Our human shores

In darkness crows cackle
and gloom overhead
plotting always

—this annihilation
we feast. Night wallops

a decadent end.

We’ve fought
the culmination
so long for nothing.

Another sunset, another
sun quake.

Grasp me tender
grasp me bare.

Inside me moved.
Inside me wept.

The pageant was upon us
and you were death.

Our human shores

Find the face of another who loves your face
and the boiling viscera beneath it. Make this a home.
Be as transient as you need. Within other
people there is a mystery upwelling,
dispelling like an inhalation—as fleeting as
putting on a warm sweater, we recycle our prayers.

Make new our gods, our lost salvation.

I had faith in people
to let me down
off this self-inflicted journey.

Here’s the truth: The sun visits
less often.

Sand will weather away
that which will wither anyway.

Smooth me into rupture,
stroke microscopic my inflammation—
this layered madness a tinged festoon.

Place my thumb
on your tongue.
Like snow forced down
our backs, we recoil
we snipe, we fierce.

Place this, my whippoorwill, down my throat, let it speed
away.
Jettisoned, ready, and immaculate—my heresy.
We were put here to suffer
the words until we couldn’t
stand and say them.