wilting,
every seed is a perennial flower-
roots embedded within aortic dreams;
bursting dandelions are just defined weeds.

we're not compost,
just pawns of propagated watering cans,
soaking in messages so malevolent that
eugenics becomes an assimilation heuristic.

seven-billion shells in
six summers of no shade,
six winters of dancing with devils and self hate,
six seasons of victims hating the victims just the same.

sharing a garden-bed to enrich each other's soil,
fallen petals call for tearful hymns,
not a body count.

the lava-blended departure of the sun is not metaphysics,
but a pinpoint target into human hearts,
both empirical and whimsical,
both light out of my ultraviolet perspective and the asphalt hurricanes of my cortex

~


bursting to the window,
it BUCKLED.

she battled the nimbostratus with 7.4 billion souls on her solar-flaring side;

I sat idly by, desperately attempting to cool my tea and fight the demons on my shoulder.
The battle was a chainsaw pitted against a watermelon,
a senseless,
lopsided conflict.

(is the deck stacked or
are my shoulders only temporarily
disfigured?)

despite cinder block extremities,
my skin is still more mesh than concrete;
these summer nights were meant for picket signs
and bare feet.

as to perceive image without light,
I swam against a salty, magnificent current.

the picture is falling so far down that I lost track the last time I had any chance of grasping it. How long does it take for a fist to form? how long can the drop be after all? it doesn't seem that bad. but its so warm up here, its so cozy and jagged and I seem like I love it. everyone else does, except for those who cared. The funny thing is, no one cares. No cares if I go to class or if I smile or if I finally jumped. we would all just continue on driving and laughing like there was somewhere to drive to. Sometimes I think about those days when they shoved snow in my face and I remembered wondering when it was going to get better. everyone always said it was going to be better. Now I'd do anything to get frostbite on every limb. I'd tear myself piece from piece if I realized what life was going to be.

I recently looked at a blank white page with the word "information" written on it.  It made perfect sense to me.

Am I nothing more than a plateau?
Rising in exuberant expectation,
gliding with excessive perspiration,
and then decaying like past-due precipitation.

Sunday newspapers continue to gather fragile New England snow on the curbside,
a stomping ground for purgatory, the home for these roller-coaster thoughts.

i'm not much for small talk.
my clothes are always inside out and i'm raging losing battles with my steel-toed tear ducts-

steel, as
grunting is a masculine expression,
and so i'll lift weights,
but gain no strength, just aches of all of the intimacy that I've never allowed myself to emit or absorb.

a soggy sponge,
a rotten oak stump,
fallen leaves-
a childhood meal coming back up over the fists and the heaves.

counter-intuition,
the alcohol binds the seams;
tear ducts are dams
and everyone needs a method of additional reinforcement.

numbness and empty-mindedness aside, I'm
still a make-shift dumpster lover,
hardwired, disassociated hinge-sucker.

too sensitive to open the window blinds or morning newspaper,
there is still no muscle definition, only
liver damage.

i'm losing myself in your hazel portal.

--------------------

fingernails, the endless target of fear, blunting the intensity of your golden-gate conscious,
bear enough of this weight to mortalize Atlas.

the pathetic, monotone static in my head is a train barreling towards an unfinished bridge,
my cynicism a pew destroyed by debris,
my outstretched hand a burning bible.

in my back-alley existence,
you are an ocean-wide coral reef of altruism and hope,
beaming with enough passionate hue to feed the starving.

i am twiddling my sprained, charcoal thumbs out of rhythm,
selfishly consuming your complexion like a leech

go back some steps and paint the rest the colors they were meant to be.
parasites preventing psychology-
absent sounds without answers, potential apart metamorphosis.
the mistakes were easy,
splitting monochrome apart of the omniscient wind.

and they never learned anything.

I couldn’t escape the quiescence of ontogeny
descending east or west in our
oblivion as nothing-
these spider webs bury dead
under my intuition
ashamed of my own decisions
refusing to light,
but the flicker always subtle in the night,
aggressive how I wanted to make it shine.

we’re butterflies with broken mirrors,
scintillatingly self-reflecting that our deepest fears will never resonate with
the man under the bridge or the
child in Idaho or the
part of my father i never want to see in myself,
but always will.
hand-crafted maps fade because we’re told to abandon
caterpillars
as if this growth was a virus and not a blessing disguised as
thousands of glass shards unlocking doors.
I wanted to know more.

I couldn't think where my mind begins
it shifts back hollow where I started
blonde curls lost frivolously among the pile of careful maple leaves
you should’ve tried to understand while you
blurred the sharpness of this image,
shades of fuschia indecisions  
evading a dream,
incomplete sets of glass menagerie fog when I fall asleep.
shuffling the shutter, parallel to the stress it put me under.
a life repeating its first day,
continuing cabarets
confusing caves in sheep
crystallize
an endless disease.

flowers don’t communicate in binary;
your daisies were fireworks,
mute mutilations of my morbidity,
simultaneously transforming
sheep from tangible reality.
as I felt every strand of indifference-

IT ALL COULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT.

but
our faces yield yellow hues in
both pines needles and piles of
orange maples.

ashamed of where I hadn't  been
because of the person I have yet to become
knowing what I will never be.
It was strange to see me as a human being
amorphous
feathers drifting incomplete
as crows without grief
circling aware
predicting what I could not escape
luminescent highways miles from fate
time spent
in the essence of these transgressions
pardon me gray.

what can i call colors i see,
branches of the trees from Polaroid memories,
or dreams of what the world should be?
where can i find these answers on this endless canvas,
this bruised, mountainous landscape,
constantly hammering away against our wars with self-abandonment?
what’s the spectrum where
trees and
everyone you’ve ever known that’s felt loss
can sing in harmony?

trapped in my mind,
hope is destiny when it's not in our plans

running out of time,
the colors will fade as limbs grow thicker

footsteps erase.

mirrors adapt.

There must be a way out.

Because one time,
there was just water.
There were
just molecules.

How they fit together so
anatomically.

And now
how can they divide
so promiscuously?

It's as if the door
has been sealed
with the visions of future.

It's as if
there was never
any way to be sure.

There can't be.

Beg, borrow, and steal.
There's many ways to conceal
the distorted image
life has shone
mystically.

This is all a mystery.
I don't know if audible waves
are what the ocean brings.

There are only things.

There are only those
who sting.

And for those that blindly sing,
there are only things.

often in days where the sun,
in its highest hierarchy,
still refuses to warm my feet
(stubborn
&
engulfed in charcoal
),

the colorless kaleidoscope behind my eyes will become a photo album of the purple-red hue of waterfront nimbocumulus,
jade scrubs not yet bloodied,
and the tea kettle sweetly whistling,
a collective hymn only conjured by your
ambitious,
bashful
cheekbones-
an antidote comprised of scarlet tablecloth and ballroom reverie within the smallest bones of my wrist.

in this auspicious daydream inexplicably affixed to reality,
i watched a cackling crown absorb the ultraviolet in a stale, forgotten parking lot

--

as rainbow plumage replaced black,
i thought of your modest palms on my vacant chest,
immersing the colorless into the radiance,
adrift
and unafraid.

l(y)i(e)ng,
providing,
and comp-
romising (together).

It is a sweet scent of a drive with no windows.
It is a hint of the things you wish you could accurately reminisce without putting clouds over the whole scene, even where there was shade and everyone was comfortable.
It puts every thunderstorm into a purse and throws it across the room and further away from hearts because what else lies in that purse is nothing in comparison to the soul that bears it.

When you lose it,
it is a nosebleed
that cannot ever stop
pouring.

on top of a mountain, dressed
in purple and frozen in December air,
we were flying through western Oregon
with our shoes in New England and our
hearts in the forest.

you would shake when I saw your skin,
turner both softer and more rugged as I reached your bedrock,
eroding like sea glass when you showed me what
makes you tug tighter in the dark and
sob at sunrises.

your tears were velvet garden shears-
I don't remember how much blood there actually was,
just that it poured out of both of our bones
with a symmetry that my eyes never spoke of,
and that it still stains the skin of myself
and everyone I've talked to in the last eight months.

you are a ghost under lampshades,
like a florescent fairy in love with tying
the night sky into nooses.

you are libraries,
volumes filling viles with memories of moments when
the darkness left your bones,
only if for the flicker of a flashlight in the backyard or
of a match,
giving me minute fractions of eternity
to see your disposition light the sky larger than stars.

you are teethmarks in my skin,
scrubbing with salt and white
body wash and oatmeal without sugar,
warming our endlessly evanescent December.

******,
filling the ceiling with blue whales and
mountain ranges,
i am a stain on the map in your backseat,
buried under used napkins and neglect,
while your wings take you back
to Oregon.

I am bound by
two brick strings
and a
receipt
of red ink.

There is nothing
about the future that presents this.
Only that which has occurred
to a stomached stirred
preventing any glimpse of bliss.

I'm only calling
the names in the distance.

There's a shift of relevance
and it's delicate.

Those who can't record
the revolution
are too busy
lighting the rooftops
ablaze.

i.
pictures hung so abundantly like there was a ponytail for every assorted alcoholic beverage that would go down while you sat on the counter top with grey in your eyes
or on my lap like lavender gloves. i bought flour and red velvet as atonement, but hollow words are as indicative of unfaithfulness as your eyelashes were indicative of my heartbeat speeding up like your raggedy red Taurus on the Pike and slowing down like our souls in self-reflection, co-morbidly.

ii.
i clip to cold like frozen gnomes but the room with fire was bellowing through the chimney in your irises. it was the ceiling i was the most comfortable collapsing under. Merlot, you are a peach and almost all of the sun that our brains can ultravioletly receive. There is no where to run to when logs and THC are crackling while you let my try on your scarves and you rub my arm horizontally like there was no famine or *** trafficking in the world. The rabbit is always right and Dewey loved the hay and telling us that we belong together. there was no time to guess the right combination of psych meds and there was certainly no one there to close the sliding glass door.

we'd unzip and kiss in a mist of dampened television volume while everyone was asleep. i fell into you, first in billions of separate-cardboard puzzle pieces and then all at once like oblivion within a climate-controlled stadium.


iii.
i noted the same pictures in this room and how your ponytails ended all existing threats to human suffering.

iv.
i loved the dark and the stars and the soupy-vacuum, pulling us in and spitting us out like a bitter mango.
there was never any water in your pool to turn green and so the unfilled concrete was an ocean to our symmetrical lawn-chair thrones, radiating green jeans and the hazel-stained dream-scene.

we lost what vision was real and what was a dream. this was a gift beyond any explanation or expectation. yet, you wouldn't let me remove all of the shrapnel and funnel antibiotics with my barren fingertips onto your scalp.

v.
here, there was kin-
the only room in which your skin didn't show me a piece of you,
but your words did.
there's a way that all of our lives collide like a supernova and our explosion felt more like a hundred-decade erosion,
giving and taking from each other like a sea-side boulder and the tide.


vi.**
you finally showed me the flesh you were ashamed to show the couch, your bed for two in Easthampton, mac & cheese without almond milk, the top of Wachusett, the pit of a pizza dish, the sink of the swooning stitches, the empty pool, the movie theater, your fake bras, and
everything else that supported us like an apparition that wouldn't return my favorite t-shirts.

and i was in.

my fingernails were there. every hair i touched while panic deducted consciousness in some scarce granting of a wish was another prarie for me to grow corn and flowers and ecstasy within. every single crop died but i never forget how self-loathing turned into a comforting sleep. we ran from consciousness like a runaway train but you were always on my back, whispering that solidarity was a the solution to a world that values prosperity over pragmatic humanity.

all the tears and dreams that danced like the branches in the frigid, unforgiving winter were dried up like a creek that i lost consciousness in when you shut the door.

these spaces exist in purgatory because i don't remember my dreams anymore and nothing really ever means anything,
like biting off my fingers in all of these rooms that are left with only memories of you.

Sometimes, there are
dream of days when
trees aren't so hollow.

When I do not wish to live,
how can words leave a mouth
for actions to follow?

I will rot.
I will live
for hypothetical thought.

Nothing is real,
and the rain
will leave me  
to lose bones
and wither away
like a calendar
left to rot
with hypothetical thought
and empty plains spanning
light years
in length.

Just give me it,
******* it.
Give me the strength
for a collapse
spanning light years in length,

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.

All the pieces are there.
For now, you say nowhere.
But
you're the everything that we need.
A benevolent benefactor,
an altruistic seed.

**** me?
No, *******.
All these words you hear are true.

A night with beer and no pants
defeats cologne,
a strict script for flirting,
and that god forsaken music
(They really make money off this, don't they?)

Your bed is warm,
but the frigid ground
will teach you to love the grass.
And when the soil thaws,
she'll smile at you,
and you'll realize-
The step outside
was worth freezing through.

There's nothing more soothing-
the oxymoronic headlights colliding with darkness.
Just us, burning haze, and the stereo.
And that's the best part-
these stories are the ones that no one will ever know.

I cannot continue,
for the lessons you've given are endless;
words could not possibly encapsulate all of this.
In a world where love can often run dry,
you embody the steadfast ambition
in beginning to try.

I don't seem to belong.
To the beating hearts, the
worn out, dirt-stained,
wry,
perpetually filthy
bluejeans.
I just am.
And how can that be enough?
I am a sheep in a flock
without such a heart.
For if wool covered potential,
any of my skin would be detrimental.
How can such a beast feel
stuck between an
immovable slab of concrete
and what is actually real.

Listen to life unapologetically.
For if there is no response,
remorse may go unmuted,
but unheard.
The only problem
worth deeming absurd
is that I was given this
flesh-filled, ruddy red *****
with a broken bridge
leading a trite path
to spoken word.

I am dead.
Why does my heart insist on beating?

Concrete
(pause)
cracks,
lights,
DOUBT,
and applause(?).

How do winds take the place of air?
How can love overcome
omnipresent despair?

The record is broken,
but beautiful.

My skin is worn and torn
like a coniferous seed
waiting to grow
into
a towering pine
and then into
a ream of paper
that mostly just
becomes crumpled
individually
and thrown out
like a heart
bleeding far too frequently,
forcefully gushing itself
onto innocent polypropylene
white as purgatory.

My new soft shell
is slowly reborn.

I can't provide comfort
with bulging ****** knuckles
and fingertips burnt,
scarred,
and eyesight that
is mediocre at best.

My hands have seen enough days
to bandage abrasion
and let go of hate.

My detachment never ceases;
but to pick up the slack
of a nervous system gone bad
is to live a deciduous life
perpetually changing seasons.

the world is not a stopwatch.

-

yet,
my gaudy lenses consists of entrapment between two copper hands,
one slightly more deprecating,
one slightly more omnipresent-

but we're surrounded by curious skies,
not a dome comprised of the middle school locker room and the sundress that rainy Sundays begged you to twirl aimlessly in.

in these crevices of half life when I can undress the assembly line to its barren tremors,
i breathe in a light spanning counties worth of mountains and mom's chicken enchiladas.

here,
there are no stifling, expendable hands.

there is the first sip of snowy December espresso.
there is my favorite fleece blanket resting on your ambivalent shoulders.
there are endless timelines of the homeless finding shelter and your roof softening the unyielding razors on my skin.

the copper will always find new ways to imbue itself,
but for now,
my breath will carry on for several spring meadows
and remember all of my forgotten names.

They say that she will be.
And as far as I can see,
I'm sheltered
by some rugged,
broken
skeleton of a
body containing skin.

So how can love be released?
Every day of absorption
but nothing
but self-bullying
blown miles
out of proportion.

Soft skin can
pass love and passion;
but it's the thick,
rugged
flesh
your subconscious
seems to remember.

I am a fingernail
covered in cayenne
bitten to the core.

I am a neuron
running into walls
in a room with no door.

I am
the feeling in your gut
the last time you felt sick.

I am
the feeling in your heart
when it does not tick.

I am a broken tea ***
boiling cold water.

The dream sends the signal;
the battery applies the shocks.
Don't rest a weary head on blankets full of rocks,
like a pillowcase full of hard knocks.

It's consciousness;
it's metamorphosis,
but the backflip out of the cocoon
doesn't indicate an exit too soon,
but rather a kick
for bad shtick
on why I hear them
and my chemicals don't match
yours
or

(You think you have it bad?)

I've had a share of troubles
but nothing to compare to
stares or glares
of empty yesterdays
and broken sticks on snares:
I guess your most important thought
is
who the hell cares?

Orb sinks slow while
the numbness of routines exit
and nothing
becomes less
abstract and more of
your hollow, melting core.

This has a moral
This story ends at some point in time,
but I don't have an answer for when.

(You think you have it bad?)

Every story has an ending
and every cracked palm
deserves mending.

_

Wake up,
*you don't have it that bad.

Wise women and men who have written books have always told me to focus on the light pouring from stars that kindle constellations,
but my eyes refuse to ignore every single bottle cap from the thousands of beer cans I've torn off out of a fear that I'll always scratch the backs of those who need it and that no one will ever return the favor.

My hurricanes will make no difference if the forest has already burned to the ground,
but moving my eyes upward into a sea of stars has been dulled by a neck brace that you embraced boldly when you broke every jar in the cabinet and didn't even think about helping me clean up this mess that turned my dreams into a reality where I wanted to learn from those that have read books and affixed my eyes to the constellations you gave me right here on Earth.

One day,
the thousands of metallic memorabilia reminding me of every hair I ripped out of my head over shattered glass will transform into seeds that will fertilize a field and yield a forest that anyone who ever needs tree for shelter can fall asleep within and dream about love without strings attached or knives in their backs.

I've removed your blade and recycled it,
transforming the blood from my spine into the stars that hold hands with all of the other bright lights composed of the pain that has defined your lives and then helped you shine in a constellation full of flowers blooming from fractured hearts.

We will watch from the treetops,
together.

A hero is,
someone who uses four letter words.
And her sundress
requested far more than
four measly words.

Her answer was not my question.
but what if I never wanted to ask?
Could I have shriveled up my eyes
into a spirit hiding in my flask?

(Join us in tragedy,
and end us in comedy.
Leave us
in such ambivalent irony.)

But we had our times
and our guts were spilled.
I (don't remember any pollen)
that Spring) don't often remember Spring.

I can't discredit
how crooked you bent me.
But you played the most crucial part
in folding my fingers and toes
into the shapes that should be.

What shapes do you think of
when you sit under trees?
Blunt corners, forgiving curves-
a fluctuation that never seems to ease.

Do we circle in repetition?
Or is self defeat
a mirage of an inhibition?

The lines sometimes will never touch.
But this lack of closure
does not discount your right
to an ameliorative crutch.

i'm warmly lost in the absence of that aspiring red light,
as your heartbeat is still a stabbing pain in the side of my gelatin femurs,
losing visions of the rigidity necessary to live this life of ambivalent autonomy.

--

steel strings and fibers of teeth eating this flesh like a false promise of love,
i am a windowsill covered by a nebulous, translucent shade,
clothespins existing simply to taper my eyes from the pain.

the stars take no mention of this cynical cycle of self-doubt,
for they're lighting our hearts long after they've burnt out.

and your hazel kitchen recipes are hanging over the paint-chipped railing,
giving meaning to this heart,
a blood-stained peach in constant mourning.

break this furtive glass,
there is no light pointing home,
**directionless map

There are
daisies in fields
and
two lips
that won't align.

As honeybees,
how can we predict the right fit?
Pollination
is so much more
than a one-night stand.

There are supernovas in indecision.
There are apathetic nights awake.
that end
muddy
and wrapped around telephone poles.

The hand that will pick,
nurse
and water
will be
a hand slaughtered.

You are a bird flying near.
A simple graze of my arm
a feather kept, a loss of fear.
And this is not temporary.

You are a parade.
Your trumpets, your drums
reinventing the copyrighted charade.
It's not a trick-it's rudimentary.

You are fresh squeezed lemonade.
When the sweat cannot be quelled,
you forge trees for shade.
But speaking of you is just supplementary.

You are the long drive back.
Every worm in the miles of dirt
can hear this counterattack-
especially those four days of January.

You are my trustworthy veins,
our frivolously necessary games,
and the smell of relentless rains.

These senses, put blunt yet gently,
manifest nothing less than your infinite trajectory.

A spark, a spark, a spark
An ignition in the street.
A compromise to sweep you off your feet
and repeat
why do you stand beside me?
A cheek
a kiss
a pretty hand to hold
behold
the power of how much an emotion can do.
A bottle of wine after a disappointment,
or a compliment and a kiss
of those ethereal lips.
Talk to me about why you are here.
Why me?
How do I deserve the sound of your everything?
She waits to speak in the most beautiful way
the action could possibly be completed.
Love.
The love that you give me.
The grip when you hug me,
The look when you kiss me,
The nook where you took me
And the meal that you bought me
And the lessons you've taught me
And the things you've shown
To make me a better person.
And she didn’t even know the half of it.
She didn't know that her eyes exploded with significance.
She didn't know that her smile never ended nor began.
She didn't know
how lucky I truly was
to be here.
All I knew is
I'm glad I bugged her,
I'm glad I called her,
and I'm glad that she answered.

I still wonder how to calm my thoughts.
They sprint the tightrope with closed eyes,
remind me of every note screamed,
and bring me back to size.

Her passive-aggressive nerve.
How did I never swerve
and fill the forest
with my blood and good intentions?

I'd come home with a red rose,
or maybe a few.
The only sentence she could compose
was how my hands smelt
of feta and bleach.
There was no closure,
but I had no composure.
The secret is that I still don't.

I have no regrets.
But I still wonder pensively
why I haven't wrapped myself
around that alluring oak tree.

It's around 2:30 now
and a few years have passed,
but I still reek of feta and bleach.

Light the funeral pyre.
The fleeting fire of desire
will never keep you higher
than a space devoid of *******,
or the clever whiff of wit.
(whether or not I deserve it)
I looked you in the eyes;  I shook.
The embarrassing strength it took.
The longing I have for you
is asymmetrically split in two.
A love for the rendezvous,
but a run from the morning dew.
That's you.
But realistically,
I'll be me.
And to be free,
I'm finally happy.
And she's out there-
a heart of care,
soft, translucent hair,
some lacy underwear,
a smile to defeat despair.
Every time I doubt,
I see you there.
And then you're everywhere.
You're my sturdy, wooden chair,
and the cowlick in my hair.
And to be fair,
I've got some pretty sweet underwear.
But ****, when you’re there,
you're there.
And for me,
you're everywhere.

Listen to the sound of the clock.
Does it beat the same for you?
Days are passing by and I
Would pay handsomely to miss the view.

The winter soon approaches
And the leaves even depart.
And who's to say for sure
If we really hold them in our heart?

Listen to the sound of your heart.
I don't understand all of the commotion
Perhaps a kiss, a touch, and unrequited feeling.
The logic just never seems to dictate that senseless emotion.

Because who's to say that love
can overcome all of the fear?
When nothing in this world besides confusion
is set in stone and crystal clear?

Listen to the sound of your head.
Does it puncture your mind with sorrow?
Even when the torches light the way for me,
I can't seem to illuminate tomorrow.

Who first decided there was a purpose?
A poor idealist who failed?
I suppose he hoped for better days.
For lovers and dreams that never bailed.

I grow tired of dreaming.
Because life is just too pragmatic.
I'm older and just that more beaten down.
It's just becoming so traumatic.

I'll be the one to give you the while.
to be there for soup and sniffles.
I'll be the one for savage days and lonely nights
to heal the burns, to count the stars.
I'll be the one to push you into the clouds
to remind you of you, once in awhile.
I'll be a shining rose on a warm spring afternoon.
I'll be your favorite pair of earrings.
I'll be a sweatshirt when it can't seem to get warm.
I'll be the ice cream,
the perpetual supporter of your self esteem.
Not to touch,
but to feel.
Not to sway,
but to swing.
Not to love,
but to adore.
Not to ease,
but to excite.
To smile, to hold, to love.
Just let me in.
To love, to love, to love.

there's no instruction manual
for the day that cotton and
broken ceramic sentimentality
both lose their argument
and the bedsheets bleed
a blood better resembling magenta
than a dream-filled agenda.

there's no escape when
night time travels
come to an end.

there's nothing to knit.
Enough of the yarn
has covered cortexes,
capitalized on insomnia,
and nullified touch-
the only common sense.

it's common sense
that bruises don't heal
by applying pressure.

and brown eyes
and blue.
formerly, there is
underrated hue.

(If underrated could ever encapsulate oceans and the stars giving us light abundantly and concurrently from millions of years away.)

i unravel years as I lie
not sleeping,
reading up on different methods
to stop the bleeding.

of all of these shades of vibrant blue,
I choose the one that is brown,
but true.

i see these shades in unison
and when they inexplicably combine,
they are you.

Hello.
Really have you cared?
Spare it.
I'm waiting for my real conversation.
For my real moment to connect.
Because I haven't ever.
I haven't ever felt that,
that sweet euphoria of intimacy. Of
enlarged pupils.
And apathy towards sweat.
And birthmarks.
And gaps in teeth.
And oversized guts.

I have told you
That love is the first of the emotions,
And the last.
Whatever lies in between,
Is a fatal confusion.
It fills the space.
And whatever that means to you,
is.
And that's okay.
Because
We cannot be told what it is.
We must fight.
And we must bleed.
And we must lose sleep.

For the last, most true level of enchantment
is enlightenment.
Enlightenment is finding this love.
It's scratching and
it's clawing and
it's kissing and
it's miserable and
it's the best thing you'll ever know.

And if you don't know,
you will.

So despite all of my hollow hellos,
and yours,
You are not devoid.
You are just scratching.
You are just clawing.
You are just kissing.
You are just enduring the misery.
Because you are here.
And you will.

Peel it off
One by one
By every single thread
So every single strand
Is unwoven by a broken hand
And reveal to us
What you've done.
Were you scared?
Were you scarred?
Beaten and mashed in and marred
by the wasteland in which we breathe?
I don't know which came first:
the euphoria of absolute power
or the fear of it.
Regardless,
we are here.
in the wasteland.
And the worst thing you can do-
the only crime you can commit-
is to stop peeling layers.
and stop wondering why we are
where we are.

Who are you
to tell me the verdict
of a case
held within a suitcase
enclosed by vines
and repression?

I suppose it's somewhat
of an obsession,
if one can be so apathetic.

It's not pathetic.
I understand a panic,
but when the sirens sound,
would you even care?
Would you sit me down
on a slab of cracked concrete
and be able to caulk and sew
anything that would seep?

Or would I be left at sea?

I suppose one without emotion
cannot feel empathy.

So with my lowly, unholy,
hollowed-out chest,
I lie on the melting asphalt
pooling
and
always becoming warmer
to sweat through
another fever.

you are but a single spec of dust
and yet you are
every particle that my eyelashes
have ever deflected
out of some
(probably false)
sense of defense
and mistrust.

the contrast
has never broken
the ice sheet that covers
my bones and organs
so sharply,
so warmly,
so comfortably

moving mountains
has become simple
with the oxygen and hope
you generously give me
in each blink
and
velvet
touch.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

A
bone
slowly
woke
just
in
time
to
become
br­ok(en).
Once spoken,
there's no point
of lending an ear.
There'll be a violent
jerking of the wheel,
deceptive *** appeal,
and an unrequited (love).
Now, unwillingly,  it's open.
The rhyme is deliberately late,
but it's not tardy enough to satiate
Swelling lungs-we're just getting started.
Both for respiratory and broken-hearted.
Here, we speak of energy-specifically kinetic
Because you can't live in love and good faith
with right hemisphere real, and left prosthetic.
AND THAT'S WHERE THIS BEAUTIFULLY KICKS IN.
Picking up faster and quicker and clearer
and headlights have never come nearer.
But I'll be somewhat content lying at rest.
While lively and enthusiastic is best,
unemployed potential is all I can be.
It's something to unwillingly see.
You'll watch the clean breaks
as the marrow escapes.
As I steadily gush
onto pavement
you'll see
how
idle
I
can
really
be.
As
I

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

We are all pieces to this puzzle,
but there are more heartbeats
than there is audible space.

There is no mark on the skin of an outlier-
just a universal instinct to reach higher.

We'll all keep reaching for the right fit.
What happens when realizations
of isolated chairs
and echoless rooms
reach consciousness?

Will we stop reaching,
or blindly ignore truth?

Will we accept broken limbs,
or feign eternal youth?

To float or to sink-
is a truly blind way to think.

Arbitrarily,
there is universal fit
and there is
unison.

Love in an elevator
Procrastinated "see you later",
and how I ******* hate her.
An attest to me?
No, attest to thee,
And protest the conquest
for outdoor reccess.
No I didn't break it,
I found it that way.
No love in an elevator,
Satiated, recluse motivator.
See the rust on the bones?
They happened when you were home alone.
Home but not alone.
Check your sunrise, check your phone.
I will check it before I wreck it,
and remember she still deserves respect.
Despite the state of the insect.
We all need love.
Not some hope from above.
A genuine sunrise check.
A dauntless morning peck.
The hope for this comfortability
The mind's wish for mobility
The endless denial of futility
And my endless conquest for you.

my brothers,
carried by storms,
aren't keeping it warm
anymore.

I've been evanescent:
an irrelevant adolescent.
I've felt this for years,
through tardive tears,
rusted shears,
and too much time ducking in the shade.

Sometimes,
I just don't know if it's worth it.
My bed holds me closer than anyone,
and she can't repair the cuts on my fingertips.
(Nor can she silence the creeks or the drips.)

In memory and in reflection,
we hide from present affection.
But I'll invite the bullet,
and accept your kiss.
(For it is all I've wanted
for as long as the recent past recalls.)
For there's an electric hue in your cheeks:
a cunning current vibrating my days into weeks.

You complain of certain self-distortion,
and blow mindless fault out of proportion.
But as the facts would have it,
you are the brightest sun on record.

I am relevant.
I can and will scream loud enough to be heard.
But I will mute beautifully for you.
I will absorb every cell of your existence
with each auspiciously soothing word.

There's such a delicacy about all of it.
What to say. How to feel.
How do you feel?
As if the price of honesty was well worth the reward.

The weight of it all
will almost always pause us,
and freeze us in picture frames.
It will capture the shattering fragments of glass
before you have the slightest chance to react.

And how do we reflect on the past,
or predict the future,
when it just seems so out of our control?
It's as if we've been thrown into a violent gust
without any wings,
or at least ones we can trust.

But you are to my left,
and you are to my right.
And we are all around you.
So no matter how futile our attempts
to blow each other in the right direction are,
The love behind the action
will never steer you too far.

An ocean away from the Ivory Coast,
my feet are too clean and my mind is too *****.

i'm so far away from this euphoric, ruddy discharge that my bed has transformed from a lukewarm boulder into all of my favorite childhood memories-
the unconscious a candy apple,
your dreams a sugary topping.

there you are-
wavering like a flag torn piece by piece from the wind,
savoring my tears like a glass jar,
gleaming ubiquitous affection, yet stoic,
unaffected by the blistering mantle-heat.

this ocean is my hospital gown tied so tightly that i can no longer breathe in your deepest fears and swallow them like morning coffee.

this ocean is my mother, choking on soothing words, repelling suicide with optimistic rhetoric, neurons firing in a tone so hectic that silent meditation is an inaudible conversation.

this ocean is the anti-depressant that ***** on my skin like a vacuum, dr. nestling his blindfold like an infant

this ocean is my empty home, abandoned, lost in the noise.

someday my feet will be ***** again,
and i'll feel your unyielding warmth like quarries in the summer,
dropping all of the noise and mending with what matters most,
where i'm blending in with infinite shades
of the Ivory Coast.

when I close my eyes,  there are deaf ears.
I see nothing,
my friends.

i have not asked for this agony-
waking up and
filling my nervous system with consciousness,
a sugar-coated term for fear.

and we see enough.

there are good dogs who bite out of spite,
from being curb-stomped and
laughed-at
and killed,
and then there dogs that will just bite.

the ability to perceive is the equivalent of watching you and anyone you've ever ****** on the bed that we never made.

none of us have asked for this,

but we have it.

Endings could be happier if we didn't spread the impression that death was to be avoided at all costs.

I just want
existence to thrive.

Breathing is affected by
my lack of left-handedness
and
my inability
to experience emotion in any pragmatic method.

Drown me
in the sea
of instability
and broken
dreams.

Every day now feels like that Thursday.
When the rain just instigates for no reason.
Every day now feels like a sick day.
Except there's no home to rest.

I suppose you could be my medicine.
You could break into a million shreds
and release all of the chemicals
that give me such an ideal numbness.

Because the pills that hurt us most
are the ones that we try the hardest to swallow.
And the ones that heal us
are just too much follow.

Perhaps this is why I'll never have you.
You are the poison and the pain
that can make me smile on cue.
But I
I'm
Nothing.
Nothing but a smoke and a joke,
and a sub-par kisser.
A black hole of emotion and ambition.
Nothing.

If only she had any clue
how much life she contained in one breath.
If she only knew
how many storms she creates within me.

She is here.
And she knows nothing of the endless light within her.
The only one who does
is nothing.

, and so weather patterns are not correlated with (mis)trust because there is collusion.

V. Conlusions:
Any meaningful exclusion will compensate restitution.

Material, though, wears thin as your heart wears my skin like your favorite shadow.

Plants don't operate like this because they have common sense.