beads of salt and sweat edge
the Cuban sandwich zest from
the tip of my tongue
flavors of my own theme song
echo in my throat

I'm merry ******* footfalls
on hot concrete snares
and the groans swinging
between my thighs take lead
singing cat whistles
along Main Street

snakes will be snakes
and tight cotton shirts
is asking for venom vial shots

don't worry though
those are my brother's loosened trousers
I'm a sweet gardener
I hold doors open
and voted for Hillary
I'm blinding reflection
standing over the hill

but don't shake my thoughts
with your pepper singed howls
cleaning you up messes my stride
dress like a lady and
monsters look for prettier things

oil stains dripping through
the elbows of my shirt
writes working man sonnets
across noir alley doorways
named Touch But Don't Tell

keep quite and use the suggestion box
and don't blame me for chromosomes
genetic randomness isn't my fault
biochemical cocktails don't drown babies
you just fill your bathtub with them

why do you need life jackets
to fill my shirts
empty your oil can and get a promotion
so you can buy your own

I'm tattered sheets stuffed
over hotel window rails
you're a frail damsel selling dreams
I won't buy, I peep keyholes
save digital copies and call the cops
stop screaming and let me save you

your fingers compress a sweaty glock
rioting my stomach
your tones too ******* loud
remember I loaded the bullets
so at least credit me the shot

beads of blood and sweat
whisper cat o' nines tails
see I'm your martyr
but only on favor street.

since you don't know me
here's something to help

I leave wood splinters in my hands
so I can brag about not crying
when I clench my first

manly, yes I know
because you told me

the scales slithering
through my spinal cord
tell me many things

like when you
bit my long hair
and said it was gay

I spent years dislodging your teeth
but I think I learned my lesson

build cradles from rusted nails
sew them to your skin
so you never have to leave

I forgot the next lesson though
and was caught swallowing pencil shavings

sneers rattle from the tail in my ribcage
hissing that I'm too skinny to be a boy
the jokes hard to get at first
so I l graffitied the punchline on my mirror

my heartchambers gasping for breath
is the sound they make from
draining blood for gun powder

a strong proverb really
I'm glad I learned how
to blow up ghost sailing to my head

now my shadow walks to the store for me
because
I'm still learning how to crawl on my belly

my daughter is almost 5
and my son is nearly 2
I could simply say they're one and four
but when the number's higher it sounds a little better
they're less babies and more childlike
you know, bigger and more wise
I'm more wise

my daughter is almost five
and my son is nearly two
they're in our yard with twig berrets
and mud stained smiles posing for a postcard to make the hose drinking generation proud.
he straddles the ground, chest bare like he's Tarzan and howls at the blue sky
challenging the sun

I look at him like he's made of stone
she's a daisy pedal I crush in my hand and compress into a diamond
the toxins dripping from the curling edges of my lips burn the dirt from her face
the shine of the light washes out the blood on my knuckles.
a ring on my finger and my hands look clean

my daughter is almost five
and my son is nearly two
their muddy fingers comb their feral hair
and their green feet clip the grass till they find jagged rocks
they weep over skinned kneecaps and with one arm I pull her close
with the other I slug his shoulder, "buck up kiddo, you'll be alright"
I hold a stone in each hand, and call one a precious gem while I build my house out of the other

my skin has washed against those stones since they were none and none
built into the houses of a thousand graveyards I've watched daisies pile over golden sarcophaguses
watched them wilt at the bottom of alters built on stone
I won't carve epitaphs into these hearts I hold

my daughter is almost five
and my son is nearly two
we drag fallen branches to our firepit and dance to music next to the flames
like weightless stone his strength surges to his tippytoes
she powders his nose with ash and pretends she's a cheetah
her game isn't to **** she just wants to chase
princes have their feet welded to pedestals and the sport's no fun for her

my children aren't rocks, they're stardust
I won't make kings or queens I've no providence  over their future
so I'll **** the venom from the sky and watch them walk back to the stars
I may not be a champion but I'll be their father

We read tragedies to cast shadows on our fingers until we pull our hands away and realize they're stained black.
Our impartial grief resolves by tucking the stories in the shelf and taking a shower.
We scrub away another world's trauma from our wrist, browse Netflix for something happier, and go to bed at 10.

Tomorrow we will reach out for handshakes to display their firmness and how it's all a hoax.
See we're stronger than the others. We don't lie in graves, we scrawl marks on a concrete wall and say they would have died regardless.

We reach out for handshakes and tell you it's inconsequential.
But your arm tremors from holding tragedies woven through your lips, and your hand shakes as it grasps at strings holding your house together.

We reach out for handshakes and cry freedom.
While you read tragedies scribed under your skin.
They wrench under layers of sinew, twisting your nerve endings into a lump at the base of your skull so big I can play tennis with it.

We reach out for handshakes and tell you grandma was old anyway.
You breath in tragedies and hope the heart beating in your ****** can scrub it off.
You bleed tragedies on a hospital bed and wait for a transplant that matches.

We reach out for handshakes and tell you you're not choking
You clutch at the tragedies swallowing your lungs and tell us to let go of the plug.

let’s blur truth behind
our forest of strings
teased by blocks, and below
they dance these real boy nows
                                                                                                              clap
                                                for the show
say
                                                 your lines
                                                                                                              sing
                                                   like me
I’m
                                                your queen
baubles like pebbles
shine my fingers please
watch the firewood gambol
**** the harvest, so languid
                                                                                                           shape
                                                   your hips
just
                                                    like me
                                                                                                                 oh
                                                 they'll swoon
just
                                                      for you
please dance for the show
marionette toy!
oh sing these strings up high
what ballet they pull
                                                                                                              take
                                                         a try
no
                                                     my turn now
                                                                                                               pull
                                                   the garrotes
you're kindling
                                                         to us

where is me
upon ash and dust
shall the rain collide
so tell me, who remains

drowning in faint whispering of the syntax?
bracing the brackets of the mind?
buried in dust of bone?
why the frail psyche bound to collapse?
no me is not here

humans are simple
their composition seemingly
far too elegant, a dash of this
pinch of that, presto!
that be a man there, no?

pack me up, carry me in your knapsack
it seems I'm little more than a midday picnic

The water tries
to spell happy
my brain yells
                              **** that

row up the stream
God it’s all so
                             blue!
wait no
It’s nothing
cause it's all breaths
of tiny explosions
and everybody
                               dies!

just pixel cells and carbon
or some **** like that

a great green north
shouting hymns
to quite a rumbling mind
but all the quite is too much sound
the beautiful green trees and little
                                                        blue ponds!

make the sounds
click
postcard
paint it on my
face

hey
I’m happy!
                             wait
                          no
rustles of wind
are just the gas chambers
hissing on

those two oxygen
*****
are professional arsonist
wearing mask that say
                                           fertilizer
                                                    salesman
you breath in life
I burn inside
out
millimeter by millimeter
until a tree grows out of my
head

we all die
but what if we
                         don’t
It’s all real till it’s
                               synthesized
I'm symphonies inferno
until I'm part of the choir

thirteen years old was first
the words hidden in my teeth were seen
on window pane bone shattered
spelled primal utterance
KNOW
carved in disillusioned groans

foreshadowing of roads
lain ahead on tracks
strewn in leather bootstraps
a brother hears his leg snap
THAT
like screeching eagles

the reading is clearer
with age, comprehension
improves parallel to sorrow
the price of silence whispers
FREEDOM IS
woven in slow rips of pyche's shawl

the mind shouts why
don't you pay
but first my molar
splits in two, shrieking
the rot has set in
hands firmly grasps the
bottoms of boots
gravity laughs in
chorus of unpayable premiums
pulling harder tills my foot
In trenches of mud
uncovered in the earth
spells a solemn word
BOUGHT
written from fossils of my teeth

building hammocks from dimming lights
indulgence sipping cyanide
dripping through fissures made
from the lies
broken ties
internalized
a shadow ego mind till
cocktails full of chloride
pour over laughing ID
animus swindling suicide
please forgive
just let up
I'll cave in
these serotonin little souls
down measured holes
told pleasured sin is not for him
so they go
psychoanalysis
is just paralysis
tepid palsy in choices
screams shattering thin facade
neurons raptured to their god
bones and skin
left behind in ruptured mask
jades of husk
dusk escapes into the sun
leaving me just alone
no darkened sheets
retreats of mind is adjourned
I'm on the verge
can I return
please return

I hold this door handle
I've held it for time unwound
across its way I turn left or
I turn right
in fact I do both
these truths have held future's hands in pair
and through each second's splintering gate
myself divides
I turn left and
I turn right
I hold this door handle
I've held it for time unwound

looking around looking in
through eyes cast left searching
my serpentine luxury has
envenomed my origin
when in me you find only proxy
look to digitized surrogates
starring back be only the husk
simply faded synapse a broken discord

we've aligned the margins
counted the drops
standardized the primal
resolved to the order are we
what docile agents we've become
servants to our own magistrate
who euthanize our inhibitions
freedom can't live in this ritual
freedom can't survive ordinance

I killed my own dreams for
I can't find free from these prosaic walls
hey hey I forgot how to imagine