Things My Body Only Knows

Sit on my sill

dim and heavy
where vines sip thick mist.

lamp lights on the sunken road
lift lamented souls 

who yowl to pot holes
for their cavernous stutter
on the muddy path.

I cannot help but cry.

See my insides flutter,
feel my veins
whisper tunnels to my organs
and listen as my own descant
echoes and awakens
the swollen night.
 

e. chayes

the architect

In feathered blankets you, my vigilant,
mistake your eyes
for demons.

You who absorbs the arch of my bones,
who frames the shade of neon violet
to better sketch the bridge of freckles
no one else will see--
you are the builder,
the maker,
the pioneer.

In the aperture of your pupil,
I see not cerulean Styx
but Herculean blueprints for every waking hour
where you trace murmurs of my heavy breath
and turn them into art.

Before the sun has risen upon mortal follies
who have demolished spirits
and beg you, unknowingly,
to amend them, you are called to duty.

Hephaestus sanded your hands
to architect my heart valves, and I
like domicile vines,
climb slides from the pool to the scaffold
where you stand
sculpting stardust and salient tears.


for the one i love.
- e. chayes

Asterid Ericales

Storms throng a luminous body.

Emptiness

on barren farms,
a forest,

and quiet things without man;

the woven pastures

where she could be still.

An African dessert flower,
she preferred to leave the city nucleus

while she was still in bloom.

But the crowd cried back

screaming giants at her

fortress shield and sent her
running for cover.

Tomorrow sprung from yesterday’s bud.

we’re melting under pressure,

we’re breaking, softly, stained glass,

we’re pouring magnum from our cores

and spinning on our stomachs into copper.

With the earthly center

in her scope and silence surrounding,
she postulated

how freckles are fixtures.

She observed the pulse of a nerve,
scintillating lanterns and verdigris;

the way mold inches on a grave.

"We’re all dying slowly,"

she whispered, "but,
I’ve seen man's laugh lines

orbiting
like wandering suns

on the crest of his lips,

pale and parted."

e. chayes