049: Spring in Luzon

With a contorted mouth agape,

frothing sermons for seconds past

and myriad mistakes

that congregate in whirlpools of shame,

I'd feel the pain of a tiny, endless world

dissipating in a structured void

of silent, hydrogenic granite.

Away, pustulate words

that never healed betrayals,

raked bone chapel, mine,

in a splatter of rearranged

gaunt icons of the holy,

a haunting of perfect ghosts

in self inflicted lacerations.

My friends of misery would stand tall,

proud like lead crosses,

as I'd absorb the nails to atone

for feasts of skin and milk,

to every place solid or dreamed.

I'd picture trading blood for comfort cold

to solve the riddle of war,

for love becomes the word of flame,

of throbbing membrane

in godly, infernal delight;

but the spirit whispers forgiveness,

seeping through the seams

of walls built of question marks.

For fire and water to be wed or gone,

perhaps as life requires pain,

freedom demands a little death.

048: Together

I still see him sometimes

in splinters of volcanic glass,

standing on my right shoulder;

and sometimes I fall back

to visit the empty rooms

where he used to hide and play,

now, animated only

by a desert wind

blowing memories.

Our blood, our tears fading,

melting into the night,

clawing at the walls

of a perfect nothing;

and if my heart was heaven,

I'd build you new flesh,

brighter than pulsing stars,

and if my heart was hell,

you'd rise to steal the sorrow

from humans' brow.

As you were fire,

I will be ice;

and as you were the word,

I'll be the teeth,

as I disowned, so I do miss.

Together in the estrangement

of concrete confines,

and the tenderness

of untamed flowers,

in frailty and power,

we'll remain the same, eternally.