Cooking beneath the shell
The meat of my thoughts
Like a hermit crab
The boiling of my dreams
Escaping as high-pressure steam
Through tiny fissures
In dye-shifting armor

I never opened up
I never bent or broke
and never cracked
But now is never
All I have, I’m giving back

Plug your ears
To the deafening screams
That no amount of heating
Can make edible
You are the hardness of my shell
Omnipresent and Incredible

double long, triple-strong caffeine pinch
hopping round
cardiovascular road strips;
its hues are bloodshot contrasts
blending well in peripheries
alienating sources
of scarlet origin;
eyelips swallow eyeballs;
impossible to bite on,
for their teeth are on the outside
pulling punches,
stopping short of eye-lashing out

*

the ellipse of Your eyelips
swallows my irises
siamese twin suns
sky-connected
at the luminous breeze
falling asleep on my chest
vivid abreast
the pyre of lungs

as we talk
around in circles
words fall
******* silence

in the east
there is sand, and fire, and oath;
in the west
there is another plague
of the mind and the soul;
in the north
the solitude of every snowflake
can be felt;
in the south
the ancients are rotting
forgotten because
their stories don't sell

“several wolves were introduced...
...rejuvenating vegetation
with the deer henceforth
avoiding those areas”

and now behold sprouting grass
and blossoming branches;
makes you think whether balance
always leans on a quota of violence

I start seeing in my park
the flora is suffering
I’ve let in too many deer
and they’ll eat everything offered;
they know not when to stop
leaving the trees bare *****,
chewing the bark
just because it is there.
And I'm sorry my deer
but our gardens could use some wolves
for the good of the land
(but we’re) learning the hard way,
seeing the truth in
“Too much of a good thing cannot be a good thing”

I'm tasting sugar on my eyelids
Syrup on my irises
Sour on my heartstrings
Bitter in my arteries
But we are more than corporeal
Meant to fly
And cross the boundaries
Transcend the frames of nature’s canvas
Spill our colors farther than the physical
We invent what we do not discover
The horizons and the realms of our future
And I am just like you
A mess of senses that
perception blends into

Lightning is the fleeting thorn of blooming thunder
The self-erasing crack into the sky window
The laceration of the clouds that left no scar
And sealed itself instantly
And bled to life bountiful
Shifting afloat in deep grey

*

The lightning showed me the way
To the burning tree
The clouds were dark with worry
That I would not see
The thunder told me to hurry
Before the earth swallows me

I asked her “tell me now,
Willow, why you weep”
She said “because, my cloud,
No rain has come to me
In a while”

“But you are on the riverbank
how much more water could you want”

“And yet I long for yours
for it's coming from above
and I'm in love with a cloud”

PHONE RINGS
"I should answer it this time, but I won't."
PHONE RINGS
"I should call whoever back, but I don't."
PHONE RINGS
"I'm scared of who it might be."
PHONE RINGS
"I'm deeply worried, that who is calling is, me."
PHONE DIES