Bones
Originally uploaded by Atomic Citrocity

I exist.

I exist.
Originally uploaded by Atomic Citrocity

Striking against light to knock down
a shadow that scarcely resembles what I scarcely am:
a woman, a wisp of hair loosed from a severe braid.
Asymmetrical division of features, already loyal
to asymmetry.

Broken winged bird doesn’t need a wing, doesn’t need
flight for walking - of course not.
Air-crippled only. But something in its small body
has met the skies expanse, something knows
and so carries to hops across earth,
This Hurt. A limp can be all-encompassing.

Wings in the rafters.
The sound of someone hammering fence boards.
A train through a canyon. Slow grinding
cement trucks. Children’s balls bouncing off
house corners. The angles make chase
a practice in deductive risk
(I always missed the ball).

I can’t see any of this.
But I know the sounds.
Not where they come from …
streaming from some place
in off time gone by.
Resting in my consciousness.
Old sounds leftover from events
long under the bridge .
I respond as an echo
to these echoes.
Low and estranged from origin,
in tissue thin places of recall.

Shattered.
Spliced back together.
Tender towards all I can’t touch
which still so touches me.

52 card pick up

far enough below the Frozen,
mad humidity rises from
earth's boiling core.
warm stone's wait 'round white
roots that stay shy and hidden
behind winter's poker face.

i am decembered in rooms that shake
with the weight of heaving trucks
gearing down, while the highway
goes mainstreet for a span through
this tiny tapeworm town.

i need

i

need to be ...

beside me, a whisper i passed through,
hesitant ... turned back and passed
again, backtracked to listen. a redness
speaking ardently of crystallized
white. tree terraced winter splintering the
cold crust just jutting in cracks
sent out as star felled, deliberate
sky debris pell mells below the bellow
of a soft soled shoe.

is it his?

is he coming? will he

ever ...

i need ...



tracks so vague -- set deep but spreading.
slow going either/neither way.

it is not winter though in the
white room of my thought, where
temperature's disinterested and lost
to a skyline tight drumfull of
vapors - porous poison, fragrant bloom
distracting the wind to come, then carry
its scent to my lips. buried there like
the taste of him only heard beneath
my skin. dethroning all other senses,
usurping calm countenance kept over
my handful of cards.

cards fill my close-chested palm with
royalty. one-eyed kings can't see me
while i wait to play, but perhaps will
choose to fold, withdraw, lay flush
and let the winnings go to
his cool hand.
it's sad display fanning
a few spades
and a joker with
a too familiar face.

needs hierarchy

cocoon.
Originally uploaded by Atomic Citrocity

the horizon's rim -
chipped china cup, tiny nick.
sipping lip there leaving no
less than the blood red sunset
slowed down to heaven-speed.

dizzied
by thirst. only water
will do. want may conform to etiquette,
but not need and you are
no longer and you are lost
with the light past that line across
earth, across water - out there
somewhere where the wind
dies. tied down, horizonal,
emptied harness for light.

this, a soon-calmed fight of wilderness
in me. my silence brandished
in the vanishing of weapons
that the air once struggled between us -
spun webs between us - i caught
only myself. casting out careful glances,
full to the rim, full
of gentle posture. only vague
fantasies about moisture our skin
might create, close and sated.

heavy paintbrush.
poised moment - only one.
one above the clean canvas.
there. just there, the sweetest
memory i have for us.
a memory invented
free of decorum,
full of thirst.

Do I scare you?
Originally uploaded by Atomic Citrocity

hold.
still.
amidst vigorous mystery,
stilled and emptied.
a shell
i am, a shell at ear,
collecting loose threads
off songs far from
here, where waves clipped
and crossed, tangle my
heart.

the memory of motion,
that's what moves me.
the sea, i am the
sea at shore. for a moment,
i am neither approaching nor leaving --
awash in kinesthetic prayer.
re-absorbing the sounds that
still haunt aged footprints,
shed through sojourn like old skin.
i recede again, give the land
back to itself,
slate clean.