For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones are consumed.

                      – Psalms 31:10

I sob with intense kinks

exhale zephyrs    & it is that

from the body are issues of life

& man is a god breathing into

his own sorrows     the breath of

life     each time they’re half dead

but in my Holy grail   I’m a brimful

of ineptitude   that’s why I sew my

grief skin-tight & watch it

compress me    expel the oxygen

God once breathed into me

leaves me gasping for the life –

what I’ve always held on to

that was never mine    what

my sweaty palms are losing

hold of as we slip apart from

our clasp.