Broken Bodies Part

It was the night

he bit into his fist, again,

not knowing it.

Gravity turns such things to stone:

Rather than blood on the knuckle

A fissure formed—(a line

drawn perpendicular

to others more familiar, almost,

welcomed

by the slow softening

mineral part)

where harsher sounds are

formed by touch and tongue.

Now we understand the relationship/between

(Tiny-cavernous)

pores connected by jagged cracks—

like a crumbling constellation—

explaining

why we call them

heavenly bodies: At dawn he opens his mouth

to finally exhale the story

and stars

fall

:

;

,

tumbling

out/in

broken pieces.

The Body

The body hangs like

A stranger haunch and hook version of soul state

There is a man who knows

the veins and arteries,

-even capillaries

designed to carry the carbon and color of punctuated probabilities

red lines connecting,,,

exposed cartilage to iridescent tendon

but now

drawing pathways down.

All this dancing --

in a white room:

The steel against liquid iron in strings

of steam drawn heavenward

Mixing with the cumulus exhale from lungs still living.

We know the butcher is capable of clutching the blade meant for marrow and sinew

He also concerns himself with the bitterness of

(the sound of)

blood that belongs below the body.

He knows

to leave the marbling of compassion so it will be consumed

with blood drawn

nearly raw and tender,

or the dense creamy attempts held sacredly within the splinter-prone skeleton,

is to know where the once supple joined

will gladly give way,

and the characteristics of this body:

The difference between

places where pain resides and

the pieces of my heart.

untitled

September grass

Splitting in a tepid wind

Swimming in red sun

Lowing like a prayer beneath ashen sky

Humble eyes

Your tears in the early light

Like the sweet offerings

Of your moonlit solitude

If the warmth of the day

Carries them away,

Suspends them in the air above you

We will breathe them in.

When 

it is quiet between the blades

I whisper through the cracks and lines

In my skin

The wrinkles beside my eyes

The hole in my heart

Where I know the oxygen turns

to fire.

I blow consonant breath toward the spark there

And the embers nearly ash.

I tell them about my shame

Until they burst

into flames

Because my fear of the dark has enough wind.

Finding false fault

in my fine broken branches with blossoms still fastened,

drawing lines across the glower,

begging me in blues and green

floating behind bones and breast,

sewn with sinews like hopes patch

worked by habit:

Frayed and stray threads holding steady.