where did your eyes go
when my heart
decided to slip down
the sides of your veins.

where did your eyes go
when my nails raked your shoulders
in search of answers
to pointless questions
(was that all in vain?)

where did your eyes go?
for now there must only
be hollow sockets in their place
if you can’t see
the river that’s drowning
my fading face-

but even worse;

where did your tongue go
so that you don’t feel
the vile after-taste
of memories put to waste
when your skin
brushes her lip to
burn holes
through my brain.

And worst of All
-where did your hands go?

the emptiness of your fingertips
tickling my breath
now resonates as you trace
the curve of her hip
that mingles with mine
for we are not so different I and she
she
and
I
(strangely
inter
twined)

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream:
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

I am not
afraid
of death.

I am
afraid
of not living.

I am afraid of
lips that shut to the rhythm of
a pulmonary valve that shuts to the rhythm of
my beating heart that shuts off
The red rawness of air
from searing my lungs
so that I
become
numb.

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and ****,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.

His body sinks to the depths
of fading thoughts, returning, shifting
sand-dune visions.
She
bathes in the trickle of letters escaping burnt lips
like when she ***** in the moonlight
adrift his month-long lunar withdrawal
-or when she lets the breeze hit her
to erase the thunder.

She
traces his words with her heart
following lines on a crumbling map
-callused fingertip rubbing against
yellow paper
as once he would trace a corpse’s veins.

Aubergine voice then seeps through pores
into her vacuous chest
-prying open
bleeding heart

heart which hides in a corner
of her quiet brain

brain that heals him from memories
of immortalized hollow of her necks against
ghostly wrists
memories burning
worse than fire.

Together they lie in the dark amidst
deserts of emotions,
pools of memories,
rivers of unshed tears,
-daylight drowsily approaching
to chase away
lingering dreams.

A world map puzzle rearranged,
haven for the lost,
home to those too strange
to the outcasts
to the insane,

Where hearts collide
and children of the sun thrive
because storms
can’t keep them
inside

because
here
they find the moon
in their skin
rain in a stranger’s eye
and know that they are kin

because
here
there are no borders
to separate our brains
we are all one
yet never the same

because
here
culture runs deeper than blood
in veins
in its palm this world
where spirits roam
and dreams grow


-kisses
drawn
upon nurtured souls.