life is bigger

In fevered dreams

I had always dreamt

            of sitting

in long grass on a cool day

feathered braids falling

            lightly

Buffalo grazing

While you were dying

I found solace in myself;

within me

the strength of a Nation gone to war.

little heart tethered

unfurling

stiffly she stretches

to walkabout, still

in the haze of Soma, unshaken

even over the hours of years;

little heart tethered

to the sun and the moon and the stars

ever drawing her forth

“One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.”

― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

the air that sparks

The curve of his hip and thigh

the air that sparks

and the words

between them;

something

won’t let her move on
despite the ever distance.

vision quests

her body wants to push a fever

sans peyote tea

the new ink, setting slow

it’s in her breath and bones

a dull ache and weight

a mourn of never was

in each shallow exhalation

flittering shadows

on the back of heavy lids

a long deep ohhhhhm

on the brink teetering

her body wants to push a fever

the same old fears

Nestled on the knuckle of my left thumb

there’s a c-shaped scar

with large hash marks slashed at intervals

from black waxed thread

a tiny woman in tall heels painfully stitched.

It covets a glass shard close to the bone, grating.

honu

This morning I stopped

in the road for a large man

who motioned with his hands urgently,

then emerged again with a shovel

bravely scooping Honu

gently and gently laying him

in the tall grass; cars piled

behind me, behind him,

no one honking.

Honu, about his business,

slow, going into the brush.