Some people adhere to the “first draft, final draft” rule and some to the motto: “revise, revise, revise.” I tend to oscillate between the two. The below is a result of the latter. I realized that several poems which I had written fit together in an eerily peculiar way. The deconstruction below first appeared in errata, etc. 6: Glint. Deconstruction:
One Bullet Left
Toybox Spilled Blood on the Moon
A Slow Hurt
Marrow
Grace, a quality
absent this ground,
when the sun’s presence
still echoes across the ridge...
The sweet silence of dark waters,
such a novice resident of these days. Sleep dear, sleep
the night leaves too soon. It’s dark, she said. Sometimes the sky’s too cruel
to offer up any hope
and that heavy sun of heaven
ran dry a long time ago. This bone repaired, set askew,
laughing at the horses splashing through
that black mirror staring into
a sky full of rain. It’s dark, she said. Wrapping its way around my aorta,
a heavy thought, beautiful and bleak.
A cataract on luminous things.
A leisurely walk along the banks of sanity. Our paths crossed me too many times
to bother with forgiveness;
when all I’ve got is burden,
your words are too much to bear. It’s dark, she said. Pour what’s left into a sidecar
and leave me to my rest. The rain is my poetry,
so write my elegy in the clouds. Gray those bright colors
and let lie. I don’t need
your goddamn forgiveness. Sleep, sleep, that you may wake
Tomorrow is a promise that I just can’t make Afternoons were always spent waiting
for the dark glory of moonlight
and the soft humming of gunfire
in the distant hills
to trickle through the evening winds
into his toybox of memories
that he would, on occasion,
open as one might wish on a
penny in the stillness of a watershed. It’s dark, she said.
Drink, my friend, drink. The sacred woods
stretch out far too long for sobriety.
Follow the waters into that parlour
of shadows where we can finally rest and
let the bones set properly. It’s dark, she said, don’t go. I gave it everything I had,
and I’ve only got one bullet left. | 
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