Cries Outside the Chrysalis

The leather Lincoln ride 

takes me up to Franklin, 

where a torn beehive. 

sits against a tree. 

Tennessean whiskey, 

with the bottle shine

I know there's no honey 

anymore, 

inside. 

I cut my teeth for ivory, 

and I get to taking off my 

grizzly hide. 

An obscured setting, 

with the season still swelling-

-I bare under the shade, 

bittersweet, 

& begin to cry. 

What of 

the candlelight 

that can only ever be 

finite, 

while just a waning scent lingers-

-and furthermore 

like dynamite 

I bring a lethal fire upto my fingers.

I light my smoke and 

wonder what comes after me?

Melted wax and craters 

speak for the energy 

that once took other form

there, temporarily. 

I see crystalized 

children in mine eyes, 

fearing that’s my kin 

down the old metal slide, 

burning skin 

while keeping alive on 

a preordained friction stride. 

Then I get to picture 

a dragonfly’s life in an

atrium. As my chorus hums,

I tear my wings 

and swell my hands on 

the cathedral’s drum, 

filling space with echoes 

that the archangelic weavers strung,

and I pray to gain away 

up to my dearest ones, 

and I stay crying. 

The salt 

in my tears 

are what’s left 

when my face has dried. 

I look to the earth, 

that feeds 

with what 

I can choose 

to season with 

sodium & 

chloride. 

Cigarette put out, 

I return to reset 

because I owe it to those 

still burning in the sky.