Since, Eve, We Will Return

…And God, he made the earth from ash and dust
He lit the stars returning to their place
In dreams of Eve, He fostered Adam’s lust
And stretch’d it o’er with skin and gave it grace
Her body’s sails did fill out with a gust
Of holy breath; a smile licked Adam’s face

The holy heads that tongues of flame do lick
They turn to ash the deeds of murd’rous men
Speak healing to the sails, the seas, the sick
To fathers, sons return from the pig pen
Mud from their skin mortars a house of brick;
The dreamhouse of “thy will be done, amen.”

Sometimes we are commanded in our dreams
To lick and seal, roll a scroll, and eat it.
The parchment skin unfurl’d from candy reams
Is ash when our stomach turns to meet it
The mouth cannot return the words it seems,
Galilean sailors can’t repeat it

One day that scroll, like a sail, will unroll
A future dream illumined to reveal
returning revelations to our soul
that faulty licking lips cannot repeal
this flesh of living ash may take its toll
but your skin at such price would be a steal

How will our skin fare in tribulation?
They will stretch it on a righteous sailboat
To escape the ash of conflagration
Dividing their dreams between sheep and goat
Lick the crux of transubstantiation
Returning to God on a scripture quote

And earth returning to its former state
Sloughs off the shell of life like dying skin
With hands of fire God licks clean the slate
His Spirit over the deep, sailing in
With new dreams of life, the flower of fate
Blooms in the ash where other life had been

Since, Eve, we will return to dust and ash
Wake my dream to your skin; its smiling flash,
Wind-licked like a sail with an open lash

a poem from the vault

i think this might be my favorite thing i've ever written. which is saying a lot. i wrote it three years or so ago. usually the appreciation i have for my own writing would lose a contest with the shelf life of unrefridgerated milk.


this is a sestina,
unto the moon
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lady moon you are an apple in the vault of the sky
waiving white lily fingers as you pass me by
drawing shrouds of heaven about you as you go
slowly wheeling through the sky, your light like fallen snow
trust me when you ask me and i tell you of my love
there is madness in the roads i roam which most know little of

wake me not from my sleeping madness yet
though i pass the scent of apples by with much regret
i am trusted by the sun to pick a route between the stars
my fingers clenched around my sword and guiding chariot cars
my burning feet are wheels cutting through the nether-sky
my hand before my face shrouds the burning of my eyes

soothe my restless dreaming with your shroud as thin as light
sing and soothe my madness in the midst of desp'rate night
there are none that go before me but a golden fiery wheel
and none so well has led me but my apple through this field
your fingers spread through nighttime, your fingers through my hair
ever on must i trod and trust that you are there.

trust me though you know not why they call me the Half Red
the shroud of night will come and spark a fire in my head
my fingers itch to work upon their each appointed task
what madnesses I’ll meet, I neither know nor want to ask
but do not even offer me an apple 'pon my road
and risk the falling heavens ever if my wheels be slowed

on the rim of heaven, on the Wheel around the Tree
while i trust my Eastern course, and from the West if you can see
beneath the silver apple-light i'm sending kisses out to you
in the beaks of little birds who'll pierce the shroud and sing them through
their song is mad and keening for the veil that stands between us
their winged fingers harping winds for sleepers dreamless

my fingers are ablaze both with fire and with blood
my burning wheels are spinning in the darkness and the mud
my madness is a tunnel that I must lead and be led through
trust that though I may be late I’ll not break tryst with you
fate is wrapped up in a shroud and bound up in the night
and woven on a loom beneath the bloom of apple-light



your silver fingers trace through the stanzas of this ode, chasing tunes of apple trees across my chest, in woad
the tearful night is tearing and has torn in shrouds behind you; let the always wheeling, turning night and burning stars remind you
that my love is like an Axis, like the Tree, your trusted guide, a constant through the madness you can rest your head beside.