Scold this abrasion
in weakling poses
dance with me,
Memory.

Awaken me
in the hold of your breath,
stilted in the lapse.

Our lights are bending
beneath the weight
of your gravity...

let it go before they break.

It has been
festering
for years.

You are out of sight,

from within this
eroding sandstone,
too-high-to-climb-walls,
box canyon you have left me in,

and I am out of my mind.

Last night, I dreamt of you
and all the roads
(overgrown and tangled)
I lost you on.

Can you see yourself
the way the mascara runs
the wings splayed out
like an angel
naked
pale
leaning into her own
dissolution.

Have you listened to that song
and felt bad for yourself?

You ******* idiot.

Pull me back,
expose the nerves
violet scabs as
we relieve ourselves
in each other.

Darkened doorsteps
in the collapse of a decade.

Fill me up, drunkard.

Empty me out, wife.

I am nothing without you but everything.

Will you stay?

I ease up cautiously to the door
gently place my eye to the keyhole
see her wide-eyed innocence
looking back,  afraid.

"It's gonna be allright,"
I sing gently
her favorite lullaby.

Slide a poem
on a piece of paper
under the door.

Show her the treasures
our life together holds...
held...
will hold.

Meet her eye in peace
a gentle coaxing
at her pace.

"I can't live with
or without you."
Well then,
all things being equal,
why wouldn't you pick
saving us
over ending us?

But how far have we come?
The miles we've traversed are benevolent ice:
we fly,
frictionless,
into each other.

Love destroys.
That is only to say,
"Love makes room."

If I had you in my hands,
petal,
cradled from the rot
guarded from the corruption
the world assails you with,
I would hold you firmly
and never let you go...

Never let you go.

Some words from those most close
but nothing from the one that mattered most.

The one that could have filled the holes
he left when he left.

I've cut you off like an extra arm,
something useful at times,
but mostly just in the way.

And sometimes I look down at it
on Father's Day,
and wonder why
I ever let
you in.

So now I've severed my phantom limb
made your death in my life permanent
and with losing you from my life
I regain it.

You appear like a ghost
haunting my mind
infecting my heart.
Are you even here,
or am I imagining your presence
like a husband pining
for a dead wife?

Were you ever here, really?
Did I have a life with you
or is that just a dream
I am remembering?

Clots of blood surface
saying we have nothing in common
but I know, really,
that they are only imagined
in a reality I could see past
but you couldn't.

So who are you?
Who am I without you?
I've been finally catching up
but you are long gone
and I never had a chance.

But I'm glad you
eased your concerns
by invading my
thoughts, presence, dreams...

At least you
got satisfaction.

When you took me down
we spin through memories
of brilliant star skies
when you were so happy
and nothing mattered
and you had your innocence
and I had you.

Your lips taste like gunmetal
and I'm a waste of time
and energy.

So I held her down
under my tongue
until she
fired her life off into my mouth.

Picasso on the wall
intricate patterns and raw shapes
leave the message I always
wanted.

Dissolution
Unavoidable
Pick up the pieces.
Do they even exist?

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.

I wear a tie around my neck
and Testoni's over my socks
but underneath
my feet
are covered in pitch
throat is raspy
from too much ******
and cigarettes.

Walking into service
some splash water
from a golden bowl
onto their faces;
others snub
their cigarettes
out in it.

A monk teaches
that breathing
is the key to life;
he dies from
emphyzema
as Shaolin franchises
spring up across the globe
selling soap
at golf resorts.

Yes come,
let's surround ourselves
with each other.

Straw-colored veil
falls naturally into itself.

She smiles,
not knowing its power.

Little bones etch the flesh
and quickly clouds are parting,
laying out their symphony
of rain upon this tightened roof.

In her fragility
she shines,
so strong.

My stomach turns like
the violence in your eyes
spun around dizzy upped
lost in the love we have
for each other
when everything else
wants to destroy us.

Empty like your love for me
poured out from a broken vase
that you considered
throwing out.

And suddenly
I'm looking forward
again.

Smell of you on my lips
taste of you on my fingers
gaze of you on my skin
warmth as you envelope me
shuddering of skin
shedding of sin

We consummate in a shared womb of ink
above and below cotton blows like springtime,
a perfect non-sequitur segue where
flowers of aloe bloom
swollen pods that explode
spraying pollen everywhere.

I'm chewing gristle
gnashing my teeth on bone
yet somehow it
is like honeycomb
and in it,
sweetness.

Splinters of bone between
my teeth like
macabre toothpicks,
quills of a porcupine,
fangs of a spider.

Corpse dangles from tree by snapped-twig neck,
innards spilled out from stomach like rotten raspberries,
nothing but stick-figure hang man.

Simon Iscariot's tears fall beside blood and water
that pours from your abdomen,
similar to the emulsion
from the spear-wound in Jesus. Christ
gave you the highest honor:

that of making all
ancient parchment
statements true.

They were then hidden away for centuries in dry clay pots
in musty caves of sheep-herders.

Father lowers you down
the greatest of care
to the arms of
Pieta' Mother.

You bend
and almost break.
My pretty dead doll
skin pale as bone
spreads her legs
like a gate to bliss
now wide open.

Worship your white stone temple
words whispered from my thirst.

My hand over your mouth.

With tongue and fingers
I write my worship.

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

There is so much that goes on in that pretty little head of yours
un-shown to anyone with living or something instead of words
that mean so little when so much said causes burns.
So abbreviate, punctuate, silence and contemplate,
hold these conversations using only your face
those eyes of blue, convey everything inside of you:

the perfect despite what you tell yourself
the flawless despite how you rate yourself
the endless rattle of colic baby rattles
the voices telling you that you equal less
than the shocking
the breath-taking
the gasp of first love

that made this never-at-a-loss-for-words boy
stumble-stutter over himself
in his first attempts to get inside and learn what
goes on in that pretty little head of yours.

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.

Strangled by feathers
purple fades to violet
and men run as fast as they can
to women who harden to stone
see,
when invisible mistakes
are made
the solutions are just as hard
to find.
Like returning from war (the shells! the shells!)
to an empty nothing
no yellow-flowered sundress
no fruited perfume (you are fifteen again)
no soul shaking open mouth
full of teeth...tongue...soul
like it could be your death
and you'd sigh away
smiling.

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.

Chew my scabs,
peel them back
(my paper mache skin).

Let the oil
of my life
flow free,
drink me up.

When you can't
carry the weight
how much
can whiskey hold?

All of the windows are painted with pitch.
Every doorway sewn shut with steel stitch.
Each body rots here - odor of decay.
Prison that holds ******* life in delay.

Along comes a turpentine brush - wash away.
Scissors that sever. The cords fall today.
Aerosol spray cleanses air in fresh bloom.
Star arrives. Now you can flee from this room.

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'm leaping in waves,
rolling like dice.
Give me the victory,
she reads just a slice.

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.

Over the ridges of kettle corn chips
as some sort of enduring
piece mail attempt at balance.

It's never possible.
You are unlovable.

And if fault may lay,
it lay in me.
When I die,
early of my years,
I've gladly gone,
and am listening to music
with Noni
and Tim.

you
Disgust
me.

The ring
that you nearly
forced upon my finger

has now come off
for the first
and last
time.

Your hair
tangles
hands
across hips
the color red
your familiar
alien scent
as stars dance
in your dilating eyes.

"Don't play sad songs, please?"

Of course.

I'd hate to make you feel
guilty
for straying.

Poor baby.

I feel so bad for you.

I'll play
whatever
the **** I want.

You burn them all away, keep me safe.
I wear you, I use you,
the only thing that is keeping me

together.

Like a woven basket falling

apart,

you thread me like a needle
when there is no capable shopkeeper.

You are a safe place to land what's inside my head,
you understand the circuitry inside this machine
because yours is the same.

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.

The sky unrolls like parchment
and angels lose their footing
as all the devils of the world
fly free, screaming.

Put me in your pocket,
keep me safe
like the paper fragment
I wrote this on
and never gave to you.

What would it be like
to die on the vine?
"You spin and you drown
searching for a rhyme."

"You're so lonely..."

So come home.

"All you ever wanted
was a stable family."

So, come home.

Separate phone plans.
Separate bank accounts.
Separate vehicles.
Separate homes.
Separate insurance.
Separate hearts.
Separate lives.

Separate.

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.