Dead names scarred onto the mouths of trees,
teenagers as stripped as the bark,
fenced by the flutter of the leaves.
I once loved a girl who loved
to remember the old me.

There's a storm, scurrying across the saffron.
You'd have to ask if this would always go on;
the broken hair, grape jaw, leaky gums.
An embrace, tortured knuckle,
all before the Sun, the bodies buckle.

Incurable beauty explained by the hunting game:
Is there a God who molds the fumes,
escaping from my brain?
I don't want to think, that all my thoughts
are all just the same.

He protects his phone
but not his ***.
Sitting on a cherry
withered-wood,
it's good to remember
that in December,
he waited for this
tired world, to pass
him by, for his mother
to 'please come home.'

Casper, undercut with curls on top,
plays a greyed banjo while wearing
the green-chestnut flannel his dad
wore before he disappeared into
vermilion sky, only remembered
with lullabies from a hopeful mom
that smelled like Pall-Malls and
factory-soaked-heartbreak.

White, chiseled with skeleton intention,
he sips from within himself,
hoping to harness new direction.

Ma and Pa,
lover doves,
kiss with fists
and hug with shoves.

I'll be an empty canvas
as long as you're the paint
adding color to my madness.

I'll be the midnight sky
as long as you're the fireworks
and it's the fourth of July.

I'll be an empty stomach
as long as you're the butterflies.
I'll be the void
If you'll be the cries.
The ketchup to your fries.

Can't you see?
You fill me up so perfectly.
Like you were made for me
like you and I were meant to be.

You are...

The feet to my socks
The juice to my box
The tic tok to my broken clocks.

You are...

My reason being.

The ***** ate into rocky soil,
pushing through clots of dirt.
It reminded me of
the girl I love
from two-thousand fifteen
and how she
struggled to be clean,
because of a needle eating skin
burrowing towards vein,
against what was within.

My fingers pushed on it's ribcage
-- I never found out it's *** --
only forcing brief breathes
and gasps flowing from
my grasp, knowing that
I can't save her and that
I can't save him.

Patches of white were
framed around squid-ink clash;
fleas fleeing from
an ever-slow dying of heat,
hopping onto me,
a host with a heartbeat.

She never had a name
and all I can call him is 'it'.
It's paws fluttered like
a desperation dash across
the invisible wall of life,
a borderline between
eternal logos and
dimming pathos.

Whiskers brushed against the
plastic, grocery store bag,
destined for celery,
destined for dead cat.

And as the shovel
drank the soil,
And as the bag fell
into nothing --
Heaven or Hell --
I feel so tainted
for a life so fleeting,
for a love so wasted,
for everything leaving.

For everyone leaving.

I feel them staring, glaring --
I'm never sure.
My mind rewinds
to a different shore,
where fish have armored skin
that protects them from
pressures of Earthen spin.

They have legs like fingers,
the fish, the people,
that tramples me, samples me
until I'm withered, feeble.

The stares are like bugs,
striding across with curious rage.
Biting, learning, living
in the hollow of my rib cage.

Asked to be safe, to be calm,
with the suction-pores of each palm.
Lips in twist with skin so sour,
drawing blood to drown a flower.
Pulling back, to study faces,
shaking out of sure embraces,
her heels kicked out
and her face soon followed,
and what she left,
I chewed and swallowed.

She kisses the boys and girls
that pay the most attention.
The boys play with vapor
and her girls play with tension.
I wish I was the only one
that she will decide to touch
but I am who I am
and, in a way, that is too much.

Sawblade-sunflower petals
wrap around an earthy cushion,
and the humidity hangs in the air
as her beige body is crumpled
and I feel too sober, pushing.

Baby yellow falls apart,
in her hair the flower starts
to trickle onto sheet and pillow,
decorating the absences
that define how hollow
she and I have felt before --
******* like an endangered species
on the killing floor, I whisper once,
I whisper sweet, "Don't you wish
that we didn't meet?"

She kisses the boys and girls
that give the most attention.
I played with vapor
and she played with tension.

There's a difference in these woods,
drifting between grey, scabby bark,
sifting into the moist, wormy soil,
beckoning for purpose,
breaking into the sound of a
becoming yet battered nature.

The footprints can be light, thorough --
almost a trait granted by the torture of eternity.
With head-weaves buoyant above tree-leaves,
a hyper-vigilance stemmed from the abuse
of a darkly philosophy weaponized;
an extension of the elbows, forearms, wrists
of huntsmen seeking inferno.

A hollow is an ideal resting place,
beyond the greased veins of trees,
fingertips delving into clustered black,
grasping an illusory livelihood,
only to imprison itself,
hoping for only a thoroughness
granted by the torture of eternity.

When love enters the picture,
it's best to fade into the skyline,
becoming a blue phantom,
hiding behind q-tip clouds,
balanced feebly, anxiously,
unable to realize
how easy you can be seen.
How easy it is to underestimate
your own significance.

You can drag a razor horizontally,
thinking the ink of space
will pour through, staining yourself,
watching yourself disappear,
hoping for only a thoroughness
granted by the torture of eternity.

-

I dance with her, a light caramel mutt,
in a purgatory of racial tension,
between black and white,
living in the grey area of society,
not knowing that it's okay --
and she is like me,
I've just realized.

The boulders are freckled along the bank,
sleeping on lime-skin grass, grey and tired.
Fading black canvas shoes
attach to smooth, firm sides,
climbing a planet not as hard as ours.

From the distance, a spinning speck is seen.
With binoculars cupped around each eye,
you can see her twirl in the old, pink thing;
in the mirrors of light, you can see her beauty,
even if she has been blind her entire life.

You can see her rest her shoulder on a boulder,
gasps trying to grasp galloping breath --
and in between each choke, you must wonder
if you co-exist in this world
or separately, infinitely.

When you are drunk on the altitude,
it's time to step down and walk to sea-level.
Scurrying down thrown-up mountainside,
you should try not to trip on nature
or your own nature.