The Black Wood

 

I smell you
the black wood
pulse of subsonic desire
the white stones
and wet pine
blurry shadows with yellow eyes
with dog breath

I awake to the scent like a song
cold wind just above the water
a morning fog
his majesty in velvet crown
with birdsong calls the sun to rise

I hear you
in hot hymnal
breath from the black wood
that alluring edge of whispers
tangled roots
footprints where silent the wraiths passed
silence to usher me awake
heart throbbing
the blood in me stiff
struggling to gain air
to tie my boots and start marching.

TA

Left Knee

Skinning you from your witch's robes
proffer your naked flesh to Old Moon
with wet lips plucking sadness in your voice
soft midnight blue like first snow
   settling on your round breasts

left knee

realizing too suddenly that capturing you
is impossible
not in four lines of long-form poetry
not from a man who isn't sure how to own his name
a break
and then a single left knee?
of what is essentially an endless linear loop
like time itself, I guess
like the way I loved you in that dark red wood
bleeding from the parts of you the asphalt took
so clumsy the wine hour falls
not from a poet nobody's ever heard of

three piece combination
right elbow one
left elbow two
Sal Paradise
and all those beat mother fuckers.

TA

To Last The Night

 

Citrus twilight climbs the distant canyon wall
in pursuit purple evening
a crown of broadhead pine
atop the shadow
charge the last of dying day
color collapsed some time ago
into somber tones
monosyllabic ghosts
a gathering of minion spirits
stewards brokering for the day's undress
mothers clinging in killer's claws
to their surrogates
affiliates not yet disconnected to the source
that power of the womb

from cold eclipse of bough and stone
a panther wandering willy-nilly into moon whisper
her orbit pools of quiet footfalls
her soothing rhythm inaudible
a lull to sleep nevertheless
a false promise in that pussy's purr
 
Callisto
like Europa
and strange Io
her revolutions no more reverent
than those captive to Zeus' heavenly embrace
brightest diamond winking in the swelling empyrean
yellow like the cat's eyes
soft of paw
hardened heart
a nitehawk in whistling spiel propounds for all
his hunger
the night comes fully
and the things caught in it
we have only ourselves now
to blame
until morning's glow.

TA