight sky, 
words carry all of the Gravity left to us. 
Thus I offer you these machines, 
these words, 
to understand, work and shape as you will: 
Cold, Reaching, Resonance and Desire.

Glaciers

Glaciers

I was born son to glaciers of ice,

Brother to the west wind,

Singing a song of memory and change.

And as I walk the halls of snow, the rooms of steel,

I hold fast to the shadows that cloak the ruin,

And never chase the silence from the daylight,

And shake the floor of the world

In my lonely tantrums.

I am made the merchant of emptiness,

My currency the dew at the night’s edge.

Given dominion over the empty spaces

And taught that to rule is always sweet,

no matter the kingdom,

I haunt the concrete canyons.                                                    

In dreams I chase the inviting glow,

The glittering crowds and shimmering clouds

That tease the promise of redemption

And bring the pain of waking a dreamer with empty hands.

I am the wanderer of frigid spaces,

Drawn to seek dawn in distant skies, worn robes hanging,

Never, never standing before Heaven,

Singing  of flowers and thorns even through my tears,

King of the outer wilds,

East of the sun where the dreams fall dark.

Element: Void

Void

This is where there is nothing;

Nothing between us, nothing around us,

Nothing but us.

No space as I enter you,

No distance as you clench me,

No time but that told by the beating of our hearts.

We singular are, one from many,

And nothing exists but your nails in my back,

My breath on your neck,

My hands under you, lifting you,

Your eyes holding me, lifting me.

We are the friction of dark galaxies,

Filling what was never meant to be empty.

Frantic in our desire to be,

To create,

We have inhaled each other’s souls and bodies,

Quenched the thirst of our needs,

Reflected on our desires

Nourished our animality

Set fire to Infinity

And radiated the equations of Eternity

All with this Lust,

With this Love that we were made from and made for.

We move against, into, with one another

As if for the first/last time,

Like all that has been hasn’t,

Like we are something new in this Universe

Until your body shudders against me,

Carrying me away in its blessing

And I speak my word into your void,

Our particles colliding up, down, top and bottom,

Screaming each other’s names

As we fall spent,

Strange and charmed,

Knowing we have held nothing back,

Left nothing out,

And have nothing left. 

In Temporary Twilight

I exist only in the moment after nightfall,

When the world thinks of Love and lovers of each other,

When chaos and order play at life

And the stars themselves are passion.

And somewhere, in this temporary twilight,

I am still holding you. Now and forever,

As it has so many breathless times before,

Eternity beats your name onto my soul.

There has never been anyone, no one like you,

You were my angel, your song echoing in my heart.

And as I think longingly of your eyes

My soul remembers how to dream:

I dream your tenderness held tight in my arms,

Your hand again in mine, my heart still in yours.

And under this night, so bright in my fantasy,

We are more than even we thought possible.

I dream of lost memories of forgotten love

Of truths never learned and lies never told,

But even submerged in this vision of crystal palaces,

I know that you are gone, and I awaken.

I wake, like I rise each morning,

Praying that my heart won’t call to you,

Knowing all the while that it will, as it has

Every since my lips first touched yours.

I awake to a world of coldness

Where the warmth of you lying next to me is a memory,

But that memory is all that sustains me

As I seek the clouds I last saw you dancing under.

"Go then. There are other worlds than these." - Stephen King, The Gunslinger

Status Migrainosus II: The Unlovely Smell of Oranges

She says "Dance a little dance with me".
She sings "Dream a little dream,"
And again I fall into the dark.


She holds me close as we dance,
My oldest friend,
As close as my memories of her
That stretch back in my mind almost as far
As the face of the quiet Hunter,
He who has always been my goal and my goad.
She holds me tight in the dark
And it is hot and we dance and we spin and spin.


She says "Dance a little dance with me.
Dream a little dream".
She sings in a language she has taught me
And again I fall into the dark.


My oldest friend,
As close as the lie in a lover's kiss
As we dance and spin and spin
In the darkness where everyone passing through 
Is limned in fading light
And the rising dark of our dance is
Intimate in every way.
We dance in the dark and know nothing of the world.


She sings only for me
And this is always her song:
"Dance a little dance with me, dream a little dream".
And all duty and desire fall away
As I fall into the dark.


Her perfume is oranges, likely blood,
As sweet and as sharp as Love's first kiss,
And it envelopes me as we dance,
Scenting my reality as we spin and spin
Through the waves and the valleys and the hot.
My oldest friend and I,
Together here at the bottom of the dark,
Where the world is  a memory
And there is only the dance.


I know that one day she will call,
In a voice of marmalade and cold wet earth,
And she will sing "Dance a little dance with me,"
And through my tears I will dance;
She will sing "Dream a little dream,"
And I know only her embrace;
And she will whisper, into the cups of my ears,
"Stay here, a while with me, in the dark,"
And all of my desires
And all of my hopes
And all of my breaths-
All of my equations- will fall to zero,
To the smell of oranges
As we spin and spin
And then spin no more.

The Riddle of Sand

I: Angel of Broken Stones

“So heavy the burden I bring with me from the past,

I doubt that I should make these vows for the future.”

                                                     – The Tale of Genji

I am the eater of days,

Father of the Indefinite roads of Time,

Consuming hourglass moments and sundial liquor.

As I let the ages run down a throat

Dry with ancestors dust and the heat of being,

I swallow sand and time,

Drinking dust

Drinking dust

Tasting in it steel and blood,

Diamonds and lead-

Sweet sepulcher wine.

I bring a song of kings and battles                                              

Sung in the voice of the outer world,

War and warriors all fall forgotten, water upon the sand

While my wings beat

And stir the other side of the light.

I am the arbiter of dreams,

Sender of the dark sundrinkers

That sail through the cold, impotent ashes

Left after the living fire of the Childe of Night

Turned the men of dust into the dust of men.

We seek the jewels of the desert, the roses of the sand.

Son of Swords

I stand in the dark, under the pouring rains,

While I pray, and the world eats my soul.

My song is all of my roaring pains,

Buried in the shadow of the black totem pole.

All that I used to be is just a memory,

A prayer crashing against the stone ears of devilry

As I long for zero,

Singing my song in chains,

I long for zero.

(Every step is dogged)

I am the son of swords

Born to follow the lines of force

With my blood beating with the swollen words

Written on my soul with no remorse.

I seek the palace and the sonic throne

The Chalice and the broken bones,                               

So I dream of zero

With all my tattered dreams,

I dream of zero.

(Every hour is devoured)

In my lonely tantrums,

When my entire world is ice and steel,

And I am the only sighted man in the kingdom,

I lose my way and cannot feel

The dark kiss of the maelstrom,

The omega sunshine bliss of the atom

So I go to zero,

Holding close to my shattered soul,

I go to zero.

(Every breath is counted.)

Somewhere there is a great black mountain,

Looming under a twilight moon

And under it a great marble fountain

In which I bathe by the light of a wormwood noon.

Call me the lord of pain; call me the king of sorrow

Call me silent apostle, son of mourning on the last tomorrow.