Armistice

Armistice

A grey cigarette haze lingered

above the bed like gun smoke

over a battlefield and we,

the casualties of war,

lay beneath. When we kissed

I tasted Bataan on her lips

and she said she could see

Manzanar in my eyes.

At times love is a negotiation

between desire and history.

The clock on the bedside table

flashed in dim red numbers

as the battery was nearly spent.

After the passion runs low

there are not many choices;

a long march in the Philippine sun,

a desert cage of spiral concertina wire

or a one last bloody conflict that ends
with the squeeze of a trigger. 

SMG

Out of Chaos

Out of Chaos

In the time before time,
while I swam the Tethys Sea,
and wandered the plains of Pangaea,
you were there, igneous and undefined.

Through the Laramide epoch,
Chronos, Chaos and tectonic slip
worked their orogenic magic
and Gaia’s labor gave birth to you.

Into the Cretaceous I watched,
as a deep slow subduction,
drove you, compelled you upward
out of the plains and into my view.

I have crossed the alluvial sands,
and braved the ice of the Pleistocene
to lie with you by the glow of caldera heat,
and be quenched by your glacial waters

Dance with me, 'round the ring of fire,
and explore the depths of Mariana.
Sit with me atop continental divides
until we are rendered, consumed again by Vulcan

Reprint from: "Another Hotel Room"