Ebonvoice Thank you everyone for listening! We @TheNinthLevel are taking a 165 hour break and we'll return next Tuesday! - March 23, 2011 add/view comments (0)

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You come to me
in fever dreams
dreams that knit my eyelashes
And whiten my knuckles
dreams
that soak my pillows
with hot spring oceans
and matted hair
dreams that tease my fists
in the clenching
futile command of mattresses

My sheets reach out
and frustrate my legs
in a gorgon's entanglement
and despite their petrifaction
I sweat
like granite
at a waterfall's base
my scratching fingernails
collect algae and moss
convicted
of mocking tranquility
growing vines along veins
as my arteries throb labor
like frantic coal miners
and December
works its chill
on the bricks of my hearth

My forehead burns
and my embers yearn for you
treesap popping
at the base of my spine
sending their needles
to where we met
the night before Easter
we couldn't touch
without invoking prophecy
our kiss
was foretold in Sanskrit
before forty night floods
or Eden's colonization
even before
there was ever light

and in the darkness
of sealed eyelids
I curse the gossamer
that keeps us from waking
I call your name
and my phone rings
I beg you to lie to me
to tell me you're not hurting
to say you've moved on
to say you don't love me
but your lips
don't move that way
they graze my neck
where they belong
and echo your
singing truth
in an f-sharp aria
lingering
on walls, ears
and dripping temples
indelible
as red feathers
and tears at sunset

to the cumulus symphony
of your air
keeping time
with mine.

We have always breathed this way.
synchronized as railroad watches
pulses tied like a gift
in a forgotten corner
where dusk's fading ribbons
of human lucidity
make me keen
and whisper
I would die for you
and your sins
I would die
for your crease in my bed
for the year we didn't speak
I would die
with drenched legs and knotted sheets
in hotspring oceans and matted hair
I would die with
desperate hands
grasping sacrament
tasting communion
lunging for absolution
through a spider's silk labyrinth
reaching for you
trapped
in a somnambulant haze
of fever dreams.


I am a writer, a poet, an entertainer, a father, a brother, a son and an uncle. I am a laugher, a hunter , a nurturer; a connoisseur, a soul nearly a hair's breadth from redemption, riding the ragged ether in lightning's wake, barely holding on, smiling in the wind. I am a human, being.


I produce and host The 9th Level, a program featuring local, spoken word, music and hip-hop artists Tuesday nights 7:00 - 10:00 pm Pacific Time on www.killradio.org. You can find the latest show in my blog!

Currently working on a second book of poetry. My first book, In a Fever Delirium, is out now!

It's damn good to be alive, and every day I wake and don't smell brimstone is a good day!