Knead…
the earth with rain,
and let it fain
the glaring lips
of the sun.
Knead the earth.
Pour your mortar
among molded bricks
and molten sand.
Knead the earth,
and erect your dwellings high.
For like the shrub pierces
the womb and sprouts
from the face of Mother,
you, too, shall wreak ruin.
Reign eternal,
and remain.
Hazy Gaze
The great brown mountaintops
were melting into meadows
and ridged plains overflowing
with their own substance
in a thick stream growing
thicker under the heat.
A great scythe in the sky
unraveled more of the earth
and dug deeper into its roots,
reducing their very soul
to the heap of lumpy mud
whence they came.
The sky was lit
by luminous eyes
projecting light rays
as plenty as days,
and thereupon each
perched a songless deformity
meddling with what it lit.
Now,
what if the scythe were
my tablespoon,
the mountaintops were on my plate
and it were a plastic plateau?
Were these eyes mine,
they would not shine—
only see and suspect
a gateway to introspect.
What if the earth were
my foregone lover,
or my mother?
What if…
what if it were chocolate,
this liquid subject
and hazy object
I nigh perceive?
Apathy
I stare into high noon.
I see the fight in the wide white disk
of the sun, diffusing ray upon ray
of its cosmic fission.
It gives me vision,
and takes it away.
From mountains
to flatlands fled
I, foreign, and ferried
for an unfair fare
across woods
and seas.
The black cloud
right beneath my skin
does not let me breathe.
Though content
with godsent joys,
I cannot smile.
All the while,
I turn my graceless,
charred face
from love and from
all the warmth
at finger’s reach.
Each day,
this brain frays;
this mesh of flesh
does more decay.