#cgsdgsxc

Oh Lord,
we praise You from this distance--
Your righteous eye in Jupiter,
Your peaceful halo around Saturn,
Your beard in the nostalgic stars.

Oh Lord,
we thank You for gifts--
this imperfect circle of dark tissue
hiding behind every heart,

its surface colored by the ink
of a million black holes, connected.

Oh Lord,
we kneel at Your holy gesture,
your Hand of Fate sweeping across
the landscape as a five-fingered tornado.

Oh Lord,
I thank you for the strength you have bestowed,
stripping me of everything
but a fight,

even if I have to use it against You.

#bsdsdlj

Eyes open in kinetoscope
upon a curtain, thick red

stage curtain at the end
of a hallway with no doors.

Behind it, you know there is
the grand reveal, the truth

you cover in metaphor because
you don't have the balls to just say it.

Water rolls out beneath the curtain,
overflowing from behind--

and in it, a black liquid ribbon
snakes out, circles your ankle--

as the water rises further,
a dark cloud in your step--

and the water is rising,
the curtain sways as if in wind--

you still cannot speak the name.

#hbsdghs

A mermaid circled by a ring of jellyfish,
light dotting the water as if a prism shattered
on the waves. I can nearly reach her.

Soot-smudges for eyes, but she senses me--
around her neck, my heart on a string,
a leather pocket in suspended breath.

I inhale water, exhale black ink.

And when her mouth opens, it reveals
a whirlpool, a black hole, a vacuumed riptide--
water pulling away from me in all directions.

I reach out to touch her, and she is gone.

Waking in the middle of a desert, slate rock
beneath my knees as I look up, blinded by the sun,
tentacles draped over my shoulders.

There may be nothing for miles and miles,
but I have survived drowning at the bottom of a trench,
and I am here to tell you about it.

#ahdgfsbv

The suburbs at night, like the other side of a painting.

A home under construction, wooden beams exposed
to the windy night, an owl squatting in the open attic.

The dogwood in the yard covered entirely by a tarp,
the tree looks like a clenched fist shot from the ground.

Leaning against the back door, a man hunches over,
pouring paint thinner through a piece of white bread
and into a mason jar under the shadow of a shadow.

A gust of wind brings a sudden sound, an ambulance
blaring down the silent street in one canvas of time,
a neon tube of red against the squares of darkness.

A piece of wet, doughy bread alone next to a door without a handle.
The night's hand lifts the tarp, it settling against the skeleton house,

loosing a hundred bats, hidden in the tree.