she turns the emperor on his head
as the sun penetrates the forest canopy
I listen for the sounds
wild reparations offered for all the blood

scanning for (in situ) signs of life
a heartbeat pumping in searing words
brazenly on a hot pressed page
wood transmuted, only resurrected with her name

surface so smooth that everything slides
liquid nitrogen cooled tongues
slipping from cottonmouths
stained only by washes
of colorful trauma

mineral night rising, a phosphorescent outcry
burning chemical fire layer by layer
until our skin becomes as
ineffectual as the paper
she wrote the truth upon

hush imbued atmosphere descends,
a pernicious intent
poet tells me, ‘every angel is awful’
not mine, lord,
not mine

I saw her at the dawning
and in the glimmer of his oceanic love
her joy lighting candles
in the holy of holies
that day I stood in the temple
in the land of the sandsky
(where I never could have entered before)

murmuring supplications
with an apotropaic wand
against the inevitable dark

secret cinematic sounds delivered
in the tone of teenage apathy
Video Games plays in the acoustic hollow
of a phoenix’s breastbone
an echoic pleading
one skin to another

I held her in the birthing
and in the slow murder of life
in her incandescent light, her
dénouement, her breath infusing
my own, whispering paeans,
singing sighs

Notes: Every Angel is Awful is a book by the French poet, Martine Broda and Video Games is a song by Lana Del Rey.