I see you
          falling
               through
                   the purple air
                       eyes bulging              
                          teeth showing
                              like a blind, hungry tiger
                                      without a sun to guide
                                             without a son to follow
                                                  without day or night
                                                       to know the alligators
                                                        on the black river
                                                       in the jungle
                                                   where the russet snakes
                                                  wrap themselves
                                                 around your mind
                                              squeezing seeds from it
                                                      
I see you falling from
     the emerald tree, first
           clinging sanguinely
               then giving in to wind
                     and gravity, toppling
                      dropping like ripe fruit
                    splitting open spilling
                   your tawny seeds sharing
                your succulent flesh, flesh
               which feeds succeeding
             trees, trees where you can

sit to watch
             the tiger
                   and
                      the
                      alligator
                        struggle
                           struggle for
                              a place to be
                                     before they fall
                                          through
                                             the purple air
                                                air that forces
                                                 out the seeds
                                           seeds spewed
                                       on the green
                                    granite mountain
                                under the sizzling
                              saffron sun.

The truth about love
Is that there is no truth
Love is a chemical imbalance in the head
It doesn't last and always leaves depression in it's wake

I know a girl made out of rose petals
she has words seared into her
her heart pricked with thorns
fingers trace her skin, soft, delicate petals
it crumples and falls away, reveling a cold void underneath where she has been hurt too often;
the coldness seeps out;
the words roar to life, consume her
she falls away, gone to the wind.

I've unwound my crooked spine
and forced it into a straight line
Planted my feet in the ground
and grew a whole new world for you

I've choked down a thousand perfect words
and left them stuffed into my throat
Almost impossible to breathe
And then on top of that, I smoke
Covering the metaphors with tar
And coating my lungs in a joke

A time or ten
I've lost a friend
To overdose, to suicide, to car wrecks
Death sneaks around on silent toes
Remaining in the shadows of the things we'll never know
And life is just over
Before you even know it, there is nothing
And no one
And nowhere left to go
that you haven't already been

I've been stung a hundred times
by the spines of porcupines
Or so it seems
as my voodoo doll heart
falls apart
from an overabundance of pins
and a lack of sturdy thread