spontaneous/combust, baby

distract me, dishevel me
pour dirt in the windows, raw and red-brown.
grind black stones to powder and touch them
to your tongue; concentric ink circles
across the walls and ceilings and around your throat
circuits play in 3/4 in the bedroom and
all your lights blink out in time.

shards of indigo magi
skitter over the tiles
leave clinging streaks
of purple blood
sparks of golden fire
coalesce like malformed glass
air pockets evidence of
misplaced passion
flame-brown retina, cornea; iris singed--
the heat sticks into you like
burrs, brown and doll-like

he: "cerulean embryos, designer-child technocrats--
did we give birth to prometheus or the minotaur?
(either way, we bleed on and on and on
in trailing ribbons of azure and chalk;
you'll have to forgive me for the self-inflicted wound)"
she: "it is years from now!
the august-blue back jagged under my fingers
i remember you crimson-stained.
the thievery still tastes like poison with an
aftertaste of bewildering delight."

i think you meant to say 'wild'
but i'll pretend to forgive you for reverting to our kinfolks' ways;
you always were the strongest of the litter
every tiny mouth, pink and white of treacherous teeth,
the saccharine lecherous teeth in my tongue,
infant devourers i shake them off beside hungry mountains;
ravenous world-eaters; ravishing consuming sinking dirt-claws
into cliff walls; pinpricks of obsequious
sunlight burning away flesh and sod
and coverings less common
to feast on shattered
bones.

time hauls upward in a dim spiral
and your fingers grow dull with pain and yet
you cling and you cling to that bronze head hour hand,
while ages below you the city unscrolls.
toy cars collide, combust.

putrid smoke billows out of furnaces
seeps from dim-lit poker rooms out into the alleyways;
i never knew my feet were made of clay.
and your mouth (hot and painfully dry)
burns my toes as they glaze over in the kiln of your lungs
hours later, week or years later, in the film of her oil-spill eyes,
a woman of incredible age looks back at us through the brass
magnifying glass of time, and the glass
shatters from the brutal black paint
images flaring out from our eyes.
no water spills around our feet.

he: ". . . why didn't you tell me dorian was dead?"
she: "maybe it was too late.
somewhere between midnight and three a.m.
a streak of owl-fur grew across our window
and some warnings cannot be ignored.
some warnings must not be ignored."

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[error 2904: reality is leaking]

part iv: i roll out of the way

did i mention that you were asleep for decades at a time?
no matter, dear, we're sailing through scattered pebble-stars;
there's no rusted train to block our view of paris this time
when i blink at you--so--in the stifling fraternal air,
it is all surprise, all blame, and i feel tiny universal
earthquakes ripple out from my face.
is it clove-gold love, or is it seismic despair?

you can tell by the shaking of my rattan fingertips
that i am woven out of cast-off strands of old wood;
i prefer to tell myself that it is only the aftershock of desperation.
it was a gold ring then,
burnished like a mouth caught on the fraying fibres,
the drafted weathered woodwork
feathered over the tangled grass.

you are sheathed in snake-skin plates that let in all the blame.
molting season has come and gone and still you remain the same.
so never mind gracelessness, never mind restraint,
never mind perfection or debate--
this is all black-telegraphic urgency and
some
fears
hurt

he: "i never could tell the difference
between white-ruffled ripples in the ocean
or the not-quite-symmetrical
stencil on your door. but if you come close
we can move down to the sea;
i'll house you in a conch shell until
we outgrow the sea-anemone neighborhood
and return to analyze the thumb-worn filigree
of your walls."
she: "but give me a few weeks and
the whole world will center
on your littlest finger. lift this
weight off me; lift this weight
off me and let the
raw red dirt pour in."