Like cadavers are so many lovers.
Drunk on a table for two,
laid out and cut open
examined, weighed and cataloged,
yes,
cupid has your number.

He sharpens his arrows.
"Oh, how cute! He's like a baby!"
Shut it!
He's a monster.

It was nothing serious.
Angela and I were noncommittal,
then,
it just...
Happened!
I kissed her and she lost her footing.
Her legs slackened like climber's loose rope.
Angela fell, hard.
I pulled out the arrow. (I only wish I had disinfectant.)
She was breathing funny. I wasn't sure what bit her,
but when her eyes flickered open,
I felt the shame she would never know.
I looked up in time to see a fluttering of white.
A dove? I was too naive.
Angela started to get clingy. That's when I got stingy.
Soon, I began to ignore messages selectively.
Eventually, she was a fading memory.

Monica. Jessica. Lisa. Monique.
The story kept repeating itself.
"Get a grip, love was chasing you! Some should be so lucky..."
If that grip is cupid's neck, give me two handfuls, please.
I nearly stopped ******* around altogether,
haunted by feather after feather,
but I really just learned to play it safe.
Cut them off after a couple of weeks.
I'll never forgive Cupid, that rotten ****.

Her name was Felicia.

It was day thirteen.
I had my copied and pasted, "Sorry," SMS ready to go.
We were engaged in pillow talk,
it was nothing serious.
Sarcasm turned into playfulness.
We rolled over,
she had me pinned,
she nibbled on my earlobe,
and with artful tongue stroked
years of pain
from my soul.
She reared back.
Our eyes locked in mutual reverence.
We smiled and embraced letting our slick bodies revel in the moist residue of our tender frolicking.
It was then that I felt the itch in my shoulder blade.
Color and warmth fled my chest.
It was with a numbness that I let her go,
and reach back,
and felt the long spine of the arrow,
like the stem of a scythe.

The weeks that followed were a heaven
that I had always hoped not to enjoy
and felt ever more guilty in knowing my unfettered happiness.
Simple pleasures I once knew were then mountains of joy.
My passions magnified were as the flames of the sun.
I even feared I could turn her away with mentions of my love,
but this was not an unrequited venture.
We shared in admissions of our deepest affections.
There was not a moment passed in yearning of our old lives.
Even shedding light on our past imperfections was a delight
incapable of breaking the spell.
Truly, this is the purpose of youth; this love; this roaring of souls entwined.

Is justice blind?

I certainly felt this token of nature cast its judgment upon me.
No sooner than I had finally accepted my new reality, did I watch this sheltering bubble burst.
We weren't as open as I had imagined, of course, I shouldn't be so naive to think so.
She disappeared. I was distraught for what seemed like weeks, but.
I got a phone call.
The phone call led to a hospital. Within the hospital, a room.
Within that room, she lay on a bed, head shaved, smiling weakly.
I sat hesitantly by her side.
She grinned as she pinned me with a pink ribbon.
"You'll fight with me, right?" She said, as her eyes searched my soul,
quivering, yet there was a fierce strength behind the weariness.
"If I don't fight, I'll lose more than losing you."
She lay her head in my chest. A chest that could lend its power.
Looking out of the window into the horizon, I wished for things I never considered to be signs of hope. Yes, I'll fight...

In that moment of my life, it was as if I weren't alive.
Perhaps my body was waiting for me to return: sitting there, breathless.

Are brave words the measure of fate?
Oh, I wish this were so, yet some battles only time can win.

I didn't go to the funeral. I simply asked that I may scatter the ashes.
It was a moment for two. I stood on a cliff by the sea, a place she and I loved. I spoke to her, in ways I knew she deserved. I scattered the ashes, and I knew she had returned to the promise of life, a place beyond time and pain.

And so, time passes for me.

In time, I am ready to love another.
A familiar itch in the shoulder blade.
I know the arrow is there.
I look up and there is cupid, smiling.
No need to hide from a gracious soul.
I gaze and I whisper:

"Please, Cupid. This time, don't leave me breathless."

My passions, like a flood of magma, pool at my feet; caking, cooling, cementing... and I wonder why I am rooted in my beliefs.

Tiny necklace locket
resting on a rock
it
gleams in the sun
next to necks that met a gun.

I wonder why they left
they
left my soul bereft
of the dreams I wish to hold
oh, the story's growing cold.

They were dreams!
My dreams!
Whose do you think they were?
I was the one with all the youth.
You put your hopes on my shoulders,
didn't you?
So why did you leave me?!
It's not my fault I forgot the
dreams...

The colors run from my face
and twist and turn
down
down
the drain
leaving stains that
I wish
were the mark that I'd be
satisfied with leaving on the world,
but
no one appreciates a colorful drain.

Even when the end of your life
is a paradise
does that justify the hell you've been through!
Don't you wake up
in the heat of summer
sweating
and wish the nightmares would just pour out, too!
Why is it that the biggest fish,
in the nets of our minds
are the angler fish and the puffer fish?
Terrifying and poisonous.
Rancid and unappetizing, because we leave them
out in the sun
afraid to touch our own dysfunction!

What justice is this?
My father wasn't father enough!
Why did he sleep all day?
When he died, didn't I already know he was dead?
Did I experience a déjà vu no more feeling than it was a jagged knife?
Am I dead too?
Is that why I think this is hell?
Is that why I wondered if there are souls? The confusion borne by still being flesh and blood, yet being so ghostly that I couldn't scratch the itch of my bleeding soul.

Justice? If you cry inside, does anyone hear you scream?
Can you?
Only when it's too late.
The last drop of the blood of your soul spent.
Mortgages! Taxes! Insurance! Loans! Employment!
Yes, please, they're all a merciless enjoyment!
A ceaseless tickling of agonizing fun.

What choice do we have?
The choice to tell those who tell you, to tell those to tell that person,  and on and on that it's enough!
We're tired of being told money is life-blood.
Why should my ability to live be based on how much dead tree you've been siphoning from the life of the planet I am worth? Am I a resource?
I'm sure that's in your audit, isn't it?

Citizen #11899382280 is complaining again, send him back for conditioning. Advertise some more bacon and send him to the hospital again so he's distracted, this will distract his whole family. We'll advertise a specific hospital he should go to to them so they feel compelled. When he's at that specific hospital, we'll shorten his life as our insurance. His family will think he's graying because of the stress of the heart attack, but it's really the drugs, which always look the same, yet are increasingly more destructive. We'll send Lawyer #448322783 in to talk about his retirement and will. The family has requested him, but Lawyer #448322783 works for us. Lawyer #448322783 will edit the will to suit our intentions. Once the will is arranged, we will increase the life-shortening medication, which will, in and of itself cause complications. We will introduce a catalyst to forego the critical time we have to avoid his otherwise impending and damaging insubordination. When Citizen #11899382280 is dead, we will retrieve the damaging and insubordinate files from his HelloPoetry.com account and erase his existence. Were he alive, he would find this poem ironic that his emotions, being a matter of the heart, led to a death that was a matter of the heart.

From the heart,
Your loving government & your ****** life

I forget where I forgot you...
That place is a ghost land,
it's a dreamscape,
it's a netherworld,
where Styx was our path
and death was our guide
for into life we emerged
absent of one another.

When I remember that I don't remember you,
there is a gentle flutter of the heart
or the buoyancy of a smile uplifting the balloons of my cheeks
even the pull of earthly forces
a magnetism that I'm sure slams us into walls
across time and space
when we can't escape the force.
I'm forced to regret my shame.
My heart splits apart where glue,
like melting-hot pizza cheese,
can't protect the seams and my memory is suddenly
seamless.

There you are.
Cradled in a vignette.
It's snowing, and I've fallen over.
My friend cackles next to our Quasimodo snowman.
You fear that I am a basket of eggs
sliding toward the precipice
time counts down
you fade
I smile,
and tomorrow
your haunting is a stormcloud
the past comes raining down upon me...

"Good morning folks, it's 97.8FML; look's like we've got repressed memories. Visibility is low. There's a sharp depression chill sweeping over. The tears won't let up; about 70litres today. Better have good wipers, it's looking like a long weekend. And now, we have a word from our sponsors. Kleenex."

The memory surfaced the same way you found me.
Out of the blue, like an angel: of death or of life, I don't know.
Sleeping is harder than catching butterflies.
When I count the sheep, they have your face.
When I think about you, it's a circus.
It's a mixture of laughter and staring into a wall; the occasionally thrown chair at an invisible lion and the whiplash of my dreadful anger.

It doesn't make sense. I last knew you in the time it takes to grow a forest. And here I am. In a thicket of bedlam.

I used to forget that I'd forgotten you.
Now, I can't remember you're not worth the memory.

What do you hold dear?
I've seen it.
Tasted it.
Owned it.
Thrown it away.
I've loved it, hated it, ignored it.
This is what we fear:

The primitives unearthed the obsidian.
Their eyes caressed its semi-reflective luster.
Their fingers ran along the smooth confines of purpose,
or rather, surface,
it was cool to the touch
and obsidian whispered its secrets
imparting realities the primitives sought.

Tree bark was no longer an obstacle.
The flesh of beast
land, air, or sea-bound
came away like loose clothing
and the people rejoiced, teeth all the whiter.

One day, whilst digging with his prized tool,
one man found a sparkling oddity.
It puzzled him deeply.
And so,
he unearthed it
and sought to reveal its
mystery, disrobing the dirt that clung
to its crystalline body this thing, this... diamond
in the ruff was beautiful, but truly,
what worth was beauty
in light of the fill
of belly?

The man put faithful obsidian
back on the shelf
and joined his hard-working brethren at the fire.
In the night,
a stranger passed through the village.

The man sat at his fire,
chipping the stone from the crystal,
entertaining the astounded onlookers
as he perfected the gem.
The stranger looked upon the diamond
and she delighted in her providence.

She stood at the fire of the meal place
allowing its haunting glow
to cast her face in flame and shadow.
She announced,
"Look upon his treasure.
This is no mere stone!
A fist of this
diamond
can buy you king's riches
in Assur.
This man cares not for that..."
And with that, she skulked into the shadows.

Those whose hungry eyes
spoke for their hollow hearts
came forward and pleaded with the man.
If he does not care for the stone,
mustn't he choose a kin who does?

"You care not for the stone!"
the man declared,
"You care for the debauchery of the city!
I must keep this to ward you from death."

Their pleading became insistent
then ravenous,
but the man defended himself,
until one deranged man,
drunk with the fantasy of the gem,
stabbed the possessor in the back.
Thence began the war for the diamond.

Who should be the
rightful
possessor of the diamond?
Bloodshed can be no true reward.
Bodies lay strewn across the floor in warring poses
teeth gritted
eyes glaring
one ****** palm sated with the prize.

The stranger danced into the bankrupt fray
snatched the gem from the dead grip
clutching it for herself.

She smiled her yellow smile that
by her sin
could only be cleansed
by the innocence of the crystal clear gem.

She walked off triumphant.

All around, obsidian glittered in the fires
that now fought to consume the village.
The first man crawled in the dirt,
like some blood-trailing slug,
trying to escape the inferno.
Trapped, he leant against a wall
and obsidian clattered to the floor.
He picked it up,
"****** are those who delight
in fill of fantasy,
o'er fill of belly!"
There, the fire consumed him,
screams and all.

How unfortunate it is
for the meek to pay the price
for the world's greed.

The heart. The errant symbol of restless devotion.
It can be a blind lover's hope, a buoy in death's dying desperation,
Or damnation to the wise, a martyr's foolish, festering, folly.
Be sure not to forget, that the heart is sure to die.

It will be diseased, before it is deceased.
It will be broken, before it is bereft of beauty.
It will be hopeless, before it is hesitant,
And in that pause before the final blow,
It shall weep its last tear, and love no longer.

If betrayal is dealt with a kiss, then pray tell,
What is the sign, that heralds love's abandon.
Any moment, any breath saved for eternity,
Is snuffed out in the most glorious fashion.

Calm before the unapproachable sigh, and
Still no whisper of frustration from me.
I would still be strong, if I were to say,
That I am no longer passion's, patient, prisoner,
Or cupid's, aimless, trusting, intrepid, target.

He wouldst claim me heretic before heir.
Hair like the winter white, sprouts 'pon my scalp.
Signs of my bitterness waning in the wash of wine.
For we are all grapes, longing to be sublime.

Were I to count the leaves from June to June,
Where in the world, would I find love soon?
Would I learn that life on a silver platter,
Is useless, enjoyed with plastic spoons?
Surely any fork would do, unless the meal forbids it.

Foraging amidst the gardens of Eden and Amazon,
The animals wonder at my perplexity, my regret.
How could they understand, these apes and snakes.
Up in a tree, there it shone. A familiar shape, for me to long
A ripe, red, resonant fruit shaped for open hands.
The apple shook in branches, fading like.
The heart.