Disobedient Fingers
A wrinkle is written upon your cloak
when you refuse to release
the symbol of the traveled thought
who tarried through time
to be birthed by you.
Mt. Vesuvius
The naked being
surrenders her suspicions
to the sea.
Her form flees
to fields irrigated by light.
Her sight slips
from her sockets to
a tunnel of terrible silence.
Her blood boils
below craters in the sea,
burns like scented oils.
Gods and saints
receive the fragrant smoke.
My feelings foam
on Death’s mustache
like sea froth against
a rusty fishing boat.
The Pause
The Pause, a trapped heart,
pulsated in place.
Indifference froze it
in a crystalline shell of paranoia.
The Pause
in its denial of time
beat itself
against the glass of the soul.
Its strength broke the transparent skin.
When the Pause diffused into existence,
the soul breathed in
the fragrances of fear and want.
Poetic Leeches
Unable to escape the leeches of my mind,
who neither burned in the heat of Rome
nor drowned in my sweat
I feed them their friends–
For breakfast, a bowl of Lorca.
For lunch, a plate of Cortazar.
And for a snack, Rilke.
But for dinner,
my pests are starved.
Hungrily, the leeches gnaw on my mind.