One day, I'll pray
to make this pain go away.
Someday, I must say
my past will never drag
me down today.

There will come a day
where everybody knows my name.
They will say to me that
I was once a worrier,
but now I'm a slayer.
I slay every fear and anxiety
that creeps upon me like a serpent.

I held on to my sword
for I will no longer
be a slave no more!
I will travel across
the land to find the cure
for I am a warrior.

I shall fight,
if it's the last thing I'll do!
the devil will never have me
because we're through.
I lift up my hands
to the righteous King,
for he has blessed me so well
that I could sing .

After many years of doubt,
I won't let my fears and emotions
pour anything out.
I must have the courage
enough for me to flourish.

I still have your single black sock-
It is a reminder that I am not the only one who
lost something
when you left:
misfit parts of you are still sprinkled across my bedroom
(it is a lesson for the both of us)
what else am I to do?

That I was alive: I suppose,

there was a certain eager meaning to
these moments–wide and short–these
hours–fat and narrow–these years
long and deep–

the stars, the lunging of my breast, the
turned curving of a sunrise, the rapid
expulsion of blood, tunneling suddenly through artery and vein;
I guess.

Looking and wondering; I turn my
hand over in a spent beam of sunlight. Its span tumbling with that heavy glow–it iridesces.

(I love you.

Knowing I will die–I love you.)

I am walking in some hall. There is the fast purring of a cat. Easily my breath inhumes and exhumes the space within my chest. Heart beating. Air and flesh exchange.

How easily it is to be–it seems these
hands are mine over your *******. I put
my fingers in your mouth. Your tongue
tousles their fiber. I make and unmake
myself in your hips.

The thick leaning of this chair into my back–where are you?

(Reading this perhaps.

And am I alive? And where?

Or dead?

Could be.)

And what is death?

Dying after all, it is, I guess, what I am.


There was the forest today. And five minutes ago I kissed you.


I am incomplete–I can feel
the way this shirt turns over the skin of
my arm. Somebody is speaking French on the radio.


"I will be dead someday." I want to whisper.


(I will be dead someday.


I love you.)

Sometimes I hold a dead phone to my face so I don't look crazy as I talk to myself.

You'll learn to love too much
when smiles turn to distant glances;
as distant as the galaxies
she'd used to point to and say
'that means you and me':
speckled and splattered
across your milky way of
coordinated highs and byes.

You'll learn to love too much
when the words you seep
are dulled to a different sleep;
one that used to put your
fleshed-whole-soul to bed,
but now keeps you up
regretting what was never said.

And when you hallucinate,
to escape the bronze lonerism,
you may will yourself to
a golden-childlike-aura,
believing you are brand new
and are never blue, because
the love you splurged
can never hurt you or
never be enough.

She has a shaved head
that reminds me of a
crooked-smile-ex;
that choked on cigarettes
and words too contrived,
painted in a negligence
for humanity and a
belief in uninformed
nothingness.

Her body curves like
backroads I've been lost in.
Skin as pale as an eggshell,
I'd imagine she'd shatter
under the olive robe
she calls a dress
and bounce under the
kickstep of organic flats.

Eventually she will become
too much of an idea, she will
evolve into a misogynistic
poem, and if I were
to imagine her naked,
guilt would flood our fleshly-
alcohol-stained-continents,
angry between every slur,
loving between the shadows
of phantoms I once knew.

The table was set.
The morning was fine.
The world lay reflected
in two glasses of wine.

An empty plate
reflected sunshine,
The morning compressed
in two glasses of wine.

What did she see
in undulations of wine?
Were the shapes a portent?
Was there a design?

Were the glasses a mirror
or shadowy sign?
Perhaps they were more
than just glasses of wine.

She and a friend
sat down to dine.
Their reflections drank deeply
from two glasses of wine.

the sound of a wave lapping,
summer thickens

and suddenly everything is
vaguely surreal, under the
hidden stomach of the stars

ghosts of silver struggle
in the white light.

when the water splashes
little islands croon.

love, rescues me from
the millions of pieces
where i lie scattered.