Feathers burst forth
seared with sunlight.
The coast is clear,
baby girl,
the waves are breaking
turquiose shores,
and my heart
is aching to consume you.

So many wounds,
bled out over years
like ink on a test
failed over and over and over

turned into

So many scars,
raised up on the flesh
like the rounded sides
of speed bumps made too high.

will become

So many forgotten memories
faded like ink turning invisible in the sun
like cement smoothed by the erosion of time.

I am getting closer,
princess.

miles where I think about you
feet where I see you
inches where I smell you
millimeters where I breathe you
contact where I feel your skin
(hair standing on end)
inside you
(fingers, tongue, ****)
filling you with my ***
where we are whole,
and one.

I've been drowning under your weight
too long
in stances of submission
weakened by your laugh,
ceaseless.

Watch my lightning bugs sink
into death, let them burn
out and collapse these lungs
into delicate origami butterflies
like the fragile hatred
I feel for you.

Squeeze the bone until the chalk runs dry
escaping into your body
unwound like chalk
on a whiteboard.

Lust should only allow so much;
but you find places, cracks in this
brittle sidewalk, where
you grow through
green,
like grass.

Well she lives, a life allowed
permitted apostrophes
clinging to the nerve endings
in my mind.

Where are you, suddenly,
a cry from the night.

Let me wreck you,
bind you across the world
in hunger wrest
control away for you.

Scalpel through
the ample blue
ravages a belly
never true.

When right is lost
a cashmere sentence
is **** in mouth
all that's left to us?

I have:
coconut lips
wrist bindings
finger marks
hand prints
tongue on skin
palm on ***
nails on throat
stubble on neck nape
gentle caress
tender heart
shivering words
rough chin on inside of thighs,
soft,
wet.

Do you have:
lip to gently bite
hips to trace with feathers
collar-bone handles
eyes to drown in
body to wrap around
legs to intertwine
voice to whisper
scars to lick
mouth to breathe into
and hair to hold like a leash, until
it becomes release,
collapse,
lost breath,
speechless,
rocked to sleep?

I wrote your name
onto my skin
with the permanent marker
of a razor.

And when you left...

I washed it away
from my body
with the cleansing power
of a blowtorch.

Her words
bring me to earthquakes,
if I had held someone before
I no longer recall.

I am lain bare,
barely aware
of these binary borders
holding me back.

Her body curves like flowers,
I have bent backwards
on numbing fingertips,
and still she sits,
a spell
possessing my soul.

There were always words I could have said.
I could've danced right off your edge, World.
Instead,
I stared into the Star's direction (hypnotized) for nearly a decade,
and stumbled, blind, off your edge, World.

This aircraft is in flames.
The fuselage, broken.
My fingernails, bent.
My knuckles, white.
My parachute, missing.
My life,
flashing before my blind eyes.

My bones reach you too late.
Would
excuses heard as lies
lead our ghosts into
their graves?

My skin soaks you too soon.
Would
heart-break lived as death
give my life a way
into my tomb?

My loyalty ***** your face.
Could
prayers answered in vain
let my life ever
escape itself?

Sometimes
I feel spread so thin,
like a man who desperately searches for his home,
and suddenly realizes
he is a vagabond,
and has none...

I feel like you are the only real thing I've had.
I feel you in my heart.
I think about your taste, your scent.
I think about you.

I think of you as a child to me.
I think about you all the time.
I think about my seed pumping into you, your *** up, my feet planted forward
(you know the position)
I think about you.

I think about your smile.
I think about that giggle.
I think about your eyes rolling back as you ***.
I think about you.
I think about you.
I think about you.

How the warm water seeps over your skin
in a bath that is too cold as it slowly pours into the water,
How the purr of a cat sometimes hits that cracking note
as it sits, legless, on your lap in Winter,
How a man can feel like a child again
when a woman undresses,
How I can feel so certain,
your bared back against my naked chest.

Sparrows burst from my head
like a broken breeze
an explosion of feathers
black and blonde,
and I can't hold your memory
as much as I'd like.

My churning gut,
full of sour milk,
running like a river,
full of playing children,
and chemicals.

And like the pointless energy
of these words,
my fists crack pointlessly
against the depth
of a black-water ocean,
filled with you.

I won't even speak to you today,
I know it.

And I want it to be your fault,
but I feel it's mine.

My heart cost less than I expected.
You spent every cent of it.
You borrowed against its little value,
ruined my ability
to ever lend it again.

I'm so close to slipping away
burning life into irradiated ash,
slipping beneath the waves,
and escaping.

Baby, let me break.
Make me happy,
lonely, aching to
love.

Able only
to hate.

the trunk, withered
the leaves, fallen
the Winter, dark

And as I sat there, in the midday
That tree like family skeletal
My hope was present
My hope was bright
My hope was you.

All the things, unsaid.
The thoughts, unsaid
behind a blue light lcd
staring into the white space
I do not fill with the:

I miss you so much and it hurts
I so very much enjoyed our time together
And maybe I'm over emotional
And maybe my vision is blurred
But I hurt when you aren't here
And I hate this machine
I've become.

And I worry she tore all my veins out
replaced them with wires, unfeelingly
pumping signals to this lead heart,
just gears and steam.

I am a machine, not a man.
I am efficient
I am strong
I am unfeeling
And I destroy everything
I touch.

I am grocery bags,
carried through your rain,
now split at their soggy bottoms
spilling what you filled me with
(fresh produce, water, sustenance)
all over the ground
like rotten, polluted, abandoned
trash.

This is dedicated
to the dead words
deleted.

Tied to furniture
in near-weeping posture:
lust can always bring you here,
carried in its spider-cradle arms,
eager for my marks
across your hidden spots.

I am your ***** little secret,
*****.

I have erased my name,
in shadows lurk,
behind barely closed curtains,
watched by Gideon Bibles,
hazed in blue television light,

your only sound,
barely abled gasps of,
"Yes, Daddy...please, Sir.
Yes, Daddy...hurt me more."

Tied down,
bruised,
bitten,
opened,
all your secrets revealed,

collapse
into the pool of *******,
muddle your words just enough
smile your bottom lip,
cutting against your teeth.

I have won the respect of the princess,
shown her the strength she has,
awoken her mind.

My reward is the ownership of her whorish body.

Just like a dream that seems a lifetime,
is often only a few seconds in real-time,
you passed before my mind and heart
making eight years seem like an instant.

Now I am
waking
wondering
if you were real.

Now I am
trying to get up from
the bed that we made
the bed that you sleep on now
rub your sleep out of my eyes
see again
the things that are real.

Earth risks freezing for lack of sunshine at Star's absence
green blades of grass turn brown
fallow ground, brown soil hardens
invaded with spiderwebs of white frost
the animals, frozen in place
the world - a tomb
there is no warmth without the world's
shining orb

the Moon is lonely, no light
to reflect
to hold it
to warm it

She is the One, the one and lonely Star
Burning bright
and like the Sun
it doesn't matter how far her orbit takes her -

the Moon still reaches for the light, his hero...
feels the warm photons
to reflect
to hold it
to warm it

until She spins back to Him.

If I poured myself out onto you
like milk from a glass jug
would the little droplets
sour and stain your love?

I can take you from a minor key,
to a major key.
A bow drawn across your
strings of hair.
The fingers delicately firm, push against me,
that I may push into you.

I wear you like a weapon,
I bring death to every fear inside my gut.

I am a vase,
an Egyptian glass jug that will take every drop I can - careful
for I may overflow,
and we may drown,
smiling shaking *******
squirming stained-glass synchronicity.

The lens is out of focus,
for the first time,
the lens is out of focus.

This mixture of metol and phenidone is making
the edges show
clearer.

So hold me down,
run your fingers across me,
and I'll slide right into focus.

I'm not the power they say I am.
Lost and curdling in my corner,
a broken, brittle man,
shaking in the recesses,
corners in which a
faucet drips blood.

So break, baby, and run.

I am a symbol of death,
and my name is rot.

All spun out like the chaff,
the fire breathing drags on,
clever little jots and tittles thrown in anger.

But nothing good ends well,
as the saying went.

I never wanted anything
but your happiness,
and I will not reciprocate the attacks.

I am not like the others,
and you know it.

I would dig deep:

past the

sun-dress
knee-highs
*******

to the

flesh
scars
secrets

bring back the

joy
confidence
excitement

protect them with my

heart
words and
deeds.

"And every time he woke up in the coldest sweat
Scrawled to the bone with her nails
was the promise that she wouldn't let go..." ~ "Momento Mori" by Antemasque*

I was dreaming
about you
and realized
I haven't dreamed
about her
in weeks.

The sky rains feathers onto your wrists tied down,
your blind eyes nervous,
excitedly worried in the best way.

I am the gentlest man you could know.

I am the roughest man you could know.

In those little contrasts,
wax paper and lace,
milk and alcohol,
cigarettes and oxygen tanks exploding like your body,
when I devour you.

Your wry smile,
smirk the moisture away
on the back of you hand,
drawn across your lips.

Bring me to my knees,
that I may look you eye-to-eye.

Words no longer have meaning.
I strip them of their false hope,
reaching spaces in between,
letters like notes in a song,
between which, the truth
is told.

You couldn't pry this void from me.
I grasp onto it like a greedy child,
sloppy and heady from
your soury-sweet mother's-milk,
drunk like you never were
from my ***.

Sunspots and stutters singled out in the paradox of oil,
dripping like *** I do not want.
Curse my name, break me apart
leave me (hear).
*******.

Help me crawl to you,
who are you?
*******.

Drape me in your comfort, fingers in my hair,
my baby screams, hold your hand on my head,
cradle me in your peace,
death.

Wipe the tears from these sun-burnt cheeks.
This ******* temple shattered,
crushed me beneath it,
crippled my ability to breathe.
Pray for me.
*******.

These brittle teeth are covered in germs.
Let me inside you where I turn my sins over to you.
Who are you?
*******.

I would skin my bones,
cover them in tar,
bathe in alcohol,
light me aflame.
Love me. Hate me.
I do.
*******.

I want you, back of my throat,
past the lips, parted so willingly
around your shaft,
hard and firm.

Let me gag like a *****,
saliva dripping,
I'll be the best *****
who has ever ****** you.

Reach forward, caress you in my hands,
staring up with eyes full of fear
and hope
and relief.

*** for me, baby,
***.

Empty my ******* head out
in one great last blast of passion.

I'm sorry
I can't field the answers to questions
I won't relapse into.

My heart is hurting,
and I can't stop it.
I want to feel again, so badly,
but it's dead.

The muscle is not alive.

Just like my writing,
this boy isn't real.

I've got so much for you,

(fingers that play twister with yours,

stencils carving your name just above your skin just
barely brushing baby hair around
your navel,

barely breathed words of love,

soft sandpaper stubble to drag out goose fleshed neck nape
as it reaches up to reach my chin,

slightly parted lips grazing yours and then a sudden
gasp of teeth into your skin,

waking wrapped around you in a moment I can make feel
more than a mere instant but like it would never end,

as the sun sneaks its way into the blinds
reflecting soft shadows off of your every angle,
and the power to
take
your
breath
away.)

if you'd only accept it...if you'd only accept it.

A mascara face print, where those tracks of teared-makeup
once ran across your face,
now dormant upon the bathroom stall wall like the print of a mushroom,
forever etched into that Formica board separating defecators from one another
all day long;
save the absent omnipresent five-minute stands that occur as ours did –
**** ******* against a fragile toilet partition as your recurring image
the face mashed against a solid substance,
standing behind you and convincing you of the ***** ***** that you are;

you already know that...but it feels so good to be persuaded this way.

Within
without
within
nothing like a truck load of pain to ease your reservations.

Scrawling drawings in bone coins,
desperately attempt to pull you from a hole of
skipping heart and
tightening chest.

My pen is crooked,
my lines are numb,
and I'm wishing you were awake.

Wake up, heart.
Gently rise, open those eyes and look
at what you could have.

**** the sadness from your bones,
lick the moist marrow clean.
Explode like dust from the Sun,
rain down into my cavernous chest,
spread life back like the flowers that bloom.

Let me die at your feet,
born again into something luminous.

You were railroad track marks
the spots you placed
up and down like pinhole cigarette stains
all across my breaking heart.

You were an escape artist act
up in the sky
like memories of sharp objects
drawn
across our skin.

They say people cut themselves
to feel some control,
but they are wrong.
We opened skin
to make sure
we were still human.

Clamp onto my weakness,
precious.
Where did you run to,
holiness?

Your everything
equaled torn ligature,
some jaw-grinding equation
where I sent prayers,
unanswered.

Strip me naked,
break my bones,
open your heart,
and breathe in the butterflies.

All my hope rests with you, aflame.
The yellow heat of your hair
corrects the simple nothing that rests in my stomach,
a knot of weak loneliness.
I yearn to swallow you down,
my lips and mouth making trails along your skin:
neck, *******, belly, inner thighs.
I drink your honey,
I gorge on the reciprocal desire dripping from your hive.
Like drunken gyroscopes,
my eyes roll back into my skull
at the heady scent of your innocence.
All the meaning
in all the art
in all the places
in the history
of the world,
uncovered and shamed
in comparison to the luminous existence
my breath finds in contact
with your flesh.

I was blowing vapour trails like a dragon,
splitting heart spinning in my
broken head,
when your words arrived.

And you know what?
I have held those
makeup-chasing gestures
down your cheeks
onto your chin
across your chest...

But they meant little as your presence
which never really existed,
did it?

This isn't about you.
This could've been,
but you do not exist.

I should pull over,
but I'm speeding
through myself
too fast to stop.

I'm hurtling towards my rest,
not where the happy go,
but where men like myself go when
in need of water, warm,
to bathe in, cool
to drink
to quench this sandy-fingerprint throat.

A people wandering, lost
the temple, cracked
like spiderwebs spread across the surface,
pain captured in its lattice.

My sight lost from the goal,
for forty years it seems,
I've been lost, but...

I see the oasis, with its
materials with which to heal
the temple,
bring it back,
like the words that are now
coming back.

I go to sing with the gospel,
to cry tears of relief,
in the arms of you,
my temple,
where I kneel
in worship.

It's funny how you notice things
at times
that didn't take a space in your
consciousness
until events
dry brown and husk-yellow leaves
float into your life,
and suddenly,
everything is painted in
their colours:
every song on the radio
every empty place you see around town
every good time you try to have
all the little words...

They all fall into place,
and leak their brittle discord into
the cracks of your life.

I can pretend behind this wall
that I'm okay,
tender little teeth
wear the truth each night,
grinding down to nerves.

I've not gained so much as recently,
as I watch it all
drain
away.

I am just a ghost in your machines
low as binary, weak ink traces
a lost little girl
justice is never wrought
the leftover heart break I thought
and you still occupy
the cracks in my heart.

I long to slip
beneath your surface,
but I freeze everything
I touch.