073: Alphabet

I had explanations to give
but the words I could find
were all green
in meaning
and they crawled out
on a Saharan muscle.

Brick faced,
across a distance
from an absence,
tombs of Pharaohs,
belittled,
child's speech.

I'm crafting the tools,
stronger arms and better words,
ever voiceless;
red is the first new letter.

072: Stoking (a credo)

Concrete walls
of architecture.
Fleshy membranes
of anatomy.
Rusted beams
of structure.
Bent ribs
of gravity.

Nitrogen commutes
where lifeblood should flow;
death evicts
the unfelt Atem;
bodies shrunk in salt,
cold fireplaces;
God fetuses,
supine in jars.

The mountains bereft
of their snow crowns,
waves stolen
from the sea,
rectitude, contraption
of man's continental hands -
I invert to see,
ask to believe.

Sewer smut and scintillant sky,
ever wed by magma and lightning;
never allow
fire to starve, for
my seconds break clocks,
my nails grind walls,
my blood, of a deeper shade
of red.

071: The flower thief, part 2

Nuclear heart to be cherished
from a safe, dim distance,
as my eyes beckon late evenings
to conceal what's trapped
in a jaundiced gaze,
birdcage of field flowers drowned
in bile from the pig liver of love.
Presiding over an empty court,
I decree transmutations
for coercion, golden concrete,
owner of what shouldn't be,
nosebleed the loneliness
- mind ravish the body -
and jet black choler, the mortar
to fix the battered bulkheads
and face-lift the facades
of a soured Magonia.
Born from the egg
inside the skull of a stepchild god,
my sketch antihero, persona of null,
everyday war against landfill dragons,
splintered sword still sharp,
he feeds the leech of pulsing life,
stuck to a bloated vein,
subway shafts encompassing.

Vision comes as thief and judge and jailer,
a spoon in the murk of days,
red cloud to the sun, a backward light,
barbed wire dreamcatcher
evolved to raven feathers,
metronome the string of captured moments,
living life, a collection of seconds.