Birth

On that first day We woke up restless Stillborn, bleak, dry and dark Blood dispersed in the water black Ink without paper Language without form Absence without grief It was all ours And ours alone Hear the scalpel-sharp intake Of a baby’s first troubled breath On a day like this, there are no words Yet our voiceless cry, it must be heard For our wings, they are tired And there is no land in sight...

I was there at the breaking of dawn When the unknowable heavens Were divided from my unknowable heart When the mountains of my spine Emerged within the salty womb And trees took root With a harvest of life And breath And the pumping of my fragile heart Sustained by nothing but light And my waking life Was divided from its dream And my subconscious disturbed the surface Before diving deep on holy gill And my...

I am many things I am a roller coaster I am an overpriced funnel cake I am a long line for a short ride I am in on the take I am an unneeded traffic roundabout I am the price of gasoline I am pretty sure that I am self-doubt I am the spent remains of the Fourth of July I am climate change I am the spit in your eye I am death on...

Baptism 1: 1975 Born of Machine At the gates of the Magic Kingdom In a room with a view Disneyland across the street But after nine months in line The ride malfunctioned Lungs not working No time to linger in my mother’s arms To be held close I would have died then and there Without the second womb Made of metal And oxygen   Baptism 2: 1980 Born of Freshwater When I was held At...

When two bodies collide There will always be A fault line to find In you or in me But not now For today we are lovers Folded one around the other Cliffs and chasms Metamorphic And sedimentary flesh Thrust like beating hearts Love is a precipice We stand on the edge And as we spill over We fall into the wind And rise like mountains On the updraft And from these higher heavens We wonder...

Words create worlds And fill them with life You are a word And so am I Spoken into existence Past, present and future tense Each of us a word With our own definition And connotational leaning And without which this poem Would be missing a line And also much of its meaning For when love speaks truth Fresh ink gives birth To new lines in the poem And new meanings between them But when the...