Soul of Rows

[soulofrows-blog]

An empty seat Where I’ve neatly stacked  my excuses

Just my speed Peacefully reading lists that need tending Light that flickers with failure Forgets itself in winter Hope is for dinner And we all have to eat.

[soulofrows-blog]

Each brick of this routine has been chosen, stacked, placed, and cleaned by the sum of all I know. Mornings talks with the future. Books to clear the blur. Sweat to button up the slop. Every window has taken the courage of an army to wash. Every inch in healing from the howling sting of self-inflicted burns. My time is my crusade. Every second afraid, each following brave with the warrior I made out of the scar tissue I traded. No more vague. No more tired. I decide the why. I laid the bricks. I choose who gets the hammer.

[soulofrows-blog]

The wind smokes a pack of chimneys, spits wet leaves, caked beneath where brick meets boot heel- there. Where you’re hollow for color. I’ll bring bouquets of tomorrows, followed with witty auburn quips that slip between our boundaries. We built them in youth and will destroy them in burgundy love. Don’t stare. Just let the light land. A golden hand against the early night, untroubled eyes, skies darker than summer, better spent under quilts and disguises. Yes, I loved you, but I find that love in fire, I find that love in evolution, I find that love in contrast. I find that love again. 

[soulofrows-blog]

November clouds wound like cupid - my smokeless tongue smitten with the rain under streetlamps glowing amber rooms, blacks and blues of night bring light in stripes on soaked parked cars; they’re mine, ours, yours, claimed telepathic from Paris or downtown. Somewhere, your screaming teakettle wakes you from your daydream. Someone, you’ve known but never met, undressing a wish from her windowsill Listening to sirens and saxophones wail famished for promise and touch and future Somehow, the ghost of maybe in your bed.

[soulofrows-blog]

God reveals himself Inside his mouth In the smallest moments And every new day I begin again 

[lucidruby-blog]

Sober

When you wake up to this world You’ll always have one choice And nobody waits for you to grieve- So whiteknuckle hell and heave Sob the past out of your sternum A hollow you, sick of being you Stands- letting mountains be your legs. Letting your cavernous chest be packed with sex, flowers, satin, undressed faces and wild, absurd laughter. French and pancakes. Fleece blankets, the warmth of skin, fizz in your throat, a breeze on your collar, a one way flight, sugar and color, hot water, moonlight walking you home. Let your vacant eyes feel what its like to see somebody beautiful For the very first time.

[soulofrows-blog]

“I think I’m coming down with it,” she confessed, That thick maybe there in the throat, Panicking with capsuled futility. The avalanche, the symptom, The war encroaches slow. It’s an opening world. It’s changing the direction of wind itself. Sudden, shuddering, shutting Finding biting rightness in a budding rose The autumn sun through ferns and smoke The warmth of wood and dark coffee The eventuality of endings. She swallows a pill knowing There is no ignoring that scratch.

[soulofrows-blog]

We need cooked. My cheeks ooze reaction With the sweat of change. Of oracle. Of subtraction. Your eyes are raw drawing attraction from a few seeping stitches  the needle between your blazer and my tattoos. We need baked to be fashioned.

[soulofrows-blog]

Same

There’s no repair of a person’s shatters. This matters. The game will persuade that you hadn’t Your name the same one that you swallowed before you’d cracked. But there’s hope in that broken The open, the real you took in That wind that you feel is the same one That grin all around you will win

[soulofrows-blog]

No me importa Caminar descalzo sobre la hierba afilado Ver capas de piel caer en una roca Arriesgando mi cabeza de pie en una grieta Toser sangre en la página de un libro Y que se convierta en letras Perderse cerca de la calle Navas Beber café para calmar el malestar Quemando mi espalda como prueba de trascendencia Llorando en una hamaca sobre el espejo Perder dinero en efectivo a un ladrón hambriento Hacer mal tercio en otra idioma Es el dia que llueve Y todo lo que tengo son sueños.

[soulofrows-blog]

I don’t mind Walking barefoot on stinging grass  Watching layers of skin slide off on a rock Risking my head standing on a crack Coughing up blood on a page of a book And letting it turn to letters Getting lost near Calle Navas Drinking coffee to sedate discomfort Burning my back as proof of transcendence Weeping in a hammock over the mirror Losing cash to a starving con artist Being third wheel to laughter in another language It’s the day when it rains And all I have are dreams.

[soulofrows-blog]

Albarracín

Blazing sand and goats graze fire Any drier and we’d be apparations The ambitions of blood and friction Chalk covered rocks  And a flock with our own Conditions of the submission of stone Frozen with power alone It won’t shift change Or adjust. Clutch the edge of a boulder When there’s no one to trust.

[soulofrows-blog]

I opened Like an orange blossom Knowing there was fruit to be I fought my vanity with calloused feet And strawberry skin that breathed The no after no of hard defeat I played with hope on a set of swings And wings that carried Who I thought I was away from me I found sweetness in A single olive tree Music brought me home And dreams brought home to me I danced with wind and drying sheets As the mountains turned green I crawled out from the sea To find the freed om in my feet.

[soulofrows-blog]

Ghosts

Ghosts with bodies dosed and empty Attempt their acting, distracted shoddy Fraud inhuman, dull and oddly, God is stale and sickly pale  Behind their hollow nodding. Vacant voids for swallowed stares Latent statements Blatant follows Complacently bare, unaware  Snuff the light And fail their glow They make life shallow They make love hollow They walk amongst us gray and foggy.

[soulofrows-blog]

Ugly

Maybe- I’m not as red as a field of poppies And I won’t stop tourists like the mountain peaks Taste as sweet as Berber tea But I can speak And move my feet See and be many things Change or stay the same Dream of possibility Soft and kind like African clay Free like dreams we hide and seek

[lucidruby-blog]

Chefchaouen

The mountains hold you in their lap And as you nap, your hills that wrap me up to smoke Have led me home- a broken bird who breaks another Tired, flies to find her mother Cooking breakfast on starlit floors Scolding sons to do their chores and dragging on Virginia slims And yes, the blue that’s on your limbs can catch a picture, heart, and high But it’s the way your moon can share the sky With peaks of your protectors’ eyes That makes me lust on the bust of night- And mends my wings for flawless flight.

[soulofrows-blog]

Copenhagen

In a heaven made of steal and paint Your lofty boats sang me to sleep Tipsy only two sips deep And on your chest I took a breath Knowing you were mine to keep.