Poetry Blog by Zach Dafoe

grains of idolatry
tooth-split and mulched 
spit down into living beds 
cemeteries of words
nere uttered in forgiveness. 

falling 
in slow motion 
like marine snow 
sustaining 
but out of resentfulness 
out of spite
falling
to emulate life: 

there is breathing, certainly 
and dreaming 
and this 
ashen sustenance 
but to call it living might be a farce 
might be a reluctance t...

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crystalline echos 
of webs run jagged
collapsing against the face 
of what history wrought. 

winds stripping flesh:
the immolate cries 
at a thousand stakes
freed from the old mortar 
churned under one hundred years 
by the twisting abuse of saints.

you'll know me 
by the raw and torn:
by the salted splines 
of feathers shorn 
bristling under embers 
and by ire 

you'll know m...

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splintered saints 
laced with dentene words 
all pearly white
Like the gates made 
of the bones of slain fae
in the conquest nobody talks about 
in bibles, beloved

but really they're just pocket protectors:
drivers of us snake-folk,
catchers of miraculous stray bullets,
and the low fruit of cherries picked
held up on high-- 
higher even than the lichens
that broke the sacred rocks 
...

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sinew cord
plucked, an open-mouthed note 
stretched and wracked upon the straight and narrow 
tho unfurling,
and dishevelled
spake be the promises of paradise
by feel. 

a chorus of arrows in the rain
heart-bound

there are full orchestras that struggle their whole lives 
to play an ode to silence: 
bliss-struck, half parted lips 
at a sunrise of bathroom sink bleach 
and menthol ci...

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the low spot

familiar hammock,

hung loping

silken tar pit

draping and folding;

a salve of shirked living

soothing until it's not

until it's too heavy

until it's a mountain too smooth and soft to climb

until my limbs rend

salted and wet

slow-cooked into apathy.

exhaustion press'd

(rye and ginger, lemon, soda

left half emptied

beaded condensations le...

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1. 'i would go out a lot when I was young. I think most people do. It's the time of your life where you feel like you need to test your legs, see what fitsm how else do you come to understand who you are, right? 

I was just trying to have fun. I was out to have a good time. I was out to have a good time, until I wasn't. 

Sometimes, you climb real high, as high as you can go. Just t...

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[hockey game by STC starts to play] 

HELLO OUT THERE 
HELLO OUT THERE 
HELLO OUT THERE 
HELLO OUT THERE 
HELLO OUT THERE 
HELLO OUT THERE
H--

[camera pans back, back and back and out into orbit, into our solar system] 

hello out there
hello out there 
hello out there 
hello out there 

[out to the asteroid belt as the radio bands picked up from further and further back in histo...

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cues caught in smoke 
swallowed iron, made malleable 
by the heavy forkes tongues
of embellished pleasantries. 

in the coals, we pray 
to find our best selves 
And thru temperance 
make them better. 

ride, pale horses, ride 
ride wretched and clean 
vein-sewn with pride : 
a vanity too large 
to seek the the small and deep fissures
wherein lies the livelihood of 
us: sooten worsh...

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beneath the crushing boots of time 
the smoothed teeth of chattering maws 
insisting that a loud pulpit is best 
in spite of souring bedrock

it is your sun-picked bones 
my sons shall find 
like petrified feather splines : 
mere pinpricks and 
pocket sized nothings
rattling against the rocks 
in riverbeds 
the echo and wash of your misfortunes. 

and your tragedy will be writ 
with...

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and for all the black earth in my nails 

of which bed have I finally earned sleep?

milling and tumbling endlessly 

scraping and planting
in flesh-tolled toil 
machete-pacing a tract in the floor
until it becomes a fissure
and that animal is no more.

smoothed out by life's sandy trials 

a shape named me 

whittled an atom at a time 
to finally fit the slot and turn 
with a we...

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imagine doing the thankless job of rivets 

hold together, you beleaguered son of a bitch 

hold together, this heaving, creaking hull
this, sinking, stinking patchwork glory 
made at the end of so many stubbed cigars
held wet, by the mouth
while two busy hands 
idled towards retirement , pounding away 
christening by the light of midnight oils, annointed 
(10 in 1!) 
in the warbled so...

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the long and loping ache
of the seizing loop called 
Aorta 
crimped by a lifetime 
of sacrifice to the dogs
of electrochemistry: 
wrung beats from the feverish sweat
of bedmates and 
those kinds of friendships that die in shared smoke
Rising: fragile broken birds
whose abalone pieces remain
imprinted christmases on my blood 
trading one tether for another
to let loose and limp 
the w...

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 sitting
at the bottom
of a well

everything looks so small from down here.

as a close acquaintance to nothing
I can tell you that time is relative to
the steps I take towards a biological death
but not the wrath and reaping in-depth
well-lit and liked
by a narrow spoonful of silver moonlight.
were it so easy to call it
death
but down here time remains bereft

cobblestones worn smooth
...

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please don't talk to me about 
how all addicts should be put to death 
If you've never cracked the joke: 
"Ah, I've had two drinks. Now I'm finally sober. 
Now I'm finally me" 
and been right. 

;

please don't talk to me about those 

milk-fed good vibes 

and treat me like a tumor 

when my legs finally break from 

the weight of the world relieved by me 

doomed to glue-...

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a spiral of ribs 
detaching like plugs
splitting like looming nodes 
shredding red, tight ribbons 
with a snap only as audible as your mind allows. 

unplug, unplug, unplug 
unzip, all the way down 
spindles going slack 
slack and spooling, loosed, 
uncontrolled tensility 
A freefall.
to unravel all of what could've made me 
if it only had the strength 
to endure these crushing molar...

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the world will always be a terrible place if you decide what's coming out of my mouth before I say anything.

Before you even know my name , you've already decided who I am and the min max of what I have to say.

and then we don't even have a conversation, you just scry keywords and wait for your chance to talk.

it goes nowhere

and when it goes nowhere, you consider that a victory.

an...

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IT IS A DAMNING BLOODLESS TIME TO BE ALIVE AND IN LOVE
CHASTIZED
CIRCUMVENTING TURTLE DOVES
AT THE SPEED
OF WAR:
preface this
in a wake of what roves
what undulates beneath the wreaths of painted doors
in front of what should be a door step
a stoop
instead lays the view
from half way down
approaching the abyssal zone

and here we float
an echo in the deep
amongst echoes in the deep
...

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a couple moves into a house 
there's a bed in the basement. One of them cannot leave it -- there is a pleasant, numbing tiredness that keeps her there. There is an inexplicable weight. A presence and a draw, crushing gradually more and more tightly. The man feels it too. They lay together, crushed tighter and tighter. The woman has been in there for days. Her bones are crushed by the bodies of th...

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this old couch 
a rested place 
of day dreams :
A sanctum for the spittle of birds 
breaking in with the early dawn. 

and each window, in the winter 
a mouth of frost, 
vignettes of cold rolling thru the glass with ease 

i can feel my breath on my teeth
heating and cooling these tines
tuning truths on a good day 
hoping for just
 white lies on all the rest :
mild discomforts, acid...

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I knew someone that was all torn up about my having people comment on some of my works as a poet, tearfully saying "everyone loves you as you are."

well, no. 
Not everyone does. 
But Id like to think I appreciate the ones that do. 
And as I got older, my tools for sussing out who didn't got sharper 
or maybe im just a likeable person
or maybe I don't fixate on the parts of the world I cann...

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