it is all dead here;
the birds sing bones awake.
slow is the air
when the sky sleeps.
a fringe to hunger for
when the center dims
all glowing notes
is all we feed hope for.

escaping fangs lazily is
just wraiths scraping ancient
havens clean and leaving.

same old shape-changing...

see the bowl?
see the ocher?
this is us silently slumming
through the rush of present
flesh and far-flung mind;
derelict awareness shared
sparingly.

it's all love though.

She has me spun around;
nothing but this comes to
the page.

I'm ok with it though.

tin can transmissions
sent and listened to by entangled  
heartstrings long before
the birthday-balloon-blooming-doomsday-dance-off was
standardized as the answer
to any and all questions
regarding the textured pressure
of her breath blessing my forehead;
a vesper my wretched flesh is desperately stretching towards.

(i know, i know.)

this is a test of will.

(i said i...)

this is that mad dash
into the ashen catacombs
to slash the throat of the
last cackling basilisk
so passionately it shatters bone
into the rapturous jazz
crafted with cracked saxophones,
maps the fastest route
to her faceted fathoms
reconstituting past afternoons
in which i was never fortunate
enough to touch the gravity of her
napping naked beside me.

this has always happened
after a collapsing hasn't-yet
and it's enticing.

a zygote to high hopes
splattered on streets
that lead to Zion;
a new day to pay for
if you got it like that.

america dreams in 4k
and all we have is an
old CRT with rabbit ears.

the revolution will be
printed on recycled
paper and handed out
in the grocery section
of wal-mart.

digital and analog
and minerals and masks.

all is comedy and we don't
laugh anymore.

after all these years of spitting
blood and laughing until it feels
as though ribs have cracked,
there is one fact that never
changes.

one note that persists after
the curtains stop swaying
and the audience has gone home.

one line that seems as though
it is etched into the bedrock
of everything.

it has haunted me throughout
my life, only because i
misunderstood it's attempts
at relaying it's
message through slamming doors
and creaking floorboards.

i've come to know it as grace;
a gentle touch of my face
by someone who loves me more
than i could love anything.

it is that it's not easy being green
and it never will be.

i grow weary of watching
the world sharpen it's teeth
with a rusty file
and trying to smile
at the same time.

who would want to measure
raindrops in a thunderstorm
when you could just feel them
hit your face?

exit stage left when you
want to stretch a minute
into infinity.

that advice came from a ghost
of a man and cost me a cigarette
and a can of Modelo.

worth is relative, i hear.