In Which Music Is Influencing Me, Again.

pounding, that beat
slams,
that song hits with
every dark or dusky word,
with every
lung-wrenching riff,
each cymbal crashing like
eyes clenching closed
or wounds sewed shut,
the very sound is body is
arms-legs-neck-shoulders
thrown hard against
walls of air or
your own life,
brain against skull --
the only struggle you have
left within you,
inescapable and
pounding.

In Which I Think Maybe I'll Give Myself Weekends Off Of This.

it's only sort of
in spiders crawling under
sunrise-golden door frames
or in breeze-ruffled
oleander-petal afternoons or
in evening sips of cold red wine
through previously parched lips
or even in the burning
incense that takes me back to
starlit-jasmine summer nights
when everything was
not better but less hard
not softer but less responsible
not lonely but less full of you.