when orion cries

where do the ghosts go when there’s nothing left to scare
when fearless bed sheets can no longer mask mischief
or undo the undone clocks?

where do all the lonely spirits go now naked in the light
when the dead of dark came alive trapped in their eyes
and gnawed off its paw?

do they hang in bars with their emotional scars
hung like halloween candy from their long chagrins
and order another round of shots?

do they sit when they wish to float and hope to gloat
just one last time before time unwinds and it’s back in line
to catch the next flight to hades?

maybe they rise and make constellations that make me move
and twist themselves into shuddering shapes of irony
and fall like old photographs
shooting cold holes in the sky

maybe it’s want and not need
maybe the ghost is free

april says

and if i’m green and blithe and warm like spring would you wrap your summer song around my frozen chorus and make the days last longer like twilight walks circling sleeping parks and navigating me through the revelry— the triumphant harmony of love’s plundering army— and paint me in your picture with blood from a rose and sea from the sky and let the maize of sun be your eyes and bathe these lies of truths and burdens of proof in a glance best left for faded black and whites where i am the rough edges but i know we have the negatives buried deep in our minds somewhere in boxes cut from old calendars with the winters crossed out and the thawing fingers of spring running childlike through the fresh cut grass

this secret stream (how to listen to "crucify")

mangle me with your darkroom eyes dark strobes probing red my heart cannot take the heat and i become a blurred black and white you shook me too tight in your hand you hung me to dry and then the spies (those penetrating eyes) saw through the filthy film on my mind and you took another picture a puzzle to muzzle the overgrown thoughts of words unheard because they refused to clean themselves up and smile and pose and say sorry matters sorry matters sorry matters sorry clatters cold teeth in a dark room in a foreign corner and reaches for…

the last piece