The Open Line

Ask the open line

Stretched across the rock face

Ask about the gold laughing mockingly

At the harpist on her knees

Ask the alter for the dripping poppy

One might feel – the closure of lacerations —

Blood echoes where silence lay helpless

In prayer — asks he — and the one

— a well crafted metal — the mask o’er the face of none

The rockface blooming teeth

Fractured jaws yearn

 Me for the you

The complaint of spears

Wrenched in hard the flesh warped –

Cursed knotted in the basin of a dead dove’s fountain

Her whisper in a tongue’s dream unravels

The calcite threads around your knees bound

Ask again again ask

That jaw fractured that rockface open

That poppy o’er the altar dripping

The empty remembrance of a minute hand

Begets slumber in a herd of hours –

A light, dances over the horizonless expanse –

Yellow etched in gray

A cloud quiet and serene sighs

Haze the day over