I Am (in series)

I Am (1)

I am an emptying vessel

Scratched clean

Slow dissolve

Of Purity

Clubbed out

A hammering

Solstice of the page

I’ll swim up canals

Climbing like foam

From a sea, drained

I spoke to my hands

In a wrinkled way

Redolent words

Hung tightly on lines

On poems inside you

He was a vociferous husband

Chained like the night to my knees

Roaring animal

Unfastened

You taste foreign

A bark in a mouth of a child

Too simple for me

I Am (2)

I am the roll of the hilltops

The stalk of the withering rose

Lived in lives over and over

Calumniate a simple time

You scavenge me for truths

Looking upward

Like a lamp

extinguished

Hoping for a glint of light.

I cannot bring you with me

I cannot bind you

As hard as I try

This weight in my skull

Lends an unfortunate response

To any and every

mark that is less than my own.

You cannot reach me

Slip in to me

And out the other side

Distilled and dismembered

Your head got caught in the door.

No song moves me

Trees burn dark

And dim

I shall not let you move me

You are faded

Thin.

I have no use for you.