While riding the bus today
I saw a man sitting in front of me,
as subtly as possible, attempt to pinch a mosquito
off the top of the head of the woman sitting next to him.

Without drawing any attention to himself,
as this woman was staring out the window,
he was insistent in his anonymity.

I looked over to the girl sitting next to me and smiled.
Though she had noticed this interaction before us, she didn't look back to me but instead smiled to herself.

89.2

An animal that was there all along
is recently discovered,
recognized for behaviour now considered odd.
A lizard sheds it's skin to avoid predators.

101.89

So what constitutes a mass,
the accumulation, or the loss?

We continue to find faults of our own in order
to forgive the faults of others and their own.
Justice is when everyone is a victim.

To dilute the issue, to divide the tissue
is the diplomacy a broken line speaks in equal measure.

92.16

Children of immigrants
dust off their melanin when it trends

Pain fabricated as public art
as an act of instigating peace
as if war were not reason enough

static

the wound is not lost though the skin changes

predators and victims and recently discovered animals
share station on the radio

As wheels
spinning in traffic

What are the chances,

I keep seeing these wolves, and

you keep coming back?

Many blessings upon you as you settle into your new address.

Since that workshop of yours I attended many moons ago, I have been in the practice of what you call "kiss poems". Though this exercise comes as gracefully for me as to be almost involuntary, I disagree with its name, how it implies temporary as fleeting;

the breadth of time allowed for a kiss
should supercede that of a pair of lips pinching each other
it should be amnesia breaking like a fever
it should be dodging bullets
and finding forgiveness
capturing the sun
a spinning panorama centered around two people in a busy train station
we get closer as the universe drops away with every revolution
it's William Blake standing in line at MPI
it's long lost friendships
it's fond acquaintances reintroduced in a museum after a thousand years
it's the accumulating caress of cresting tides
it's finding out what's on the other side and staying awhile
it's a lazy afternoon to make up for a lifetime
it's your song on the radio
it's an unyielding hand on a shoulder as a foot leaves a precipice
it's, "I'm sorry"
it's, "I know"
all this said as read should allow for the breadth of a kiss
for more, for less

dear Mr. Wint,

the breadth of time allowing for a kiss
should leave a pair of what was once previously anomalous,
identified indefinitely as a singularity

lips like fingerprints
forever evident

At the risk of being contentious, I just wanted you to know I wrote a poem, and you're to blame.

Thank you.

I'm looking for a hailstorm to run blindfolded through
For the sake of refief
A psychosomatic firing squad to save me
from this six by three square feet of dirt
that you have left me
I now drag behind myself

I have taken this earth
and sculpted it in your likeness
I am Pygmalion praying to the moon for love
but instead I get rain
and as the picture of Her and perfect summers
falls apart like mud through my finger
I clasp and grasp and gasp
and when the rain stops
I am left on my knees in the mud praying with open hands
my skin is baptized so clean my scars shine

Now as the pieces of a heart are returned to us
twisted and unwanted and rearranged like a Rubix cube
by the hands of past lovers
who we knew too fast and promised so much
but didn't care enough
to figure out our combinations
or to hold the secrets contained or the dreams cradled
in this human-sized box
I guess no one thought to tell them
that if you plan to be a past lover
return what you have found just as you have found it
and walk backwards
that the image of you walking away from me may not haunt me in the mornings
and I can make believe you are returning to me at night

but even the stars rearrange themselves
destiny can be rewritten
let what remains of my days be it's pages
in an infinite number of realities I am still happy with you
in an infinite number of realities I am tragic without you
but in this reality I may be happy without you

I'm kicking open my wardrobe and cleaning it out of all the shadows
I'm putting on a new jacket, a new hat
but I'm keeping my old shoes
for I will not forsake the path
all the roads that once only led to you now lead from you
thank you for the detour

I'm looking for new hands to run through forests with
new arms in which to build a home in
a girl to jump on bed sheets with
and a shoe box in an attic to bury you in

For this heart will grow and one day I will see
through an unbroken stained-glass window
you were just another piece of me

What odd creatures we be
in binary we breathe
these two feet
a lifetime of skinned knees
propped up
suspended
beneath eternities
a rhythm alternating heaviness
upon such a wild sphere

we danced like infants
when we danced together
we danced the moon
we danced quadruped

this heart at times plural
often lost
we carry always
a contained ocean
a single fragment
a measure of the sudden and the certain
a rhythm alternating heaviness

we wander
we heard
we learn extended
we fall restless
the universe and knowing it
we are made up of everything
and we are incomplete

ever beholding the beginning
ever beholden the end
everyone belonging
the choice
and the inconsequential
in between
the road and the alone
the time we make home
a rhythm alternating infinities

and I dance incomplete
for your eyes and your feet
missing your breath while I breathe
my heavier pulse
my bent light
and our ocean sleeps
in streets
in the puddles of a weeping sky breaking concrete

No. 1

there is a pane of glass
which now occupies the air between us

an indifferent arrow has flown through it
leaving a web of cracks

for which I am trapped
reaching for you

No. 2

the light you bend reaches across room
the same distance travels your voice

it makes me a ghost not to touch you with all that I am
exhaling wanting in your direction

as stars are brought down over head
by the weight of unfulfilled wishes

No. 3

victim to a whisper
pious to an echo

tomorrow I'll be swallowed
I didn't even need a name

lost and unwanted things are entitled
to each other so long as they don't hide

no. 4

it's an open hand
it's a broken window

it's a perpetually naive sky
it's off beat but we're out of line

and I'm waiting for you
one hundred percent of the time

no. 5

out of context
misshapened in parallax

past my expiration date
but you looked at me in a way that dared both of us to exist

when all this is dust
the loudest we'll ever get to be is a secret

Tonight our drowning is hollowing out bottles
drinking the impossible honesty that echoes there
tonight we are wearing neon
wearing regrets loosely
shaking off our youth
as our shadows grow itchy

Tonight the impossible chance
that she takes me into her hands
the whole weight of me
all unfinished poems
and the man parts I have

She says, "let's see what you are made of"
I make her no promises
I just give in to our mutual intoxication
there is no where in the world I'd rather be heedlessly
than in this moment
half-drunk and leaving this bar
hand-in-hand with the girl
half-drunk and leaving this bar with me

there was no traffic that night
so we drove wreckless against the calm
as if to save time on fore-play

She takes me back to her place
we stumble through the door
as if breaking-in we reach her kitchen
each missing a shoe
her hands invading my layers
unwrapping my dignity
my tongues' failing diplomacy against her mouth

She looks into my eyes
breaking what I had hidden behind there
I wonder now if she does this with all her prey
I wonder if she does this everytime she prays
as she falls to her knees and defeats me
for all that I am
man parts and unfinished poems

And finishing me rises heavenly-faced
from the crime scene
of my oblivion ephemeral
at her feet I kiss her again
less for diplomacy now
more for slavery

She told me once
that's what she always hated about me
the way I would kiss her after she killed me
as though turning a secret into a promise
then I would laugh and she would not
which always made me wonder if I should apologize

I lift her in all her accentuated smallness
on to the kitchen counter
and free her legs from her pants
as I am still shackled at the ankles by mine

I crash all that is holy of me
into all that is sacred in her
and just before her breath in sips slips beyond her lips
she tells me to take this to the bed
her knees over my shoulder
my arms under hers
I carry her in all her shifting heaviness

Her skin could make the sky jealous
our names tattooed among the clouds breaks bleeds rain
everything hollow sings in harmony tonight
tonight you need not believe in heaven
to inherit the ghosts which had kept us empty

Tonight we danced horizontal
shipwrecked against our bed sheets
dying to fight the dark away
dying to wake up with each other
what we break before morning escapes

there are shorelines we'll never reach
there is a forgiveness we can't quarry
there is a weight too heavy a
lifetime of nights could not swallow

our *** was an attempt to forgive each other for being empty
we ****** each other in attempt to forgive each other for being incomplete.

Tonight, everything hollow sings in harmony
As we pick up the pieces
before morning breaks

We give thanks to the

Trees, by planting our cigar-

ette butts at their feet.

I saw you in winter,
and thought of tree branches feathered by starlight in poorly lit neighborhoods. A hearth where the more honest parts of myself, I am bared fetal, warmed upon, welcomed.

I saw you in spring,
and thought of long drives in the countryside in the rain. Ice cream melting from our chins dancing petrichor upon our toes, kissing by the sea shore.

I saw you in summer,
and thought of sleepy boathouses, uncovering ancient childhood treasures in the woods. A secret lake somewhere, the sky's reflection in promise. Windy hilltops upon which to blame each other for the sunrise.

I saw you in autumn,
and thought of scarfs and cafes, city streets and sunsets where we watched each others breath escape. Apartment staircases where windchill hibernates, the world slowing down around us from your window.

The first time I saw You, I thought to myself, "I could live there."

On the last day on Earth
you will smile at me and say,
"Oh, well."
and realize you never really gave me a chance...

On the last day on Earth
I will smile at you and whisper,
"Oh, well."
and realize I loved you forever...


"...as the heavens descend to end what we mend."

in my mother's basement
once upon a time she ******* a clothes line
though most of the time
the line
was used to hang up
hangers
precariously hooked to a rope becoming less taut
as the years go on

the paradox of garage sale hand-me-downs of broken homes
as bodies for clothes become subtracted they make room for memories
we grow heavier by
as the hangers continue to multiply unused
clothes hangers are sacred
they are ghost as zygotes

back then there were days
I would wear my woven leather belt for an inverted neck tie
on those days
tie the other end to the wooden cross supports in the basement ceiling
then tip-toeing up
on a beat-up old stool
play chicken
a game of chicken with nobody
a side of extra mc chicken sauce for the soul

I wonder now
how if anyone would've wondered
if I had died never really learning how to wear a belt
or how to properly tie a neck-tie
kids today wear their pants too low
and parents back then were way too given to involuntary penance

to up the ante
I would write a list on the wooden beams in the ceiling
each time I got up there
for all the reasons I got up there
in attempt to embellish the exit sign
singing ugly duckling swan song echo
sedated by the attempt
training wheels for Icarus syndrome

it wasn't that my youth was in disillusion
I just never really learned how to measure distance properly
a pair of breaking parents
an unwanted pregnancy
"What's with in arms' reach?"
a game of catch
a game of release
a flight of stairs in one step
"it's not your fault kid
but you're gonna have to get hurt anyway"

funny how when you are teetering on stoic infinity
balanced like an idle pendulum
a noose becomes a life-support system
dance like no one is watching

I don't play those games anymore
my bones have gotten too heavy to bet against
memories I still wish to change
knees too weighted to two-step the precipice
on weekends

and since practicing how to use my legs again
and again
I now prefer walking this earth
wearing my belt around my equator
over drawstrings around my neck

the basement has since been renovated
no more wooden crosses
exposed in the ceiling
I don't play childish games anymore
I just do my laundry there

You call the Moon beautiful
but You wouldn't want Her fixed in the sky
She's beautiful because She is not always there
because She changes

Allow Her to awaken in the sacred shades
You wouldn't see in the day
the way things bend at night
how things connect when they are not being watched
the language the wind speaks when the stars are out
the raw chaos of Her beauty which appears as darkness
the challenging coldness
the tired feeling prolonged which makes You drunk
the intoxicating carelessness of being outside
You hear animals talking
but You don't know what the **** they are saying
as the trees continue to harass streetlamps to dance with them

Everything is a facsimile of death
and everything is watching You
and every minute is not the proper size
and every mile is an illusion before day breaks

And if You could give yourself
to such darkness to such chaos
without pretension or forgiveness
If You would risk any guarantee of a happy ending
for just one kiss
then You would know what it is like to love the moon

Or You are just reckless

How do you live here? / who's sins have you / do you forgive yourself / for the sake of what you believe / makes you? / keeps you in momentum / sails unfurled against the clock / How do you live here? / which scars do you show / which ones no one knows? / what parts of your skin were you born in / what parts of your skin are new / drawn over / coloured outside the lines? / what parts of your skin have you always been? / How do you live here? / who's laugh track echoes in your ear / a recording of a long since dead live t.v. show audience / or your now since becoming nameless childhood friends? / How do you live here? / how do you occupy your skin / your sins / your echoes? / what dreams keep you asleep / what dreams keep you awake / what dreams keep you? / How do you live here?

Love... doesn't care about you
Love is looking for someone prettier and with a tighter ****
Love is looking for who everyone else wants to love
Love is looking to own

Love has the power to make the air worth breathing
to make gravity redeeming
Love will assign you a new colour that you may add yourself beautiful to the human tapestry
Love can take the nausea of daily orbit and turn this spin into dancing
Love keeps in time with your heart beat

But... love doesn't have you
Love is looking for someone more handsome and with a bigger ****
Love looks for characteristics that have nothing to do with character
Love is an opportunist
Love eats for free

Love can't be held accountable
Love hears you have passed away and has trouble remembering what you looked like
Love laughs without getting the joke
Love doesn't return your calls when you call it love
Love is letting go and waiting for the rest of your life
Love doesn't apologize
Love thinks it's your fault

Love doesn't want to fight
Love wants to win
Love wants to beat you down and hates you for being weak
Love is waiting for someone else to call
Love doesn't show all it's cards
Love is immune to your tears
Love doesn't think that half-truths are the same as lying
Love doesn't know what to get you for your birthday

Love doesn't care you don't sleep at night
Love doesn't have to tell you where love has been
Love doesn't owe you anything
though, you would give everything for love

Love waits for it's turn to talk
Love can't be held responsible for its actions
Love wants to be judged by it's intentions
Love doesn't know how to give straight answers
Love will forgive you and not mean it
Love only wants to play
Love thinks of about somebody else during ***
Love... is better than you

Myths

They were not statues
and now you see what they see
looking back at you


Man

Her tongue, was so sharp
dissevers men from their ******
kisses them goodnight!

Our blind date went well
Next time leave my mask at home,
and her eyes attached.

Scratched, stained, double locked.
Basement corner, light bulb off.
Refrigerator.

Won't let him hurt you.
I promise, now go and hide,
Daddy is coming...

I don't remember,
I keep having these blackouts.
Sorry I hurt you.


Movie

Make-out Point, moonlight...
Turn their car radio on,
leave my hook behind.

50 ft. Woman,
dreams of a fifty foot world.
Curse my two left feet.

Empty, shiny man
His axe hacks you limb from limb
You hear a heartbeat

Wound too tight, tied down
Whisper lies, impale your skull
What is a real boy?

"Last person on earth,
dif'rent faces in mirror."
- Frankenstein's Monster


Miscellaneous

appeared as a zit
it grew, no concern for it
it spoke! *******!

Lamprey fingertips
Coarse hair on infected tongue
Lotus seed ******

My beast sounds like love,
vanity to a monster,
hero to a ghost.

from Horrors Grotesque,
the existential monster
fears little carpals.

Spring does not occur
in verdant shocks and celebrations
of garden blooms and animals *******
it's a slow parade
it's a hostage situation

there is a crow
dodging traffic for roadkill
there is a boy
who loves a girl who doesn't love him

The Twilight Man
finally learns how to cross the street
alongside school children

The thin ice
which still resides
on the concrete
dares you to be the first to traverse it

and the snowbanks
which lay before you
feign alpine hazard

and I wonder what the naked tree branches are saying
as they reach for the sky with twisted fingertips
with their meteorological braille
we confuse for variations of shade

they say give us back the sun
and we'll give you our leaves
there is a book in each tree we do not cut down
and we read it as we breathe
a forest is a library we breathe

Spring is resolving hostage negotiations.

Some nights I leave the door unlocked, though there is no proof, they are still after me. You are the last place I look for lost things. If I could stop thinking about you I would tell my psychiatrist but I wouldn't tell my priest. There is a lifetimes worth of new years promises pending upon your lips, nothing gets me through most nights like practicing in front of a mirror. I believe the fire inside of you will burn me, but I know no other way to get close to you.

Some nights I dream of you backwards and leave the doors unlocked, if you walked out on me, then I would know one of us wasn't telling the truth.

Lighthouses on purpose, fire escapes on mute. I am the patron Saint of second chances, I count the heartbeats away from you. I believe in nothing else. There is a rock in my breast pocket, I don't know how it got there, but it reminds me of you.

the ocean is a
teardrop repeating itself,
lessons in breathing

There's an old joke that goes,

"The Sun sees the earth and asks,

'How is it that she shines so?'

"

Perhaps in some ancient Greek
philosophers' dream
we danced quadruped
clumsy and complete
interlocking narcissism
as celestial bodies skirt
the curvature of the earth
In some drag queen Diva's dream

Nothing
hungers
more
for
your
monsters
like
an
empty
page.

You're poetry,
I'm drugs,
Let's get together and do this!

In the act of wanting, my human facade wilts, confusing happiness for hunger sated, I am a common monster, with appetites that only fit in this world when it hurts.

There is a snowflake
on your eyelash
that I long to be

Take me with you
when you leave

Show the world to me

in winter the trees forget
how to be green

and all the cars
the same colour
as the road

i am driving you home
springtime is around the corner

Let's meet up at the end of the world,
and **** everyone along the way.
So we'll know for sure that only true love waits

for us there.

giving you what i am,

either;

         -makes me empty, or

         -makes me home

Love,

I cannot

forgive

You
until I

forgive

Myself
for
loving
You

Don't tell Elon Musk,

but...

You can power a starship with her smile.

Beware the World;

         
          Be the World

     Wear the World

You can tell that the ocean loves the sky for the sunrises they have raised together.

You and me, babe

We used to laugh at the world...

And then we became each other's world...

And now, you laugh at me.

Shall I continue to confuse, that which is between us, with that which is before me?

As the sound of her footsteps diminish in proportion to her figure
her shadow lengthens across the street
The horizon eats everything and I am always on the inside
from that same hunger I yell, please.

/

She told me a secret
Now I make maps from empty pages
and hide my poetry in her
I believe in nothing else

/

In the emptiest hours of evening
through an open window to your kitchen
stray animals are lured by the scent of flavours they've never tasted
and I knock on your door hoping you are not home

/

In spite of the chemicals
and circumstances that we are
I kiss the stars and lose my place
upon the pages you are writing

/

I long to be collecting
on your tongue
like snowflakes
like secrets

/

I see now
how
after the third try
a genie fails to complete
what comes naturally
in your arms

/

childhood is a secret we'll remember someday;
for the heroes we were, for the monsters we saved

/

hope everything falls out of your pockets
hope you arrive at the gates empty handed
hope they can forgive you for arriving empty

Next to your pyre
Nest to your flame
I am ashamed by my mortality

these days have made ash accumulating of me
the grown-up ghost I'm taken to be
a soundless sonder

Through another man's lens
through another boy's poem
you are still beautiful to me

Some other man's Eurydice
Some boy who didn't turn around
when faced with the world only a few steps away

Now I am buried under this city
practicing sleepless nights
I talk to you backwards and pray for the world to begin again

a double exposure in third person
the picture makes sense, the pieces don't fit together
My schizophrenia in monochrome

Limerance,
though spurious
pending supplication

Two birds flying at night crash into each other
and as they spin falling from a cloud of feathers and starlight
they are reminded of a time before they learned how to fly...

Will we fold into each others secrets
would we fit each other like a spoon
won't you take my hand and chase stars with me

we'll catch them if they fall
and bury them in the backyard of our childhood dreams
so we can always find our way back there

Chase the shoreline
fly with a flock of airplanes
we'll signature the moon
as we dance our footprints upon the clouds

swim with me through an ocean of bed sheets
and Sunday mornings
and we'll chase dinosaurs from our bedroom

The warmest place in the world is next to you
let me sip coconuts in your arms
won't you plant my name behind your tongue
that it may bloom in a garden of your smiles

We'll find a beach to name after our children
and serenade the ocean as it refuses to stop kissing the shore
we'll use toothbrushes as tuning forks

fake a limp at new years eve and ride the elevator to the highest floor
and dance with me above the skyline

'cause if you sing me a lullaby of forgiveness
I will keep you from all the broken promises
we can finger paint sunrises on each other skin

Be orphans with me
so that we can name each other
the way we once named the stars
as if the constellations held the promise
we could find our way home

What was once green
finds grace
in falling
finally
to sleep some day
beneath winter
snow storms on mute
through the anonymous eyes
of neighborhood
windows
to dream
in degrees of spring
of blooms
waiting to ignite
inside of her

And I wait for her
ashamed
of my mortality.

For want of fire, farther furnaces sphered in alignment
I lit your cigarette and you ignited my tongue
we crossed our wires
and poured roads a cacophony of car horns
and shifting street lamps heading East
hazard lights left on as the planet rushed by
now everything is muted in your wake

I keep pulling at my flesh
this body was always a puppet for you
Husks for which I was growing in to
and decorated with threads and falsehoods  
            
weekends built to be empty            
with all my windows and doors closed
not even an echo escapes out of politeness
for a memory I am just learning to keep sacred

There were fireworks once
they celebrated the mortal distance of
hours and kilometres between us
now fotographs grow heavy
collecting shadows made less so
with each new attempt at levity

Don't save me from these days
I may lose count of the steps leading back to you
lose count of the clouds for which we mortgage tomorrow

Somedays move heavier everyday

I miss you

Hands so small as if broken by this world
found me in places I didn't know were home

As we raised our peluches
and layed down in foreign parking lots
everything is a facsimile of what could've been but we try everyday

Trees lengthen around us as we wait
for our chance to plant our lips among them
to add garden to the changing green

I reach for you over seas
I dream of you recklessly
I breathe mutual atmosphere
I don't want to leave this place if you won't take me

In neighbourhoods as safe as routines
I hide and wait for the sky to be paved
as these streets overflow with thunderstorm warnings
with cigarettes that won't quit
with good coffee and new uses for paper

My tongue waits for your toes behind the last unlocked door
As you practice the full nothing away from me

My tongue waits for your toes behind a last unlocked door

Beneath the skin / Behind the canvas

      A fragile greeting found
            This fragile tempest

            Promised and unarmed
            Unwrapped infinity
            and sharing air

Anaphelbete for sharpness
      Anorexic for fitting
            Amnesia breaking

Mining Space
      An unnerving echo in prayers

            Please,
            and now,
            and why

There is a smile buried in the curtains
That is why our violence forgives

            The lacuna is free
            linen running unabated

Heavy comedy and rubber tires sail away

A stained glass sunrise
A signature war waiting under tickets


Neon spins everywhere

      The taste of finger-nails
      The bite of fingered-lips
Gone Again Left picking clouds

      Beneath the roots
      Above the rooftops

      Dancing concrete with me
electronics off-beat eating the world shaking

Some where still to call us home
evacuating pain behind familiar windows
I whisper you a fire escape
a static ocean at your door

What is it the wind whispers on your cheek my finger tips long to hear
What effulgent echoes of sunrise render each tear
What facsimile of midnight your finger tips whisper back
What ancient childhood secrets parade behind each eyelash.

Oh, how my fate lifts by the curve of your hips
How condemned I am hell-bent by the swerve of your lips

Such language infinitely dancing loosely upon your palms
Such remedies recited by your resting tongue
Your mandible sacred where my universe began
Oceans devoured between us by our patience

I picked up a collection of your poetry
and it didn't take all night to read
You talk to yourself a lot.
I am now empty more so for knowing
how empty you tell yourself you are.

there is a fifteen minute cab ride
or a 45 minute bus ride
that makes the most distance of this city
but I would walk to you at any hour.
Regardless of any change
I may carry in my pockets,
there will always be an open hand
for you if you would take it

Somewhere my mother shares her bed with nobody
after being twice robbed of her covers
by the same man
she has never returned to that softness.

somewhere else my father sleeps with himself
and cries for having held on for so long

There is a grace we don't allow ourselves for letting go.
you need not be in love to hurt,
you need not forgive to be alone.

I think you are everything I reach for,
though for fear my throat is empty of your echoes
I read your poetry
and some nights I ride the bus home
in the other direction.

Love, ***, jump; repeat

***. jump, give birth to statues

excavate cities.