It's not that I don't appreciate
the glorious struggle of this life.
But when I'm crowbar hopping until I can hardly stand up
guilty of smashed in windows and foggy afterglow afterthought
I can't help but wonder
how I can be anything but off the wagon
when they've been circled to fend me off?
They want their stereotypes?
Fine.
I'll be the station wagon burner of their suburbs
but even if they're entertained I don't want their thanks.
I reserve my thanks for being alive
for being allowed to rise each day
even if my thanks are abstract marks lining
my arms.
Sorry if this is disjointed.
I'm writing from the heart
but shooting from the hip
with those familiar revolving killers
slung low on fun belts with
the chambers of my heart spun
until I'm dizzy.
I've always been an avid subscriber to chaos
but I can't deal with this disorder any longer.
I know that each and every one of you
are precious and dear to me
but I can't break away from the oubliette of
my dreary words.
They're like my alchemical dependency
burning dread into gold.
I give thanks to know you
even if showing it is difficult.
I'm a barren mined strip.
Now I'm discharging thought heavy metals into your
water supply and I can't help but think I'm
poisoning everyone.
I've been a misanthropologist all my life
discovering what makes us so awful at times.
Now I just
want to be a sincere apologist.
I need you more than you need me
and I love you.

At some point
I got really into
this radical
pretend revolutionary
mocking revolutions
trash pop art
where it was about
not writing
beautiful or
compelling things anymore
but just regurgitating raw
thoughts and avante garde musings
onto the page
like careless splashes of paint
red and black -
- black and read
- read in blackest humor
sense in the senseless
nonsensical. -
No hallowed grounds -
no safe spaces -
no trigger warnings -
or safety switches -
No structure
no reason
trash trash trash trash
with maybe
just a hint
that buried beneath
this landfill dissection lab
of grotesque disregard
a muted glint of
grace and hope
yearns to be shared
once more

There is an ember
burning brightly
for you
In the darkest
most secretive regions of my heart.
When furious dark tides crash
high against the waterfront
Leaving me soaked and shivering
That ember cannot be doused.
When violent squalls roar across
the barren landscape
Forcing me in
all directions and pelting me
with dust barrages
That ember cannot be smothered.
When the earth’s clashing faults
trembles and shatter
Threatening to swallow me into
its monolithic abyss
That ember cannot be crushed.
When the fires lurking behind your eyes
leap forth and envelope me
in their silent rage
Immolating my very being
They will leave only a pile
of pitiful ash…
…and an ember
still brightly burning.

It is only the sweat drenched
fever murmurs
of shell shocked honest ones
that can
and will
fully explain
the powder burn residue
and necrotic psychology
of what they have seen

Christina Snowcrash feels eternal suffocation in a landslide
of murky river rumor mongering
and forced black out make out fake out insufficiency
from her choke out black and blue Valentine
All this tragic **** abuse
deals a million miles of bad road damage per second
because everyone else can see
Christina Snowcrash is a starry eyed constellation prize
crashing and burning brighter than
supernovas blindly raging gracefully
She stands her ground with her loss
but we're all praying for the day
she stops his predatory bending and breaking
as she dots her eyes
and crosses her tease
and lets loose tear smeared makeup
breakup bullets
aimed at diminishing returns
on those blood diamond investments
and involuntary commitment
Let him burn for a change and trash the ash in
fretless regretless release from prison bar bedroom brawls
with a loveless lost cause phantom
no longer worthy of the best times of her life
because Christina Snowcrash
deserves better than this

Silas has locked himself away in a skyscraping hotel
perched atop a Vegas casino
Belongings scattered throughout
like passenger train derailments

He was a writer with a jack knife vision
Now he gathers dust next to a windowsill graveyard
crumpled up beside his follow up novel
sloppily sprawled out
unfocused unedited and unlikable

Unable to cope with fame stress addictions
the last of dwindling fortunes
afford the luxury of
having everything delivered
He hides from the maids
thus
his only face to face contact
with the outside world consists of
quick frightening glimpses -
inquiring half-faces through the door
chain

Developed this shuffling submissive
walk to keep from falling over
compensating for dizziness
from stolen prescriptions
he doesn't need
and shouldn't have
Drowning his sorrows with grandeur -
Eating nothing but eggs
Drinking like a fish
to chase runaway pills
A stuck throat refuge
lulling him to sleep

Silas  drifts away into a comatose fate
Left dreaming
Hoping someone wants to ****** him
in his sleep
and end
the dull roar

You know
I was thinking how much
I'd like to just leave it all behind
and let loose like a mad
rebel with plenty of caws
flitting through sunlight that creeps
through the trees
because anymore
I can't get behind another day of
constantly dragging on more
supposed last toxin riddles
while your hands become these frail metastatic
cooling tower fingers
I can already see them already shaking off
clinched jaw fuel droplets
onto cancerous rancid mass graves
and I don't want to imagine what's beyond that
Besides
lately I've been preoccupied
with the feel of timeworn ciphers etched
in my charcoal wings as I
descend on power lines joining
scorched throat jesters cackling murderously
at this scorched earth
See I want to get away from our plutonic friends
all they want is to binge on residual radiation
raising their safety glasses to their excesses
knowing their acceptable risk deformities await
with contaminated breath
Sure we've got a reputation of being devious
but I'd rather proudly flaunt tattered onyx feathers
than sit around with
decaying radioactive half lives surrounding
inactive decaying half lives abounding
We crows scavenge our meals indiscriminately
but we don't dare eat our young as you do

In time and heat sand burns to glass
the glass cradles more sand
The sand keeps time morosely
amidst the engulfing heat
and ponders
if in time
it will become glass

Does she know
that she is silver strands of light
gently plucked from the sun
and manifested in human form?
Do those that would see her
captured know that you cannot bottle
sunlight?
Her intensity will burn those hands
before she can be contained.
Does she know that she has become my beacon?
Does she know that she is my warmth?
Does she know that her presence chases away
the darkness?
Does she know that I would not
capture that which
is meant to dance across water?
Across the sky?
I desire only
to hold her in my hands
for as long as she will let me.
Does she know that she is sunlight?

Looking back I wonder if
I was a silent player
looking on while you were
held down and tortured in those
abduct taped conman confessionals
he was so fond of
Because the way I remember it
you and I were always standing
on the same corner slinging hope
while the smog encroached
but maybe you were disgusted with me then
like I am when I think back to watching
the scar strangled manner you were
loyally subjected to
I stand captured
Resigned to billowing abstractions
brought forth in my less callous moments
Looking out at these slurred flickers  
shackled and swinging in a nine to five iron cage
wondering if you would even let me out
if you held that key
in those perfect imperfect hands
I always longed to hold.

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

We tread slowly
but not hand in hand
because of the damage I have done
Lighting flickers in once pristine halls
Straining our eyes and hearts
as we navigate corridors
we thought we knew so well
Plant life that was carefully nurtured
now neglected and decaying
leaving us have no choice
but to ration our meager supplies
Sleep chambers cracked
and malfunctioning
forcing insomnia and restlessness
on cold tiled floors
Ivory tower foundations creak
and rumble as inevitable
collapse becomes apparent
So many stories I wish I had
worked on
instead of sticking with the same tired
ones I neglected
We drift further apart with each step
I do not know if we are fleeing
or going down with the mess I've made
as we traverse the blackened remnants
of our crumbling utopia
I just know that I wanted us
to experience it together

I staggered into our front door this morning
and I can't find the broken home
I feel like we have
because you take good care of the place
while I can't manage to take care of myself.
Dragging myself through the kitchen I
tip my king over in the chess
game we were playing
I know you're just learning the game
but I'm sure you know that means I forfeit.
I can feel the warm alcohol tinge to my
sweat this morning
the soft metallic taste invoking more memories
than I want to admit
I struggle to take in the
glimmer of dust floating through
seeping in light
everything else with its soft haze around it.
I kind of thought everything would fall into place
for us this year
but until death do us part seems like a sick joke
with how much we've struggled
to make it through the first week.
I walk into the bathroom and remove my ring
I always wanted that groove in my
finger from a ring settling in
getting comfortable and making itself
a home
But I've never managed to make myself
someone you can live with.
I had hoped we could rest upon each others bones
when they got too old to hold us on their own.
I drop into our bed and my head swims
will dull ache and deep remorse
as the future we planned blots itself out
another victim of broken and fermented promises.

Those mass factory
farm dairy cows
lining the highways
hardly look happy
like in the ads
I heard they smack them
with forklifts
and speaking of which
Are we almost there?
My pain pills
are running out

Drug company antidepressants for breakfast with
feelings adrift at the corner of
Armageddon and Vine then
four cups of plundered coffee beans
bring heart poundings against that
swollen old surgery scar but hey now I'm
finally able to focus -
Ignore throat tissue issues that
issue forth acidic ******* bile
to navigate
mirrored command lines cut in
neat little rows -
They tell the machine what to do while
music blares and
****** I wish they'd
stop playing the ******
version of Blinded by the Light
for once -
Agitated and hurting -
But intrigued -
Like watching the jaws of life
wrapped around a car crash
you can't look
away from and
sometimes I just want to go
back to yelling
"Go **** yourself!" at everything
but it
didn't do any good then
why would it now?
An old friend's chaos algorithmic
paintings bring strange
comfort from mass media assault
and pepper spray -
Recall he was dead set on
a jukebox demise but maybe he realized
following linear models of
progression will
derail when spun
across time as a wheel
that breaks the back
of all who push against
it but that doesn't stop
hired guns from hitting
heavy pipes
in the park
after dark
and it's all over now baby blue
because I can't stop thinking
of desert roses even when a thorn
adorns their last names -
If you figure any of this out
let me know because I sure haven't -
Welcome to my stream of consciousness -
Fishing off limits -
You already took the bait.

The rain has gentle hands that
smother out my claim to flame
as I stand with a soggy borrowed cigarette
in one hand
and one of those expensive uptown
coffee shop drinks in the other,
their daily grind keeping me awake
but ultimately coffee rings
hollow, insufficient in fulfilling
my constant half-empty outlook.
I'm resigned to bracing myself on a street corner
watching traffic lights
flash and cars streak by obscenely,
wishing I could get by on good looks
from everyone moving past me
but I know it's all just an allusion.
Always alone in the big
city but she changes that,
she's sensual but odd
like the smooth shielding
over the wings of a beetle
if you can stand holding one
long enough to touch them.
I raise my face to the sky
and she washes away my
hazy carbon monoxide exhaustion daydreams,
letting them bleed into corroded rain gutters
All those curve bald face lies and avoidance tactics
dilute by her storm fronts until they mean nothing.
You and I?
Well I can't figure out if our daisy chaingun
romance will ever
be more than hollow points fired
across each others brow,
but I know no matter how hard
she pelts me in torrential downpours,
the rain always answers.

I had forgotten
the sensation of
painted lines
adorning my face,
weaving tales
of secret and sacred things
that would otherwise remain
undocumented and guarded.
As I scrubbed
off those caked layers
of primal mystery
before leaving the riverbank,
I couldn't help
but wonder...
...If I never returned,
was I washing away
my only chance
at something authentic
in this life?

We pause to rest on the hilltops just before
the afternoon gives way to evening
While her young child
crawls innocently across the grass
A tiny cherubic visage silhouetted by the slow flare
of the summer sun enshrining the scene
She tells me
that even with these things
that bring her such intense joy
the darkness would not relent
It was always there taunting her
just beneath the surface

She tells me she wants out of these panicked strain eclipses
tugging cantilever protrusions through heart chambers
The worry of writhing sickness murmuring like scorned blasphemers retreating to cimmerian shade
Incessentally dominating
the pleasant moments of her life

I could not offer any reassurances
other than to say
Perhaps these moments
must interlace
forever woven together by
the passage of time
that we are blessed and doomed
to walk alongside them simultaneously
And that just as light and dark
are separate parts of the same day
Our experiences
are just different expressions
of a magnificent existence
on an unstoppable wheel.

And like an enveloping
transmission
with increasing frequency
you have become the only
thing I want to hear
You have always been
best in show
for mixed media
and messages
and now
I can't help but wonder
where this path you
are leading me down
ends?
Will this develop beyond
an ethereal blur wisping
through my everything and
anything?
And how was I to know
you would become
the brightest part
of my day?

Her lips thrum
like reverb droplets
as I steal
trembling kisses
before the mad dash
out the door
into sun brushed
ruin

I've been looking over
my portfolio and considering
diversifying my assets
to feed this junk punk habit of mine.
Ono-Sendai is looking strong
after that Hosaka team up
But I've been told to stay away from
those weirdos at Tessier-Ashpool
and their vatgrown monstrosities -
They're all scary like dead TV grey skies.
Cyberdyne stock is rumored
to skyrocket after some microchip breakthrough
but I've just never trusted their promises -
No fate but what we make and I don't
know if I like what they're making.
Tyrell Corp is down after that
messy Nexus-6 affair -
Tears in rain and their CEO dead
Guess they should leave the synth
business to Hyperdyne instead.
(Hey...are they just a division of Cyberdyne?
I should investigate that one)
but then I've heard Hyperdyne has
some twitchy artificials of their own running
rampant through Weyland-Yutani.
Weyland-Yutani seems like a solid bet
after their merger
but I've heard they'll treat you like
an expendable crew -
Absent mother computers and derelict signals
abound.

**** it.
I'm going with Walmart.

Love
conquers all
and
conquerors
destroy everything
in their path

Hiding behind screens.
Sealed from the world.
Connected/detached.
The next best/worst thing.
Our precious intellect...
Our fleeting consciousness...
Boxed on a chip and stored away...
Hidden and safe...
Our stored binary dreams.
Malcontents under pressure.
Until they find the box.
Press the button.
All is consumed in flames.
We hurt the ones we love the most
and I love all of mankind.
Woe to an empire of blood.
Woe to an empire of blood.

Although no longer
entangled
we will always be entwined
Not only through the things
we are obliged
but something unmarred
something subtle
something deeper
Two souls on the same plane
still moving across
undaunted by hurt
and hardship
and loss

-Not gone
Not apart
Not broken
Only changed-

Although these things
have been set in motion
and we may move
In different ways
To different rhythms
And time may find us
In different places
We will always be
something special
and something graceful

-Never gone
Never apart
Never broken
Only changed -

My dearest friend
Although it is time
For things to change
we will always have
those things
no one can take
or fully understand
We will always
be timeless
And always
on each other's side

-It is all only change-

This bitter endgame theory
is the remnant of us
tightly clutched in a loose collection
of dulled hidden blades I kept in
empty sugar pill bottles
for moments such as these
My shallow breath slowing
showing
nothing left but hesitation marks manifesto readings
to stave off never lasting mob stompers
losing control of thought criminal empires
All is lost with wounds swabbed in hopes of growing cultures
not inundated by murderland vultures
cackling that doomsday clock apocalyptic-talk
as they pick apart failed crop circles
The past is in the past but remains so tense
as you stand revolted by wretched plans
while wrenching cold calculating razors from my hand
because being allowed to touch seemed so unattainable to me
in the first place
and now that you're gone
I
am
so
scar struck.

The number of universes
she had traveled was infinite
She couldn't stop thinking of you
in any of them

I will
never
forgive myself
for forsaking you
little howling
wolf girl
with madness
in her eyes
and anger in
her voice
and a face
carved by the gentle
hands of nighttime stars

Through all my phase shifts
You have been my constant
Still
I will die alone watching the stars

At first glance
the fight or flight flash trash light of the strip
appears to be a breathtaking rapid burst
of coming distractions
But after a few hours slinking and pulsating
with the grid pulling at your heartstrings-
Trudging through one closed door
where another creaks open
I realize it's really a slow burn disaster
coaxing me backsliding to where I belong
That is to say
that the past few years have been borrowed time
with little to no interest
All I've been doing is settling my accounts
and lack of accountability
Fulfilling obligations
closing out friendships and lost loves
with the efficient sorrow
one usually only sees on
the last leg of death row
Two approaches prominent in my desire for absolution-
Slamming cheap shots and begging for changed minds
depending on how much I wanted or took from you
in the first place
I am selfish
and I did hurt you
and I am even more selfish for trying to get you
to forgive me so I can check out and leave a mess
for you to clean up
But I am only here on someone else's dime
and all I have left to do is settle my accounts.

In dreary codeine inspired nights
Where I have somehow
Wandered back into your bed
We forget who we are
Lose ourselves in
those lucid slipstreams
I know where we stand
And I never want to come down

She was always concealed
in the graceful mystery
of the way that she carried herself
Seldom found conventionally attractive
but ultimately possessing the unrivaled beauty
one only realizes
when dreams of a one way hurt
come crashing into their reality
and scatter that
subtle something about her
that they will never get back

I know you
needed someone
who is willing
****** flowers for you
and present them
with thorns all removed
but
here in the shadows
of the gnarled bramble
I'm still wild and unchecked
as I will never cease to be

Just as the shadows folded
themselves into the hills
for the night
and the sun dropped its
enveloping glint into
the corner of the looking glass

I drove slowly past your suicide

I could imagine the
scene as if I was there
You were pitifully slumped
over the dashboard
the telltale spray of
sacrificial lamb's blood
across the back window
confirmed
you sold your mind
in a shotgun barrage sale
The passenger door hung opened
as if ominously
inviting all lost souls
to join you
Birds circled
but did not dare
descend

I don't know why you
wanted to be buried
so far from home
maybe you knew
that we would
simultaneously haunt
each other
with a lost love
that never fully made sense

I've been a ghost town since
your unsettling
impersonal
departure
The drive down was
haunting...waking nightmares
and dulling pain
with whatever I could get
my hands on
Mumbled ranting fever dreams
of not so sacred cows
skipped over songs
and roadside immolation

Now I'm here

and they're casting lots
for your belongings
Without explanation
my mind drifts
to the moment we come into the world
screaming as the air hits your lungs
for the first time
they put you in your first tiny
pair of clothes
and you are so loved in those first
days
We blink into existence
Dance in its splendor
Sulk in its darkness
then we are gone just as fast
as they lower us into the ground
no longer screaming
wrapped in our last set of clothes
I turn away from
their morbid possession dissection
because you already gave me
so much
the weight is heavy enough
I look to my brother
without saying a word
and he knows it's time for the
long journey home

Hey I know
you're the
listen to the whole album
type
but can we skip this song?
It makes my arm slashes
seep through the bandages
and I know I'm supposed
to be over that memory
by now
but the truth is I'm not
and besides we've got
a long road ahead of us

I have reserved
audacious and capricious things
for you
things I do no wish to let linger
I have reserved these things
in hopes that you will return

I've got prose
in different area codes

You lived in my old house.

You greeted us with
a warmth that
matched the touch
of soft simplicity
and the antique heirlooms
you so often
dressed your life in.
After the others left
and the wine bottles
fell empty to the floor
you smiled that lazy
knowing grin
that so often
told me I was loved.
Just as I pulled you into my arms
the world filled
with that telltale haze
when we are seeing
what is not real
and I felt
the impending sorrow
That so often comes on
As we begin to wake
from these longing mental trickeries.
You died in the fall
and every time the leaves
crumple and wither
I do the same
as we so often do
when a part of us leaves this world.

In my dreams
You still live in my old house.

1.
You slipped out in the night
leaving only
your period piece illustrations
of lament configurations
and braided wyrm coils
burrowed and replicating
in hollows of sorrow

2.
The best I can do is
listless digging through
your scrapped dream junk gears
and pointed dagger crystals coalesced
all around contraband gifts
scattered throughout

3.
At this point I'd even settle for one more night
so our last moment isn't a
backlash conversion pressed
at the back of the neck
whispering
it's
all
over
now

the true
conquest of the bourgeois
is the
scalding envelopment
of this bathwater
and how long i can stay under
before
i have to face the blank slate

Changing sliced frames-phantasmic shapes
until all out of focus
No where is home
if we don't even know where we stand
Sliding a long treachery faster than
light intoxication and
slinking across the thin black line
Entire live spans and plans changed in the space
between a breath and a lie
Thresh hold reached intense beating
from forgotten spoil change
You do know that if you let me take the wheel
I'll drive us both crazy?
Brace yourself for jump
it will only work if we fall together
Counting down five-four-three-to-nothingness
End of line end of line end of time
Stop waiting stop planning stop delaying
The future never comes so
can we start again?
Delete
delete
repeat

She was a cautious razor blade saint
with silhouette paint spiritual advice
casting her scarred brow wisdom through
phantom streaked watercolor caress
She spoke interpretations of waking dreams
in harbinger binge drinking remorse
abandoning masks for midnight unveiling
of fingernail abrasion secrets
She taught me to dance unabashedly
although she knew not a single step
She was everything

The woman I was supposed to
marry moved away long ago
And no matter how hard
I tried to follow the dust trails
I only ever came up short of breath
In the end of days
where it's always night
we spend time
in a broken down watering hole
on the edge of purgatory
and listen to muffled bomb blasts
bleeding on through to the other side
When she laughs she
stares up at the ceiling
and I can see traces of
repressed horror welling up in her eyes
I can tell she's thinking about
nitroglycerin sweat and splintered cells and scattered shells
before it all goes down
In the retro cartoon relapse nightmare
I've conjured for us to spend our time
The television flickers with the hissing reluctance
of reporters telling us to prepare for another
invasion
She finally speaks.
"You know there are no real sides right?
You know that back home there's just
dodging fire and not necessarily knowing
who it's from?"
She takes another drink
and tells me
"You could have come
for me, you know?
You didn't have to sit stateside
with endless excuses while the rest
of us had to be there on the blurred
front lines.
Still...I want to be with you now.
Here I am trying to look my best.
I like to wear
brightly colored ribbons
woven into my hair
and don't bother to cover
all the scars...because
that's who I am.
they can't take it back
and neither can I..."
She pauses to brush
tears from her face
and finishes with
"...and I think everyone
wants to look nice for the one
they love".

Seemingly random change greets me
as a phase shift just below all surfaces
In front of the face the world
Julia sets me apart
takes my hands
turns them to branches with
all my lines blurring
Planting new seed values
endlessly looping on one another
fractals endlessly transforming
infinite
and
beautiful
chaotic determination
I'm all mixed states and
dreams of you
Each flutter of your translucent wings
manifesting all new hurricanes
I cannot control
what haunts us next
I let go
With each iteration
I am free.

A sunburst flash
Chopped up ******* down
with blistered reluctant pull
and the choke of dry dusty pills
A floodgate rush
Terror campaigns
Denial rampant
Plagues...
...on all houses involved.

In frozen terrain
with ash set ablaze
we stand together
through chilling nights
and searing days
Two forlorn war torn refugees
cribbing messy illustrations
of listless ****** creeps
hanging out on the back balconies
watching aimless graveyards
where cyber-gridlocked dissidents
reluctantly go to die
But we remain
and through the strain
the wrong side of history stares us down
with viper haired stone sober gaze
We ignore their judgement
and thirty pieces of silver
and instead scrape together
fists full of dollars and hopes
of change
to guard against
their pointless mutual choke point
when they absurdly perceive
our attempted dignity
and fragile windowsill garden
as signs of sinister takeover
Even as it all collapses at their necrosis
riddled feat they
diminish and return
Assets freeze and insults burn
threatening to bring forth
the death part
of that 'until death do us part' line
before we ever had a chance
to make that pact
Still
in the grim twilight of anguished
frostburn soliloquy
whispered by a tired world
begging to expire
You will always be
a godsend
and my reason to survive
against the fury
of a planet besieged
by endless storms
of ice and fire

I run my fingers across razor sharp hints of frost
The first signs of cold
sliced across trees by raging violent wisps.
Thin slivers of blood shimmer down the crystalline
coat of winter desolation
as these wounds gleam with crimson vengeance, cruel and empty.
Spatters of angry, scarlet disappointment gathering
in the pristine emptiness of this icy wasteland.
I do not feel this, I am numb to it.
To me, it is a gentle lock of your hair laying across
the soft rise of your collar bone.
I feel the passionate burning fire of your breath against
my neck.
Still, I have questions that these lonely trees cannot answer.
I lay down in the cold,
entangled in their ancient, deceitful roots
wishing they would provide me with answers.
But they only stare blankly
their sap laden mouths frozen, gnarled,
and silent
These are questions only you can answer.

I am
a smeared
scrawled out
conquered chalk outline
on an incinerated
cinder block wall
To be washed away
in seconds
without a second thought
Like the last beams
of a dying son's light

There are years of
rusted crimson coating the rails
corroding the way we once traversed
and the secret walkway stones
only we could ever navigate
when the beaten path was
too crowded
have been smoothed bare
We anxiously stand apart
in this seemingly
final void of a thousand
chasms overgrown with
agonizing truths
Every bit of strength
devoted to fighting against
tumbling off the edges
As pain weighs on us with inevitability
falsely alleviated by tiny
brief
moments we disguise as stability
we scrape by
with scarce resources draining
We are
exhausted
and
hurt
and
unsure
Yet in this treacherous space
between us
that we fear falling
into
there is
An untamed look our
eyes
A tremble our
embrace
And a longing in our
hearts
that we cannot ignore
and I know
that our love can outweigh
all hurts

Smeared interpretations caught up
in inversion mirrorball bathrooms
defying those punched up dust down reassurances
from
punk rock goddesses
emerging and
cutout of vagrant tunnels
Cast out by demagogues
spinning bottles determining fates
Falling to sidewalks falling from grace
no longer saving face from
a future washed down with the last call
This is how is all goes down
This is how it dies
Standing on the edge of a forever
that is all too quick to end

-
A lone azure flower
growing from the center of the
cracked and muddy earth
struggles as the downpour pelts it
Saturating and uncaring
threatening to uproot and smother
it in a watery grave
-
The vision subsides
but the roar of the flood remains
the waters careen recklessly
enveloping
the gorgeous
the profound
the defiant
and
the unconventional
each one it swallows every
bit as precious
as any lone desert flower