the heavens are bodiless
skytown is a heat-haze
    beckoning,
        self-deceptive,
            uninhabited

the space is a traveling matter
with its stems inside you
roots — out
and you become a child of divorce
    between
life                        &                    death

these walls hurt me more than your underworld possibly could
their hands constrain me
their demeanor shapes my response mechanisms
their remedy i seek

this city is my crib         my playground
my bed             my death row
needless to stand there:
if you don’t move, someone will move you

karma is the thin fingers of a woman
the rage in her honesty
the hatching words of her mind and faith
her stolen oaths        she broke         to reclaim

afterlife is acceptance of aberrance
the wrinkles on earth-touching skin
unfound path into the next moment of existence

blessing is the fire in the chest that doesn’t kill
it waters and soothes and wraps the roots
of body that are ribs into the armor of immortality
up until it’s taken
                                away
                                         and it’s only a thirst for its return
                                         scratching at the back of your throat

prayer is the poem merged with melody
their sinless union
seamless healing
shameless sentiment

absolution is the bare-handedly untied knots
the blood that starts to pump back into vessels
released noose around the reddened neck
and the traces of the plasma under nails

if i let the deity fill me
i know i will be gone that moment
losing everything my conscience is
stripping myself sky-clad of senses
of humanness
of world
of you