YOUR PROTECTOR

If he exists at all,
it's at nightfall.

It's the moment
when the sun
sinks down into the stones.

And shadows
crawl out of their holes.

In an earth divided
between light and dark,
something occupies the gleam
where the seams
don't quite join.

A glint is face.
A wisp becomes body.
A hand waves.
Lips mouth the words,
"Blessed are you."

But he's lost to air's veil,
the low cloud of blackness.

Night closes in
and you have nothing.

MY LIVES

I dream who I am in alternate universes.
Who's to say I don't live all these other lives.

I'd rather have a body on sixteen planets,
eight galaxies, fifty seven different time zones,
ten realities and multiple lifetimes.
I want to be the human starfish
who loses a life and gains another.

Paradise is the go-to word.
But I've hung around with the ones
whose designs are on heaven.
Holy equates more often to dreary and dull.
I'll take my chances in the light-less,
reassuring womb.
Let the blessed have their resting place.
I've loved so many in my time here
from mothers to martyrs to mavens to maidens.
But none more than life.

Meanwhile, the woman seems warm and inviting.
The meal is scrumptious.
The flying is serene.
Someone says it's all in my head,
But what other place is there?

DEATH

I am shown to be
maggots nibbling
on a dead man's brain.

But I am also eyes,
dark ponds
where sometimes
flies can be seen
dipping feelers
in the rippling iris.

Oh I am a skull
no doubt about that.
I'm at my best
when I've been buried
a long time.

But I am also lips,
s-shaped and slithery like worms.
And a voice,
a hiss disguised as a whisper.

And hands
that appear, in the moment,
as the comforting kind.

That's why
the hopeless, the helpless,
reach out to me.
I've a grip
on those kinds of people.