I'm talking to my computer
because if I talk to you
I'll uncover
all my rage for you.

You'll cry,
"I can't take this beating."

But you sure took that beating
his **** gave you,
didn't you.

That's right.
It's a statement,
not a question.

And to think
of all the pain
and broken feathers
I spent trying to
save you.

A way to sing the praise
of rotting memories
without the tears
without the years
without the tears
without the years

...

you could come
if you choose.

I'll burn this belly out
churning up coffee grounds
whiskey builds the fire
loss, the kindling
dreams, the fuel
and then you wake
and realize it's
done...

There was no fire left.
There was no good use for the loss.
The dreams...empty
and you realize you're
done...

Open my mouth
cornocopia of
rainbowed feathers
pour out.

I'm speeding down the road
looking at my phone
and the only thing
that's catching my eyes
are the telephone poles
waiting to kiss
my face.

Who would ever see
beyond my flaws
and still want me forever
despite them?

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.

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.

I will never
trust
a woman
again.

Does she know the words hit
like a sudden explosion of colour,
blue, green, red.

I am curled in a mother's arms again,
feel like a child,
and my eyes well up.

No one has ever reached me
the way you did
with your such sweet
simple words.

I've always unfurled myself to you
like a map that guided you
to where you currently stand
and wondered when
you'd roll me back up
and put me away.

I love you
Don't buy me flowers
I love you
Don't leave me romantic notes
I love you
Don't kiss me
I love you
Don't touch me
I love you
Don't come with me on my trip
I love you
I'm moving out
I love you
Maybe I'll see you during the week
I love you
I can't stand being around you most
of the time

I should've loved you better
And I'm sorry for the love
you gave so easily and I neglected
caught up in my sickness
and this ******* disease
which took me away from you
and now we don't know
where we stand
and my feet
and soul
are crying.

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...

The sky is greying
like an old man
and the clouds are so close
to crying your name.

He’s staring into the grains, wondering how what she felt
for him could  have become even smaller than those little marks and flecks on the wood.

She’s staring at the screen, her face awash in the glow she now values more
than what he offers her.

And he’s pushing and squeezing on as hard as he knows…

But she sees him as the enemy, her Nemesis, the antithesis
of what she wants at this moment,
those moments,
moments to come,

Her happiness doesn’t come from him any longer.
His smiles, and words, and care, and love,
holding less real estate in her pretty little head
than dried sauce on a plate
or ***** socks
on the floor
by the door
he now stands behind staring at, wishing her face, aglow,
would be smiling on the other side.

Empty me out
blood,
to the floor.

Open my veins,
hung from the door.

She changed
and gave up on me
until I
gave up on us.

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.

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.

Quiet...
   .. .
      . . .
         . . . there are feathers here.

The blue you use to wear me clean,
knows nothing of the day-stains
I wear.

They do not care.

I am purified by your blue,
deep, a shade beyond the glow of nostalgia.

Come to me again, in this copper fever dream,
rest your temple before me,
that I may make an offering unto you,
oh Queen.

I could only count so high.
That was my regret.
It's a secret I'll always tell.
So accept me, my sweet meats and myrhh,
toma mis lágrimas, y arreglame.

It's so quiet.
The kind of
quiet
that
kills.

Not a familiar heart
for hundreds of miles.

And my heart
runs up and down
the aisles of you

searching...
searching...

out on the lost highways
of our path
into the unknown.

The last time I saw my son
he was smiling
waving his little eight year-old hand
in front of his scarecrow-gold hair
shoulder-length

The last time I saw my son
he was joyous
at simply another day of school
mom taking him in her car as I stood by
unemployed

The last time I saw my son
he was blissfully unaware
of simply another day of sorrow for us
and the unatainability of life
missing

But I smiled back and the window between us
hid my welling tears
as I stood by the car that pulled away

The last time I saw my son
I knew he'd come looking for me
but I wouldn't be here any longer
just words written and songs made
photos and pictures and comments online
a ghost of electricity
a haunting blast of brain and regret
whose last thought was
the last time I saw my son.

My scars
are etched
by tears
like canyons
along my cheeks.

When you're missing something
(like a piece),
the only way to go,
is forward,
and one day soon,
you will roll over
what you
were
missing.

Come with me to the trees,
unjudged,
moon white as your skin,
like Lucifer,
and just as beautiful.

She stands in the truth,
a puddle of lysergic acid
that seeps into her bare soles,
as a tuning peg twists her gut.

The single page, crisp,
bends, hangs limp
where index and thumb tips
barely touch left and right edges.

Her blue eyes quickly sweep left and right, work
their way slowly from top to bottom, absorb his self-eulogy,
drain their color out and onto the page.

As each drop hits, ink blots change from explanation and apologies
to a Rorschach Test to which she will never have an answer.

Moisture leaves her body faster than she feels it will be replaced,
she is mummifying herself alive in Sokushinbutsu,
attempting to join the Xerces Blue letter-author
who flew away into extinction.

The walls around her now close, tight, stone;
her only contact with the outside world the string of her memory
attached to the bell of loss.  

The weight of the page
she holds destroys her.

I'm building a room
for a little princess girl
White curtains with fringes in pink
Bedding all in pink, save white ruffles
on the edge of the blanket, and pillows.
A dresser with vanity,
soft wood, painted pink,
with darker pink (almost indigo?)
handles.
The walls, pink.
The door, pink.
Everything pink.

But the piece de resistance?
The white framed windows,
filled with the most beautiful
crystalline
pink
glass.

Because of this, every bit of light
entering the room
swirls in a kaleidoscope of sunlight
shaded pink.

And in the bed
my baby girl
pink P.J.s
asleep
safe
content.

The Pull of Death
has many names:

Jim
Dad
Woody
Papa
Randy
Arkeem
Noni
Lexi
Tim

It's a cold and lonely world
when the only person
you can talk to
is paid to do so
once every ten days or so.

When no one wants details,
and friends respond only with emojis
the cold of Winter
snaps especially deep.

There are names for girls like you:
pretty, pure, and more...

But I know ones that are liked the best,
you ***** ******* *****.

I don't write for you.
I don't write for even myself.
I write for simply no reason
and so very much less.

I was hurt
and trustless
from my divorce
and you
convinced me
I could trust
and love
again.

Then you
waited
ten years
and
****** someone else.

Your life may never be the same,
but there will come a time when I don't
drive you to distraction
occupy your mind
engulf your every moment

but I am not here for the conception of new memories:
coffee
arguments
commercials
Sunday dinners
shared cigarettes
pregnancy news from family
getting high
getting sick
car ride album listens
dark room hair pulls
bright room eye locks
glances across the table because
          everyone else is so stupid, aren't they?
squeezing into a too small bath together

They are all disintegrating
moments break apart
fall away from you,
left only with the clichéd sand through your fingers
like the memories of the

sme l of my b eath
f el of my tou h
so nd  o m vo ce
s  h   f  y fa e
  ve I h    y u

I must be quiet
quiet, still
but doing so
will only show
shadows on the fourth wall.

His eyes became wells
overflowing
buckets of regret
drawn from the emptiness
that crawls up his walls.

The colors run
passionate
cotton candy
water colors.

All
I
ever
wanted
was
you.

Oh,
what a sweet rapture
it must be
to never feel
the sting
of love.

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

There was a time when I was driving towards you,
highway lights passing by as if they were hyper-drive stars.

By blunders I somehow found your address on the scrap
of paper that I write this on now. It's still stamped with your lipstick,
scent of your armpits,
blood,
hair,
and the smell of your palms after they'd cradled my face
while I cried for you not to leave but just to make this daybreak
moment last an hour longer
to make that sun rise slower
drape your body over mine
one more time.

I swear I'll enter you if only you'd just give me one more chance.
I swear...

I was waving goodbye
but you never
saw. You never
even looked back.

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.

"I'm not making it, I need help"

"I'm not okay, I need you."

"I need a hug and empathetic embrace."

"I love you, and now I need your love."

"Help."

Sometimes we feel a bit of pain
over things missing from our lives:

gifts,
childhood
toys,
that old silverware,
memories...

But there is a special kind of pain,
a person feels over people missing from their lives.

There is a trick;
it is not this simple,
see.

The trick is this:
Often, it is only when that person begins to come back
into our lives,
that we realize just how great,
acute,
that pain was,
and is,
and this mutes the happiness one would fully feel
at the reconnect.

I'm swallowing pieces of paper,
dissolving the fragments of
your holy ghost on the
moist surface of my tongue,
the one that still means
all the lies it told.

So I am shaving my eyebrows off,
over this white porcelain sink
(it was never as pure as you),
sanding my fingers down to nubs,
and licking razors until
the tongue is gone,
and only the truth of silence remains.

Disintegration
to
Reintegration

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.

Did you hear it,
telling me I'm ugly?
Did you see me,
believing every word?

"How do you carry
the weight
of memories?"
I asked.

She looked at me,
tears filling her eyes.

Yes,
even if you were
a worm
a rock
a man
I would still love you.

Despite the marriage vows,
I can no longer promise it will last forever,
like I used to be able to,
but I can promise
you will never be loved
as I love you.

Gaze down I examine
the dried once-white paint
peeling away from
the wooden window frame.

I am abbreviated
in my stance
as the knock reaches my ear.

Who are you?
I know you,
I mean,
I knew you.
I knew you?
I knew you...

Sunlight catches the air

I realize it was a dream.
I was wake-walking
into that leaning
blue-hearted home,
whose colonial frames
bear the weight of guilt,
peering, leaning
into me.

I become nothing.

I've seen a sun rise
sense-shocking
but it is an empty gourd
next to the
light
I see in you.