STEEPLE-CHASE

Steeple-Chase

Make note

you brittle flame

you rapacious creditor

life is bigger than it need be

I say with the breath

of your mouth:

"are you thinking

what I'm thinking?"

likely not

Hoisted by my own petard

better settle out of court

you'll get half of half

of the way you are alone

ground to pieces

in an act of contrition

cruels my heart

when it only wants love again

a piece of Heaven cut

Alas, this fear is dust

and dust is bending

jawing for a new tomorrow

are we nearing stalemate

you and I?

it's your turn to judge

get it all down

the bedroom has no King

only an oppressor

in its silken chambers

ordering slavery

But here's a button for the sea

and its two voices

one is poison to the ear

the other a glass of fourteen

slammed on the mouth

I have lain with ape

while watching a tattooed arm

move up the leg

to the warm meeting place

all is subterfuge

and guilt is the recognition

of how great

you could have been

Cavity

I ask

with soft arms

show me your selves

I'll choose

at the hour of conception

the smooth torture

of learning your language

These sins matured

upon glittering limbs

more alive than actually

like God's erected

then abandoned corpses

holes appear

Do not suppose

your rainy body and small hands

have shaped my day

know it - I am

under the Volcano

the lifted breast

trying to empty these pockets

of your tender fortune

With murderous vigil

I think too much

such sadness swarms the heart

relentlessly pregnant

lament

you don't speak

the schoolhouse winds

This need not be better

or more "painted"

only have more of you

more suffused

steep and purple

withholding nothing

of the army

thick behind the eyes

Fill this flood of me

black of horn

empty feathers

ten thousand strong

moving between legs

I hold my own

You are all cities

you alone

under long blue meteors

wrapped in roads

the sky is lovable

if dissolved in sound

This is the Going Down of the Sun

Behind roaring fountains

& Eucalyptus

when you know sorrow's pallid jungle

terribly alone

in and out

you see a beautiful Mother weep

hands clutched on

Now pretend you don't know

how this'll end

For real is the day

when the kneeling dark

comes home

roosting in the chest

with the weight of an ox

she knows it well

you know it well

guilt is no pioneer here

when snakes with the shadows of rope

unmake the day

I feel mean

mean to the point of cruelty

but I don't die

and she doesn't drown

in our ephemeral agony

no

in a crackle of thorns

we wait out the uneaten wind

like a tray of dental instruments

huddled in darkness

no fresh day

no more

and up above

the clattering sky

has the curious jasper color

of a burning angel

Chad Hoogervorst is/was/will be a writer from San Diego who works in poetry. E.E. Cummings, T.S. Eliot, and any other poet that begins their name with two placeholders are largely influential. Language, form, and sappy emotional prodding remain the main components of his writing. Previously published in Oh Cat! and the San Diego Reader. For hire.