Standing here, in 90-degree land
Where nothing is right
But the drink in my hand

Sweet saving coolness, fine eastern breeze!
I welcome thee warmly,
I welcome you, please

Stand fans may blow this languor away,
But I cannot stand
These bills I must pay

Summer is hot on my heels as I run
Through prickly white sands
– and the daydream is gone

In thick sticky air, seconds trickle and crawl
As sweat from my temples
To the sides of my jaw

The sun's got a fever and my blood could be boiling
I laze inch by inch though my insides are roiling
To be productive in this haze – this hell of a heatwave
But instead I'm in bed, just rotting and spoiling

Silver tried to pilfer a podium of palladium's
"I don't want you next to me," said 4d8 to 4d9
"For the 8th time, for the 9th,
I don't want you next to me," said 4d8 to 4d9

She ruined you in the way
Water erodes rock
And time obscures memory.

She was the gentle fawn
That nestled within your contrived roots,
The soft fog
That embraced your unchanging peaks,
But went away
One season too soon.

Too soon,
She was the comet that shot past
And would only reappear in another lifetime,
The painted lady
That touched upon your concave petals,
And then took flight
One moment too soon.

She ruined you in the way
A woodpecker chips at trees
And watercolor makes inked lines run.

Too close,
You let her come too close,
Until you were tangent lines in an otherwise beautiful work of art.

Somebody had to go.

– so when she left,
She was ruined
   In the way human breath
   Makes pure water acidic,
And she ruined you
   In the way acidic water
   Wipes every detail
   Off the face of an architectural masterpiece

Without you he is lost;
   His mind searches for an answer,
   His thoughts falling into narrow, twisted tunnels
   Of what ifs and what should have beens.

Without you his lips are a desert,
   And his heart a tundra. To him it is all the same:
   Vast, desolate land. A stagnant nothingness,
   Haunted by shapeless shadows.

Without you he is betrayed
   By the swathes of shimmering stars in the
   depths of the cosmos – by the notion
   that everything was possible, that the universe was good.

Without you he cannot tell
   The difference between human touch
   And the searing sensation of a white-hot branding iron.
   (Which leaves a mark, and which hurts more?)

Because without you he is lost,
   A single alien species floating in the clouds
   Above rolling hills and sprawling meadow,
      Bone-dry canyons and ancient forests,
         And snowy peaks and stormy seas.
      Miles above the earth he may find quiet,
         But he never will find peace.

Artificial, yet an artisan,
Pontifically partisan,
She raised her eyes to heaven high
And chiseled my heart with steady hands

She carved her own intricate façade,
And painted her mask to earn applaud,
Beneath her father’s right-wing feathers
Brought up to pray to his decreed god

He crowned her with his finest gems
To show her off to all his friends;
Helped her gild herself with gold
An aristocratic wright in the truest sense

“But I specialize in counterfeit,”
She said, as I saw under the definite
And skillful strokes, the expert notches,
A messy sketch yearning to freely acquit

“Then be free,” I said, as she let me in
Her atelier. So I scraped from her skin
The china-doll gloss and regal glitter,
And drained her blue blood of cyan tint

She smiled—the laughter lines made cracks
Through lips of plaster and cheeks of wax
I took the gleaming jewels from her eyes,
And saw new life glimmer in rolling tear tracks

She was a tempest of color, splattered and spilled
A muse incarnate that could not be stilled,
Chaos unveiled, but beautifully alive
With soul redeemed and freedom fulfilled

Time trickles down rocky faces.
The world is teetering on the edge of existence,
Its mountains sheared and valleys flooded.
She calls out night and day to ears deafened by
   The gears of progress,
   The clinking of gold,
   And the seductive voices of legacy and permanence.

But time trickles down rocky faces,
Wearing away the marks we fought so hard to leave behind...
There are whispers in the wind,
Echoes in the deep dark unknown:
   Only one thing will endure,
   Only one thing will not weather.

They were lightened by kindness;
For a soul once shown love
Always carries a little warmth
Into the coldness of forever.

Leave this haunted house
Leave this haunted heart
Take the light from my eyes
To guide you in the dark

Ease the words from my lips
And carve them into your bones
Interpolate into the blanks,
For these thoughts are useless alone

Carry me to the southern front
Where the crossfire raises hell
And let me lie with you on the ****** beach,
Among the silent shells

White bigwig owns a black oil rig
Sleeps like a sloth and eats like a pig
For gold will he drill, for gold does he dig
He maps out the world by the gold it can give

It was a simple mistake but you burned your hands
A step out of time in a synchronized dance, but you
Slid off the edge and into a trap
Because once you're a sinner you can never go back

It was a look at the sun one second too long
A note slightly flat in an almost perfect song, but the
Discord rang out in the depths of fate
And now the damage is done and you're a little too late

Our dreams are just stardust,
Just handfuls of stardust
Slipping through our fingers
But leaving glitter behind

Our potential is a sea
Vast and bottomless and blue
Just one stroke after another, and
You'll find yourself someplace new

I wish the world would stop turning
For a while, for a moment or two
And we could breathe and smell the flowers
And pretend all our dreams came true

Every second brings the stars closer at last.
Planets spinning on their shaky axes
Bid me farewell as my little pod flies past,
And the gravitational hold on me relaxes.

In the deepest reaches of space and time,
Portals die and dimensions are lost for ever.
Ten million bodies writhe as they shine
Their secrets burning in their combusting hearts

And trust orbits mine at the speed of light,
Vacuum tearing at its fragile frame
Critical velocity cracked its spindly shell
Any moment could be the last

While old familiar faces crowd the expanse
Their voices in a beautiful galactic dissonance

And is it not quite sad that some stars should shine brighter than you,
Or that your death should spawn a darkness so menacing?

Heavy hands wrought the heavens
I watch the little comets burn,
And within the ever expanding universe I silently wait my turn

Stellar voices sing an ode
To the graceful endless night,
And true to the promise of an ancient soul I exit in implosive light