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For a decade,
I put drops in
your child-like ears,
always getting infected
and agitated,
just like a toddler.

An act of service.
An act of love.
An act of commitment.
An act of desire.

An irresistible desire
to show you love.

And now,
here I am,
without you,
feeling like a child
with no one
to put them in
my own ears
but me.

Vanilla frozen cream
over slices of pink-orange inner flesh,
steam as something cold
is lain upon something hot.

The fluffy-whiteness spreads
the soft-firm peachiness apart, leaks
into the space between, gathers
in a small puddle of thick milkiness,
almost pearlescent.

Rolling-back eyes,
scent of precious fruit,
burning cold bowl
in hand, contents slide down the throat
all at once, swallow.

I am empty
with nothing to fill me.
Empty me out
but nothing to pour into.
Just tip me over,
and out nothing comes.
Drowning and empty,
my scream from the lungs.

A gradient of gravel
rough, coarse,
thins,
and the asphalt cries
tears of tar
where you once parked.

My words,
so full of love and concern
for you

have never felt
so
empty.

Like the generations before
and those loved
and those remembered
I'm joining the club.

I'm not calling to ancestors
I'm joining them
I'm becoming an empty ghost
in an empty tomb
which all of her light
has left.

And I can stare right into that black
it's there anywhere I look around
and just like the song, I'm thinking maybe
six feet ain't so far down.

I could bring the blood
of a thousand sacrifices
spilling entrails
through the fingers
just to hear
you call me
by My name.

Consumed consummation,
rotating indecision.
Feral and harrowed
and narrowed precision.

(You've seen this movie before)

My stomach is full
dessicated butterfly bodies,
drowned in the acid
of my stomach.

(It's always the same story)

I will gargle glistening aspic,
purge until I bleed out.
But the only way I'm leaving
is with you, beyond all doubt.

(...what if this time's different?)

Mija, if I could
I would reverse physics
eliminate the gravity wells that pull
you down.
That leave you starving weeping bleeding
hurting,
crushing you within themselves,
beyond the event horizons
the tragedies in your life have left.

But I am not that strong.
I cannot alter basic
rules
laws
components
of reality.

I cannot save you from the monsters in your head.

I cannot guarantee that you will always be safe.

I cannot say I will always understand.

But I am strong enough
to hold on to you,
beyond the event horizons,
until my fingers
are stretched by warped Time,
and I no longer exist.

But I will fight the monsters in your head,
until I no longer breathe.

But I can guarantee you will always feel safe.

But I can say that I will always listen, and try to understand the
nightmaresandtearsandhurtanddisintegrationofyourchildhood

Because, Mija, I know
that there exists light
beyond the dark break
of your event horizons.

dark musty I am attracted, opposite poles,
a moth to the absence of light,
my mushroom blooms
the deepest shade of azure
awakening here, molding at the spore,
the leafs and paper and rat droppings
echo down the causeway,
the red rusted gutter escape flows into
nothingness behind me, I hate you; so obese,
rotund like a dimorphism of rubenesquery and retardation,
bent beyond shape,
borrowed against ****,
I’ll collect the interest someday, maybe today,
or perhaps we’ll continue on smiling as we have
knowing that I pulled the last vestiges of your humanity,
shorn and weeping,
from your carcass years ago.

You are mine.

There's nothing left
of all that could've been
except my empty shudder
inside this chest,
begging to rot
from the outside in
where lust equals death
where death equals trust
where nothing,
(nothing at all)
keeps me alive
for the nothing that's left.

I've got oiled bearings of lead in my gut,
rolling through my intestines.
My mother's never cried quite enough;
I'll get some more tears out of her.

So cover my head in plastic,
pull that Velcro tight,
swallow down the pills
dissolving on the tongue,
dive off the building.

So long ago, useless digging down.
Will I find you here?
How much more could there be?
Here, I have to pull myself apart:
the only way I can come together.

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.

I asked him how he dealt
with his father-loss
babbling the words out
in all my anxious longing.

"I know, Son,"
his voice came
from across the world
like a Father's always does.

"That tightness
in the chest...
Yes,
I know."

I had never felt closer
to another man.

I had never felt more
like his son.

I had never felt
more understood.

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

She sits across from you at the group-work table in all her flesh
a coat of giant cold chicken skin
she can't figure how to take off.

A cow chewing cud
would be less offensive than the way she grinds
that gum with mouth, a hole slapping
against itself in fleshy clicks.

She is heavy, whipping cream-
colored thighs each time she slaps a hand down in laughter.

The chest is pouring out in all of it's hypnotic paleness;
the dark colored shirt is giving its all, but failing against the strain.

Your adrenaline courses in nausea
as she moves her legs apart,
veins radiation-blue,
mashed potato inner thighs,
and suddenly
you've peaked behind the curtain
the poison fish you see
makes you *****.

I've lived for the taste of your
flesh, wet with desire
a mess between your legs,
lapped up like a dog
unworthy of worshiping you.

I have prayed at your temple
white cream formed from your lips
engorged
I enter you
and never
again
are my prayers returned.

I cradle my head
like the Old Guitarist
the leather of this couch
a cold and dead reminder
of your flesh
which I would feed on
in this very spot.

Yesterday felt like tomorrow
Tomorrow feels like yesterday
And my eyes don't
And my heart isn't
And my mind won't
And I'm not sure if all these sparkling tear drops
keep falling from the thought of it
or if the weight is just to great.
It was all figured out yesterday, but
yesterday felt like tomorrow
tomorrow feels like yesterday
and my eyes don't
and my heart isn't
and my mind can't.

I see your silhouettes standing like
empty ghosts

everywhere I look around this city,
on the static sidewalks,

and like the stars etched into your shoulder blades,
I paint inside your lines
with the colours
of my heart.

I'm curating a list
one final time
Play it through
it'll feel like a crime.

All across your body,
lines written in rainbow thread.

A heart is only
so much weight, wait...why?

Would they dust your body
for the remnants?

What they have found,
is it hesitant?

Engorged like a hibiscus pistil,
covered in pollen
dripping with dew.

This is no request, but an order:
Extend your tongue
til it pulls with a bit of pain from behind your lower teeth,
open up,
and
prepare
to
swallow.

Today I was driving in my car, looking at my notepad
shoved without care
corner of a page bent
spirals grasped for life on the edge of that dive.

I thought that I felt I wanted to write,
but the glass inside my head was empty.
Forcing it full just causes it to break,
and so I wait for it to fill, fill, fill,
overflow and
capsize.

It comes suddenly:

a stroke in the section of the brain that biologists
have yet to identify.

a phone ringing at three thirty-eight in the morning.

a cat leaping from behind the corner, hitching a momentary ride on your calf.

a rush of amniotic fluid from a pregnant woman's crotch as
she stands over smooth tile.

How many pens have come apart in your mouth?
How much
redblueblackgreen ink
have you ingested in these pen-cap chew moments of inspiration,
trying to steer without looking,
shift with only *******,
scribble without seeing,
glances from concerned motorists in adjacent lanes.

How many
slips of napkins
notepads
envelopes
bills
book covers
receipts
skin
have you marked in fits of...

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.

**** the flies
out from my eyes.
As it is,
all I ever see
with them dies.

There's an igloo
glowing auburn-yellow from the inside
miles of empty snow and ice around
lead-blue sky bears down:
an endless weight squashing reality.

I'm trying to remember which muscles are required to make me stand.
I'm braiding the coarse-twine letters of your name into a gallows rope,
tie it around our necks,
place the knot correctly so the vertebrate split,
separate fragile cord that brings all life to the body,
same as the delicate thread that held us together.

Did it ever,
really?

I drip away from you
charred
marshmallow held over the flame
too long.
This ceremonial rattle shakes
full of seeds within dried husk
the sound tickles your eardrums
as you **** on the snow and ice
covered with its coat of
honey,
nectar,
black gall.

How easy my thoughts are lost
in you and simpler still my body pulled
into you held down by the weight
of the earth I’ve filled my pockets
with. I push my way into this welcoming
water’s body. I do not want to go,
but the ocean’s thundering applause
and its frigid love under my toes
sweeps me off my feet
as waking gulls
mourn the triumph of the sea.

I'll wear it like a broken record,
your weight, an open wound,
still.

How quickly the everything you were,
your void, a dripping faucet,
madness.

You swallowed my love in your throat,
your gut, a churning pit,
death.

What's left of my ability to feel,
your numbing, a left hook,
loneliness.

So please, free me, Star,
from the gravity of your being,
as it has left me crushed
like damp, wrinkled pages
of a book you no longer care to open

This vicious circle
once again
spins so fast
the friction
sets my hands on fire.

****, I miss you.
My eyes are bending down into this face.
I was smiling, but now I stand on my head…
I don’t feel I’ll ever right myself.
I gossip about you to everyone.  
You are a pillow cut open atop this twisted steel skyscraper,
loose the feather and no one can retrieve it.

We all watch you fade so slowly away on the wind.
We try so hard not to jump after you.
We are not as light, and less aerodynamic.
We would fall like stones,

and so

eyes misted with the dew of loss,
we watch you
fade away so slowly on the wind,
farther,
father,
until your point of brightest azurean love
is lost up in the deep glass sky.

He stares at the wall like certainty,
placebos poisoning his ability to feel.
The little special places where she once crawled,
now burn marks of self harm.
His nails won't dig in far enough.
His life won't end quickly enough,
and so he sets his ritual, his belief,
his yearning for illumination onto the prayers he sends to her,
his goddess,
Death.

You left me discarded
a dead leaf drying further
and went on your pursuit
of attention and power.

Not even the acorn
resplendent in its beauty
could pull you back
into orbit.

Well four decades
have taught me well
and I have pursued
you long enough.

I can father myself,
so *******.

For bringing home
new tricks
and when asked,
directly,
you lie
like the
******* *****
that you are.

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.

My top and bottom incisors do not meet
the wall of your big toe between them,
my enamel spades crushing against your nail bed so gently,
perforating your toes’ soft bottoms so exquisitely.

My tongue slowly dances with your toes,
the ridges above and the arch below the foot,
you flinch at the tickle.

My mouth dancing like an anemic acrobat,
it finds his way along the high-wire of your fishnet guarded legs,
their pale contrast to the red cloth exciting.

Suddenly, you shudder as the muscle in my mouth finds
your flesh exposed above the stocking line,
I am a conquistador and I have discovered a new land – I will subjugate it,
taking it’s precious jewels and spices,
consuming them and getting fat with the richness that is this New World before me.

I devour you so slowly – is my mouth even moving?
It is leaving a trail,
slightly damp like a dehydrated slug,
a leech ******* each piece
until the bleached skin becomes en-crimsoned by the bruises
my biting and ******* have made.
Will you try to hide them?
I move on to places where this disguising will not be a concern, and you begin to spasm.

I’ve hung myself on these gallows,
and so having to die because of it,
I will relish it;
an abandonment atrocity of aestheticism.

A cunning girl
who knew how
to get exactly
what she wanted
at the time.

The only thing
harder than my pain
is how I press the letters
writing messages
to you that
I will delete,
unsent.

There are things I could tell you
about myself,
lesions awakened in a cloud of poppies,
burn the tracks and the bridge
that contained them,
only to realize
I was on the bridge.

You appeared
like a boat underneath
to rescue me,
but you being a ghost beneath,
only makes...

I'm falling asleep...

You are a dream,
But am I only dreaming you?

She approaches, the **** skin creamy,
Except above the eyes, she is hairless,
exactly the same as polished marble.

Her back and haunches
curve like an inverted spoon of wax,
*** an upside-down heart pining
away for you to invade.

Nubile nymph, teardrop-shaped *******
move with each footfall the same as a slightly disturbed water surface.

The arms, two extended columns of stone, support
in their upturned palms, the alabaster plate of offerings.

Peach,
fuzz-covered, not like her crotch.

Apple,
the shape of her *** waiting for your worm.

Plum,
smooth like her skin and soon slippery with your saliva.

Orange,
like her ***** waiting to be peeled back so the tongue can enter.

Rambutan,
red as lust, yearns for your peeling to expose the coconut-hued innards.

Ripe Akebia,
cracks open, now full of glistening white seed.

Your torso, stretched and squeezed by God's finger
and thumb, ever so gently
just between your hips and ribs.
Those long bow-shaped bones stretch against your near melanin-free skin.
Is that pink-tinge the blood vessels, just beneath,
or the marks of my touch?

I am heady;
you are ice on my tongue,
which slowly melts into warm
liquid as I mouth-
breathe.

You make me feel so *****-clean,
a pale patriarch that ***** his Sister.
I am so drunk
on your potency,
my memories flood in as absinthe, my inebriated
body replays that first night I tore you open.

Stretch your arms above your pretty poutish head,
I pull myself out from your bald lips -
coat you in white feathers.

Hypnotized by your blank kaleidescope
caress you like a Kwashiorkor belly
rotund
smooth and round abdomen, empty and
covered with flies
an allegiance to parasitism,
supported by the skeletal mass
too thin to pull the body along,
ground-glass ground
ochre earth,
away from the feathered death
stepping lively behind you
hooks pierce the sand,
soon your meat.

you scream at me
with colic voice
cut you open
I have no choice

A girl with soft teeth
grinding cavities

*******
in confession
with five weeks of absence

wrapped up
in confusion
with five hours of evidence

she's got a new kick
tomorrow, she says

tore up
in weeping
with five minutes of dissonance

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'm skipping stones on your plain
surface risking nothing
but every corrosive moment
in the clutch of feathered sadness,
dripping in milk.

I am not
stone building
mortared wall
mountain range
concrete foundation
giant rock boulder

I am
a cool breeze
rain on a sunny day
music in the trees
the beating of your heart
rich soil foundation
with deep roots of
hope
faith
love.

There are bits of glass
strewn about
this empty
heart of mine.

Spread this out
through your cries
broken little pieces
spread out
like your legs
shaking and bent
the rope remakes you:
a glass sliver contortionist
thorn in your side
like a kitten
lapping milk
with razor tongue

Scaffolding in place by those that value
a structure arranged and supporting,
housing community.
Community from its root of ‘commune,’
what exists from the efforts
of all those involved.
A building housing
opinions,
creativity,
debate,
and art.

What was once a poetry free-for-all,
now a pay to play disaster
crumbling down
at the swinging of a dollar-shaped
wrecking ball.