Returned Postage. Wrong address.

I.

My night-watch

Peering into the dark,

over the walls,

watching the steel gray fog settle into the valley.

The tones of our voices start to fall low,

into indecipherable murmurs

of what we once meant them to be. Heavy. Hallow. Sacred in nature.

Held onto like that pulse we can't control. Woven into the cloth of desire.

Off in the distance is the River Styx. The boatman slowly rows downstream.

The steam of our breaths and steady, beat, steady, moans, drum,

keeping us in the land of the living. They … the They... Sheltered from the heavy, sheltered from the cold.

Her Santa Muerte nature is holding too tight to the shadow.

And They stand on these banks in limbo. Too rigid to let go of their coins.

It was the coins she pulled. But it was really the cups.

If They embrace all the shadow, we have no room for light.

I want that light.

The Southern Gothic, relying on the harm of strangers, hitting the swinging light bulb,

suspended

from the falling ceiling,

it crumbles, as the bed hits the wall, as the fist hits the wall.

Fade into the unhappy ending.

I want feel good.

Good that my heart can heal.

Good so I can fall in love with myself in every pour,

and then seep into an another like a wound filling.

Good with all my being.

Good so that I can heal.

Good does. Good does not ... hit the wall.

Stuck in a room of walls.

But the want to swing a sledge hammer at the stucco does not harbor the stagnate shadow self.

Hammer reveals the cinder blocks that have taken over my space. My healing.

My fucking god. Get me out of this room.

I want to let that light in.

It comes over the valley. It shows us the way.

Sparkling on the dew of the fields. Away it sails again.

She is healed.

II.

Sobriety

Sour-punch

suck

satisfied

sulk

sound-off

succubus

sanctuary

sure

said she

sorrow

satisfied

smug

sorry.

Ash

She swept through the land
as a volcano disrupts
a sleeping village.

How calm and quaint we were,
with our tiny boats on the calm sea,
gazing through      murky waters,
shimmering lights of the silver fishes.

And one day she spoke,
clouds blocked out our sun,
and the mighty Kali Ma
brought on a storm
and ripped through our hut made of sticks.

When the ash blew away,
        and the tide waters cleared,
that, that the sulfur had claimed,
gave life to a new flower.
And it stood erect against the wind.
              It stood alone on the bank,
taller than anything that ever came.

And she sang to the sea,
She sang of the day,
that the mountain gave way,
and the storm that blew,
and the volcano that changed, all
that she knew.