I wish I could draw
with soft dark lines on perfect white
I would sketch a woman
sitting in a tub
knees tight beneath chin
hands unclear

she would be nothing but an outline
stark and vulnerable
colourless

then with gentle flickers
of stop-gap movement you would see the blade

not menacing or sinister
a scalpel
and my simply drawn woman
would ease the blade into her side
and you would see that there is no destruction in her intent

this is to cleanse

and I would bring the image close,
so you could see the gentle weeping wound
watch toxicity leaking from her flesh
and it would make sense to both of us

since times of leechings we have understood the dangers of letting ugliness fester inside our skin

but then we would step back
as the bath around my woman filled
red and toxic green
the simple lines of her submerged slowly by the ugliness from within

and you would look at my pictures then
and understand my meaning
that sometimes poison cannot be cut out
that you cannot give clean skin to someone made of scar tissue

Fall to me, all you streets of Rome,
With your embrowned oils from torched walls and breccia of shadows,
The pizzicato of stairways and afternoon slowly closed
Like the thick, leathery-echo from this book of all roads.

Fallen, smoldering empire of storefronts and back-shop heirlooms,
Your lupine hills unbound with milk of cur in the wind and woods,
To your fallow fields rowed deep by a conquest of oars,
To the deepest silence and soot-muted oneness of Pompeii,
And a sky that is an ancient coin, without worth,
But still rubbed smooth at the edges by overfond lovers.

He ate flowers.

this mentally challenged boy
from the countryside
I used to watch him
in the fields
when I visited my grandparents
as a kid
He was like an exotic thing
a wild beast chasing
static pray
They had no chance,
the flowers
he would assault them
with a killer's smile, frothing,
and would grab
and tear and rip them from
the stem and
would eat them

Nobody knew why
and the only explanation given
was that he was insane

then the men and women
who saw him would
scream at him
to stop and he would raise
his head and watch them
like a deer surprised by
headlights
Then he would spit the colorful
froth from his big mouth
and would run home
hopping and leaping like a horse
through the tall grass

He was mostly inoffensive,
this flower eating boy
but they all told me to stay away
from him and would
always chase him away when
he got too close

Time passed and I moved to the
city and went to school there
and stopped visiting the
countryside and its wonders
I got busy
and my busy life drove away the
magic and mystery of childhood

The flower eating boy is now but
a memory
neither good
nor bad
just strange, interesting

He doesn't eat flowers anymore
because he doesn't live in the
countryside anymore
No, from what I've heard
he's in some mental facility and it was
his last flowery meal that sent him there

I don't know,
maybe if they hanged signs with
"Don't wear flowers in your hair!"
around the village and the fields
that little girl would've been saved
and the village would still have its
magic beast.

Like me for this but not for that
And that is who I am I can’t change that
This is who I became to make you see that I truley did change for you ..
But that! ...see that right there isn’t a act!

Honestly if you wouldn’t of had this and that then I wouldn’t even like you like that
BE YOURSELF AND STOP JUST STOP MAKING ME INTO THEM
I’ll be fine you don’t like me for that
But this I know about you
I loved you no matter what you had
And I hope one day you will see this and realize I’m not perfect but I’ll give you the world





...you just gotta understand

Being cheated by
a moon in dark night
of winter.

A corruption of
my name makes you
everlasting.

Would you ever know
the spirit of surrender,
without giving yourself away?

In the start, there
were no signs. Only eye contact
with adrenaline rising.

Because I will not
know you, sparingly
silent footfalls
of rain will overwhelm.

There are shadows
growing under your eyes.