'I've Lived 100 Lives, and I've Died 200 Times'

Coffin Birth

The child that climbs

Into mother's lap

And squeezes her

Hollow syphoned breast

Drinks instead the tear

That falls from mother's eye

Until he is forced to bare

His bare-boned back

To carry her to the grave.

Child, not buried, already dead.

Mother, buried, but never lived.

Growing Pains

I sleep in the crisp cadence

Of your voice floating.

The lights blur, passing glimmers

Of street lights,

Rocked by the cradle of your lap

In the car.

Colours float in the melody

Of apples and grass

And afternoon sky.

I don't look up to see the stars

Anymore.

I am eye to eye with the

Wonders of the world.

My hand bridges

The chasm of when life

Was still new.

It claws onto time—

Ripples of memory,

Stained by my fingerprints.

Falling Stars

Our footsteps fall

With light-tread tracks

Unlike the missiles

That fly high above.

Why do we run?

Little Girl asks,

Why must we hide?

Innocence, warm and wide.

All-encompassing,

All too trusting—

We run because the stars

Have been kicked out of the night.

It's a race, my dear,

A dark and exciting race.

The booming and crying,

The running and hiding,

It's the last game before

God calls us near.

Where are we going?

We're going home.

We will tell Papa what we have heard and seen,

And Mama will hang us new stars to put in our dreams.

Love After Life

The end begins with the roughening—

Calloused fingertips against granite and steel.

Pruning skin stinging with the kiss of salt.

We climb into salvation,

Pressed against a marble tympanum,

With the waves lapping at the lintel.

Kisses are not honey, caresses are not tender.

Instead, we carve our hearts with bleeding claws.

Our teeth cut and bruise,

Tongues lapping and eyes stinging.

We are the salt of the earth.

We are the light, the brimstone and fire.

Yes, the end begins with our roughening—

But the beginning ends with the ocean made of our tears,

And we drink freely, hungrily.

All is welcome here.

Adescence

How sentimental, how original,

To have your first act be an act of creation.

You "draw" your first breath,

And from this, so it begins.

Everything is bright and new.

Nothing is as wonderful as it has been

And nothing will ever again be.

What is life then, but a steady descent

Into atrophy, decay, and pain?

I do not rise into salvation,

Instead I sink into despair,

But even in death,

I am born and reborn again.

I open my eyes in the thereafter,

And once again, I am new.

But this world is a circle,

A turning tide deeper,

And what keeps sinking

Will one day surface too.