I walk the world with thoughts of you
In every place I go
Your voice is on the winter wind
Your footprints in the snow
And every tool I try to use to scrape you from my mind
Cuts your name onto my tongue
And beats me till I'm blind
I layed my head upon your knees and breathed the air you breathed
I cut myself when you were cut to know just how you bleed
Now as I walk this empty earth with nothing but a face
To breathe me and to bleed me
Until I leave this place

I remember us in bed
the most.
I think about the heat
the burn
the bites and bruises.
I think about the loss of breath
The heaving chests
The white bright lights
and rest.
But more than the fire
I think about the silence
and the way you would put your ear to my chest
and count my heartbeats.
I remember your breath on my neck
your arm around my waist
and all the nothing that was said
and cut me with its loveliness.
I remember us in bed
and try to forget the fire.

The unorthodox are the true prophets
for their ways are those of the future,
so in the now, most kings get their head cut off.

But as death is the greatest prophet,
for it never fails to come true,
their martyrdom proves their ways truer than the footsteps of their fathers,
so in the face of adversities;
never be afraid to be a lonely Jesus on the Cross.

The first time
I took my clothes off in front of you,
I didn’t take everything off.
The first time
I pressed my bare skin against yours,
There was still something between us:
A final barrier between my secrets
And your knowing them.
People say the act of love is the most intimate,
But it isn’t.
The truth is,
The most intimate of acts is stripping yourself
Not of clothes,
But of everything hidden,
Even from yourself.
This act of trust,
Of divulging the deepest, darkest parts of yourself
You often refuse to acknowledge –
This is laying yourself bare.
And often we ask for nothing more
Than to see someone’s clothes on the floor
Because, frankly,
True nakedness is something too personal to ask for.

The first thing that disappeared
was your lips.
Not your voice;
That I still hear loud and clear.
I can’t seem to remember what your lips look like.
But I remember how they taste.

Next it was your nose;
it melted right off your face.
Sliding down your cheek and now
your mouthless lower half,
It fell to the ground below.

The image of your eyes is burned into my mind.
I fell into them the moment we first met,
sunk into the blue flecked with grey
submerged in a stormy sea.
I have yet to come up for air.

Your rosy cheeks have faded
over the years.
Now they just look like everyone else’s.

I hope this means that to me
You’re not as distinct as you used to be.
But I sometimes wonder if it’s far worse;
if it’s that everyone else
is now more like you.

Everyone I’ve ever idolized dies tragically.

He said that Blues Run the Game and died still feeling that fire all over his body.
He sings about losing control again even though it’s he who was.
He taught his son about responsibility and fell to the wildebeest.

I used to think the monk who set himself on fire
was insane
but now I think
he was a product of sound rationale.

Ears are falling off in this starry night.
And I see nothing weird
If he told me to keep the object carefully
I would.
Madness is Genius.
And I’d rather be absolutely ridiculous
than nauseatingly normal.

No one tells you that the very best parts of love
are also its very worst.
Love torments the soul
Tragedy becomes a way of life
And suffering, a daily occurrence.
Such is the way of the mad artist.
Who after he paints Starry Night
Cuts off his ear.

I’m starting to think
I’ll live longer
If I stop being an artist.

everything dries up this time of year
driving into the wind I cried for four hours
but the desert air drank the water from my face, from my lips:
brittle sacks, experiments in evaporation

candy bar wrappers blow around the backseat
courtesy of these broken windows-- impractically high speeds
I don't know whose trash this is
I've been driving with a ghost

shouting at it, in the vacant passenger seat
all the things I'd never spoken
(for I swore you could read eyes)
but illiterate you saw only reflected stars

trying to find yourself in the Pleiades

all you knew of love was mythology
all I knew-- diesel gas, freon, points on maps
you read nothing in my vacant looks
I saw nothing in your ancient texts

a translation problem. little less.