SONATA FOR CROWS

I.

Wanderling with grackle wings
you fledge, branding my insides.
When charcoal daybreak's laudanum lattice
alights petrol on my night lake:
you too strand across our midnight faces
like a flame.

Ebon taper, seared in blue
you stretch upon me burnt canoe:
fierce, soporific fissures
Knotted oak begs for oars: dark mahogany
my arms have ground for you.

Thieving
under onyx aqua ledge
I steer you, negative of a kiss
sunken between brackish ivy.
Here somnolent, inky eels garnish
our shins. Thighs flash black lightning
under petrified shivers of moon

II.

But still, I wear a shower of evening
when I see you are sleeping inside me.
Threading rivers of lime for forgetting,
you erode every edge, my anguish
Pale rivulets scythe remembering
childhood hollyhocks, two palms that touch.
Forgiveness condenses, a tempest
where your eyes have rained, ululations.
When you blink I wade under an eyelash,
explore a lagoon once bestilled for me.
(It is) your oceanic agape's tidepool ­
turquoise cream carved in gray flannel

Here my black wears your mouth's altered nations
that you fan nimbus in five directions.
Diving, I derive your source: silty release,
monsoon comprehension inundates
we celebrate the beginning of touching,
birds of summer migrating over human soil

III.

The sky breaks russet, begrudging
and when I see you anew, love
you're sinking:
wrapped in atria trapped in my sunset.
My charred cherry chest
grows your frame's
carmine kisses, fuchsia vicissitude.

Day stages red's end scene:
layers of thought you have scraped clean
at night
congeal droplets of mimosa
daybreak without permission.
This diffuse rose light
ebbs over your endless bones:
melting
as hail over warm Pacific.