About Face

Your smile to me was the fire that split 

from blackened coal lips to jagged uplift,  

your reach within courted me into it,    

fragility. Like how the blind touch, sift

our language. I craved you mine, shivering

darkness. You were still sky, draped velvet veil

living in second state, and lingering 

my whispers of love coursing and frail.  

I dreamt you blank faced at night, your atoms

encasing the universal veil to

light and no flesh, filtrating pure acid

I touched you corroding and knew,

the surreptitious peek, your flash white bone raw

metamorphism, against the lock door. 

Science Sings a Morning Call

 We are only the salt of dreams,

you must lift your feet. Hydrogen glints in your eye,

sending beams, the whole world humming awake.

brandishing a solar circle

on a dark drawn room. Do this.

light the candle

like a swaying moon, to bright.

You can rest, there in the mix of elements,

the little white lights that are you.

they sing the language of days you haven’t heard before,

and you can trail still sleepy ghosts

and see constellations

you paint the colours of rushing noise

transmitting through ossicles to the labyrinth.

Get up. Do it. Stretch your back to the sky

ninety percent of your body is stardust

and

each atom in each cell in each eye

formed in the core of a star.

you burn breath like magician’s smoke

carrying all the planets close. Flowering in Liaoning.

Earth’s early opening eye.