On a chair
On a cliff
My back is straight
My arms are stiff
It churns
On angular
Axis
Gracious
Then Gaunt
Back and
Forth
Momentum
Momentous
Backwards?
Nothing
Just the chair
Rocking
Tipping
Anxiety
Anticipating
I flail before
Straightening
Caught once
Again
Always always
Hesitating
Again
I am coughing
Again
I am drowning
See me smiling?
It’s quiet
Screams sent
Screeches screamed
But only when
Slumbering
Silence kept
Returning
Is the Sanatorium moving?
Except the grime
My lungs secreting
Drowning
My coughs in my arm
There is no sign
There is no alarm
Just is
Is
Is
Rocking
Back
And forth
Coughing, stumbling
And finally finally
Falling

I flail before
Straightening

Women throw themselves in front of it
With actual freedom
Faces are drawn out in wild arrays by it
Alive finally in abandon

Screeches shrill sounding
Significant in their speech
Shrill speech they screech
Not ever silencing
Loud
Not tempered but proud

It’s echoes
Of crackles
Echoing
Cackles
It’s complimenting
The women naked and needing
Complimenting

Feel feel. Feel
Warmed for the first
With their own voice
With their own feet on the earth
With themselves

With who?
With whom.

Autumn comes cold
Campfire feathered fathers
“You’re just young and becoming old”

With who?
With whom
Cut off at curfew

Passive apathy persuades
To find warmth away; Away.
Alone again I find myself today
Strong specter in silence
Soft snowflakes
Missing when day breaks
Sleeping songs
Slip into my headphones
Shutter slipping
Sound skipping
Everyday
Monotony
Every movement
Is extraordinary

Cold cuts crisp
like
Cracked lips
With who?
With whom
Cut off at curfew

Now nowadays new
Without you
I have myself to
Have myself too
Cut me off at curfew
With who?
With whom

The Wainscot Weasel lost an eye to a fight with a bird,
But it’s what he did next which makes him absurd.
It’s because he fell in love with a fish in a pond.
In another life he might have belonged,
But his fur had no scales and his single eye swam with tears,
So from a distance he watched her swim through the months and the years.

A year is millennia for a young weasel to wait.
A year is a long time for even an animal to contemplate.
The sun lingered on the water, its surface filled again from the trees.
A collection of orange smudges then reflected the leaves.

The frogs have all croaked and new birds’ calls now echo,
And still sat a lonely, but quite happy fellow.

He followed her tail’s drag through the painting of his existence,
And finally he could no longer put up resistance.
He lowered himself to the pool where she swam,
And the Wainscot Weasel was never heard from again.

The past is the dirt hidden behind the *** walls like it’s not even there.
Roots have been dug dry by clumsy paws before, and a then the grimy, smiling face spoke true and clear,
“You'll only feel comfortable being naked in front of the blind without glasses.”
So please play off the naive smudges resting under my lower eyelashes.

I Lowered my eyelashes.

It’s when it’s seen in the right light angled 30 degrees above the left cheekbone.
It’s when it blisters outside and a mirage sits heavy on the empty road.
It’s when being is to be seen as a composting collection of freckles and scars,
But nothing kills weeds like seeing new flowers and thinking they’re bazaar.

They are Bazaar.

I’ve been used to skinning my knees with smiles to shake off the trauma.
It’s just a hurt, I know that it hurt, so why even bother!
Take it, prune it, and display it in a vase on the windowsill,
But I’ve tried, I’ve failed, and I won’t try again to make roses less hostile.

I Made Roses less hostile.

A dog is a dog and a cat is a cat because a plant is a plant and the sky is the sky.
The way I’ve been told is to radically accept it all to get by,
But it’s when you reach your fingers to the sun through your squint and the heat,
And realizing you’ll only feel as warm as the dirt that’s been curled under your feet.

Growing over your Feet.

A road trip in late spring
With the street lights flying by
Over my worn out eyes
Lying lazily on the leather door
Forehead against the window
Racing raindrop
Time trials
The radio buzzes a melancholy voice
Low and long
The warmth of your hand on
Mine is all I can concentrate on
I know above the whirling lights
Stands Orion and Ursa Major
Who circle each other
Waiting for an opening
And we’re just driving right through the middle of the conflict
Acting like galaxies aren’t erupting into black holes
And the universe isn’t becoming smaller one star at a time
But even in the coldest part of space
There’d be your hand

You; accented by a melody of color like every time we explore the world around us
Underneath the purple sky with the streetlights turning everything orange like a Halloween night
Underneath a pink sunset where everything was gilded in golds and yellows
Even in pitch darkness with the distant electrical buzzing of the abandoned construction site
Where if any light did show it was through the glassless windows
Distantly they provided no guidance through the maze we were exploring
But still we made our way through
Dodging large holes floors up and climbing questionably safe ladders
We made our way to the roof and lit cigarettes to add our own small light to the firefly buildings in the distance
And that’s where I fell in love with you
You who aren’t my savior or my only hope in this world
But someone who I’ll carry the water for because I know you have the snacks
On whatever hike
On whatever journey
It’ll be us in the same pace
Side by side
And there’d be your hand

Are my feet too big for my body?
Because I feel that the gravitational force on it
Centers me too hard to the ground
And it’s hard to lift either one to progress

Are my hands unilateral of each other?
Because it feels like every time that I reach for yours
The other one reaches for an object to grab hold of behind me
Just to keep me anchored

Are my eyes too wide for my blocky head?
Because I feel like whenever I have a goal and a focus
My limbs swing wildly at everything else
Grasping for distraction on anything of interest

I keep remembering that you have been the only one
That I could still daydream about being just a thought
In your otherwise always busy mind

I wonder if ever a tornado lands and you look for shelter
Only to remember that you once saw land upon the horizon
My own rusting tankard that looked like the shadow of oasis

I hope that you can remember what could have been on the shores of the Titanic
That all the years on the dry deck could have tasted less salty than the sea
And the exposure will feel so warm on your skin that it leaves burns