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King Panda May 2016
my bones stick out
so much
I should feel good
like fat
like privilege
and power
but these things are fleeting
like my body
like the conversion I had
with you
I never meant to bring
up semi truck
cabs
artist’s sketch
tables
I only meant to move you
into the city
like a good friend
like a walk in the park
or a trust fall into
the pool
blues
I say
this is the strife they
sing about
and everyone loves it
and eats it with
peanuts
allergies?
no thank you.
green smoothies?
no thank you.
a good morning text?
well, maybe if I still
like you
if I can still stand
to be in the same room
with myself
to go bowling
to go on hikes
to meditate
all these things
I hate
and my bones
they’re smooth
and splinter when
bitten
and my bones
they glow like
uranium in the
mirror
good morning blow
good morning blush
good morning white boy
good morning,
Andrew
King Panda Mar 2017
No sun this morning. Rather,
Austin struck gray
Thru and thru.
There is a bite to god’s madness--16 years
Of sun before I came--16 years
Of fall, rain, fertile soil raised by
Red star.
You, obscured in morning, take my
Love out my mouth, my messenger in railed
Kisses.
King Panda Jul 2017
dragonflies melt
into each other.
flowers meld
shaded silver
upon silver.
string whips of
cotton float by like jacks
thrown by children,
unsusceptible to
the force of gravity.

the mechanics of
heart machines
crank awake.

steel knees bend dull and
swollen.

venetian mask with
sterling tongue
skims the tops
of tiny toes
and errantly spring-ed
grasshoppers..

warm bodies
in bubbling steel
meadow—
cool in nature,
stolen like
gold
crafted and
crafted again
in heat.
King Panda Jan 2016
I may have gotten into the
stupidest argument of my life

it was about men painting their
nails
yes
men painting their nails

I want to paint my nails a
deep burgundy
because
well
I feel like I really don’t need
a reason

she said
it would turn my nails
yellow

I said
I don’t give a
****

she said
men don’t wear
nail polish

I said
I don’t give a
****

she said
she didn’t have any
nail polish

I said
*******
I’ll go buy my own
then

when I walked
to the front door
with my car keys
she stamped her
feet and said
FINE!

and she walked upstairs
to her bathroom
where she kept all the
polish
King Panda Nov 2017
starlight snaps your
cigarette awake. the imperfect
circles of earth’s motion orbit
around your breast. the moon
chimes
from your ears.
north and south run
the rivers of
smeared mascara,

you stop. listen to

the man
playing fiddle with
half-hearted
bar light.
King Panda Sep 2017
I was not sick
and needed no

convalescence

no rebirth
or panning
view of

bloodscape

the black

gasp of dawn
it offered

never
drew

no sickness

no hospital
beds

or starched sheets

no goodbye
rain

or last shot
of whiskey

it unended

when the
sickness of

the mind
rolled in

with its fingers
shaped like a gun

and a trash bag
for my jewel

give me
no sickness


I begged

and robbers
there were three

beat me down and
left me like a

headless buck
King Panda Nov 2016
let go, brother
let go of your forest
your ocean spray
your frantic
manic
tendencies
the ability to wipe it all away
lost somewhere in the wind
let go of your rain
let go of your shaky hands
and hold your pencil straight
with your teeth
don’t fret, forest
don’t burn, brother
hold
hold tight
the hallucinations of what swims
a polished stone skipping
in one endless encephalon cycle
fogged and
fogged again
the forest smokes
and the rain to put it out wanes
steam
King Panda Apr 2019
In the place of bright dust
We ransack the sun
Back from her bed
We stretch high/baseball bat/wood
Crack in earthen shower
You are there behind the fence
Holding the baby
On easter sunday
We walk in wedding circles
Discuss the tropics, somewhere
On your back I write
Sixteen dances/crickets in tall grass/waves melting shore rocks
I pour you coffee as you squeeze the yolk in deviled eggs
And I fumble with the crepes
Halfmoon/full/french peninsula/the photograph of your riding a merry-go-round
Full, wordless smile
I search for the soothing leak that
Sleeps with frankincense
First, nameless day/nameless, silent bowl
You place the fruit in stained glass
Watch the skins reflect blurred jet-plane/kind sky
What’s left is my burning muscles
Aching for you in tiny flint
Your lips
Your thing that bleeps with breath
With the empty canteen
I leave it in the car
Reset
Cigarette kiss to your bird,
My best friend
Cuddled in croissant
You  make rain a baker’s dozen
Awake
The body inhales
King Panda Oct 2015
found
grounded bird closed in
ribboned-box and buried
underneath a willow snapped back
to finally relax
to decompose and nourish
by the lake in drooping shade
the felled leaves pile
candy wrappers gray snow in
parking lot corners
with pumpkin spice scented candles
with charred letters skirling up
the arm dropped to sizzle and puff out
white beanies
flannels
leather boots and jangly bronze-leafed wind chimes
I sit on the patio and listen to you speak
the chill of your words
perched like a squirrel barking on a fence top
hibernation preparation and breeze
the gospel of your autumn

it’s lovely.
King Panda Oct 2017
strong is the still that
reverberates
over old space,
the cold
drought of petal dreams
I chalked
on the garden hose
nozzle,
the mask
just one string
away
away…

the night we touched
was like

                
*    

                   *
  *   *
*
      
*

*
*
(stars)

those daddy-rolled feelings
on my back as
you licked
my spine.
King Panda Aug 2017
I place my bet
on strings pulled

by the sun.
crows in their

black plumage
are silhouettes  

suspending
mustache sunset.

my pockets are
empty—

no lint,
crime

or cash.
I am broken

but will not run
into the darkness.

no
let me maunder

with the ephemera
of passing day.

I need a friend to
talk to.
King Panda Aug 2017
a crocus opens and
closes with the stream of
midnight moon.

the playmate of exhaustion
crosses the room
in his heavy, black boots
to close the curtains.

goodbye, light.
goodbye, pride of lions
and boy transformed
into a werewolf.

a scratch
of larceny,
the cuddle of
maple leaves rotting,
the magnet spinning
in rocket-ship orbit.

all secrets held in
feathers,
in hair compounded
into strings of
black opal,
and limbs stenciling
comets around
five feet of woman.

nothing in the talk
can suffocate—a quick
and easy birth of
ecstasy and the emotional
sidestep into the dark
of slumber,
seemingly feminine but
dreams strong as
barbed wire.

when to sleep?

a question finger-written
on my chest.
King Panda Feb 2016
threads of salt
drowned land
and sea
brisk on the shore
to the vine
of the tree
not fruit
not sweet
but
check beauty
check redolent
check dog named after
and sea urchin-robbed

the steps taken
through the pink
the sunken ships
the little women
with big hair
the jewelry that
weighed them down
to drown
drown
drown

the flower
floats like
a headstone
from the hand of
a daughter
to the mouth of
the sea
where God still
reigns
with a crooked shaft
and a helmet
long struck
by the sky

pink

the ocean loses its way
through the flowers
thorns and
all
King Panda Jun 2016
like red lion parts
crotch rocket
nut cup
anything done behind
a dumpster in the dark
yes, always
because you never liked how
light peeked through my thin
hair
or how I squinted
my eyes when I kissed you
“Just close them all the way
*******!!”
of course, I obliged
anything to keep you
away from your mother
anything to keep you
out of the garage
the sulfur smell
the demons in your
drinking marble
but god,
the vibration
the car peeling out
on the driveway and
“Here take this.”
all of me reminded you
of her
all of me
“Rest, darling. Rest.”
and every time the night
ended with unclothed gin
bedspreads like
forts and painted
walls
“Go **** youself.”
and all was lost
my body
my grief
10 pounds lighter
sweat soaked through
the carpet
King Panda May 2016
the river is
drinking it
sequins
blankets
the river runs past
hobos
unidentified
water fowl
two trolls
taking shelter under
the bridge
there’s conversation
in another language
fiendish brains connecting
fiendish yet
beautiful
thunder
tampons
a turtle
a naked boy
on the patio
rain
definitely
rain
unmatched
and the steam
coming from the
bridge
once there was a troll
on my face
and I swatted it
with a broom
but it came back
it came back
with you

laughter pounds
with the rain
laughter that wears
emotion like
skin
soft
elastic
still pink
bouncing
on the river’s surface
breaking
absorbed
sustenance for
the trolls
like fiends with faces
like minds with names
these two connect
with spark
and the rain
falls
the stillness under
nature’s
machinery
King Panda Apr 2017
Love—sometimes too
abstract, but I know it lives
in slow songs played
in the backseat of my car.
I know it ripples down
your tongue as I lick, kick
and grab.
I know it shocks your
backbone as I place my
hand under and over and
in-between.

Love—sometimes too
abstract, but I found it
resting on a fallen branch
in a park.
I found it in the bottom of
a chocolate malt.
I found it caught in a
rabbit trap.

Love—sometimes too
abstract, but I see it
in you.
And it smiles back,
amber, un-blistered,
and perfect.

now—

let me **** on those
*****-sweated fingers, and I
promise I will *******
on my vintage Remington
typewriter.
King Panda Jun 2016
we are here
my shoulders grow weary
let’s save
love making
for the moon
King Panda Jul 2018
thirsty soil,
hungry sky,
I rent the earth and swing over
curled in a heap of buddhist death—
a mischief light breaking a paralytic sun
so taught in no-thingness,
so creaked and crafted
as I sit at the bar—the last foam of
night popping on the bottom
of my glass.

whose to say life shouldn’t be this way—
a tempest strong and virile
as she lies clutched by the moon—
the nightest of night
blocked by resurrection
of a half-dead sun—
hungry and dear life of lost faith
King Panda Feb 2016
the good book says
one to tame
another to handle the whip
and groan at the horses
as they pull the
freedom carriage

freedom from what?

freedom from fields
of wheat and grass
freedom from
dirt and potatoes
freedom from the
bite of the whip
in the sweltering
Georgia pits

lord
this good book isn’t
very good at all
these horses can pull their own
but I am weak
tamed
invisible
I am a pipe cleaner
bent over and over
until it snaps
to quote
I don’t want to live on
this planet anymore
I don’t want to live at all

this is the sun breaking through
this is the vain bee trying to pollinate
this is my rose under glass

quake if you must
earth
I have been shattered already
King Panda Aug 2018
here I find you
my little wildflower
unable to catch
the powder-blue butterfly

the breeze—something sweet
to wet the clouds
while mountain’s edge bites
horizon’s crushed and swollen lip

you blend in—a pile of jade
something blue to budding wheat
but no fear found
by a little scout
holding the spider with caged palms

how easy it’s been to love you
leather hat in tow
as you make your way to
snowed lake’s basin
now melted, shone, and gleaming

my love for you is planted—a babbled sunflower
leaning over the sidewalk
as you return home
skipping over cracks—
child’s play to the mountain, ocean, forest

you are the universe’s first creation
blooming out its chest—
there is no room for anything but you
as the pollen of night sprinkles down,
spirit o’ spirit
and sprite of loving girl
wrapped in candy wind
now asleep and closed petals
to grace
from grace
and the life in between
King Panda Nov 2015
you follow me everywhere
little girl wet with tears
kissed and shut in the garage
with that yippy dog and
a box of fruit rollups
to rip and obsess
to **** at your heels
driven into the dirt
my popper princess
you've endured enough
King Panda Aug 2017
I am common.
seemingly feminine
but shoulders strong
as barbed-wire.
like a chicken I am  
underdeveloped—my wings
weak and unable to
lift me into the air.
I am preoccupied
in self-identified war
with the 875 square foot
apartment and the pasta
that refuses to boil.
on my knees, I
crawl
reconciling rhyme
and reason for
suffering.
the world has gone awry,
I say to myself on an
afternoon bike ride
through wooded
pain, my face
a perfect plane for
scathing branches.
quick and easy blood
am I.
wretched and astonishing
is the rhetoric I
find in the hollow of
my rib.
I am common
but not so when
written by hand.
King Panda Feb 2016
she described it as ice
in her chest
like
a lance that tightroped from
her chest to mine
fought over at the breakfast table
because her end was bigger than mine
or mine had more blood than hers
or she always got to look at my good side
and why couldn’t I look at her without laughing

mother always said it was a blessing
that two people were so close to each other
not through birth
but by journey
and life
and happenstance
two people that tasted grilled cheese the same way
that heard the same voices of joy
loss
despair
but always stuck to the roof of the mouth like peanut butter
and not the generic brand
no
the 10 dollar organic stuff

two people that couldn’t help but
crack jokes at the dinner table
when everyone else was talking about
death because
what is death without life?
she would ask
and everyone would go silent
and float up through the
limitless sky
while we stayed grounded in
the life that whiskey brings

sister
if you ever hear me calling
know that I’d give you the bigger half
every time and that
you may borrow my three-hole puncher
without asking
because
I love you
and love stitches time without holes
and moments without the train station goodbye
and the rocks
well
they will always be rippling the stream so you
can go whitewater rafting and I can write poems
about how you fell in and found
a fleck of gold
King Panda Jun 2017
sundog—small and incomplete
half-***** rainbow.
light.
at least once a week for
the clever dreamer,
the girls with no eyes,
the men with small *******.
there is

fortune in the river—it swims
away when I take you breath
down to it in a bucket. and my hands
quilt flawless wade of
nighttime water.

*where is the colored light?

nowhere, sundog.
nowhere.
King Panda Feb 2016
you went sledding
with the kids
while I filed the paperwork
and cried

I used to be your lady boy
shining in green pit-bar light
as you kissed me like
the kids were with my mother
stuck at the bottom of the
treehouse slide in a pile
in mud
laughing
when

in reality they were
just budding inside of you
fertilized with apple liquor
and the perfume smoking
from my chest as you
unbuttoned the first few
revealing the scar left by
my brother's first pocket knife

the skin of my young years
the skin I am wearing now
cut by these ******* papers as
you freeze
tearlessly
in a pom pom hat
teaching our babies how to make
the perfect snowball
King Panda Jul 2017
I’ve forgotten
to be anything but
space—so enraptured
with the black that
the forest was
less than a goose pimple
on earth’s flesh.

I have ignored the
eighth notes
hanging from the pines.

I have forgotten
the snowbirds and whipped
winds.

I have numbed the needles
pocking skin through
my jeans.

I have forgotten green.

I have forgotten green.

I have forgotten green.

now
the light of frozen
flies dims
in your mouth.

now
love washes out
in seasons.

now I eat
sugar-frosted buckthorn.

And I see you
ready to touch
through one
hundred leaves
and foliage.
King Panda Aug 2017
my hands swelled
blue and purple

to match the
glassy doe-eyed

stagnancy.
I saw a pair

of cocoa
moon rocks

heavy with
music and a

queen bee trapped
in a flash

of departure.  
mine and yours

one in the same
corpulent and

greased trembling
at the lips.
King Panda Feb 2016
where were you when I came out?
seventeen
asleep in a Philadelphia suburb
with that man
you called
boytoy
lover
caccoon
because everyone likes to feel weeks of web
crystallized between their sweaty toes

I was an unremarkable specimen
called yoda because of the hairs
on my ears
a baby with a flawless twenty digits and
hands like a
painter’s
but love was spring
and had to wait for the grass to green
and the retrievers to shed their
winter coats
so their owners could curse
and huff
and sneeze

you
precious
Kurt Cobain fan
and all things hip/hop
with those glasses and that hair
asked to be my sister
but caught unaware
with **** in your shorts because
you never saw me coming
and
how alike we were
and
what if we met
somewhere
someday
and you said
yes
this is my brother
this is the one who I lost
in the spring
King Panda Apr 2016
every night I go to bed and say
“just don’t”
every night I lay awake and say
“just don’t”
because two negatives make a
positive right?
and maybe if I think about us
long and hard enough
I can jumpstart my
water circus
and finally ******* cry
for once
but *******, birdie
*******
this is supposed to be a friendship
poem
filled with all the good things
about us and I turned it
into me
I turned it ugly
again
but you
sister
are beautiful
King Panda Jul 2017
I imagine I can write about
war—that god and man
have contrasted to the
continually shading
topaz of bodies being
crystallized.

stoic,
tangled planets overhead—
circling as my eyes
fill with infinity-pools.
your edges
fall off when I
look up into space to
see you without
seeing you.
King Panda Jun 2017
I could not accept you—star
incarnate, carved and swollen
in the trunk of a fustic—

*****-yellowed and preened—risen
and alive I strap my
saddle to your back. My heels
dig to the dark side of

a price yet to be paid—an eye
of a coursing, being scrubbed
into the spots of grain—heat
eaten by earth. Star set.
Star rise.
Star be

livid and leaven


whispers the cowboy
sitting in a lawn chair on the
front porch—his hat falling
off from crowning, bald-headed

tilt. space and all its wonders.
King Panda May 2017
This is the shape I was given:

a violent explosion of brilliance,
massive,
flaring—a mouth so big that
it could swallow a
honeycrisp spreading the
red skin like
peanut butter.

100,000 years it takes to become and
I will be dead.

star—*

the harp of the wind.
King Panda Jan 2018
the wicked queen of morning
greets you with
clutching shore

little pebbles in the stream
rob red rubies
from dead fish bellies

on a rock
there are some feathers
a broken beak
crunched bones

your attention is cut
with the dead kiss
of a woodpecker

you are bound
to relive the death
of thousands of forests
bound to kiss
the stream’s mojo
laughter

listen—
the stream is still asleep
its floor is falling through
the weight of its slumber

nothing can contain it
King Panda Feb 2016
the clay patio was baking
just hot
enough for the dough to rise and crisp
and for you to spread your blanket
in the sun
perfect for a picnic with the kids
and observing the man on that really tall bicycle

it’s times like these when you think
why doesn’t everyone just shut off
and bake in the sun
with a glass of peach tea and a pair
of well behaved kids
who share life like it was their job to love
each other
their mother
dad
and especially
the old dog

even the young lovers get jealous
as their gaze from the park to
your front patio
witnessing that there is something more to love
than just body heat
chocolate-dipped strawberries
and jazz clubs
that children grow like spinach flowers
in mellow
medallion
heat
until the training wheels come off
and they feel earth’s balance for the first time

and the peaches!
they shackle the branches
like juicy bombs
and you decide that
mothers are like fruit
unbruised
unwashed
and perfect
something that God
herself
keeps in her finest
crystal bowl and replants
in the summer

mother
sister
friend
shoot me some of that peach tea
you’re drinking
that sun you are soaking
that air you are breathing
the world needs more of you
and you deserve the last taste
of its summer light
King Panda Mar 2016
I laid an anemone
on the mask of a crying girl
the young mother
the crouching woman
I am beautiful
says the sirens
says the ever-youthful vegetation
of God

I mixed my blood and nectar
on the mask of a dying man
the decay of kiss
the resurrection
I am beautiful
says the anemone
says Adonis in his grave

I burned their leaf-stems
on the mask of an artist
the eternal springtime
the life-death-rebirth deity
I am beautiful
says the martyr
says girl as she wakes
to the sirens

I am beautiful
says the head on the platter
I am beautiful

and the woman descends
the bronze invading
the bronze high-handed
the bronze opening
to the gates of hell
King Panda Sep 2018
I am born again
this September morning as
each thorn on the rosebush
breaks pink with the sun

the hummingbird buzzes by,
echoes and springs in
the mist of chamomile flower—
a yellow-bodied bloom and
liquid-sugar disco running over
conscious body,
conscious mind

a chord is struck and
pecks the roof twice—
tap…
tap…

and I see god for what she is—
suddenly and always present as
two birds dance their wings
over a cradle of planted flowers
King Panda Jun 2016
this is my excavation to
the days coming along
running hands with laughter
throwing it down on the table
straight
flush
okay, cool


sister, these things don’t matter
when we’re twisting into the sun
with pants that are too short
the fountain rich with
iced chai
tangled with the peculiar
the beautiful
through these moments
I commend
our hearts for finding each other

love is always on the move
as sure as shoe shine
as mahogany
like timidity to relinquish
to let the universe take hold
and instill this emotion
into my body
fit it all in my heart
O, singer of love
fit it all in my heart
the knell
the reverberation
the cotton that lands
on your hair
the sunscreen stuck in my ear

we are a sketch of two travelers
sleeping under stars
the fire
finally dies down
the rapture of the universe
is overwhelming
everything flows
everyone is connected
and this music we hear
is constant
like gentle waters falling

this too, sister
makes my cane solemn
and I draw you in the sand
only to watch the tide
wash you next to me
the emotion
wrangled in English
simply means good
simply means
a full listen and
dear sister
because everything begins
and will be remembered always
as love
King Panda Sep 2015
my love has 1000x
the energy of a
dead corpse

viscosity

singing telephone
wire

aeolion
harp

my heart beats
like a rabbit’s

me
the prey
crouching in
tall grass
ears flat
legs ready
to spring
with dusk’s
breath

I will continue
to shake
with this
expression
King Panda Mar 2016
she huddles in
tormented pose
working like a fiend
on her oeuvre’s
final piece
the anatomical agony
of horizontal necks
the three shades
the souls of the ******
abandon all hope ye who enter this mind
the words run
in the shadow of her face
years and years
the pyre’s ash
tormented her features
until her skin turned
grey like the sky
abandon all hope ye who enter
she lost her mind
somewhere in the fire
abandon all hope
on that day
she cried for the sun
abandon
she huddles in
her loose skin
the oils of her flesh
embodying the paints
staining the woman
she once was
King Panda Oct 2015
lover old voice
bed bug boy
timbre distinction of
man vs. boy vs. baby
raspberry at the lips and
bubble beaten air
boy in bed clothes
locked
rolling
sad sad boy down
the steps in a
laundry basket
weathered hands and makeup
prongs boy
you’re cute
let me buy you
a drink
King Panda Sep 2017
I find you
the lappet moth
like slug or bat
with fuzzy ears
stuck dead with
nothing except
the toxins of
my fever
abnormally
high and
boiling
how

perfect it is
to be under
your legs
bugs
or none
my fingers will
do the
crawling for
any insect
camouflaged
in the skin
dig

the nails
now
bits of flesh
under
tiny specks
of blood
gather
and your net
snags
words I’ve
never uttered
King Panda Mar 2016
God
what have I created?
such fire
and sin
spewing from my
pen
drawing blood
from all of these
prisoners
the devil
spilling out like
vapor
from the cracks
in my
door
such poison
am I
such a delicate
observer
of death
King Panda Sep 2015
play
parallel range of
solitary confinement
omnipotent panic linking
experience
developed underwater
predictable anger
theories of the
mind
jammed in a mason jar
left to ferment
for years near extinct
then
ahhhhhhhhhhhh…
release of the rotten
the aged and
contracted
this involuntary drama
where you call
only to say
*bye
see you later
King Panda Oct 2017
The birth of our sun wrote megalithic,
two-word bursts of observable heat to life.

It pounded the density of a billion
squealing animals and thought itself
star—a pencil

being lifted by an oven-mitted hand
somehow deft, fortune-telling
witch.

sun—which will, in time,
bow out to a goodnight city
where every light is eaten

by dark-spelled window—no reflection
of flame,
no kiss of magnet—no

just cold death to
the bones—a molded meatball
dancing in a spiral once believed

to be beautiful.
King Panda May 2018
I shred you as cedar
to eat your smell—
a crick of words to ultra face-off
between bone-splitter and bliss
I

am your writer
and my heart’s cavalry
pounds your lips
with sweetness
the

submission of sugar
the

taste of honey
the

number of times
I’ve

had you in comb
buzzing your fuzz-ectomy
into a new mind of flower
to be pollinated
with the lilac breeze
of my going
King Panda Aug 2017
death:
an abnormality—
deep prints left by
heavy boots filled with water
and washed away by
summer’s end.

grief:
a metal
sensation denude of
coldness—swelled up again
and again from life’s ***** driving
deeply.

I suppose you couldn’t
help but steal away.
you (now endangered
ghost) left your
trace fossils moted,
gray and cold.
our memories of you
divorced from the
mountain’s path—
a wound raised
higher and higher
to a crystal peak
where your soul
was plucked cleanly out.

we built cairns to
mark your going
and stories to signal your
inevitable re-arrival.
we welcomed the heavy contact
of fire felt in the
middle of the chest
and watered
arches cut beneath
the eyelids.
we felt the frigidness of
lit feet gliding
above mountain frost
and set forth your
eternal journey
to the solar eclipse.
but somehow
we lost your trace fossils
frozen in the rock.

where did you go?
who found you?
why?

these are the questions
of extinction of the
physical body
but the soul is
unmatched in
its uncertainty.
if it exists, it leaves
upon time of death
and reenters when looked
at through shielded glass.

soul:
a mountain
view, black and polished
by an unfurled moon. its
brother sun not far
behind.
RIP, my dearest friend. You will be forever missed.
King Panda Dec 2017
spark the flask—the vitality
of natured *****
and

tears (they fall again)

releasing the bloodied heron from
sleep—

yesterday,

I drew a lead around you
and harnessed your heart
like a dog and (for the first time)
you

were on your own,
schmaltzy from

daddy’s liquor.

this

blindfolded euphoria
creeping in channel 99’s

static—how

I’d drink you whole
until my toes swelled up

rough and one-rooted
King Panda Mar 2016
every profile of the body
drapes of a fallen dress
the flowers twang
the bassoons
the wooden harps

the human body is a temple
with the purpose of changing
into new forms
ephemeral
beauty
or love
or passion
or life

the metamorphosis of another
the brother
the kiss
the flowers of evil
the death of a maiden

Ovid
hear me
Ovid
love is simply a measure of
bumps and holes
Ovid
love grows out of soft marble
Ovid
we are one

the mythology of
passion ensues
the act encased in
fire
King Panda Feb 2020
My God is not a genie.
He does not make crosses out of mushrooms
Nor flying angels out of hammerheads
And each night, I lay out a bowl of vinegar
To absorb the rot of my nightmare
And each morning I sit in the cool water to rinse
I wash the windows and their screens
I vacuum the baking soda from the curtains
I place sage leaves behind my back molars
And kiss the earth before my little altar
So said my Lord after the clouds broke
To reveal a hidden blue bond in the sky:

You will not write of pain any longer.
Life will be real.
Love will be the horseshoe that never
Leaves its hoof.


A stranger told me once,
cleanliness is close to godliness.
He told this to me having not bathed for months.
He told me this with two devils behind his pupils
And picked up his 4-stringed guitar with a broken bridge
And sang until the sun-bleached the black of dawn.
That morning the sun rose to scream-o and I left
The stranger in the purity of truth. A miracle happened.
A miracle happened.
King Panda Oct 2015
this is where you
own our love
purse your lips and
twist mine
because I am the one who has
to sleep without
you no compromise
you said
as I ran my feet
over
the smooth 12,000
threads but no
body

even the patter of the
rain can’t soothe
it hits my face
in horizontal
crosswind and I sit in
that same fold out
chair on the porch
looking out across the park
at the children playing
in puddles

now when I think of
your highlighted jaw line
I am truly gaping at
the mirror that shiny
shiny reflection where my
eyes pop blue
and I’m magnetized at
your breathy yawn

what’s in your head?
what caused this
boiling
this cream that
settled on my coffee?
actually
already
easily
I am forgetting
interestingly
intriguingly
amazingly
you still taste sweet
when I blast music
in my car and then I hear
myself uttering
*thank you.
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