Swallowing The Moon

She looks like another girl,

another girl I’m drawn too like

a black hole in the sky,

swallowing the moon every night.

Small chest but a beautiful ass,

long dark hair, out of fashion glasses,

and the edge of vinegar in their smiles,

sting, but low level venom is so sweet.

Another night, fish sandwich, tea,

watching her go, slinging beer,

chatting us at the bar, smiling bright,

but we’re a means to an end.

Home is a lonely room, browsing Reddit,

maybe sorrowful ballads on YouTube,

maybe make  another picture file for a pretty actress,

distractions, a weak sugar before sleep.

So I milk the vinegar from her fangs,

for all it’s worth, for all it’s bitterness,

for all it’s sighing dreams, for all I adore.

Swallow the moon whole babe, there’s another one waiting.

Last Night In Eden

Ally’s house is right on the county line.

I could head on south to Madisonville,

then Atlanta, or further to South Beach.

My car is filled with the smell of her

menthol cigarettes, sweet and harsh,

it’s even in my clothes, in my dreams.

Maybe she wants to escape this town,

head to where the action is, where there

is hope for magic or dreams coming true.

I pull into her house, small and sensible,

a tapioca yellow, with an American Flag.

She’s sitting on the steps, smoking in the cold.

I get out of my car and sit beside her, and she

puts her head against mine, and I kiss her head.

She stinks of cigarettes. Her hair smells like strawberries.

Even out in the county wilds there’s too few stars.

But the North Star is up there, and it can guide us.

18 now, both us. legal and free. We could run away.

Pizza joint, back in town, Friday Night, packed place.

She smiles at me, and we play footsie under the table.

We giggle, eat our pizza, pretend we’re not adults now.

Graduation is coming up, and she’s calm. I’m silently exploding.

Maybe she is too. Always seems calm and collected and with it.

Maybe she’s just like me and won’t show distress, let blood in the water.

We drive to the other end of the county, to the mountains.

Above and at night, the city is beautiful, full of magic.

At night anything can happen.

We sit on the edge, and we talk, and we kiss, and look up.

She lets me reach inside her jacket, feel her up above her shirt.

She lays her face in my neck, sighing, her breath hot.

We drive back towards her house, her smoking, smiling sly.

Her favorite song plays on the CD she made me. My heart is full.

If I keep driving all the way to the sea, we will be perfect forever.

I walk her to her door. The light is on. Parents watching TV.

She kisses my cheek, smiles.

She says good night, greets her parents, goes to her room.

This was the last night in Eden.

 

Archangel’s Walk Alone

Archangel’s work and walk alone,

maybe get to flirt with pretty, hard luck

waitresses in all night pancake houses.

Always a war to fight, a demon to repel,

as even heaven itself catches flames now,

and there’s no time for dates or smoke breaks.

Endless war and battle and toil wearing

even creatures of light down, of love, duty.

Even the believers have guns in their hands.

As they wipe the gore from their silver swords,

they try to think of the sister hugging her baby brother,

of the mother wiping away her daughter’s tears.

Try to remember to hear the prayers that are

not barbed with venom, that call on God in the darkness,

those that are so desperate for the light.

And, for a moment after another demon slain,

or another innocent lost, or any fire starting to burn,

they watch families love and protect one another.

They fight for what they can never have,

these creatures of light, love and duty.

 

Winter To Be Done

She’s pale and thin,

selkie out of her skin.

Auburn hair, green eyes,

fisherman promises plies

for her to come home with him,

She combs her hair, says no,

seething as he closer to her rows.

She pulls her skin over her,

now a seal with no need to defer.

Fisherman curses and yells,

and she makes curses, spells,

for she only wanted the sun,

and for the winter to be now done.

Fisherman rows back to shore.

Selkie will come here no more.

Cold water of the northern sea,

in its darkness, only place she is free.

The Distant Angels

Christmas Eve, almost midnight, all is still.

Ally walks alone, only her breath, heartbeat,

and the crunch of her feet on soft snow.

Her favorite jacket, black parka, faux fur

lining around the hood, is her armor,

a prism of her faith, in the darkness.

Christmas Eve, the sky clear, wide open,

all the stars, the distant angels, come to

sing of hope, of love, of all that can be.

The church was left behind years ago,

the stained glass smashed to jagged edges,

the large doors and tiled roof long lost to rot.

Ally steps inside, the starlight the altar candles,

the moon gives her her acolyte robes, the wind,

quiet and still, whispers something, somewhere distant.

Something lingers still, and there is a stirring, a dream,

a terrifying hope in the lonely night. No angels come,

but a birth has come, His Birth, a world without end.

She here’s a cry, a growl outside, no mere animal hunger

or aggression or fear, something more, something come.

Ally pulls her parka and hood tighter, whispers a prayer.

She leaves The Church, walks into the night, led by stars

and moon, led by her eyes that sees it’s light in the cold.

She looks not at the demon, though she feels it’s biter gaze.

Christmas Morning, the day has changed over, morning has come,

though still dark and cold, still so little light, still so far to go to the sun.

Ally walks, whisper sings an old hymn, of all the love that is near.

 

Interlude, Small Town, Kansas

I had stopped smoking, but being around you again,

and the past and all it’s illness and missed opportunities,

I smoking like I used, like a freight train, one after another.

No beer or booze or even wine though, now. Just pots and pots

of piping hot black coffee, as we talk about The Hellhoud hunting us,

and The Demons that we cannot dislodge for our hearts.

And we talk of hope, some mad desperate push to win the day,

for the whole world not to burn in greed and arrogance, that love

might win it all in a lucky spin, like we always hoped it would in our youth.

We find a hipster radio station, from the state college 50 miles away from here,

that might as well be the moon, so far from this dying town, closed storefronts,

too many empty houses, and no dreams left to kindle bonfires beneath the stars.

It’s a love song, lovelorn and despairing, and it’s one you loved in our youth,

some once hot shit band past it’s prime and any popularity, just a footnote,

just that one song loved, like that one good story I have that I always tell strangers.

And like in our youth, in that one perfect night, the time you gifted me with my one good story,

we slow dance, and softly turn on bare feet on dirty floorboards, your head on my shoulder,

my face buried in you dark hair, full of the scent of strawberry shampoo, smell of hope, innocence.

And then, like before, we make love.

We are shivering under the covers, and in each others arms. It’s the end of September, and the cold

is coming, and the stars grow brighter but the sun grows dimmer, and all our dreams our dormant

until spring comes again, and we make believe they’ll come true.

I kiss you softly. I kiss your lips. I kiss your brow. You giggle when I kiss the tip of your nose.

Our breath is ashes and the sweetest bones in the galaxy. Like a dragon I feed on your ashes.

Like a dragon, and therefore your champion, Queen of the Moon, I slay every knight errand on principle.

The cold is coming. The sky is clear in the coming bitterness. Will you let me stay this time.

Will you tell me to go, like every time before, from graduation, to that Perfect Night, to the Breakdown.

I rather fight demons in the snow by your side, then be alone again, in Miami’s so called paradise.

And then, as morning breaks, we make love again.

And then, we finally sleep.

---

Forensics Tournament Afterword

Forensic tournament afterword.

Sneaking a smoke in front of the host school.

Your Kool makes a veil, around your head,

angelic and wispy, menthol scent of burnt offering.

Big black parka’s faux fur lined hood is a halo,

and your dark hair is buffeted by the cold wind.

It’s November, and these tournaments will be over

by Christmas, but early nights and cold winds are sacred to us.

You broke again Ally. You won again. I’m an also ran.

Your pieces are sacred and bright. Mine are desperate, sad.

But we both wrestle with demons, whose tails choke our hearts.

We both find solace in winter, when no one makes any promises.

Your cigarette is burned out, and it’s time to get on the bus,

and ride over the plateau back home to Heritage, and we’ll sit

beside each other, maybe your head on my shoulder,

and we won’t say a word, but we’ll feel closer than heaven allows.

Head back to the crowd inside, all those other kids,

all those friends that feel distant and full of words.

You hold my hand until we get to the door, then your hand drops.

But though we know The Devil, we also know hope, and I know you love me.

And I know, I love you…………

 

Sunday Morning

November, cold and whispering,

but the sky above clear, so blue.

The park by the lake on a Sunday,

just us together in the morning.

The wind makes choppy waves.

No insect whine of boat motors.

We sit at a picnic table, watching

the water, sharing a clove cigarette.

The taste it’s leaves on our lips

make the kisses so much sweeter.

November is quiet, and gives dreams,

even as we feel all we love will burn.

We chase each other, playing tag

like we were still children, still innocent.

You catch me, still so fast, daughter of wind.

Lone art geek on the cross country team.

I chase after you in return, and you look back.

You would, even in the underworld.

We walk, hand in hand,  quiet streets.

They’re are people going into a church.

Tall and stone and from a fancier age.

Stained glass windows show Jesus’ miracles.

You say: “I used to feel at peace in their,

in honeyed sunlight of a spring Sunday morning.”

You have one last clove cigarette to share.

We sit outside your house. Sun is on us.

Even in the cold November, sunlight is warm.

Our skins kissed by a light that lovers everything.

I put my arm around you, kiss your head,

and wish this morning never become another day.

Libraries Are Solace

The high school library is ours.

The hallways and classrooms

are left to the ghosts of our youth.

We spoon on a couch in the librarian’s

office, with the sleeping bag, comforters,

we brought from our homes, when the end came.

The sky is grey, end of November, cold is here,

and our city burned and the world kept on,

and we took solace among the pages and tales.

Stories we loved, and study halls and lunch periods

spent writing and reading and dreaming, finding joy

and love when the first bright blue of spring came.

The world spins as our world ends, as all fades away.

We make a world in the only place that ever was ours.

We hide among the wisdom none of the others want.

I tell you tales, whispered in your ear at night,

of an aging knight and a quest for the grail,

and the letters he wrote home to his impossible love.

And the library has it’s own ghosts at night,

the starlight through the windows by the ceiling,

and fires a million light years away are silver sweetness.

The classrooms we leave to gather dust, and the hallways

are too full of our regrets when we thought our dreams

might end up coming true.

Just us and the pages and tales and wisdom no looter wants.

Just us and canned stew on a butane stove, and our dreams,

and the escape of each other’s warmth in the cold, cold night.

On a Clear Winter Morning, Mother Mary Came Unto Her

She walked in the cold, morning light,

after the torment of the Devil’s Legions.

Shaky legs, sallow skin, but maybe alright,

and maybe there’d be healing of lesions.

 

 

But she walked away from me, finding vision.

Alone in skeletal, naked trees and the snow,

I heard a thunderclap, saw heaven’s division.

She was going where I could not ever go.

 

 

 

She came back, smiling, at peace, glowing.

“I will go back to torment and those fires.”

“I will go back to Satan’s clutches, but knowing

my lesions, pains, will deliver others to heavenly spires.”

 

 

“I lay my life down to deliver them, and I’ll be a light

in the darkest of skies, and be with Our Father in Peace,

after the fires have consumed me, and he’ll hold me tight,

forever and ever, and my joy and love will never decrease.”

 

 

 

She took my hand, and we walked in the winter morn,

she heard the bird songs and the rushing creek, melting ice.

I watched her, now pale and humming and without scorn,

and knew paradise and salvation command a dear price.

 

 

Finally, we walked back to the squat, bland apartments.

She held my hand all the way to the door, then let it fall.

She was going back to pain and Infernal, gnashing departments.

And I could not hold her, soothe her, know her pain at all.

 

Inspired by an incident from the demonic possession of Annaleise Michel