write-as-rains

Poetry & other writings (main blog: @sagedigger)

[write-as-rains]

Night finds

[write-as-rains]

After living in East Texas for a few years, I sometimes find myself missing the burned out, small towns of Western Texas. The dirt, the sand, the dry heat, and the way you could see the sunrise and set for miles. For the oilfield trash and the scavenging animals on black tar beat grey from an unrelenting light.

[write-as-rains]

Alphabet crashes

on couches

A loneliness epidemic

is an off coded thing

[write-as-rains]

These roads wind deeper into the dark woods-

no outlet in sight.

[write-as-rains]

Is your Christmastide shining bright

Yuletide’s burning log or candles burning

in the dark

Heavy and smoky

the last connection at an old

town bar

[write-as-rains]

The people I encounter in swamp & pines Texas don’t believe I’m from the state. They claim the accent doesn’t register- they don’t understand West Texas erosion. Smoothed down, “yeah”.

[write-as-rains]

Winter oak:

There are days where I still hope that the stranger

asking my name

is you.

[write-as-rains]

What was meant to be a birthday party

Became a funeral.

[write-as-rains]

I had a realization the other day that I never saw you as a person. That’s not to say that I saw you as an object- I didn’t. You never presented yourself the way that people do. You always kept things surface level. There was never a chance to see the beneath- the bones, the sinew, the tendons, or tendrils of ideology that you held- that you abandoned.

I was told that I was close to you. That I knew you better than most- but that wasn’t true. I didn’t know you. I couldn’t understand you. Now, the enigma is lost to the reeds of time.

[write-as-rains]

The owl floats through barn doors

the witch rising

moon bright over straw-gold pastures

deciphering birds below

[write-as-rains]

Trinity-

Girls like that

set themselves on fire

destroy the ego

a twist of godliness

The shrine left empty

only ghosts kneeling

altered

[write-as-rains]

I had a dream about you

The night gathering in bunches

purple needlegrass along the edges

disguising haunting eyes

cutting sharp and clean through the bruise-colored dark

[write-as-rains]

Outside the boundary-

[write-as-rains]

What am I? What are any of us, if not oracles?Transmuting the unspoken. The here, the now, the gone. Ushering words into the tangible place. Language seers seeking a nod of insight, a glance behind the veil. We take what comes unsaid and translate forward.

[write-as-rains]

There, you had everything

You would never go hungry

And you forgot what it meant

to want

The hot spice of desire

the heat upon the tongue

a starvation of its own

extinguished

[write-as-rains]

She told me

The ritual always contains food

Something is consumed

the fruit, the flesh, the spirit

a transformative cage

[write-as-rains]

On the first day of summer

I checked a kitchen cabinet holding honey jars, nuts & dried fruit

only to find moths fluttering around

An entire stock thrown out

The only atonement possible was grey as white paper towels turned the color of wings