numbness, my old abusive life partner, trickle down my spine and gush outward like a broken levee.

stay up far past a reasonable bed time to think about a reality where purpose is more evident. work, work, work. learn the circuitry of computer programs that will never solve world hunger. listen to sad songs on the drive home. empathize with roadkill.

float above your body. smell the surroundings and mimic all of the textbooks you've read on active listening. grin and nod while your mind transforms more and more into pile of melted wax. become nauseated by the stench of your own life. let it seep into your bloodstream like a rotten batch of dope.

think about death. think about death during breakfast. think about death when the sun goes down on an uneventful Sunday afternoon. think about death during ***. think about death while getting drinks with friends. ponder why this earth decided to play the role of an impolite and overworked host. feel sorry for the sun for having so much responsibility.

cry until the faucets allowing your tear ducts to stop are broken. let your dinner become play-dough. be a gracious host to the parasites in your mind. swim with them like the dolphins. lose grasp of why waking up is so important. swallow whiskey like saliva. promise yourself that you won't drink four tall-boy Pabst Blue Ribbons on a Tuesday night. drink four tall-boy Pabst Blue Ribbons on a Tuesday night.

hold numbness while it cries in your lap and promises that it will change-that things will be different. allow it to feed you lies like someday you'll enjoy the sunrise and someone will realize that you're not too broken to love

rip skin off of limbs. try to make it another day.

my bare feet and the nose-crinkling tickling of sand-
a contradictory image,
for I was taught to never run with scissors,
your image a rusted blade in my femoral.

my heartbeat and the blithe tide have flirted in a far less than parallel existence,
heels rotting, feet grinding down to the ankle-bones
in the softest fashion,
like a dying rose in vase
in a cubicle too small.

I've inhaled these beaches before.
white dresses have lit up the July wind like lavender candles,
sunsets and barking labs scalping distant couches,
turning my broken back into your expendable canvas.

your birthday has escaped me,
and the tattoo on the back of your sandpaper neck is a static television frequency.

the rip-tide is welcoming me for dinner, filling my lungs with my favorite dessert.

abdomen muscle
sores.

floating inconspicuous,
intermittent,
along our constant wavelength of nullified measurement.

swallowing pills that were made to be my mistress,
it's shattered glass that hasn't yet numbed this instant.

everything is just a leg waiting on a shin-splint.

horns, hollow-
ly followed by a public service announcement

you do not exist in simultaneous intersectionality

YOU GIVE US CARBON DIOXIDE,
AND THUS,
you are DEEPLY ENTANGLED

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

a web, spun by an anxious,
poison-cursed arachnid
holds us all by the finger-tips,
pressing each of our infinite, six-second *******
together.

gravity ensures that when the silk can no longer bear the weight of the world,
the rose-tinted lenses will shatter-------------
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx­xxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
****
x

violently,
our brain stems will rot
alone.

my cerebellum is ever changing,
but in my head there are always vases breaking like a drunken father in an angry fit so that my isolation is never vacant;
my thought patterns are shattered, blood-stained glass.

a furious saleswoman is grasping my hairline at the forehead and pulling the skin off of my scalp from behind,
her friends tying my hands behind my back with rope that is much too tight,
ensuring helplessness over my tumultuous oblivion.

in younger years, when my bare skin touched the cold porcelain, i would dance like an underpaid bartender on a tight-rope, and return to pockets of heat like nuclear winters.
but now i cannot find the energy to stand in the shower, and
i'd liquidate any inheritance from my last names and deepest loves to transform my thumb and pointers, molded into the shape of a magnificent pistol, into steel-

my fingers as a gun do not disintegrate my limbic system like a homesick child. i'm not capable of accomplishing any act of substance without outside assistance, explaining why every lover has looked into my eyes and seen enough thunderstorms to run and hide as fast as they ******* can.

i'm not sure there is a finite amount of broken clocks to convince me that time does not stop for anyone, and that for every vaccine you bring to their doorstep, there are seven more dead friends just outside the reach of your eyelids.

we keep our hands busy. we shift positions. if we can hide from the cosmos, we can quit biting our fingernails long enough to win Nobel Prizes. if not, we are pushing boulders up mountains, disguised as grocery stores, office parties, football fields, television screens, and pieces of paper just like this one.

there will be many more Nobel Prizes and one day, my hands will turn to steel. the final chapter of thunderstorms always contains some sanguine symbol, a motif mirroring soothing rain.