Cronus

i just want to eat you
i am so fucking hungry
so hungry
i can feel my insides
warring with themselves
and i just want
to devour your skin
taste your muscles
lick your eyes
allow the warm
coppery wash
of your blood
to coat my throat
i want you
like salt
wants meat
i want you
like teeth
want sinew
i can't stop
wanting
i'm just so hungry
the heat
is coming up
from inside me
to shatter me
make me
ravenous
Wendigo
i want you
so very bad
can't shake your
taste
can't stop
tracking
your scent
across the city
you run from me
run from my hunger
hide your liver
and your heart
but i can smell
you
and you set
my teeth on edge
i'm coming
i'm coming
just open
the door
for my big
bad wolf
or i will
never stop
tracking you
from here
until the
stars blow out
and we are nothing
but white bones
who long ago
thought they were
human
and once upon a time
were
hungry

God, I'm Hungry

I have a secret drawer
I keep my lovers there
I hide them under my father's obituary
and one of the few medals
I ever won
You never gave me a letter
and I had to steal a photo
so I have little to keep
and fewer places to remember them
stuck between the pages of some volume
I hid my hunger
the petals of a different love
and I forgot about them
someday in the mountians of books
that fill my bookcases
I will stumble across it again
and remember something
feel something
trace those pressed edges
and peel up the corners
my underneath
never really forgets
I move on
but I am not the kind
to ever really let go
it's always under there
somewhere
maybe stuck to the underside of the desk
weighed down by old trinkets
but I never really
let my love for you go
I am as dusty
as a dust jacket
crinkled like ancient paper
I pressed myself in those pages long ago
between those covers
petrified like old cookies
warm as chocolate tea
that's where I keep my secret hunger
folded and bent
under a thousand feet
of broken heart pieces
with the curse
of a good memory
and the prying apart
of tenderest lips

What's Wrong With You Now?

my fingers are aching
all in the joints
tell me what's wrong with me
it hurts all the time now

"it's all your head, silly girl"

flows of pain
down the body
I almost fall in the hall
when my muscles give out

just all in my head

maybe it will spill out my head
drown you in a wave
of what it's like to be me

prickly skin
for days now
weakness and tremors
prickly prickle prickle

I can't get out of this bed
it's in my head
if I could just make it stop
quivering on the edge of sickness

tick tick tick
make a decision
make something happen
do it now

I'm not always capable
but I try
I'm just not that good at it

Butcher

that heavy wet slap
of raw meat
against the concrete floor

thick blood
oozing over the edge
of the metal table

the split splat
of congealed
fluid striking
the drain cover

the knife makes
its work quick
sharp in the pale light
flashing above his head

ligament comes away
from bone
with a snap

bone cracks
as it is manipulated
and forced from the sockets

flesh hangs
in strips from the ceiling
red and lurid

like grotesque flags
signaling
a dead parade

now the cleaver
flashes up and down
chop chop chopping
at sinuous tendons
and fleshy mounds of muscle

bloody steaks
and pale fat
carefully ground meat
packaged all up for the freezer

brown paper hiding
those sliced and diced
bits of tasty corpulence

those meals
to future mouths
watering in anticipation

this flesh so strange
so buttery
so lithe and lean

dinner will be an event
of vigor and robustness
tasted upon the fatted tongue

he will pull your chair out for you
bow deeply at the waist
fill your glass with garnet wine
and on the meat of blackened paradise
you will dine

Morning Star

here is where
quiet monsters
come to settle

this will to darkness
and this will to understand it

at the end of dreams
these monsters of many arms
crooked faces
multiplicities of eyes

here is where
we stand
face to face

the abyss opening
and closing
like a mawing mouth

sucking us in
to those black stars
that black reach

big old holes
in the side of the universe
blinking back at us

unmoved
unmoving

unwilling

it stares us down
flattens choice
and providence

none will stoop down to save us
we are alone
as on a darkling plane

unwanted
and unwatched

God hated what he created
and abandoned the seat of heaven

Scorpio Moon

you move so quick
each muscle strains
in a symphony of beauty
and violence
I catch my breath
in a moment of terrible love
and I look away
so you won't see the longing
in my heavy eyes
the moon is on my lips
and burrowing under my skin
I pretend for a moment
that you love me back
your worldly syllables
your nebula eyes
spit comforting words at me
and I just want
to hold you all night
just like this
tight
on the cusp of a world
that would rather see me fall
than let me stay
that violet light
leaking into your eyes
and spilling down my chest
mouth to tightening nipple
each beat brings
us closer
to those galaxies in the center of us
your face buried in my neck
your scent so very sweet
the Scorpio moon turns her
white lidless eye on me
and won't let my mind go
she takes me home
but my heart stays with you
in that big bed
on the edge of the universe
while I wait
for you to call me back

Poems Aren't Worth a Goddamn Thing

broken cracker
water straight from the tap
two day old bread
and salty soup

they come 'round here
offering
we have something for you
quick before it's all gone

you know there are more hungry than you
look at all these books
piled to the ceiling
sell them all and buy yourself some shoes

I'd rather wander barefoot in the rain
than give up a single word
each letter has more worth
than a heap of right opinions

each author a better friend
than a wringing religious hand
held out if you only believe
what we believe

I eat stale biscuits
the milk long gone
but still I am not alone
each word, each syllable
a stronger gateway to heaven
than any clammy outstretched appendage
crossing itself
with a backhanded weak smile
it's purveyor