O western wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!

-Anonymous, 16th century
_____________________________________
Gravity

I must wrest myself from this gravity.
Too long have Saturn’s
Rings governed my orbit.
For too long, those petulant energies,
Have lulled me, asphyxiating,
In that atmosphere, struggling,
In the noxious gas of ethereal undertow.
Somewhere in this vacuity,
There must be some solid
Stone, where I may, concede prostration.
Somewhere the stern soil,
Tolerance, temperance,
That does not drive one so, to self destruct.
I would I should find some
Leverage to pull against;
A moon who’s anchor, might haul me out
That malignant, celestial current;
Set out across that stygian rent.
I would that she would rouse me from,
That diabolical womb;
Disintegration, carve new
Constellations upon the face of my fate.
Create a new trajectory,
Together we could tread.
A path no evil, or impurity could beset.

_______________________________________________

A Storm Between Us

All this weather wears our bodies
thin and swells the glands
in our throat.

It deprives us of appetites-
fashions a white blanket out of insecurity,
which does more to catch that
cold ache in our bones than
tries to keep us warm.
And then the fevers,
so strong the hottest summer day
could not sedate that chill.

When will this winter storm abate?
But will abate-
spring already beats upon
the icy door.

_______________________________

The New Birth of the Old Religion

They scuttle amongst the scraggy thicket,
and in hours of darkness, scrape stones
together hoping for a flint, a spark to set
the new fires amid the dried out underbrush.
Their cries at each bloodied finger send fleets
of magpies into a flood of black and white,
obscured gray in the bloom of the new moon.

Bodies now twisted and naked, caked with mud,
muscles pierced by the ardent clutch of thorn-
once stood straight and pristine, adorned
in fine robes, silk mantles, hand stitched
with embroidery of the alchemist’s finest gold.

Where from their mouths once poured the milk
of eloquence, there are now only the jagged
fragments, broken syllables, which shred the
meat of their tongues, leaves them despondent,
with merely nasal snarls of discomfort,
all they can remember how to convey.

Nevertheless they huddle together, their boney
forms braced against the cold, and as the sun
brakes along the horizon they fan out in
concentric circles, foraging for food, seeking
out some semblance of that reason they’d spent
amid the cooling embers, the night the horrors
came to claim their sacred mythology.

They search for the new order
amongst the ruins of their past.