There is romance found in ingratiation – chaste doilies suffering implicitly beneath the burden of unclean bowls. Here’s one, illuminated as a pinball machine when you rattle that dung-brown stain about its shrivelled axis. Above its shaky pupil, a cataract of steam squirms about in unalarming routine.

So many nights I adulterated merely for lack of better days were given credence by the gimpy sun, turned away with its blouse undone, and ****** back to the chalkboard. Somewhere along the past few days I must have become bedridden, indentured to prickly sponge baths by that ****** tongue.

How I’d like to stay sedated now – another day of inoculation becoming an alibi for the adhesion of this numbness inducted to the soft-boiled meat of my temples, combing out my shoulder blades, running down my legs.

Stupidly I almost feel a sense of superiority in not learning any faces among the indiscrete convoys of whitish heads popping in now and then, with the subordinate arousal of stiff knuckles, or other things compressed inward by their own come-hither fervor.

“You talk too much, you worry me to death…”

We court our own defeat.
Aqua Regia in our cups
Hubris curled up at our feet.
The throne is a fickle thing,
Jesters are sequestered
By whims of alabaster
Rose crowned Queens.

The King is an utter fool,
Barons are not your friend.
The Joker always finds
The dungeon in the end.
Oubliettes of our own design,
Gossamer wrought chains
Webs spun within our minds.

born in the artic snow
she chromed
her heart
in steel

flames could
not
touch that heart

always a half a step ahead
sure
a few stumbles
but never a fall

and moonlight is just
a heartache in disquise

till one day
leaning out a car window
a scar upon his cheek
and the luck of the draw

was the jack of hearts

and the queen of diamonds
had
never met
anyone
quite like

the jack

of hearts,

black-haired blue-eyed
her beauty inspired
stupid men
to commit foolish acts

and as he smiled
the queen of diamonds
thought she had

the jack of hearts,

blue sky shimmering
in her eyes

jack became
the brightness
of her day

and the jack of hearts
saw a flame
flickering in her eyes
that he had never seen
in any women's eyes
before ...
                
               act. 2

... a strange destiny
was unraveling
and one long poker hand
was over
and the snowflakes came
down like ashes
under the street light

and then
the jack of hearts
walked away

a pale spirit fleeing
a graveyard
into the wall of night

and the queen of diamonds
cried

the sea into sky

with eyes
like twilight
waiting

to eat away the day

Time sits slouched,
Whisky supped from a shoe.
Space takes his place,
Beard smothered in brew.
Hope sprawls eternal,
Smiles, on the face of the few.
The night is masked,
Casked honey dew.

Amber obscures,
Procures,
Distorts the view.
Glazed by a hazy
Feint green plume.
Time takes a sip from
Weathered worn out shoe.
As space wipes his face
Hope yawns on que.
The night is released,
At least for now, until
The fall of the morning dew.

“I like you.”—but not enough.
Not enough to stay, to care,
To see the way I withered,
Piece by piece, beneath your weight.

You took what you needed,
A hand to hold, a heart to lean on,
And I gave until I was nothing,
Until even my shadow felt thin.

Now there’s nothing left to take.
No warmth, no light, no fight.
I have run dry, drained hollow—
I hope I was enough to quench your thirst.