Poem: Delirious Sweat

Here is one of the best poems I ever wrote. It originally appeared in Rose & Thorn Journal; in fact, you can go view it there, if you prefer:


http://www.roseandthornjournal.com/Winter2010_Poet3.html


Thanks for reading!

OWL

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Delirious Sweat

you cry tears from your chest,
the juice of your skin.
it sinks in a soil of doubt,
until parched sticks lurch up
like an old man’s fingers.
too long he’s been dead,
will do anything to earn
the vigor of a tarantula
or the languor of creosote.

but sands are tugging
on the aches in his wrinkles
as if ants had amassed
on the last twitches of a vole;
and the mountains
are so far off, never to be suckled,
those pure white teats,
where valkyries laugh
at the dunes below,
dropping snow-laced brassieres.

what isn’t illusion kills,
and what kills isn’t safe for a tongue to say.
the desert, more than anywhere,
salts the mouth with this sad reverie,
cuts it into victims’ eyes
with the butcher wings
of hawks and vultures.
you see your friends rise up,
gnashing and spewing their useless poison,
caught under those fateful knives;
and then like furious wisps
of primitive smoke
they’re gone.