Torn up like
Mom's wicker baskets
Living forever
Like all their caskets
A sky, blue pastel
An empty castle
Engulfed by vines
They ignore the signs
Thorns tear thicker
The wicker
Of baskets.

I swear the end
Of this gun is cold
Like the way he drowns me
In unanswered questions
Masked women
With red lipstick
Turning the engine on
never off again
All threats
On all sides
Coincides
With the scam:
Wherever I go
There I am.

Let me down slowly
Instead fiercely
In scarcity
We bare teeth
A step beneath
The intangible surface
Of the hi-how-are-you
Conversations
Perversions of things
We want to say

My eyes are lasers
Burning people
Unwittingly
Unwilling I wear glasses
So you can't see
And I can't see
Blind love the blind
Because it is a life
Without fire.

Chairs stacked high
My flower
I chose you
In a hasty gaze
I fit
A puzzle together
By cutting
Away the pieces
That don't fit
Sit with this
Feeling that I'm not a person
I wonder if they notice

Leaves turn gray
And fall away
The pressure is too great,
And you are far too late
I ask the universe
Or fate
To send some help
But it only hears a curse.

My light isn't light
He said
It's un-light
In the brightest possible way,
I long to gulp down
A beautiful soul
To replace the one stolen from me,
The one lost at sea
Instead, the un-light
Gulps me into its
Violent absence found
In leaves turning gray.

I dig at old wounds
with screams
and pink champagne
pink pain running down
my arms
down
my thoughts
through and through
I loved you
You could accept these lions
except their claws are sharp