I want to be

the fragrance of the flower.

Spelunking Song

Drop me deep into the cavern of joy,
the echo chamber of the spirit
song. I will hymn-harp a leap
through the limestone water
drip, drip, dripping
in the open resonance of columns.
Tall ponderous minstrel monstrosity,
pounded, sound of glass powder
dusted under subterranean winds,
flash on rock faces, chase
midnight streams through tubes
of brushed rubble. Bubble
down, crumbled towers of song,
toward the sea surface at the heart
of earth. Lick the citrus crust
sifting sky tears into the river,
shatter black chasms, shiver,
touch the black glow with
bioluminescence, sing with surrender,
bend notes like a blender and dance,
dance with your endless endeavor.

Magnolia || Three

Bloodcut leg, legcut drifter, thornbound growler

in a bottle shell of salt wood. A man smashed

his smirnoff at the edge of the ocean. Like a child

sacrifice of his intoxication offered to the world,

offered to his fossilizing life. I offer me

to the knives of green growing vines, to the smiles 

and phlogisten of old men growing on seaside stones.

These my bones, my blood and future, my home,

the soil soaked, rebirth, the teeth of life.

Magnolia || Two

Placental reef, birthing over and over

the white teeth, you have found the mouth

of the bad ocean, the iron plate preacher

growling at its daily, nightly, lunar labor.

Sailing in sea breezes a spring step up

the heart of flame, a single fisted

fighter dared to touch us fiercely,

a pieman with a golden-brown face

declaring that his circle, in the center

of iron sea on iron salt sabers,

that these gathered would be warm, well fed, friends.

Magnolia || One

Dead things are the stairs

for a climbing world at play.

Tubes and teeth, washed and unwashed

energy moves. Stone is crevice ridden

for the merchant crabs to sell

baubles of the Mediterranean,

for miniscule scuba roots

to glue, glow and give off heat

in the homes of salty microbes.

The coffin of water and sky,

the multiplied fossils of dead ages,

the plague houses, the hardened hearts,

these canals open wide as the eyes

to birth the small in their excitement,

pleasuring the lively writhers and leaving me,

finally, alive.

A Ginger Spice-Cake

or a boysenberry pie.

My flesh and my heart may fail,

But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalm 73:26