If My Heart Is Made of Stone

If the road home’s paved with thorns
Why bare your feet to dance home?

Lace up. You don’t need to seek
Pain. Pain knows where to find you.

You may win. You may rule. You
May be the one the poems hymn.

But did you want to come home?
Did you want to be the one?

I am one of you—you, me.
Fools write poems for fools to read.

If no one reads us, I wish
It meant there were no fools left,

But as long as there are fools,
Ones who write, ones who crave rule,

Ones who just want to dance home
On the thorns—my heart is stone.

The Wells of Bliss

Shun can’t come back.
The halls were warm.
The lamps lit night.
Skin glowed in shades.

The gates weren’t locked.
The walls were dark.
Strings strummed low songs.
Wind stirred the bells.

In small, charmed hours,
Bright steel slid through.
Bare throats gaped mouths.
The lamps went out.

That court’s still now,
Still there, still dark.
Taotie owls roost.
Wind stirs the bells.