Joined underwater Found breathing just fine

Christian Madsen is an Actor, Producer and Poet living in Los Angeles, California.

I wake inside the rumor of myself— a throat unbuttoned from its blood. Some mornings, the mirror hisses choose. So I do: I choose the damage that glows. The room smells faintly of rust  & raw meat. All my faces file a complaint. Each one shaping holiness  from a different wound. I inventory the artifacts: a blister shaped like a confession, a spine rehearsing its own refusal. In the kitchen, a knife hums in its sleep— its dream: a tongue that never stops splitting. History wa

don’t call it necklace   if it left a ring of sleep     where my breath should’ve lived

(after the snow, after the silence)

The orange bulb falls off and a selenite rectangle appears 

She talked too fast Wore heels too high

First kitty comes around You’re so thrilled to be picked

Well heaven only knows my heart is picking up pace Pumpin' out parts of me like a flooding lake

You're gonna feel bad in your compound now

In woods, meant to be like a crab at the bottom  of the sea,

At night, I loose a hundred  million broken stars; in the dark, their lights  scatter across my dreams. They sketch your face, your lips,  your hands, your throat, your tongue to build a likeness I can feel with no straight lines. I smear the coffee grounds  around to tell your future. I see an arrow drawn across a centaur’s shoulder, then pour my coffee through  the petals of a flower, and dream your body well,  again, and full of healing. I smell your lavender perfume upon

Ash trees—stone-naked— stripped, clear to their nodes. Wind pursuing dead leaves through life-sucked green in the yard. Your mouth, above all, the liveliest thing. 

The ambulance turned down the lane while I was mulching behind the shed  where I’d hammered four-by-fours into  a groundhog tunnel with a ten pound  sledge. I threw down the shovel, watched red light pulsing into the low gray clouds. My neighbor, who, too, had stopped, started moving again on his green tractor. We each raised a slow wave, a hundred yards away. I don’t remember his name. We spoke last fall. By the time I took a drink and wiped my face with my shirt front, litt

I felt a surge of pocket electricity 

You are bitter black coffee at dusk, A hunger for bread to satiate, A bed of broken glass to rest at night.

I was never a good painter. 

I watch jagged rocks reflecting light At odd angles, Reminding me of the muscles in your back and  That decision I regret. Like wearing sandals in the winter, Feet stinging with each step. Numb, yet all I can feel.  Mingling Razer snakes light up green on a screen And I am jerked back to your room, An internal pounding from the unapologetic bang Of my head on the wooden corner by your bed. Smooth and cool and unforgiving  Like the history between us. The pounding is compounde

Ashes are another form of tears, after crying, after losing a homeland.

The mark of the beast sometimes flickers across their gunmetal coats.