False friends fight to the alphabet’s end
Brothers muffled on roadsides
Soon to be cognate in ice
Parsed by the grammar of days
Fate covers them in common ash
They’re familial only as information
They listen for the drones and moan
They’re muted by a shared gun
And then washed away by time
They’ve broken the bread of flesh
Into language and starve
Laying waste to the present tense
A battlefield of Cyrillic characters
Mangled like twisted smoldering alloys
Wars begun in shared languages
End in babel and begin again

Mother, the bread is moldy,
The meat is rotten
And the milk curdled.
We return to you then,
One son after another
As though back
To the belly of the earth.

More alive than a landslide
More brimming than prairie potholes
More eventful than a carnival
It is all the wings that keep it afloat
All the dragonflies that drive it
It’s a sea bound by old poetries
The single vine of multiple waters
And mother of all nurseries
It’s the face of migrating flocks
With reeds rioting for the sun
The hive of every insect alive
Like a water lotus and pod
It’s the blazing before brumation
The hunger before the torpor
The carp that swallows the moon
Before its resting state in hypnotic cold

Paint the cider you taste
With a tint you create.

The golden delicious
Should ripen on the palette.

The brushstrokes
Ought to flower into fruit.

The composition
Must bare transition.

The rot at the core
Nature itself will restore.

Lastly, give the picture
A reason for being,

A return for all the beauty
And for all abundance.

A bushel, ladders,
A human shadow, an answer.

The world’s come to an end.
Old men killed my last friend.
Old men hide what they hoard
Like goblins encrypting gold.
It’s a myth that old men are wise
That’s more or less a fool’s guise.
Truth is grandfathers go insane
As though panic shares a mutual brain,
And even with incontinence
They seek control of continents.
They brag about their health
And inflate the value of their wealth.
They talk tough but shake to the bone
When the grim reaper’s on the phone.
Old men wage real imaginary wars
With everyone except guarantors
And by killing those they don’t know
Add microseconds with which to oppose
The long night of their own souls.

Everyone dies here,
Everyone’s born here,
The animal body leaps in,
The water body leaps out,
Foam washes in and out,
Spirit laughs
In the face of the spray,
Spirit goes in naked,
A swimmer emerges
On another shore.

Better a blown transformer
Than the heart stopped loving.

Better a blown fuse
To a restless muse.

Bitter the burn
Only felt in the urn.

Better a grid failure
Than to evade Cupid’s arrow.

Better a power surge
Than to have no urge.

Behind all the darkness
Begins the undressing.

Better a blackout
Than to let passion die out.

Between these outages
The light of the sages.

Better downed power lines
Than to ageing, resign.

The night is electric,
The body dialectic.

It’ll be dark forever
And touch will be never.