applesonpies

[applesonpies]

Rabbit

His face lit red in the candle like 

Ceiling light outside my door 

two steps above him, were shuffling feet on 

the stoney sill 

a person I will never know stood colored 

by the shadows of the doors brick arch 

dipping under darkness into light, veiled 

red through rosie glass  

I gave up on grief and fear 

forever at that doorstep 

[applesonpies]

A bend in the Cage

Risky.

I watch what he shows me, every

sight and moment. I take 

and make it 

mine

Eluded, lucid, gone until the night 

he escapes my mind

I’m that nightmare in the shadows 

of his bed, come to me 

I watch him crawl

through sheets ablaze, 

too hot

His body’s core is troubled

At the centre of the sun I’m

blanche again by blessed fire. 

Amiss at most; my moth.

White in the dead of winter, there’s a

lonely heat caught in my throat.

Set it loose,

those thoughts 

on my lap tonight.

I’m no good. You like the risk, 

he says.

Don’t run too far in a sitting chase 

I promise you 

I’m faster.

[applesonpies]

joy to the world 

Flaky dust that floats and hovers 

sinks slowly onto hills 

Gently cover winter Daisies, 

which, carelessly it ills

Each one is a nameless ghost 

weak and shallow, come

To find a place back on the earth

on pine trees to be hung

Crowded among millions, never 

a moment more alone 

Than peeking through the hot

warm windows

of chimney dusted homes  

Each pale soul that's come now knows

in biting windy wrath 

Time has come to lay and die 

a second, colder, death

[applesonpies]

As-Suwayda Bumble bee 

Hidden within the sweltering 

heat of the middle east,

warm air was rising in waves 

from the melted concrete highway.

I sat no foot on that ground. 

Like fire, the blistering tar 

sat distantly, winding 

behind my dark shades and

tailing through the endless

dessert fog. 

His sleeves hit just below 

the elbow’s crux.

Lifted, right hand riding 

the bucking wheel,

with his other propped up 

by the side of the window.

The black gloved hand

loosely playing with the 

roaring humvee beast. 

With the same beige tan 

faded gray, red and blue ink 

pooled blurry next to 

bright white hairs.

I wonder when he got it.

What was it exactly? Forearm only 

but continued behind the 

navy shirt, too hard, to see 

in the sun. I never 

saw it before.

I almost spoke in the 

shotgun seat as

shotgun man. With

trapped heat in the cargo  

more than the wobbling 

suntanned metal friend 

on the inside of each thigh.

But that steeling face 

was distant and gone. 

[applesonpies]

Dante’s Inferno

Dante is unchanging. He is a constant. 

A man in flesh, with the heart and blood of a dog.

The poet within him was spilled to pages

but the mirrored essence of his good is an unreal ghost. It does not exist. 

Now he is dead 

And only the pages remain 

to create the virgil he wished himself to be.

When seasons of spring, cycle through 

winter and collect his ashes, he’s gone to 

dust and buried by snow.   

But that ghost I caught lives parallel

filled with memories of fall. 

Because even then,

It’s Dantes words, not Virgils, 

that formed from lips I’ve kissed. 

And it’s the heart of the survivor, that 

escapes into the love of a man who is 

never quite missed.

[applesonpies]

Her Carro Antiguo 

The car is not mine.

It's a pretty red. Brighter once

but aged like leather dyed by rays. 

The south, It cooks the metal panes

like a Thai vendor. Seasoning his pan 

into a smoky shine, behind the lantern 

lanyards of a dark busy street.

When sitting on the old bleached skin

the champagne cushions dust.

More than the tuscan sand and lime that’s 

whipped to rain by the wheels 

of the burnt antiguo. 

Gears that feel different now, when it's my 

hands on the hot silver gem, and not hers,

shifting, her hips on the bull.

She liked no rings but the red suited her 

like a heavy stone on her knuckle, 

that I always wished to place myself.

Still, my abuelitas ring I inherited

that she loved in the sticky air of ecuador,

is always napkined in the pocket of my pants.

Front and to my right.

By god, how I want to make her pretty.

With my abuelita on the elephant skin of 

the wheel, bursting into light like the gear 

and metal. More than just a mirror

of the morning fire.

A light I see again today

changing far too slowly, only inches from 

my face. Familiar with the burnt antiguo, 

Carboneros chase the light on cue.

Behind the radio static 

I hold my hands on the wheel of a car 

that is so beautiful it shouldn’t belong to me.

[applesonpies]

Your perfume 

Baby powder on my wrists, 

you move your nose and catch 

what you got me. That perfume.

A second,

and your breath 

fleets past my skin.

I smelled you on the train

I smell you everywhere. 

You live next to me 

in my clothes 

and on my mind 

in every way you can’t. 

But I see you. 

Then see me too, living hardly

as a drop of jade.

I hide the tickle

in my porcelain arm, in silence

you let go. 

But your words, too far

I don’t hear you. I only know

your quiet sounds. 

Come closer then, now 

try my neck and let me 

tell you what to do