The Riverbank

A Prince of Darkness churns my stomach

Into liquid gold. Spends into vermillion abstracts

Sells into solitude.

I rarely paint an earth so clean, my feet

Dragging embers of silence across her noble word--

So precious and undelivered.

I brush with death and fight with hunger.

A newborn moon slathers the roof of my wooden shack

Clinging a misty river adorned by beanstalks and Full Metal Jacks--

I beckon my pail. Ruddy tremors crane the vestige of regret

Baiting my fishing rod like shoestring past tense; hand grenades that

Explode backward symmetry

Time and time again. Circling this milky sky,

Prestige informs the meaning of harvest, for when

The fish becomes king of this domain,

The cure for my sickness will run through its veins.

Even now, its scales replenish the blessed terrain,

As I’m born again in her nested phrase,

A new day.

My stomach churns for darkness,

And where I slumber thy curse brings parchment

I write a new bargain

Spent for solitude; for in regret,

The earth repays argent.