Ink Blood Demanding (July 22)

INKBLOOD DEMANDING

My fingers
Show my age
Smell like sex
Turn red
Swell
Grow and shed extra
Layers
To peel like mica

I am in
My 5th decade
I feel
Ancient
A survivor of a hundred
Lives
Bending toward learning
Like a sunflower towards our
Middle sized star

Let me learn? It’s how I find a way
To live
Engage
With the world

In a mental dissection
A microscopic mutilation
Like a sense arm tendril diving
Inside me
My mind feels and hears and sees
Screams and cries and whispers, dies
And gives birth

My hands have touched it all

Our stories matter
Cut and scraped, with mettalic tools
We put a message into flesh
Into the shouder
Pouring ink into blood
Black into red
Clotting
Closing
Creating

And the stories
Cartwheel away ending in
An arabesque, with
Outstretched arm and pointed toe, trembling
The measurement of every inch of you
Tips to lips
Conception to deception

Regrets that birth the only breath
You’ve ever taken
Fresh

So many solar systems
Of separation
From
them
From the parts of these ones
That scream-sing
Sonnets

In a soul garden
Built and rebuilt

Shake it up and
Out
Pause
Remember the moment between: it isn’t about you
It is
About what and who
We choose
To share our footsteps with

Will you follow me? When
I am tired will
you lead?
In rainstorm straddled paths
Of betrayal
And broken promises
With hearts
Wide open
Dripping
Black and red
Opening
Creating

Our inkblood draws
Upon our souls
No matter how
We move

Will you hold the needle- buzzing metal brush
Knowing it will drip
With blood?
And Choose your indiscretions
As mine were chosen to include you
Lead me deeply into the temptation
Of a forest glade full of life-giving fruit
With juices made to drip
Down deserving
Chins

And deliver us to
Light
Passion
Imperfect impressions giving birth to
Life
With burnt and broken edges
Cracks as deep as ocean trenches
And louder than a midnight sleeping forest
Screaming at
Us
Begging

Demanding

We just
Keep
Trying