Narrow ways, guild the asphalt freedom
wrapped in a steel bumper
ruining someone's day
with necessary body-shop work.

I've seen these steps before
felt this magnetism
been pulled so close
and here it is again.

Just
a
simple
step...
and...

Decision, vision, precision,
collision, scission, excision.

She pulled the trigger
blasting away all that was good
now null and void, ineffective.

The skull of love exploding
sprayed out and penetrating
the dry wall behind
like grenade fragmentation.

Now, there is no coming back.
Now, there has been a final solution.
Now, death permeates and infiltrates
the cracks made in the home
of all they had built.

The things you'll never know
The things I'll never say
The things you don't understand
The things that are only for me
a dark window I look out
a dark web of onion layers.

Someday I'll see you again,
and that will equal all the pointless counseling and
therapy sessions that only delayed my inevitable.

All the things of life:
love
***
learning...

mean nothing in the end,
so why should they matter now?

Someday.

I look forward to it.

I grew us a garden
at least that's what I say
but it was really my way
to show you that new things
can always grow.

Peppers, fleshy sheen
Jalapenos, green
Lavender, my eyes roll back

Your time signature
has changed
and there seems nothing
I can do to explain

Why the peppers are rotting
Why the jalapenos are dead
Why the lavender is dry and barren

So I roll my hand into
the dry, dead soil
of a garden neglected
and all the years we had,
like dirt,
runs away
through my fingers.

I want us to survive
the
heavy times
lost times
hurting times
sadness times
empty times
it-feels-like-there's-no-way-out times.

The faded indigo
that bleeds across the page
dampens all the hope
yet I will fight with all the rage.

I want us to survive.
I want us to survive.
I want us to...
I want us...
I want...
I...
I love you.

You say you've
given
all the love you
have.

Every
last
bit.

And
Love contracts
Love cools
Love dies

But
Love relives
Love warms
Love grows

Love finds the way
like a grass blade
from concrete.

If you were a worm,
I'd spend my days in dirt
letting you run through my fingers
along my gentle hands.

If you were a worm,
I'd spend my money on earth
rich, black, loose
where you could live.

But you are not a worm.
You are a human being.
And as a human is
infinitely more complex,
so is my love,
infinitely exponential.

The moments after death
may carry the
Images
Sounds
Feelings
Memories
In an extended,
Lifetime-long,
dream-state.

We've had so much
loved so much
lived so much
cried and sighed and
gave so much.

We have so much
love so much
live so much
cry and sigh and
give so much.

Of all the stars
you glimmer, intense.

And most important to me,
is all your future tense.

Your body
is a temple
I'd crawl to,
****** knees.

Wash hands in the holy water
of your eyes
kneel at the altar
of your thighs
confess my sins
to your mouth.

My love
pure
like new.

If ever
questioned,
know
it's true.

My eyes
dilate
when I look
at
you.

I love you far beyond the stars
This universe is so small compared
The churning, spinning infinity
Is nothing next to the love for you in me.
My little girl
My only one
Who, if life stabbed with time,
heartbreak, confusion, and fear,
I would hold you up
I would never let go
even long after
this Universe
is cold.

He couldn't understand,
it was so bright one day.
"Never forget, my child," he said
"Every flower fades."

Purple feathers guard
the weeping willow'd face.
When time cannot near to touch,
Love somehow always finds a place.

She's just a little girl.
Please, just leave her be.
The way she looks at me
shows me eternity.

So leave her in peace,
this cold-bed night alone,
for sure her heart knows
which way is home.

A skin of ice
so fragile still
lit by the sky
and beautiful.

The warming sun,
is higher now
frozen wings
and solid vows.

"Shake me loose,"
she said to me,
"help to repair
my galaxy."

And Winter's not quite here it seems
Despite the white and hopeful dreams
And every moment left with her
I keep and hold intact forever.

"So when you're lost,"
to her I spoke,
"I will make sure
your stars aren't broke."

Distanced distractions
now too close
arrange my Catopaxi,
inverse flow
the molten snow
from every crevasse
to the waiting sea.

Wouldn't it be easier
if life
made more sense
than that
last line?

I have a box of tools,
useless,
and debris.
Pistol-pin,
rifle-lock,
shorn and ****** knees.

I lay here only
motionless
in a flood.
Turn me over,
face to Sun,
mercurial soul of blood.

If there is no kingdom
you still are my Queen.

If there is no world
you still are my Ground.

If there is no universe
you still are my Sun.

If there is no life
you still are my Breath.

I saw you out in the water
thought you were waving,
but you have been
drowning.

I'm swimming out now,
I've realized my mistake.

I'm going to pull you ashore,
or drown trying.

Passing out at pulpit
never assuaging
signal lines fraying
straying lights praying
playing heights failing

Corona solitude
ember has a magnitude
un-burden your burden
fail the feathers: fire, ice, leaf.

Is this a dream,
or am I just remembering
a trinity?
Is it minus one?

If I've coagulated,
then the emptiness lost
is a cancer I will remove.

"Dasehra, make these shackles go away. Dasehra, as long as I am injured. Dasehra, as long as I remember." ~ Cedric Bixler-Zavala

One: 24 hour denial
Two: Tears
Three: Try to stuff it down
Four: Fail
Five: Tears
Six: Completely breakdown
Seven: Go to hospital because you wish it were you
Eight: Destroy all semblance of normal
Nine: Tears, fear
Ten: She makes you realize the sky has fallen in
Eleven: You realize again, a star explodes, you hadn't seen the light
Twelve: Love

1 Tbsp. disbelief
1 cup shredded heart
2 Tbsp. self hate
1 whole core life memory, shredded
2 minced cloves, bitter
2 teaspoons of copy-cat extract

Mix into a leather loop.

Put your neck in,
pantomime.
Almost wish
that clip
stuck.

Pretty potent,
Portent of Doom,
lift up your eyes -
blind by the Moon.

How can I be loved
When it pushed all love away
How can I be good
When it pushed all goodness away
How can I be alive
When it pushed my life away?

Veins in leaves
Air on my face
My love for you

If I could hold you a thousand times
it'd never be enough
If I could kiss you a thousand times
it'd never be enough
If I could love you a thousand times
it'd never be enough
But if you could hold me
just once
and never let me go
it just might be enough.

Fly, little bird
find your peace
know you were loved
fighting against growing up
for years
together.

From "we love Satan"
to "Franken-Mamma"
to late night rides
and jumping medians at 2AM
facing head-on collisions
with life.

So fly, little bird
the time is now,
fly.

A halo
of blonde blacklight
Skin, stretching
A canvas
Luminous
The shadows
are wet

Beads of water
cling to the glass edge
I glide along.

I've been unaware
holding this head under water
driven in by tiny bones
ossuary of the lines on your
face.

He's been stirring
water pours off as he rises
attracted by brittle bones
sarcophagi of dreams
broken.

There is no greater clarity,
No greater freedom,
than a pistol barrel
in your mouth.

I purge sans binge
I ***** scars onto everyone around me.
My guilt: a summation.
Now, if I could only figure out why
I keep sticking fingers down my throat.

Oh amber, foam-ed memories,
cast about my brain.
The evening tide pulls me away,
sooner than later, I'm afraid.

These cells are full
bloated
swollen
the point of splitting,
the membranes taut
rigid with
tension.

Touch me,
ever so gently.

I'll come apart,
a fine mist.

I don't know
if the blankets are enough
spindled about my head as they do,
suffocating the desire right,
left,
out the skylight
and into the blood
that sleeps above me.

Wrinkle pastel ribbons
into your mouth
right down your throat
into the pink folds of flesh,
down deep.

How can we philosophize,
when we are no better?

Coming down the carpet
between Iowa, drawing toes.
You still feel it...
the taste of chlorine (I think so)
5 AM,
              6 AM,
                          Midnight.

She's
up
on
me.

She has descended
her wings bursting forth
like molten metal.

I can't.

I tell her,
"This is the end
of everything,
and if I enter,
I will not survive."

Do mother birds mourn
when baby birds leave the nest?
Well I'll bet the pain of two at once
is something difficult to express.

I could watch it
I could see
If that could ever
be enough for me.

Do you ever get so low that so low becomes slow?
And I never dramatically quoted "that I was on a sinking
ship."
or that this heart is relinquished to obscure riddles
cement limbs
everything pale yellow-hued
cracking knuckles
limbic askew

Oh to hang (calm down)
from the neck (i said relax)
of you (see?)
but not like a necklace (how cliche')
but an albatross (as i do).

There's a Greyhound destination
stolen from the eerie
little pieces of falsetto voice carrying me
through the end of times like
Revelation could make you wet,
I'll make you ***,
split between what should be
and
what was done.

Because everyday I fall
a little bit
behind.

The first time I ever heard the term
"Manic-Depressive,"
I was seventeen.

I walked into Andy's house,
to see the oil of his father
splayed across the couch,
in a still pool of ink.

"That's my dad. He's
Manic-Depressive,
and just gets like that sometimes."

I painted that memory into the fire of my brain,
carrying with me the fever dreaming,
the terror,
the praying to never be
like Andy's dad.

did you ever fall
into the deep end?
he looked as though to fall
but in the end, he dove.

I've collected Fathers like trading cards.
My first is the very common, "Abandonment Dad."
I've also got the "Distant Stranger and Sometimes Estranged Dad."
Then, I've got doubles of "Dead Dad."
If you have the rare "Decent Dad,"
I'd gladly trade a double.

Weight presses
concludes everything,
decides what is nothing,
whips an errand boy to its whim.

Pressure,
withstood
at the promise
of jewels.

Wrapped like candy in your skull
the skin crawling off the bone,  
exposing your white lie life.

"You'll end up the same as him, you know."

His cigarette burnt the faded complications of my life.

"Yeah. I know."

He was so far down, looking up the light was nothing.

"How dramatic of me," he thought "they can't wait, can they?"

Maybe if he just broke the rules a bit farther he could be
jonesing for that hit of pure white
Beachy Head again,
and everything would be gone.

The lumination was just that: fake.
He was just that: break.

"The only way out, is through," said Frost.
"If you're going through Hell, keep going, " said Winston.

"Well I'm not in Hell, Winston, and I can't move through it, Robert."

And so he scraped the ***** root-veined wall with his cheek,
rolled eyeballs down,
and started moving his toes into the earth below.