The Gazelle, forced down to the bed
Her cries, filling inside her womb
Her crimes, fester over her body
painted like an open wound.
What crime is being prey—
What sin is weakness,
to be smited by The Lion?

The Gazelle, pinned across the bed
Clawing — shrieking — kicking —
The Lion is stronger still.
Thoughts of God bring thoughts of repent.
And today — tonight — tomorrow, The Lion leads her sermon
The Gazelle pleads mercy.
The Lion consumes her.

The Gazelle, lying vacant on the bed
Apologies fill the stagnant air
Regret — wrath — sorrow stains the sheets.
The Gazelle knows not what made the full lion feast.
Her blame is hers, pointed inward and not out
The Lion leaves.
The Gazelle — torn — seeks The Hyenas.

Doe-eyed girl across the bar
Acting a shy two-step in the corner
No doubt this is a night not for you -
a night where one must evade man.

No doubt many wish to remove you from this venue -
Wish to feel the wetness of your lips -
Wish to hear the squelch, slap, and drip of intimacy.

I am no different than many.

But, doe-eyed girl,
I also wish to join your shuffle -
and turn acting into dancing.

Doe-eyed girl -
We can hold each other in a swaying upright embrace
'til the dye of your red shirt stains my hand,
and the blue of your jeans rubs off on my finger.

But, for now, I admire in between my own act -
in my own corner.

Where that place used to be
A swing set, a park, a place where we
Kicked our feet to the moon and got higher
Ascending a place beyond the stars, the planets and desire

Where that place used to be
Past space,
Past apart,
Pushed us.

I’m past your inner circle at last — but
Beyond that place is your outer space.

The tinge of secondhand cigarettes fill the air,
Meshing with the scent of a stale motel.
The waft of solitary *** lingers on the unmade beds.
The dilapidated roofing, cracked and chipped,
Threatens to fall on its ghostly residents,
Who care little for the subpar shielding,
Which lets in the acid rain and crumbs of insulation.
The outside, which was once filled with children
Blowing bubbles, filling the moving air with floating life,
Now rests as a statue grey, unnerving in stasis.
Behind the front desk stands the concierge-
As timeless as the cobwebs in the corners and
Dust on the grandfather clock, long since unmoving.
"He was once a great man, as tall as Yggdrasil itself"
Residents were once told.
Now he stands grey and hunched,
As his residents lay sedated and soft.

Most of the snow has cleared except
for the ***** piles on street corners.
A black car treads behind me,
it's driver on the phone-
distracted but keeping pace.
I cannot help but focus on the phone,
black all over it's surface except for the screen,
which is so brightly lit
it is as if the sun were in the black car
still behind me-
and still distracted.
My car continues forward under the sun above,
which has long since shifted from yellow to red.

An engorged tide crashes into my side like an eighteen wheeler.
Or, perhaps it's a wave of indifference,
merely crashing down upon me-
pushing me beneath it's apathy.
Though, it could be nothing
and we are all simply drowning.

The sea has calmed.
The swell and crash has died down
to a gentle, rocking ebb and flow.

The driver behind me has left his black car
behind the green sun.
He is still on his black phone,
ushering frantic words and numbers.

Red and blue moons pull me from the water,
away from the moonlit rise and fall
and into a dark, entangling thicket devoid of clarity-
locking me in place.
And, on the body-
my body-
which lays ensnared under Sirens,
is an anxiety so large
it is responsible for the currents of the ocean.

Side by side fighting in rounds,
etching drawings in our skin cut by cut.
Hoping and praying that the vitriol
of the infection’s symptoms are sporadic;
that the wave of pain comes only in bursts.
Infection acting as a hallucinogen creating visions.

Yet it is in these sought after visions
we see battles as if they’re in rounds.
And in these battles the bullets fly in bursts,
where we see lives all cut
short. The lives taken are random and sporadic,
despite the takers lack of vitriol.

Like the poison of hatred and vitriol,
seeping through the mind like mirages and visions,
after drought and famine and natural sporadic
disasters wrought on different rounds
of dystopia — some of the battles we fight are cut
short and experienced like explosions, in bursts.

Sometimes our fights are drowned in shots and bursts,
with alcohol or drugs or other vitriol.
Maybe the vitriol is the blood we drink from the cut
on our wrists bringing us to the brink, with a vision
of our lives flashing before our eyes in rounds
like candid imagery. They seem sporadic.

However, although the images seem sporadic,
whether it be soldiers fighting firing guns in bursts,
or two kids fighting trading rounds,
like a man finding his wife’s lover with vitriol
in his heart, they all connect with a vision
of something where hatred is simply cut.

Where we can find personal and general wars cut
from textbooks and any person’s sporadic
memory. Where men have “a vision”
to “improve” a utopia. When men questioned men’s bubbles bursts.
Then they seethe and fester and ferment their vitriol,
like alcohol until ultimately feeding into the cycle. Then they fire their rounds.

Either at people or their own heads, their rounds
are found on the floor next to the sporadic, fallen gore. Their vitriol
lying next to the deceased vision of perfect around lives cut short, taken in bursts.

Location unknown
Uncharted,
Paths not yet sown.
Unsullied—
No person’s come close,
Refuge for no person,
Uncharted and off course.

Location unknown
Undiscovered,
Any ‘path’ is merely overgrown.
Uninhabited—
No beast has come close,
Everything is prey,
All is overgrown — waiting to decay

Location found
Unexplored,
Not barren, but certainly bare.
Untouched—
No man has come near,
Everything is sheltered.
The forest — tangled — paths still unclear.

Location found
First man on land,
Beautiful, hostile — likely to ensnare.
Surveyed—
We will become close.
She may be secluded,
But I am on course.

And thus, I wrote in chalk:
****
That'll teach her.

Time - ever fleeting - a construct amassing
Open yet closed, an entry forbidden for passing
Mortal shan’t understand - only guess - as time is lapsing
Acting, it’s all Mortal does; All understanding is acting
Time - ¿ever existing? - A thought ever lasting
Overflowed, like a cup, soon to be collapsing

Standing across the table (there were no chairs in the house) was my father, Emilo. The table itself was a sturdy rosewood, and one of the last items in the home. We had sold our belongings after mother had died -- my father said it was to help pay for school. We had each kept one tattered shirt and one nice shirt which I would wear to class every other day (we were shirtless in this moment, no need to sweat in clothes unnecessarily). We had one pair of jeans each - both tattered and mended with old quilts taken from the tailor's trash can. We also kept three of mom's blouses - one for me, one for father, and one for her. We were close to pawning hers, though. On the table, near my father (and, away from me) was my semester's grades and a polished bottle of amber liquor. His skinny arm swung across the table, smashing the bottle of gasoline-smelling alcohol against the bareness of the dry, wood wall. The liquid seeped into the pores of that portion of our home leaving a dripping stain. It never really dried. Two weeks and three days later, my father would flick the ashy edge of a cigarette **** into the wall. He was too drunk to know he wasn't in Hell.

A windy writer's
pen scratches on mute paper
yielding black branches.

Together, we woke up
In our secondhand metal bed.
Fell asleep together,
Wrapped up in our ash gray sheets.
My piano hands held yours as we slept.
I had this addiction to living our three years of pain,
Where we were at our best, our most ecstatic,
Our hands grasping tightly at the other’s
And becoming strangled and clammy.
We could have fought through anything.
We fought through our first trip to New York City,
When we came back to our home,
Our shiny, chrome bed was there – ready to carry us in our sleep.

After you moved out, I looked for the polaroids we took.
They were hidden beneath the mattress
Which has been stained a dull red
Because of the rusting on the metal of the springs.
I didn’t look at them, though I wanted to.
I imagined that the photographs, too, have rusted.
Lying down on the chilled bed-
Devoid of the warmth of two lovers,
The cold air circulated around me, slowing the opening and closing of my hands.
And it filled up the stagnant vacancy in them.
I grabbed the edge of the bed and
The rust scales flaked off onto my hand.
I wiped it off on the mattress,
And wondered how much redder this bed could get.

A cradle of flame enveloped the bed.
I ripped up the floorboards-
Scratched with your nail marks and dented from our play fighting.
The blood from where I hit my head staining the wood,
Matching the boards to the red scales on the frame.
I boarded up the door,
Trapping the remnants of a bonfire bed.
As the crackling of the burning bed quelled, I pried the ashen nails off the shielded door.
I lied down on the ash-metal frame, pretending we’re still there-
And I started dreaming.
Images appear of you and I, sitting crossed legged on a queen-sized mattress-
Holding hands-
And a polished metal frame,
Lined with astral sheets and a hand-made quilt with our initials patched into the top-left corner,
Discussing the plans we made together,
Of how you’ll travel and see the world,
Maybe Dubai, Amsterdam, anywhere but here, really.
And how I would wait here.

My wishful eyes open across from what should have been yours.
But all I see is the emptiness in my piano hand.

It is three a.m..
My eyes chanced to open
And across my bed, outside my window,
From this side of the horseshoe hotel,
Were lights cascading onto
The facade of the inner outside hotel wall.

Were the red; white; green; yellow; blue; white lights a sign
That the aliens were here? -- probing
This particular hotel for their next cornfield victim.

I did not rise to check outside
For fear they would take me next,
And turn me into a probéd husk.

Is this what happens when we sleep?

Superimposing
My soul onto another's --
It's not ***; it's love.

Fractured moons are stars
Betwixt a black    black        black sky.
Flutters: small, broken.

Drifting attention
Span against the white wide wall.
Like the clouds, it goes.