Catching Me

06/12/12

I am not asking for anything,
not the weight of your hand
in mine, the trace
of your breath along the back of my neck
or even your smile.
Because I am content
with how it is,
this distance, the searching glances
from the corners of my eyes,
your name not even mentioned
as I run my pen along the paper,
afraid as if I could jinx myself.
I'm scared to lean against you
because I want to, need
to fall
and I can't ask you the burden
of catching me.

beat of this blood

i follow the beat of this blood
curved 'round the corners of this page,
my pen on the line,
poised to fall just before the bullet
is fired.
there's a thick trail of mud
along the backside of my legs,
the dark imprints of my footsteps
a yawning smile behind me,
ready to open and swallow me whole
into the crevasses of this poem,
stretched thin between the moment,
those colours abloom across the
back of my eyelids, bruises forming
against the underside of my teeth
as i bite down again and again
until i'm bleeding along the inseam
of my tongue,
your voice forever a whisper
painted on my lips,
only parted open to gasp
as i start to fall.

Island Blooming

This holds a different type
of greenery, pooled limped between
the scrapes of the pen and
arched between the branches
of my childhood,
as I lay back, caterpillers crawling
down the brittle sides of my ribs,
the mud sliding past my lips,
falling forward into the expectations
I formed on the fields, singing
while skirting the memories of previous days rain.
Yet when I close my eyes,
or run my fingers across the veins
in the bark of the tree in what
is now my city, choking back the mist off the lake,
I'm overcome to write the colours free,
spill the green forward and
spread it across the flesh of the page,
streak my tongue through the dirt
and subjugate myself
beneath the twisting,
pulsing, sadistic love
of the island in full bloom.