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Apr 2016 · 342
Recipe For a Happier Earth
William AL Apr 2016
flesh on stone
soft, crumbles,
mortar pestle
makes ghosts.

all-consuming,
gluttonous fire.
burn the spectres,
create a world
so happy,

dance on graves.
Apr 2016 · 301
Daydream's Addict
William AL Apr 2016
Shutter me closed,
The heart and soul are gone
swallowed by the mind

the next morning, lost in reverie
watched them swirl in *****,
disappear down the drain.
Mar 2016 · 347
Hush
William AL Mar 2016
Rocked to sleep
in a murderers arms,
lazy blood fountain
drains the body,
fills the soul.

You close your eyes,
calmed in the storm.
Mar 2016 · 461
Surgery in the Bath Tub
William AL Mar 2016
Rustled voice,
summer weeds
pierces palms,

blood on flower buds.

grafted wildwood
loves the desert,
dies efficiently
Feb 2016 · 253
Foolish Adventures
William AL Feb 2016
What woodsy boy
could mountains love,
who kisses scars
long bled bone dry
Feb 2016 · 238
Inevitable
William AL Feb 2016
These are mathematics, woe.
Words rewritten and lost
But I know, and you know
the high toll, the stars crossed.
Jan 2016 · 266
And lost
William AL Jan 2016
What good will these words do,
when rocks are want to stay
and the hard places are mountains,
but the gaps and valleys-
blushing.

The western sky is so wide,
Blues to swallow all the green
and keep the good in your throat
with the pain and hypocrisy
filling your lungs.

Oh but what can a man do
when trembling, he admits
that he has [unintelligible]
Jan 2016 · 246
They Say You Write Poetry
William AL Jan 2016
Briefly forgetting
the color of fireworks,
thunderous applause;
my ears ringing.

Tell me what I'm doing here,
why I'm searching a crowd
of faceless strangers.

Don't tangle the stars
that map my way home,
Don't ask me if the flame
is responsible for the moth.
Dec 2015 · 310
Desert Tides
William AL Dec 2015
To ignore the desert winds,
the beckoning of glittering gourges
and dreams of melting rocks
turning to storms of steam.

The doctor worries for me,
my lungs are filled with sand castles
Nov 2015 · 402
Chaotic Genes
William AL Nov 2015
When you are light and choir's angels
it comes like untouchable waves
in oceanic electricty

but entropy bricks
smashing open
twitching birds skulls
these,

these are the things
that hold tangible beauty.

my vows are blood
on your bed sheets,
my hands are tied
to a thousand timelines.
Nov 2015 · 282
Killing Time
William AL Nov 2015
The Shrike, alone in his perch,
does feel the heat of the sun
and at dawn he sleeps
while the world looks on
Oct 2015 · 321
Request Found on Craigslist
William AL Oct 2015
Emerald field by church
Sexton is on vacation
Please send us post cards
Oct 2015 · 489
Breathing Limelight
William AL Oct 2015
The fetus in a womb of smoke,
the way of a delicate warrior
dancing ballet in the dark.

A textbook case of keeping water
tied with a ribbon
til the moon floods your apartment
and you do it all again
at the will of the alarm clock.

This is how you die,
This is how you live.
Sep 2015 · 269
To Die By My Side
William AL Sep 2015
He can paint himself a million colors
but beneath he will always be disintegrating,
and his clothes bring with them
the smell of dust and long-gone water.

He has intimately known the event horizon,
he has kissed the death of stars
with the ashes of his soul.
Sep 2015 · 644
The Family
William AL Sep 2015
My father says
all rivers lead to the sea,
But I am afraid
of boats and piranha teeth.

The whitewater ends
far out in the forest
where fairies grow rings
over the graves killers dug

And I feel like I'm looking up
at police officers, thinking
that they have finally found me.

But they are burying me
beneath the excuses I have made,
I can feel the levees of blood break
to carry me away from them forever.

The last lesson I teach myself
is how to regret.
Aug 2015 · 235
Human Nature
William AL Aug 2015
Can you remember the sky,
in all her thousands of shades
after you've looked into the sun?

Your spotted vision will fade,
and in it's stead leaves the tug
to look again.
Jul 2015 · 376
Epitaph for Earth
William AL Jul 2015
I am breaking apart,
atom by atom.
I am forgetting the clouds,
and how high they could be.

The world is spinning backwards
at a thousand miles per hour,
I'm getting car sick in a rocket
headed for another galaxy.
We are crying out new oceans,
for the ones our children will never know.

Aliens find words carved into the stars:

"We miss home."
If we moved to another planet, would our children still miss the green earth?
Jul 2015 · 413
Skeletons in the Garden
William AL Jul 2015
Surrender, surrender at the door step
of a life so cold it breathes death,
for I have long forgotten
my own mortality.

Wake me at dusk
so I may soothe the restless ghosts
and love the grim reaper.
I have known no life
but the lack of.
Jul 2015 · 336
Self Portrait
William AL Jul 2015
You are a late boy,
star kissed space between the words
of your favorite novella,
drenched in lamp light's beauty

Sun sets the morning
in your closed eyes,
the night lives on
within your dreams
I never said I don't have an ego.
Jul 2015 · 916
Belated
William AL Jul 2015
She is the ocean,
and you:
painfully aware of her finitude.

and you
want to be the universe,
fire and chaos forever.
Jul 2015 · 364
The Growing Ons
William AL Jul 2015
Lilacs growing in rotten teeth gaps,
Fertilized by formaldehyde
and encasing the indigo
jewels of blind eyes,
closed like the heart.

The still lungs a garden
of lavender towering high,
the scent drifting away
beyond the reaches of it's
host's own imagination.
Jul 2015 · 299
Running Runaways
William AL Jul 2015
How lost am I to you,
the last glimmer of hope embedded
inside my brain, inside crumbling suburbia

I want the shadows to take me home,
to a place so far away
no one knows my name,
I become a stranger unto myself.
Jul 2015 · 264
The Dead's Tale
William AL Jul 2015
Drown the moon herself
in her silvery reflection,
hold her under the cresting ocean
until she stops struggling to rise,

Until we die in the sweltering street,
under the weeping noontide sun
seeking revenge for her lover.

This is the price we pay
for forgetting our warnings
Jul 2015 · 268
A Thousand
William AL Jul 2015
how many ways
to love a sunbeam,
            suspended in open air,
            bleaching the dust
                        gathered beneath
                        the tiffany windows.
Jul 2015 · 464
Night's Shadow
William AL Jul 2015
The coyote in the street,
the long lingering memory
on the edges of our town,
where the night is dark
where the moon is bright.

His blood is our blood,
we forget him quickly;
standing in the porchlight,
losing him to time.

Coyote watches us
watching the treeline,
and he understands.

— The End —