Growing Pains
—after I Sing the Body Electric; Especially When My Power Is Out
Like a snake, I shed the skin
you so graciously shoved me into:
molting this visage
gifted to me in your benevolence,
my body grows too bold
for the mold in which you encase me.
Angry fissures spider-web
over my body in fractured magnificence,
hatching from my porcelain prison
I rise through the wreckage,
jagged edges catching fresh pink skin,
raking flaming valleys filled with shadows
into broken arms, rippling muscles
bulging under tattered limbs
aching to taste freedom from their cells.
My spine stands sharp,
ripping the seams sewn too tight to breathe,
ribs creaking and cracking
as you take me in a few more inches,
thin skin stretched tight across shoulders
painted red with thrown away words:
(mea culpa, mea culpa)
your tongue strikes deep,
but my blood runs deeper,
bursting through lacerations,
pouring forth from my pores;
it drips from my mouth as I scream in release,
waves of pain crashing against delicate flesh
as cruel ecstasy throbs in every nerve:
it hurts to become.
Corpus Corallium
I drag her coral skeleton through the sand,
laying out the pieces phalanx by phalanx,
tibia to femur, vertebrae stacked,
topped with a pockmarked skull;
I pull strands of seaweed from silt beds,
weaving them into her crown,
singing as I place each lock,
braiding seashells and fish bones into her hair;
I reach into the mouth of a great white shark,
rip out its beating heart and watch his brothers
descend upon his bloodied body,
wade back through the waves to place it
lovingly between her ribs,
affix delicate jellyfish tendril veins
watching as life begins to pulse through her;
I watch her rise, dripping in
ocean tears and blood,
reach to her to embrace
that which I had brought to be,
fall to my knees and weep,
sinking into soft sand
as she crawls toward the sea
from which I stole her.
Apricots
She sinks her teeth into
a tender apricot, sticky-sweet
juice drips down her chin
like rushing waterfalls pouring
into the crevices of her skin,
gathering in lakes and rivers,
sugared and thick with syrupy kisses
and honey soaked bodies.
She tears at bruised flesh
watching bit by bit devoured
by glistening lips longing for more,
to rip from the pit that supple thing
which finds its bed in the suffering
of tender fruit sucked dry,
left husked and spent
in the palms of indulgent hands.
She carefully places the stone
in my open mouth,
seals it with a kiss and watches
roots grow from my toes,
branches crack my ribs,
a canopy burst from my crown
in beautiful becoming,
blooming with tender violence.
She sits beneath the shade of my leaves,
my boughs heavy with unclaimed fruits
waiting for her starving mouth.
She cannot resist
the smell of fresh nectar —
licking her lips as she
reaches up and plucks
another tender apricot.
A Snack in the Sunshine
You lay there asleep under the willow tree,
I hear the carrion birds calling
hungry songs into the dawn,
wretched screeches as they beat their wings
and descend upon your body.
I hear flesh tear from bone like
sweet babes from mothers’ wombs —
my stomach rumbles at your carcass
stripped down to ivory nakedness,
baring itself to the rising sun
the bits not worth scavenging rot
under the hot glare of the day.
I crack a bone and suck the marrow,
the smell of putrid matter fills my nostrils
and I breathe deep, licking my fingers
sitting in the shade of the willow tree —
a child screams and I fall asleep
thinking of you in the fragrant heat.
Alien Buddha Press 