Slash and Burn Agriculture

I am an emotional pyromaniac
with an affinity for burning bridges.
burning my life down around me.
burning up
from the inside out.
an occasional burn
just for thrill of it.
just for the heat.

sometimes the inside of my skull feels
like strangers mingling in a foreign country,
hot and bursting against the smooth dark interior.
I  need release.
from my strange / hot / dangerous
thoughts.

I start a fire.
burn the present into the past.
let the fire lick my  fingers clean
of  blood and fingerprints.
the smoke drowns out the smell
of baking bread and old perfume.

after the fire,
there is no evidence
save ash
and the ground is fertile again,
ready for planting.

The Forgetting

Mouth wide, bloody and pleading, palms extended, my need is ugly and unrelenting. Long after my head has processed the loss and my hands have adjusted to the strange empty air, there is still my traitor heart to contend with, hungry and howling.

The larger pieces fall away quickly and details too specific to weigh become ether and drift. Those things which remain linger like smoke, yellowing the light, casting dirty shadows. Remnants of smells, coffee and amber, wet fingerprints like bruises, salty lips cracked and forgotten.

Sometime later, obsolete messages appear like harbingers. Long after dreams of rescue have been discarded, strange fortunes told in hindsight wash up along the shoreline. These warnings, of lukewarm sex and tepid tongues, come too late to save us.

The heat of betrayal and oaths disavowed burn away flesh, leaving only teeth and bones. Artifacts of a story told in reverse. What remains is only the forgetting, which wears away at this story like water along stone, slowly erasing details and changing the landscape.

She Swallowed the Spider to Catch the Lie

A thousand
contagious lies
wriggle like maggots
inside my mouth
waiting to grow wings.
waiting to be transformed
by the first dirty syllable
into frenzied iridescent flight.
greedy to close the space
between my lips and your ear.

Instead, I shrug, swallow and
feel a universe of
unspoken sounds
crawl down my throat
burrowing through soft tissue
preparing to live or
die
in some dark bloody crevice.

“I am not afraid”
your damp breath offers
the small throbbing vein in my neck
but collusion
has taken up residence
behind your voice.

clinging desperately to your lower lashes
your words fall short of flight
spill and
collect.
a writhing
impossible
ocean
between us.