you swept the ashes of winter
lit red and ****
drawn naked with smoke
and coal
still glowing
in the shadow of paper flowers
pressed to walls of plaster
and stone

today, i found mana in the corner
of a coffee shop and shared it
with your ghost.

leaving is relative.
"you"is just a view of an elephant
up close.
melt a bit,
then tell the splitting
elegance you'll help it
blend back into the hues
you've given different
pet names to.

headspace.
moon.
deadweight.
truth.
a ruse?
a route?
a mutiny?
a few ravens loot putrification
of any useable patience
in the pay-to-play waiting game.

get over it
or get some beauty sleep.

You
       j
       u
       m
       p
         start my machine-heart,
Fingers plucking at dust_coated wiring, slick with dark oil

Ear pressed to my bloodless mouth, my digital murmur a mechanical purring

You
       j
       u
       m
       p
         start my machine-heart, fingers coaxing a little warmth
into the epicenter, a tiny nugget of coal from your heart to mine

I burst aglow and I'm a hearth and I belch out warm delicate red-flames.

Make me live, dear
Make me live and roar

what we fear as death is just
decor.
victorian, french country, industrial,
rustic;
doesn't matter.
the bones are the same.
some people expire smiling in
neon pink plastic lawnchairs
or pierce the veil ******* themselves on dove-grey french provincial settees from the 18th century.

we have numbed ourselves in our
endless pursuit of complexity;
walked off the precipice of that
final ecstatic unraveling
while wide-eyed and trembling
at the sight of aesthetics,
as cheap as they are fleeting.

we must garder à l'esprit that it all burns to ash, singular in characteristic, that is scattered by winds indifferent to any distinguishable feature in the
many beliefs twisted into the teeth
of sleeping behemoths dreaming of feasts they had yet to awaken to.

it, what we fear, is shapeless.
the absence of all accumulated
delusion, confusion, or fluid lucidity.
ancient.
a non-locality that is the total
sum of the All collapsing in on
it's most basic components
also collapsing in on...elsewhere?

i'm done.
please, come and sit.

tell me how you like your tea?

poetry does not have to be
about love.
in fact, you punch-drunk bleeding heart sap-seekers
smother it like mothers driven to
madness,
pillows in your grasp.

my opinion.

let it be, breathe, dream, or feast upon
whatever it lunges at in the black night unraveling behind the eyes
of any who try lighting fires
for others to write by or cry to
or hide in.

for ***** sake, love that if you
must pry love from something.

just put the ******* pillows down.