Freezing rain drizzles
off of my apartment roof tonight
I'm afraid of driving on sheets of ice
and I've only got six hours to go
I should be asleep by now
The numbers on my clock are an
irritatingly sharp red
and they stare at me all night
reminding me that they run things
Not sleeping is one of my hang ups
I have this bad habit of leaving my coat
on the floor
so this isn't my hang up
because someone
usually hangs it up for me
Although I'd feel like less of a burden
if I hung my own coat up when I come in
from the freezing rain
so I try
They know I'm just forgetful
so they don't get mad
They think I'm brilliant in other ways
which is comforting
Sometimes my hang up is wondering
if I am at all brilliant
if I am a good person
I run my fingers along all my old scars
and fight the urge to make new ones

A touch of Synthetic Blue
drips
down our tear battered frames
before it catches on
a match made in hell
Becomes an oily
twisting
saffron cold flame
Redefines love
as a pact to collectively
fall apart
Redefines hate
as a pop cultural norm
As it smolders
strife imitates art
Another massacre
Another overdose
Another malignant mass media circus
and maybe now
you understand
inevitability


*Synthetic Blue is a registered trademark of White Spider Pharmaceuticals, a division of the White Spider Corporation, and is used without permission.

She bleeds ‘all tragic steam work blasted mists
‘All hobbled clamped free fall for ‘all seasonal depression slump
She’s ‘all death knell cramp urgency and held back suffering kneeling
on kitchen floors ‘all like boarding school broomsticks lessons
with ‘all that theoretical **** the ***** save the man type
schlock shock rhetoric shtick
so ‘all I’ll be is her savage heretic wagon burner page-turner
on the hot coal back burner ‘all boarded up sealed shut in the walls
until she calls
Expecting me to be 'all combat ready
‘all back with a vengeance
while her thrift store hazard suit groups and droops
‘all over my haphazard dream sliced hang nailed hangover hands
hiding ‘all derelict style while between the sheets confessional
gets voided by social media air raid sirens
bringing me ‘all too close to rocks and crystals
and who ‘all needs another pathetic apathetic
junk punk when
‘all and ‘all
I'd rather die for you
because
I just can't live with myself

She often told me
she hurt
just below the surface
of her skin

I was so young

I thought that might mean

she had the fangs of a wolf
growing in her hands

I always wondered
when I held her
late at night
while the

winds howled outside

if it was actually
them
calling her home

and
she would bare those fangs
to tear my

heart to shreds

Burnt out on
a legion of increasingly mobile devices
for a legion of increasingly immobile people
Antisocial networks and a friends list
of listless friends
But what judgment is justified
while staring at square screens with
increasing intensity
and begrudging propensity?
An information ******
that can't get a fix
for all that's wrong in their world
Let's start to run a shutdown command
march away from the heat of indifferent ****
pull away from those fright emitting diodes
crowding a fiber opticked off planet
With nothing better to do
No plans that aren't metered in Gigabytes
We can topple their towers of babel
and towers of cable
And the night sky will shimmer with thousands of stars
we never knew were there

This is how I wish to remember you

The steady rush of mountain creeks
guiding us along almost invisible paths
that shimmer slightly overhead
The two of us tumbling
through tall untamable grasses
growing as wild and free
as we hoped to be

The wide eyed wonder of youthful
innocence as we take in
the majesty of obscured sunlight
gracing the thick overgrowth
of the forest floor
The trees trembling as they
share whispered secrets
people have long forgotten


The two of us here
Where there is only the simplicity of tradition immemorial
upholding our primitive dreams
Perfection contained
in a vanishing instant
Ancient testimony
that there is more
than just what is seen
That in the end
We are never alone

This is how I wish to remember you.

We are condemned to
pass by
in the smudged opacity
of bygone oil lamps
It is in these clandestine
exchanges -
Between pulsating nettle
stings in lightless anguish
just behind my eyes -
I steal treasured glimpses
of your timeless features
painted in
faded sepia tone depiction
of war torn Soldaderas

Lips carrying traces of shellshock
Eyes that speak
of barbed wire carved laceration
and coiled braids telling the story
of combat

As we sneak past the ruins
of failed uprisings
We defy this sorrow -
this separation
with a slow
sensual brush
of fingertips
across each others palms
A substitute for our
unrelenting passion
that must carry us through
until we meet again