I trace with feathers and the flex of ambushing paw,

Twitching the tang of grass on the pink of my nose,

Gliding a tail in pleasing circles,

Eddying the wink of dewy grass, cropping

Plantations of corn along the tufts of an ear, sprouting

Bananas with curved fingers, lengthening a feline sharp

To peel rich sugars and feed breezy currents the ring of

All these happy bells, inviting the rose to bloom for bees

Honeying the mottle of garden plenty, hands bowing violins

Covered in rainbow trousers.  

A cat leaps and a bird takes flight as I lie in grass, dying.

I forget who I am: feeling so many colours,

I shatter on the vision before me.  

A griffin walks across my grave, my identity bleeding;

Lost in depths of feeling, the breaking of my soul

Reaches for a voice: I can only snarl, only shriek, because you

Have left me all alone. Helpless, I begin to walk across my grave,

Weep as the Earth names me Monster. 

My spine arcs the tension of final moments, curving

Thunder that roars inside my drowning heart.

Arms splayed wide by the heavens, the Sky rips

From my breaking lips an eagle’s cry.  

And I soar! I take wing, flee the bloodying earth.

Rushing midnight under the might of my feather spread,

I scorch toward the sun. Feathers peel raw in the flaying

Kiss of the wind, bones break inside the caress of clouds;

The heavens cast me down, pinioned and transformed.

I weep as the Sky names me Unwanted. 

A broken cat lying on its side, I trickle my blood and

Twist, motionless, with internal pain. Once more,

I try to speak to you: the earth spears me with

Blades of grass, wreaks a roughness on my tongue

With a feeble cry, a mewling puddle of cat saliva,

A heavy-lidded meow. Awaiting the savagery of a

Stone-treading dog, feline slits burn beneath the sun.

I weep as Death names me You.   

And so it was I looked the sky to shape upon the earth,

Combing the shag of its moss, the still of its ocean,

Through ripples of my feeling, tensing a blanket

From whitest threads, bluest dyes, on billows of wind,

Laughing my despairing gusts to spread the contours

I hurl and laze. 

In the forever of this melodic instant,

The demon of my choric eternity,

I spasm my hand and gather you in the grass at dawn,

Tearing with a noise like steps across gravel,

And rope it all inside the blood and saliva that stains

Across the Sky and loams the Earth.

 I laugh as my Heart names me Everything. 

Raining my sunbeams, I warm

The me that fears the storm,

Communicate you to the me that dreams

An us outside a tide of red lawn, and cleft

Your lip to remind a tender sound, the human voice. 

My ‘yea’, an imaginary touch of real feeling

That reaches, moon-beaming, across the summer dust. 

My yea on the wind, I say, my yea that dances

With bees; echo so broken, yet still no one can hear

Me dying as I speak to you.