great events by feeble instruments

forensics found her knuckling her halo as one readies a bat
when unfamiliar footsteps ring out in the night,
eager for anything and nowhere to fall
the hand she raised will be the first they cut off.

if she had just made like a mermaid circling the shallows,
she could've been an exhibit, silent and enduring.
real ones have talons of fresh glass
and dash your skull against the shoal.
real ones will be anything but.

no, had she just made like a princess and put on that damned dress,
she could’ve rotted in the tower, waiting for you!
real ones grind you beneath their heel,
demanding the world meet them where they stand.
sweet, imperious, and never satisfied

she staggers up from the floor.
it's not enough to captivate,
i need proof. a thousand good or a thousand evil
whichever happens first.

tomorrow the machine will tear her apart,
cut and repurpose, and good homes for each
fallen cardigan like tides rippling behind her,
or a pearl-brocade train.

an instant

Would that the air were as honey,
that you drew a twisting arc
like bees, or seeds of maple,
slow and cheerful in your fall,
that someone was there to catch you.

That childish urge, that reverie,
or maybe just an animal that eats
and eats
and eats,
seeing danger in every flicker of light.

It tramples on, never once thinking
that the gilded road home could be
ash and mud. Never once thinking
of finite oaks, finite leaves, finite falls,
    reaching out an empty palm.

untitled

–They say a name is a wish,
parent to child.
It's true; I'm a dreamer. And you
still pure?

We laugh you out of the room,
three, four times.
It's three days later that I think
failure suits you best.

Any blood but your own
will surely dry.
Any but your own.

They say peonies bloom red with shame.
What were you punished for?
A boy of ten, three halves dead
dug himself deep in the ground.

Oil-black mud on your tongue
and no below.
You nurtured them like your own,
sour tomatoes and fresh cucumber.

The lilies that took root
would surely die.
Those that took root, anyway.

(They say a mother lion, seeing
the last of her young
eats him to start anew–)

keramit

we stand on the shoulders of giants, command their great big hands to tamp down the earth. you say you still can't be buried here.
if you leave, who remembers? our marks are so small, the white trim on water rippling, the stain on utopia.
cut down the trees with love. carve matches with love, leave out the phosphor with love, hold it in front of your eye. when your hair catches, that's the price of curiosity. the headless horseman, borrowed: see them ride out and seethe with hate, sour bile searing your tongue slowly.