Antaeus Within

When one of us flew,
we all flew.

Such was the bond
that tied us together.
We could fly.
Separate from individual will
we would rise
to slip
the iron-fisted grasp
of the titan,
gravity.

And so we grew.
Nourished on clouds
and emblazoned by lightning.
We all grew.

We fell to the sky –
and the size
of forever
seemed to pass.
Unafraid of the boy within us,
with suspicious wings –
we had become the sun.

There are so few
blessed. Such a minority
chosen. But we were three,
and together a few.

Inside, your heart beats.
It wants to be still.
Envious eyes
are the birth of weather –
an inner wind
you could not upend
would clip your heart
and so the fall.

The future we all knew.
A fall made sweeter
by each other. Fate bond us
but it always knew.

None would fly,
when you no longer flew.

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Friends Without Benefits

In the summer
there is a rush antithetical –
A disordered summoning
from somewhere Other.
A call to the wild.
A returning but a newness.

You are a friend waiting to take my life.
You show me how I am filled
with emptiness, like a vase.
You do it when I wake up,
when I am tired,
when I orgasm –
My face looks just like yours
at that critical moment.

By the time the fall hits
even decay looks pretty.
Even the rotting smell
of death is celebrated with
pumpkin pie and frivolity.
Come sit by me at the feast,
you have earned this privileged space.

But don’t take me yet.
Let me see another summer.

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Ohde

Because the cause
has a cause
has a cause
has a cause
there is a first cause.
For us, it was laughter.
Like an engine
that pulls
a cart
that pulls
a caboose
belching smoke
and together
they form a train.
At some divergent
point
everything dips
below the horizon
and joins the setting sun
as it dawns on
the very beginning.
Laughter emerges
like a Christian Geometer
carrying a green
triangle.
Tempting to think
it was an accident
of accidents.
Tempting because
then we could be the engine
that belches smoke
and disappears
first beyond the horizon.
40 days in the dessert
chugging
like college students
after a metaphysics test
and sometimes before
a test the devil himself
couldn’t pass.
I remember the night
it began. A beginning
without definite cause
and without definitive end.
We tried to connect
things into a line
to make some horizon
of ink to disappear behind.
We failed to find such a line.

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Older Still

I met her when
her eyes were
still juniper berries
wild and potent
if not slightly toxic
the way she could
stare you down.

Her kicks ran
constantly with
her arms indicating
the direction of her whims.
Toward or away the
tides moved with her will.
We feared the same things,
and fear is in us still.

For an entire summer
she said “Holy Land”
with a smirk. We drank
to the fallen so long
as they weren’t our friends.
We cussed and smoked.
She cooked and wished
I was someone else.
Not instead, but in addition,
to myself.

Through education
we were distilled.
Taken to the level of poison
we were poured
over the snow covered rocks
to be chilled.
We wanted eternity to end,
but even as time froze the cubes
between us,
we grew older still.

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We Built A Fire

We were cold…

so we built a fire.
Big enough to warm
God’s feet.

Overtaken.
Or Consumed.
Either way it fed
on what we had
to offer.

In the offering
more was given
than appeared.
Pallets. Paint cans.
Two by fours.

More was gained
from their being lost
than what remained;
Charred pavement. Scrap metal.
They gathered at the tip
of a magnet.

We built a fire
big and round.
A swallower of worlds.
The gift of a titan –
our shadows thrown
against the garage.
Exploding paint cans
were cannons announcing our
arrival.

We had returned to the native
tongue of creation. The language
that once bound us all
in the shadows of our own devices.
We beat our chest.
We danced. Our primordial Bacchic
hooting frightening the trees.

The stars we made envious
eventually disappeared in the rising sun.
We cleaned the next morning.
Not a soul knowing.

I drove to work smelling of smoke.

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Lost and Losing

The unlived life is not worth examining
and though it is better to have loved
it is better to have lived
than to never have felt pain
or the loneliness
that comes with having friends
and lovers like owls.
They leave when the sun is up
with work to be done
so that the sand and salt
of repetitive actions
grind through your turning cogs
of aching joints,
feverish skin,
and pounding headaches.
Plod along waiting for night,
the sun hardening your skin
to bronze. A trail,
your residue killing grass
and defining edges
of this winding path you made alone.
That is worth the living
if only for the night,
if only for the dreams,
if only for the blessed, blessed,
moment that the owl returns
shaking its own salt and dust
from its feathered back.

You were never alone child,
you just didn’t see everybody else.
So examine if you must,
love before you leave,
and cherish every broken piece
of life. I’ll help you put it back
together with some pieces
of me.

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Agudah

You don’t call me friend but brother,
Using my devotion for your shield.
Danielle my belle,
Age has a beauty revealed
far more glorious than the others.
They’ve made stars from your eyes.

They don’t like it when I call you sister,
such terms imply a blood line
farewells from brain cells –
We have another name to be assigned
One as Miss the other, a Mister.
Don’t ask me why.

You wanted to go home that fall
so I traveled with you.
A hotel in Israel
barely big enough for two
is all I can recall,
except for the starry sky.

We had always talked about love
as a thing outside our pair
Michelle did well
for inspiration and despair.
Though you never knew what I was speaking of.
Some words mean both hello and goodbye.

On Sundays you would sleep in
while I went to mass
Sell the church bells
and all the stained glass
for a little salvation from our sin.
Such homilies would make you cry.

Love could not mean as much as this
yet it is viewed as a demotion.
Rebel my dearest Danielle
against those destructive emotions –
They only serve to dismiss
a union that only family can supply.

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