A broken lock equals an open mind. An open mind equals a temporary peace of heart. I constantly write in riddles and lines that will never rhyme, that most will probably never read. In my subconscious I relentlessly attempt a Resurrection of civil engagements with an uncivil mind. My internal demeanor never drops a detail, a key worth remembering and a lock that will always sway to and fro in a shanty boat that is inconsistently worthless and valuable. It will never dock, it will never be entirely worth the stress or the time it would take to tie and secure a ship of that size and quality, or lack thereof. There exists ulterior motives that Miss blonde esteem is seemingly not even aware of, or like her prior, accepts ignorance as a temporary escape until the uncivil mind returns civil. The fact is this. The uncivil mind was never civil, and may as well never be. Locks can be repaired, even when the thief begs for no replacement. What makes the thief the uncivil enemy? Has it ever occurred to any soul, that a thief is only stealing away precious moments that are rightfully his, that circumstances and uncivilized minds have locked away in a pitch black that they cannot call their own night? There surely has been an uncanny instance when the locksmith saw his prior gazing at him in the golden grooves of the trap. The thieving of one’s own mind, to break a lock placed by the uncivil mind, should be easily empathized and understood. But alas, curly blonde esteem will forever be under the spell of the uncivil mind, who will only cast a shadow upon itself and its priors. It will be remembered in the scent of cigarettes, where it will also be displaced. It will be avoided in the unrighteousness of a friend’s bed in another family’s house, where a respirator and the oxygen tubes intertwining the threshold no longer exist; neither do the white sheets. There will never again be an absence of music behind the actions committed between the uncivil mind and the civil heart.

Simplicity will make its rounds
As it always does when I'm missing you.
I can tell you're missing me in the way you glance
Quickly out of the corner of your eye
As I'm fiddling with my ink and paper.

We make rounds with one another
Alternating shifts between affection
And you watch me almost instinctively
Perched upon your over-sized sofa cover
Disguising all of my dresses you imagined as "the one"
Floral, striped, simple brown like parchment paper.

But you are stowing away patterns that remind you of summer past.
Except now it's spring and summer's not yet arrived
A fact that until today remained unknown to me.
But of course  you'll be leaving soon
And I'll be wanting you
Even if so it was not enough, even more
In the nostalgia of unwritten details in the past.

They pattern themselves as soldiers awaiting deploy
Into some unknown battle with a sparkling eye
For they know not what love is;
They have only tasted it in envelope adhesive
And flittering longings of long-lashed exchanges
Of forward observations brought to attention
By none other than the golden-haired stable boy;

So they battle with a passion of longing instead.
They have traveled this road many times
And knowing what to expect, they
Delve forward despite disregards of the illumination
Of the embellishing light of Lady Moon
Upon the night to beckon their lustful eyes and bodies
To become one with their defenseless souls
Beneath the silvery threshold of her flowing bosom.

You all remember the romantic fickleness of being fifteen, right?

Of course you do.

Everything was

Brand New. (But we faced the world with Bright Eyes)

Once again I’m sealing up my dried-on spilt blue dye

With a kiss between the lines of liquor boxes

Wondering in which book my nose was buried

During the moment that time casually hopped aboard

a timeless train with a clocked-out rate

Its silent departure breeding a fantastical escape.

Only the ironic forlon echo comes much later.

They don’t tell girls who waste their youth away between the lines of pseudonyms

Between the shelves of musty libraries

Every other warm summer day until dusk

Just how old you’ll feel in the reminiscence of inde-alternative and cardboard boxes.

Have     you ever

Wondered
                             how you would react

                --could react--

If you SUDDENLY

felt your neck snap by the hinges

       of the outboard spoiler
                                                  of a plane
Crashing

                       through shingles and plaster

Right through your favorite

                          Bob Dylan poster

Hanging on your  bedroom wall.

        Or
if you awoke in a lake

            of fire

And realized you were wrong.

There is a bottle under my bed
Clear with three mutilated holes and no cap
Along with three balls of crumpled foil
A pile of downy laundry at my feet—
The race of black lace at the bottom
Of a boat I’d rather not step into so my mother won’t relay to me her dreams
Of my possible alternative sexuality she’s subconsciously sensing and actually begin to question why I’m so awkward around my—
I keep hidden under exactly two blankets
So my imagination won’t tickle my toes and in turn, my senses.
This isn't my comforter
But it does comfort more than the preceding, this
Brown quilt spotted with creamy, leafy stars
Is only familiar to the depths of the hall closet
—That dings a precise pitch that I’ll measure tomorrow when opened—
So these walls will emit less lime and more depth to the time as to shallow out the savage speed of the
Hands no longer ticking above my head.

I will inscribe a scribe's favorite scripture
Inceptively distinctive to your woeful mind
An inspirational frame I will capture
Between the fluff of your pillow
To detain the tendrils of yesteryear, floating
Beneath the purple of your sallow
Eyes I am denoting
With every kiss of mine to each lid
So that dreams will inspire instead of forbid.

Tiny clumps of hair
Once caramel in color
Crumbles beneath the lowest
Lair of pallid
Trampled dust.
A lump in the back of my throat
Rises as the bone shows.
Our teeth have clanked
Collided in battle, our hooves
Finger-less and delving, we were
Ambiguously a hiatus in the water-color
Sticky like honey whilst Satan licks up my spine.
Burning sweet like the water that runs from the Nile
Into the mouths of every little insensate frame and comatose sky
Lacklustre pallor only children could buy.

Some days I think I could love you
If the grass was green enough
If I didn't associate your musk with the flannel
I search for at every goodwill
At every thrift store
Trying them on relentlessly
Button up, button down
As if each little plaid square could shrink my breasts smaller
Stretch my back vertically
Aesthetically speaking.

Some days I think I could love you
If was smaller and wiser
If I could believe in nothing
Rather than the absence of something
Every time I close my eyes and pray once more
Beneath the shadow of the hospital-tainted shower curtain.

Some days I think I could love you
If I remember the piercing blanch
Of whiskey burning in the back of my throat
If I recall the tears in your eyes on a mid-May afternoon
Standing closely in a gravel parking lot
Telling me "See ya later" instead of goodbye
Kissing my forehead, nose, and eyes.

Some days I think I could love you
If you told me it didn't matter how prominent my collar bones are
Or that it didn't take the catalyst of pickling my insides
Fucking a lonely man while you were away
To make you want for me.

Some days I think I could love you
When you trace the lines of my waist
Asking me not to lose any more weight
When you tell me I'm beautiful
That you envy my heaven
When you ask to see me simply to hear my thoughts.

Some days I think I could love you
If you told me you loved me
If that alone didn't set you apart from the rest
Aligning yourself a whole in one with the others
Only greater.

Some days I think I could love you
If I couldn't recall the misshapen line
Between a large vocabulary and eloquencey
Between a man and a frightened boy
Between an eating disorder and self-motivation.

Some days, I think I might love you
If I could silence my mind of all the fragrances of adultery
If I could leap elegantly past the fear of such a concept
Without wondering how I appear to you compared to the rest.

Some days I think I could love you
If I could forget that you can't
If I could remember how to open my own hatch
Without fear, as the key
If I could remember to love myself.

Some days, I think I could love you
Some days, I believe it.
Some days, I don't.

Inspiration arrives in the wee hours of the morning

Like a fresh snowfall that won't stick

Teasing, tickling my brain

Inducing a rumbling hunger for snow cream and chapped cheeks

A floating half-cadence

Stinging like the stale metallic aftertaste of the cavity I can't see

But I know I need filled

Like the hole you left when you were digging behind my back

Smiling beneath my feet and I fell a little deeper

Like you did into me under the Everclear

Night sky after we dropped

Altering our minds in a place we called home

In the company of our tribal community diving head-first into pursuit of personhood

By the hand of a tedium spring and temporary cushion

Where the new members must've watched behind closed lids

Before another night like the previous nights consisting of little sleep.

There's an assignment to complete

Suppressed by the urge to go for a night run to strengthen those thighs

I didn't intend to open, I swear to God

I never intended anything to result in this

Unresolved half cadence in the i-V-i progression

That I didn't compose on the theory test

I didn't pass today because I didn't finish.

There exists no focus to the wisps of ideas slapping these cerebral walls

Like lingering tendrils of broken thread and splattered paint on a drunk summer night.

It's too chilly now on the off days and perfect on the on's

So I will wait, patiently, more or less

To avoid dropping the wisps and distasteful run-on sentences

Into your feigning palms willing to grasp me again

Because what the hell else would I do?

I once found my heart in Catawaba
Where the blue cornflowers flourish between
Arabesque petals floating from the snowy dogwood trees
Encasing the air with the thick fragrance of innocence
You took from me beneath the dying maple tree.

The monotone cubicle in which you thrived
Wouldn't suffice for the rose petals lingering
Between your flushed lips drenched pale in the moonlight
Breathing "You are beautiful"
Smoking cigarettes with your mind.

Your fingertips
Trail
My shoulder
Inconspicuously
And we pretend we don't notice.

You’re the reason

My mother worries

Over the prominience of my collar bones.

It was your back

The time I dug too deeply

and repeatedly apologized, giggling

Laying across your chest

Cooling on the green and white striped sheets beneath.

I worry I’ve disintegrated the last thread

Of the daisy chain

Pinned to your wall.

Blue tinted glasses
That you’ll never see
Properly through
Unless it’s a copper correction
Of the thinning stomach
Or the grey eyes
Grown salty and green
As the fruit salad
Frustration sloshed down
In twenty-five bites
Of thirty-two chews
And a thousand swallows
Singing over the exclamations
Your mother exerted
Over ten-thirty yoga exercises
Illuminated at three in the morning
On a half baked mind
And a restless spirit
Pining over insights
Realized over twice more
In the company
Of blue tinted glasses.

Shankar smiled as the waves crashed
To the drop of the bass we were
Alive and breathing subconsciously
Losing all air to the cry of peculiar felines
And there existed a flittering longing 
Once common perception returned.
My hair was threaded gold 
Beneath your fingertips.

I can still recall
The energy of your fingertips
Rolling off your salty tongue
Peppering my skin with the tingly arousal
Of your lonely eyes
Longing for human contact
In a urine soaked sofa
At the breach of dawn.

Stomach full of liquid.

Black eyed peas

And obsession with relish

Finally paying off.

Trees

Collages

Dancing

Seductress.

Knowledge

Healing

Three small boys dressed as their fathers

Playing checkers

Giggling

Marimba chops

Echoing

Twice stolen earphones

Volume control

Old south

1933

Shallow grave

Shallow sleep

Fresh cars

First to drive

Survive.

Sonic

Pescetarianism.

Cherry Lime-ade

Walking on the

Green grass

REM interrupted

Curious hands

Laced between

Fingers

Three sizes smaller

Sinking

unbiased truth

peeking an ugly face

around her corner.

Talk of mustaches and

sexual orientation

The price of documentation.

Embrace

certainty within confusion.

Tuesday.

The rain
The hail
The tears
And you’re not in your bed
But in a wicker hut
In the middle of a rain forest
Like the ones from my third grade A.R. Reading time
You’ll feel my skin softer than before
And I’ll wonder what is different
And draw close to your unusual warmth
And you’ll ask me “what am I doing”
And we won’t fall asleep for 5.5 hours
I’ll envision spiders in array
Yellow jackets attached to the flowers I ring around skylers crown
And wonder where the hell I am
And why I feel so hot
Burning cash in the back of my throat

Of a bowl I never smoked

Remember the pitch of the leaky faucet

In the third floor restroom

Neither male

Nor female

Nor both.

Speaking in unison

That pitch

What was the goddamn pitch

Dribbling eighth notes

Tears worth pinning on your wall

Next to your unused bottle of sunscreen

From the time we drank in your living room

And I realized you cared.

There is a star on my pocket

But I won’t remember it tomorrow

Nor will I remember why

I connected the six-petaled flower hole

To Afganistan. Sleek. Smooth.

I slid a straw through my ear

Gazing past the green disoperation

And noticed two formings of pimples beneath the right brow

But maybe I imagined that too

Along with the adrenaline and curiosity and false negativity.

Shooting through my ankles

Enveloping every muscle fiber

Every menacing footstep

I approach the door of Debussy

Wading deep into the kelly green

“Open” sign

Sharpied just so no one ever flips it.

Every frazzled hair follicle  executes

Frustration towards the poor soul

Entering doom.

Marracas from elementary

I whispered beneath my mustache

“Fancy seeing you here”

Lingering my capillaries over their stitching

A live animal in a dead environment.

Pink toes and the Sostenuto pedal

Beckon my return to civilization

I remember why I’m here.

I remember why I’m not.

It rained

I said goodbye

I noticed the red rims of your eyes

Turning away

I bought flowers and tore away rye with my teeth

And drove down the avoided road

Looping around to scare away sadness.

I found more happiness in this

Stomachache I slept away

Than the vine-wrapped walls where I presumed

Happiness lived.

London lobster pie
Served with a side of strawberry
Plus one, please
A dinner date.
A musical extravaganza to
Beautify the hideous
Surgical aftertaste.
A peace of mind is collected
Engrossed in adventure
The uncanny youthful exuberance
Of energy flow through
Stained glass windows.
Watercolor painted pews
Inside a church that was never
Meant for entering.
Robotic, the horses
Gleaming with sweat
Drudge the asphalt,
Children’s fingers dripping
Sweaty ice cream.
Sun visors and family disputes.
It will never be the same.