the late watch

Sometimes our hands are all we have

The clenched face
The bent limbs
Battered by a thousand hurricanes
Of bullets

A single broken blade of green

"…broken femur…transport…black male…seven years old..."

snapped by a sedan rounding a corner
a crossroads well traveled

their blackened boots and brazen stares
accessories
the hardened giants walk
silently into a tiny house on a holy night

it might as well be
made of straw and sticks

a cop lifts the boy up in his arms
holds him to blue skin
and brass
caresses the lithe arm
as the EMT's strip him bare

uniformly human

the tinsel tossed lonely limb hangs loose and limp
Wet with silverish sheets of blood


the fish have no air
they flit like faith
tendrils of red
floating falsetto
high above the greenery
in the darkened
fish tank

impressions of tiny fingers paint
the officer's forearm radioflyer red

Today, the breath of God is thick
and foggy with weight of the cross
adorned with the jingle of cuffs and change


a snowy chill capping
a mountain of a man
as he holds
small clinched fingers
like the last star waiting for Christmas
white and wanting
as sparkles and snow

The Clean Break

Break
Day:

you were in my ear
holding the whisper of my thoughts
shifting through the mountains of my mind
in quiet caverns

Break
Dance:

explosions of sizzling heat dressed in dazzling beams of yellow brick road dreams
but they look better on you than I thought


Break
Off:

tumbling through dusty dreads
that I must cut
because the words I love you are no longer a consent form
for me to carry you over this bridge of my back


Break
Pump Yours:

The adrenaline of 144,000 words in a love letter
flowing from the heart of God
poised and ready for battle
with the truth their only defense

Break
Heart:
the adrenaline of one word
pierces it.

Break
Leg:

the break is a clean one, or so they say.
little bits of it
matriculating in my mind
hard and pointy
reabsorbing mal memories

amazing analogies
break is to day
break is to dance
break is to off
break is to pump
break is to heart
break is to leg

Break
Through:

I am reforming
bone on bone
clean and positioned

maybe even on the mend.

a final test, from God with love:

break is to through
as me is to you