Memory

Memory

The cream of your skin
under my hands, my flesh turned forge fire
under the trace and rasp
of your fingernails
over my shoulders,
your thighs and the high tension wire lines
of muscles flexed
and the shudder of gasped breaths
and your taste like sparkling
wild honey on my
tongue.
These memories are etched
into me like acid
tracings on metal,
like wax spatters
dripped down candelabras
like the sound of my name
from your lips, breathed soft
and I will not forget.

Title? (I'll take suggestions. . .)

And my love for life, for you, is the sweat-filled-night
lust for the whipcrack
the crazy peel
and part of skin from skin,
the poisoned candy apple red
drip and burn of candles,
flames guttering
and fading in the liquid of their own fire,
dying as heat and fire
must in a slow spiral of thermodynamics.

We are all flames, banked
and dimmed, like fires atop frozen'
lakes, chewing holes through ice, even we devour
tinder to carbon, to unlighted water, drowning
in the dark, leaving
nothing but charcoal
and ash, trapped
as flooded tunnels freeze
around us.

Going Home

Violence is a real
thing for him, a palpable
twitch in the forearms, a need to turn the door
handle too hard. Some days
he stands on the deck, stares at the moon
cross-shot by cirrus clouds and the street-light
halos humming above asphalt-black rain puddles
and just breathes out.

Other days, he sits stiff in the easy chair,
ice melting in his drink, tries to let the headache
drain away into his stomach. Knows later,
he'll float, silent, to bed.

And others the tension never leaves
but sits on his chest like giant clamps,
turns his guts to strings wound to tight and when he closes
his eyes, he feels flesh bruising under his fingers.

Going South Out of Canada

My family left at the end of October,
bags packed, clothes folded and our books
stored in boxes.

We left behind blankets, mattresses
and everything we loved because of its place,
there, in that house surrounded by aspen.
A leather easy chair, the hideaway bed too heavy
to carry out the half a mile to the cars,
the book about the one eyed man
that scared me for years
diamond willow
book shelves, my bed, hand built from pine,
the TV we watched hockey on every Saturday
night during winter,
the fireplace, the sauna

We left our rock-bottomed creek behind
and the sucker run every year. We left the Big Ridge, named by us,
spruce bogs and cedar swamps, Northwest Bay and lake water we drank
without boiling, springs red from iron, Wolf Rock
that sheltered a bear instead. We traded them for softer lines,
the artificial mountains of the Iron Range
and hills covered by trees and leaves instead of bare glacial rock.

Beauty

The sun rising over Norwegian mountains, beautiful.
Beautiful, the artillery lancing fire that melts ice
from aspen and the white
phosphorus shells raining flame
in meteoric streaks over the tundra. Beautiful,
the capacity to kill.

Beautiful, our eye-sockets, sunken and hollow,
our dying, beautiful, our flesh turned
filth, skin bloated and dark with rot, beautiful the maggot
life we feed.

Beautiful, panted breath and whispers
in still night air, the crackle of spit
on diamond cold snow, skis
rasping wax over trails
like tunnels through birch
and arms aching with fading
fitness and youth lost in a narrow
funnel of years.

Beautiful the carnal: the crumple of sheets
and sweat flecked skin. Beautiful fuck, the act
and the word.
Beautiful the crumple of forgotten negligees,
salt licked belly and thigh and eyes open
in daylight and darkness. Beautiful our lives.