When I Awoke I Was Still Sleeping

or

Miles and Mouths

I.

      .i am The Boneking.

I have twisted a thousand miles into mouths.

I have set fire to the cities, and there

I have heard the voices trill like spirits in the house of God,

       .now another throat aching for the knife,

the split like tectonic shift and time,

and us with our dripping mouths.

Mark the age of the dog,

       .the voices spreading from the ground

like vines and spawn and hate.

I have spit blood on the cross and I know,

oh yes, I know,

       .that the devil does not sleep.

And I let my baby stay the night with a killer in her bed.

The killer I fed and let rest in my house.

The killer I trained.

       .i have seen the moon laugh pale as a coroners joke,

and deal the pack of cards with which my life is played,

spitting moonshine,

and, blinking his long, red, sleepy eyes,

       .reach his long, white, caricatured hand

to pull a cigarette from his pocket,

and lift the needle over the record

that would bleed us to sleep.

II.

We danced in the rain

like the children of Cain,

with our hats on our heads,

and our heads on their chains,

and our chains 'round our brains,

and our brains in their heads,

and their heads in our hats,

and our voices like cats,

with the mouths and the miles

I have stretched into thought

of the drinks that we bought

so our scared little smiles

could spread like your legs,

oh, my own concubine,

you fill all my mind,

as I drink the dregs

from your colloquial mouth,

and your sweet townie youth,

and your hot, simple head

all reeling and dead.

Now we slip off to sleep

in our pods, oh my seed,

here the moon laughs his last

as we slip off to bleed.

III.

When we awoke we found that we were still sleeping.

The ground shot out from beneath our feet

towards the horizon in converging lines,

and we set forth on this plane

in any direction.

The skeletons of buildings brooded

here and there, calling out now and then,

the sky hung like a finger on a trigger

and I was certain then that we were underwater,

and that the waters were red and orange like the sky,

We moved on like skates along the ocean floor,

sweeping the sand that stretched out for miles or years

like veins in the body of some great and weary beast

breathing his last and bestowing some great knowledge upon you,

the coroner lingering outside the door,

one finger idly picking at a sore

I bid to bleed forevermore

and then a rapping at the door,

a rapping at the door,

knocking rocks to the ocean floor.

IV.

We are starlight,

moving our mouths over miles of space

to this bridge where we stand,

kicking rocks into the canal

and rapping sticks along the tracks

and letting our smiles loosen from our stiff, jagged faces

just a little.

Nestling our heads into the grass,

this familiar place

that holds me like a lover.

Burning, as stars do

as the moon comes stumbling, drunk from his place,

taking a long, deep drag from his cigarette

and dropping the needle on the record

that would lull us back to here,

the needle that would pierce our veins

and drug us back to peace,

bleed us back to sleep

until the bitter sun comes slinking back from

the other side of the world

where they are settling in

to dance in the rain,

oh, I cannot, I cannot,

I cannot explain.

1-22-2008

Puriel

I am stepping out of the driver's seat
And gathering my things to go inside
As the small boy playing in the street
In front of my house stops the game
That only he will ever understand to
Study me with his shy brown eyes.

He stands in the street with ball in
Hand and regards me as if he is
Puriel himself perched upon the
Gates of Heaven granting me
Passage by allowing the corners
Of his mouth to ascend into a smile.

I am filled with joy and return the smile
And he laughs and his laughter shakes
Something loose behind his eyes and for
One sacred moment I can see his soul
Dancing across his face and it is
In bloom and aching for me to know.

*Puriel is one of the two angels that guard the gates of heaven