TWO YEARS PAST

Crack awake back to this awful ache.
The dull dissipating dream
Shield splintered like spikes of ice.
White heat in a halo descending, encircling.
White band: unnatural constricting rib.
Its shifting corona throws trails of dust.
Conflagration of feathers - bright white vultures
Whirling berserk in their carrion dance.

An inky needle emerges slowly,
Sleepy and leisurely like a leopard's yawn.
It expands and contracts and expands to a talon,
And scrapes itself down my vulnerable belly
Making a joke so snow-bleak I force
A laugh like the silhouette of a naked branch.
A beak to tear my eyes appears
And speaks to me with your missing voice.
The sweet, deadly sound that I have not heard
For two years past.
Your tongue and your teeth
Are not at home in that strange cackling mouth.
It is fashioned from the absence of sound.
It is fashioned from the words you left out.