Carne

I ate half a bird yesterday

and it (the eating, not the bird)

led me to contemplate,

if poems are gentle, compassionate?

Let me explain, I stake

no claim in kindness banks;

but death is not always,

a matter of unkindness

And we are trapped in 

bodies flawed. The goat it

bleats, the cows fidget

And I will never figure out a widget.

Are we vulnerable to precision?

The killing machine is the same for me

and you and all the animals

(do you think they think they're free?)

I've toed the line of agency to 

practice the art of the possible.

Still the world has failed to well show me

how bacon can be the smell of evil.

scene

Trust slipped loose, and the shingles

sprinkled like salt on the open wound.

One by one all day we hear

the faultlines crack and wait, look around;

for the crash that will always take you by surprise.

Outside The Box

It gets stranger in the night,

a time of cold, suspended sight.

the nub of my wrist in your strong embrace,

and the taste of summer rain.

We burn by the candle's wick,

drown in the swirling intrigue.

You hold me by the nape of my neck

and fear chokes my gullet.

Strangers love like stowaways,

hungry and funny by turns.

Hysterical. The red is from the wine.

Oh, but some of it is mine.

I bear no scars from secret trysts;

I play well known outsider's tricks.

I go where strange friendships are found,

and return like clay, unmade.

Break your own heart and mourn it well;

the love of self is a lesson in hell. 

And tortured souls arrive at the place, 

none too soon and a little too late.