Caveira Cruz e Osso

[caveiracruzeosso]

[caveiracruzeosso]

[caveiracruzeosso]

[caveiracruzeosso]

[caveiracruzeosso]

three poems about the same thing.

[caveiracruzeosso]

I am as wind in wind

Without memory.

Here now as I was

Here then and here

I will be until I am

Nowhere.

[caveiracruzeosso]

Jack-o-Lanterns

You whisper into your pillow

And a bee buzzes in my ear;

Through every mirror, your hand reaches

But I cannot take it.

Put it away.

Stop your weeping.

Stop begging for answers, when

You know them by heart

And by the melancholy sound

Of bella donna: high up, higher still.

You can see the world from up there.

Better than I can, better than I could.

"In my family," you said once, "We don't say goodbye."

So don't.

Know that I am where I have always been,

Where we always are.

Do not be led astray

By notions of time.

[caveiracruzeosso]

I'm Not Running Away

Once upon a time... there were dreams.

Once upon a time... there were nights

Of brilliance and color, set apart as

Oil on black glass reflecting.

Now gone are the days.

Gone are the nights.

Gone are dreams

Spilling syrup from life's cup.

Now we walk on the film,

Over tar, over sticky misery.

For such is all that remains

Of dreams, of nights,

Of Who and When and You and I.

[caveiracruzeosso]

Red Jasper

Sometimes I reach

Into the water

And draw up the dead,

The smell of grease

And oil-light.

The taste of red iron,

the taste of you I can't remember.

The taste of loss without loss

And love not without terror.

Do you think the passersby saw?

Do you remember

That sparkling moment of madness

When times were harder and yet --

Simple in the same.

Do you remember the name?

Angels, witches and demons.

Vampires drinking lust in lieu

Of blood.

[caveiracruzeosso]

Tornado Watch

How must it be

To be Oneself

In the company of another

And not in the wind

In the storm

In the twisting embers

Of solitude.

[caveiracruzeosso]

I'm going to the desert -- because

I've had enough of weeping children.

Enough purple petaled skin and bleary-

eyed afternoons. Enough. Enough

petty squabbles and clandestine tokes

when the lights go down behind octagonal

glass. Enough cloistering in filth, in sheets,

behind sliding doors. I've had enough

of the view through my window: only traffic.

It rattles the portrait of Frida askew and

my African masks -- which stare back with

the same sort of expression I wear for

endless hours confined -- remind me of

a time I loved but killed for pennies and

traumas I did not know I'd buy.

I am going to the desert -- not to make

pilgrimage, but to shovel dust over severed roots. It is the way one grows wings

I have been told. I'll cook an egg in sand

and think not of those young things

whose families have been stricken by

a plague far longer lasting than this one.

"Intergenerational:" that's what they call it --

the ones who spit malice and suckle

venom. The ones who rejoice in their

status and their delusion. The delusion

that tells them they are more than but

breath or bill or misfortune away and above.

Truly they are less. Truly I am less.

The difference is: I know it. I feel it

in my spine, in my pedal-knee, in my

hacking fits brought on by poison bought

over bridges where others go to die.

I am going to the desert -- not for my

health, but for my health. There I will

stack glasses, walk on threads, suffer.

Certainly I will suffer. But maybe less so

than I suffer now. Maybe not.

I am going to the desert -- because

I was taught early that if the earth does

not serve you, find one that will. Then I

spent years unlearning such terrible

advice, handed down --undoubtedly-- by

ancestors whose appetites and aversions

came at the price of life. But not their own,

they sit smugly in hell assuring, "at least

not for awhile." That isn't the point, though. That's not why I'm going to the desert.

I'm going to the desert -- because

I have untied myself of several ignorances

but not the one that tells me that the

people in the desert are different from the

people here. That is one I keep because

I must. I see colorful people clad in stones,

people like me but different enough to hold

my fascination in their jeweled fists. I see

poverty, but with new eyes and teeth. I see

excess, but one more easily toppled. I see

myself as a hermit of the dust, though I

know all to well that my petty coins

couldn't buy me a room, much less the

solitude I crave so desperately that I'd

go to the desert in search of it.

I am going to the desert -- because

I can and because I must. And I depart

just as much as I arrive. Maybe moreso.

Such is the way of trains, of migrants,

of those whose lungs plug into walls.

I have taken time enough: to decompose,

to recompose, to tap bitterness from this

soil so much that it settles in the folds of gray

and tightens my ribs like a vice. Enough.

And so I will set fire to photographs and

boil my blood in the autoclave. Such is the

way. Such is my way. Such is the hymn of

the avoidant and the prayer of the vagabond.

I am going to the desert -- to go, to

become. This is what I tell myself.

[caveiracruzeosso]

In a circle, she places his Holy Word

And reads the evocation.

But the only ones who ever show,

Are but prophets with ink-stained

Fingers.

Justice will have to wait.

[caveiracruzeosso]

Sometimes I fear

That I have washed

Some of my best thoughts

From my hair.

[caveiracruzeosso]

I am but Beelzebub.

And I part always,

Through vice grip fingers;

Air — a fly,

With six arms knotted,

And a thousand eyes watching

What might be.

I am the humming anxious,

A proboscis soothsayer,

A memory displaced by intent,

An empty palm.

Surely I am...

But never where you wish me to be.

[caveiracruzeosso]

Storyteller.

I want to tell stories: bend orthography

To sound, bend sound to symbol,

Scrawl jagged scripts and hammer keys

Into form... or something resembling.

I want to tell stories, for they are in me,

A plague of racing born from nothing

Of consequence: a bird, a fretful sound

Scraping beyond the door, pooling water

Images! Vile images which hook parasitic

In the mind, unwilling to taste crisp pages,

Backlit screens, even the canvas cannot

Abide such enigmatic things as images

And then I dream of Gods paraded

On prophet tongues and imagine —

There it is again! — that divinity is only

The ability to convey that which must

Be sang, never written; that which my

Sickness will not sanction; the Gods

See but blasphemy in my inability and

Perhaps I have resigned to masquerading

As something I am not, cannot be —

I have never longed to be a prophet, but

To birth images through dexterous digits,

To log epics between two margins, four;

But then I dream in poetry, breathe

In poetry; I keen.

I am cursed: for this illness bleeds in imagery

And dumb hands, broken wills.

Perhaps I am a poet.

[caveiracruzeosso]

Sealed Black Box

I touch vision with hot fingers,

Turning back hands — and mold

Of clay a smiling world;

From my throat borne was

The rosy vomitus, radiant sun,

Whose rays brush pliant, soft

As severed petals: tender

Between the fingers, on the tongue;

Glass cities do not topple, but catch

The light, dazzling brilliant;

And only veinous gold is spilt,

Collecting in reflecting pools

Whose mirrored faces stream

Cinematic images of a shared

Infinity: expanding inward, outward;

You stand — a colossus — and

Though if knelt in worship for aeons,

I rise neither stained nor sullied,

For the soil smells of you, tastes of you,

Feels like the freckled flesh of you

Beneath my palms, and from the soles

Of my feet shoot tendril-roots deep —

I am supplanted; my mouth spills

With spoken word to effectuate every

Desire, every wanton wish;

I do not —

I cannot —

Choke,

Never on your name, for it is

Part of me, nor on these promises,

For they are soundless, amorphous,

Echoing noiseless in this vacuous

Nothing.

But no shining vision cast in golden blood,

No diamond glass,

Nor lilac kiss,

Can make you love me again.

[caveiracruzeosso]

The Knife

Let dusk

Divide the sky.

The sun’s recline, slipping

Into the hallowed equator

Unsheathed.