September 2014

	September 2014 Lost in your Leaving Scudding with a Chance of Wonder Ludlow and Vine Dog Breath Dead South First Blush Decca The Throat of Peace Rula and Jabreel, 15 Awakenings	Lost in your Leaving Dawn strokes this sky from a pallet of remorse. Dark oils of doubt, spilt like an artery let upon a bed of jagged glass, a morning left on these sheets, lingering, clotting, lost in your leaving.
Scudding with a Chance of Wonder Sun startles the moors in a splash of tangled white of spirit shadows - shades haunting the old soil graves. Their sudden glints, like crystals from a shaker, sprites in a ballroom of gloom. Winds whipped flourishes their sylph clouds dancing, transmuted, in a manic chaos of sky. Arteries of light as if Pollack were peeing great skeins of his madness to the floor.	Ludlow and Vine Love came through the window as you stopped to buy apples and a spray of violets, freshly watered, catching blue and gold off the morning light. That market is gone now, a watch repair, next to Sheila Indigo’s ‘Tattoos for your Soul’. Your step clacked the walk, your pleated hem pranced through the lemon white light down the throat of Ludlow at Vine. I don’t see like I did then, the light is muted, color loses its mystique when love has moved on. But I can still see you turn to catch my voyeur’s gaze. I still see that grin as I beckoned you closer. I still see your eyes catching the blue and the gold of that morning light of Ludlow at Vine.	Dog Breath The sky lifted lead to pewter to a delicate foil, shimmering with spring, with the first songs of green. The land sighed. You could feel the exhale, the relief, the grim smile relaxing. I went out upon the levy, Gracie’s barking behind me, her glee beyond me, lapping my cheeks knee deep in the grass. We dogs love our spring in its wee bit of splendor. We dogs love a morning when our owner’s cuddle, laugh in great guffaws… and coo.
Dead South No one touches my heart like the ghost of us, the remnants draping these rebel blue skies where I’ve tried to bury you. I hear the gun fire smacking, feel the whip-snick puff of shot, the cries of soldiers dying in the Carolina brine. I feel the drapes of your longing, your grief, pulling the soil over me, just as I gave my rifle, my life to General Lee… as I take you down under these red clay sheets.	First Blush Lifted as if leavened, filled as if infused. That’s what you felt like. As if imbued with lemon breath, as if more than you ever were without. Descending falling through miles, through years of life, hands high in the air as the car grips fragile rails. Beating inside out… Aerosols of light in your lungs, your throat tight with a flutter of stuttering words, as your mind falls a quiver in your lap a hormone jelly, a great fury of quail in the knees.	Decca Touch those streets and you will tap your feet to Motown and these Decca 45s. Release those beats and your thighs can’t help it. Your lap will ooze as it writhes for more. Let Marvin take your mind through his crooning sins of skin, let Smokey shape your lips the Temps tease your hips, let a Rainy Night in Georgia take you home.
The Throat of Peace I abhor the costs of war, the politics, the power, the size of the cocks they sway. The bullets that kill for peace. the arms sold for balance, for parity, for justice. I detest the costs imposed of religion, the martyrs, the guilty, the coffers, the waste, the blood spilled for babies, the hypocrisies of churches the gold they hoard while the poor observe and pray. I loathe the power that drives it all. Control… the minds, the wallets, the spending, the water, the morality of life. I despise the machine, the me, my, mine - the survival of the fittest animal, the hormonal soups that drive our species to sexual conquest, to rape. The claws always reaching for the throat of peace.	Rula and Jabreel, 15 We cling, eyes glazed amidst the rebar and rubble, Klaxon blare and the feeble lights flutter as soldier shadows with TAR-21s grow high and recede on graffitied walls. We pray to allah, to the powers, to the insane of politics, for family, for food, for safety and peace. for a future. For quiet in our love, in our ears, for our fractured hearts, for the clenched white knuckles of our trembling hands.	Awakenings I awoke to tempest a Mariah’s bluster and stew, every whistle and toot, gusty missiles and fingers thrust down every shoot. Nature’s talons prying into any orifice, every crevice or pious crack. as I fell back into the stream… I awoke inside of a wake, a funeral of love, a bawdy celebration of life, crushed with a sudden sorrow, a morose bowl of memories - dry blossoms in a grand crystal bowl, they stirred as old skin, rustling whispers, as if to say brooding and selfish goodbyes. as I fell back into the stream… I awoke just beyond the grasp of your arms straining, reaching for me, my hands restrained, my fingers gloved, your cheeks wet, our collars broken my heart so sore. as I fell back into the stream… I awoke in strangled sheets, in a swaddling of sorrow, in a rue of tangled percale, in the midst of your roots and knots that should have released me by now.