Month: April 2021

The Subtle Violence of Dreaming

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Here is a lesson in violence:
what brutal delight is better indulged
than waking?

With the opening of your eyes
you rip yourself from the sticky wall
of Morpheus’ oneiric womb,
sever the tendrils of worlds
not yet opened to you
and now never to be so.

You are left with a splatter
of dreamblood upon your lip,
The faint copper taste of memories
that flee for their lives
from you, cruel waker.
Sated, you pretend gentility
through the journey of an arcing
arrowed sun.

Gloom beckons the beast from you;
in darkness and sleep,
you prey on dreams again.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

The Moon, The Stars, The Sun

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I.
The Moon is too full,
and the stars are curtained,
snuffed out, stifled in their
cradles before they can cry,
because their mother is too
bright, too large, too low
on the horizon, low enough
to kiss treetops the stars
can never kiss. The Moon
loves treetops, and starlings
in their quiet nests.

II.
The Moon has strangled
herself in mourning, doused
her light in funeral black,
and now the stars dance,
fire buoys against the sea
of night so we wayward ships
won’t lose ourselves in the
black. The stars hear our tears
when the Moon is too
drowned in her own.

III.
The Sun forgets his lover.
He never sees her alabaster
cheek, nor the pockmark scars
beneath her veil. He shines,
careless, unconcerned, on
treetops and the empty nests of
starlings. He does not reach out
to comfort her. She must shrug her
own veil off. The Moon must glow
without him, but she knows only
the inward focus of reflection.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Susurration and Earthquake

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Afterwards, your lips will part and
mouth, Wow.
Riven,
held open against flustered
and flushed sheets, drawn off like
rind from the bright fruit heart,
tart sweat lingering on two tongues kissed by
escaping breath.

Worry-heart, rabbit-heart,
this is the still order of passion’s pause:
Recover before I kiss you again,
before I draw another poem
into the flesh of your shoulders; a poem
rouged, pattern-rhymed with every sound
expelled from your open
shiver-shudder lips, every sound a
susurration and earthquake.

Come, love. Again.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

You Sleep, I Sleep, I Love You

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Your bus will not be here
for six or seven hours
and I am restless,
I have not rested, I am just
so ready to see you again.

I have not seen you in weeks,
but I have seen you every night
in my sleep, every night I wake up
to your finger tracing love letters
into the back of my hand.
You keep me awake; I love you

and tonight, I want you to hold me
and tell me what you want
our future to be like until
you sleep, I sleep, I love you.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Sleep Study

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Because I snore at night and wake
sometimes,
chewing on a tongue of terror,
my doctor prescribed a sleep study.

Tonight, at the hospital,
a nurse binds me to a clinic bed
with sensors and wires and straps,
an electric kind of bondage —
I am tubed and surveilled,
expected to sleep soundly
in this antiseptic ghost of a bedroom,
where someone always listens
and someone always watches.

Two a.m., half-addled, I teeter
on consciousness, stumble-drunk,
one foot in the world and one in slumber.
Stare at the glass eye over my head
and wonder what all this paraphernalia
tells my nurse about me. What
can she read on her charts and monitors?

Can she see the yellow eyes
that have stalked through
my sleep since I was a child?

Can she see the name tags
fettered to my wet dreams?

When I wake, I’ll ask her
if she can draw me a map
through the architecture of sleep
to the fountain where
my poetry spills forth,

to the spring in the rock
and the steaming basin of words
where I drown every night;

every morning, I surface and gasp
for air, wring what drops of poetry
I can out of my beard and onto the page,
and, spent, forget my way back
until sleep seduces me again.

Cicatrice

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That night, I kissed your shoulder,
your neck, the back of your wrist,

kissing scars and asking you
to tell me their origins:

the brick wall that shook
your brain in its cage of bone,
windshield glass, rearview mirror,
the knife you plied yourself.

You sat across my legs,
took my hand in your fingers
and navigated your scalp
so I could feel the dimple

under the hair
that grew back silver,
where the staples held
you together.

Your catalog of injuries
is just the smallest part of you,
but I couldn’t write a poem
long enough to catalog
every part of you
that my body, my mouth
longs for.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Filaments

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Even when I haven’t seen you in days
I find reminders of you everywhere.

I slept last night
curled against your pillow
to breathe the scent of you in sleep
and woke with a thread of your hair
braided to my beard.

I bathed and glimpsed you
on the shower wall,
a coil and wet snake
I try to divine
like tea leaves or runes,
attempts to suss out
predictions of your return.

I dress myself; brush a string of you
from breast pocket, and walking out,
notice another in the hallway mirror,
a kiss nestled at my lapel.

You are in the headrest of my car,
my bag, my books, filaments left like gifts;
they tether me to you
until your hair and you rest at night
beside me again.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Sevenling (My Favorite Constellation)

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My favorite constellation cannot be found
among Orion’s armament, nor the broad chest of Leo,
nor among the Ursas and their dippers.

My Little Love, eight stars, and this her story:
I uncovered her as the sun went down, traced her shape
with the tips of my fingers, memorized her even as she went away.

My Little Love, eight stars; freckles on the small of my love’s back.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Anosmia

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I never dream of scents.
I dream and miss vanilla and strawberry.
I miss the scent of morning hotel coffee.

I dream with my nose cut off.
Dreaming dreams without skin and cunt,
without the scent of ink drying on your back.
I dream of all of you but you.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.

Bourbon

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At two a.m., you are drunk on bourbon.
Celebrating on your balcony,
in the warm air on the last day of February,
with just a protein bar
and some kale chips in your belly.

You write me poems
and send me songs
and apologize apologize apologize

and you text “Call me please”
from three hundred and sixty five miles away,
because you’ve gotten yourself stuck
on the bathroom floor.

It’s the first time I hear your voice
since Birmingham. You are weepy drunk,
embarrassed drunk,
and I tell you jokes to turn you giggly drunk,
and you slip into horny drunk and tell me
the things you want to do with your mouth.

You are adorable, and I am a year of miles away,
coaxing you back into bed with just my voice
crackling over radio towers.

Rest, little drunk.
Tomorrow, you have a hangover
and this poem
and my love to look forward to.

This poem was originally published under the pen name Gabriel Gadfly.