Blood tinged with the taste of iron
As it follows the ridges that
Move the fluid like aqueducts, and
Deposit it into my mouth.
I let it pool and sit like stagnant water
Until I spit and paint the canvas
A mosaic of Crimson Red that represents
All the hours that you spent
Drenched in sweat from all the rounds commenced
Never overwhelmed by what you underwent
This red’s respect, across from me
A nodding head with arms and legs, and
He bleeds like me.
Inside these ropes we are all silent poets
Unspoken codes and a violent
Calm devotion to only speak with
Measured fists and feints.
Inner pain hidden behind punch combinations
Like a writer hides his heart behind a metaphor.
You never see the crowd all circled round
Like a pack of laser focused vultures
Looking for scraps of skin to feed
Some inner need to watch a warrior bleed.
They root for me, as long as I stand tall upon my feet, but
A buckled knee creates a switch of scenes,
Now they scream and plea for him to finish me.
I list as if this ring sits
Atop a ship hit broadside by rogue waves, but
A fighter hides his pain within a flame
Kept deep inside a hanging lantern
That adorns his heart and keeps him standing.
Now he moves with clenched fists
To man the sails and turn the ship, and
Aim it right at his, because if your drowning
You know **** well he is coming with
Body shots placed straight under his ribs
Now he sinks quick, gasping for air
Afloat on hope alone, searching for a beacon
To lead him from the deep end, but
He heads for the cliffs at the end of your fist, and
Your shoreline is his jawline
He washes up stiff, rinsed out and spit
Like the blood on your lips.

What a silence
Gagged by all my swallowed pride
A man with two minds
Sitting at an empty breakfast table
Crumbs caked in dust
Sleep hangs from my eyes
Like four fingers gripping a ledge
Hoping to be pulled in through an open window, but
Content with dangling forever
Those that I love are my strangers
Overcast in August
Sedated on the bank of a lake
Sifting through rocks
Hair hiding her face, from my memory
Silently, I can write down her name
Yet moments most important
Are just the pages where I fill in the blanks
How many tears have I replaced
With forced smiles and sundresses
Swaying with grace
As you run through the wind and into my arms
How far have I waded
Into deep waters of fiction
What lies sunken and drowned
Beneath the calm surface I have created
What will be found
When the depths are dragged
Will this lake give up my dead?

Oval emeralds peer through a man made of glass.
Casement windows carry the crash of turquoise waves,
From the coast of Costa Rica, through the verdant green
Jungle trees that surround us.
Two shoulders slung with Capuchin monkeys.
Crystal waterfalls trace UV rays
Around the blonde, attached to every neuron in my mind.
Precious moments render me blind.
Lost in the liminal space between
Two doors in a hallway.
Before and after; the passing chapters
That flip away like calendar pages.
Ticking seconds of the present, present us
With all we can own.
The nods and winks miles from the beach.
Bereft of worries about what’s left.
Unbound
From the doors we choose to walk out.

Hey, would you like to be friends, or
At least play pretend and
Have discussions that pass lifeless
Like a leaf being pushed by the winds.

You could even keep my shirt at your crib,
So years later you can forget
Whose even it is. Like remembering
Which kid drew this scribble
Hung up on the fridge.

Man, all these frayed connections are
Dimming the lights in this decrepit
Building. One huff and puff
Could turn this structure to rubble dust.

I have no mind to wink or blink
An eye, at one word half *** replies, unless
It reads goodbye. Tired of tap dancing
On the precipice of caring, or
Not caring less.

My lucid sleeping has drawn the gaze
Of these dream demons that scheme against me.
This time of night, even the monsters have slinked away
Back inside their closet.

You have not known fear, rational or otherwise,
Until you lie powerless to the paralysis
That the dream demon wields so elegantly against me.
Like gripped by a vice, my body is held stiff.

My eyes wide open, or so my mind is led to believe
By the amorphous foe playing tricks with my deepest grief.
Contorting memories into the present moment,
A bedroom near identical to my own.

Hospital white walls, and the same clothes strewn about.
A faceless lady lay next to me, curved in shadows. My hand
Reaches out, but hovers just shy, as if set in stone.
Why can’t I move? One more attempt proves of little use.

The faint rustling of hands through silverware drawers echoes
Off a cold kitchen floor, bouncing off hallway walls, and
Slipping through my ajar bedroom door. Little hairs
Render salute, as the sound crawls like ivy up my spine.

Just then, I am stabbed by six figures seven times and burned
Alive, but yet I do not die. Oh how I struggle to move
An inch or two, but this formless force denies. I demand
The demon speak to me, but before the thought can make its move
The loop repeats. I never die, but I always bleed.

I feel everything, and nothing at once.
Sadness: that others seem to always
Stand with their back to me, and
Sorrow: for the indifference
That lies in my heart.
Walk away,
And with each step that widens your gait,
Run.

Reach escapes velocity, and
Pull yourself from my gravity.
Like a white hole I repel
All good natures from my orbit.
A perpetually scarred surface, from
Periodic collisions.
The heavens send their vessels,
Like tears raining from the sky.
Only to be burned up in my atmosphere.

Death never quells
The tin ringing of its wedding bells.
Our own flesh, betrothed
To dirt, and consummated
As a glossy wooden box penetrates
Beneath the surface of the Earth.

How we tailor time to match,
A fitted formula that suits our thoughts.
Trails of missed connections,
Lead like breadcrumbs to
The fraction of a second, when you spoke too soon.
Your moment is lost. Words spoken
Forever emblazoned on the stone slab
Carried around as personality.
What you always meant to say,
Only ever reads as regret. We never count the steps
Between triumph and catastrophe.
Life is a burnt-out church house. A one-man quire
Singing sorrow, match in hand.