A Wrist Against a Frozen Pole

Is it being over the line

to want a sufficient taste

of the other side of funhouse

mirrors where survival was

possible in plans for blank posterity,

or in the salt bath of eyes that

soaked up and then spewed

my feathered soul, which lay

dormant in secret alleys

paved with chicken shit?

***

And could it be that I

misunderstood well-wishers

with open containers,

inviting me to fill with

echoes and sperm and

diary entries that unite

both sides of love-lost levees

vulnerable to reawakening

star lilies that grow in

basements and half-written poems?

***

Because it was only half-eaten

apples that rotted and suggested

make believe with the sordid

suffer machines that power, say,

the bodies of Christ and Sisyphus

and bombs placed in my

off-targeted cranial vagus

that wastes away futile time

after a newborn killing.

***

Then there are reconciliations

found in city traffic, a wrist on a

frozen pole, or the

slight smell of lavender.

But what happens when

it’s not even enough to suffer,

while God learns how to die?

***

No.

I would rather hope the

belly of muster-seed emotions,

which vines from my bowels,

are tamed by the crafted cross

of a star-crossed family

that un-conditions the zephyrs

of yesterday’s penances.