Pictures of shadows

Turn their faces from me

Words run away in fear

Streets are crowded with

Screaming squealing sentences

Squalls of colored vowels scurry

Furtive and fearful consonants

Collide in panic to escape

The blinding ignorance of 'normality'

Hunts down the paragraphs

Books, notes, letters are piled high

A bonfire is lit the flesh of words

Of thoughts of alternatives melt

The flames are stoked ashes fly

Spiraling into the air

A smell of bitter blackness

Pervasive and prolonged

A bleak confession to tragedy

Knees slightly touching.
Shoulders arched.
Lips dry.
Eyes lingering.
Breaths distant,
words carefully chosen.
I know you enough to believe it all to be true.
You know me well enough to hope it all your own.
Thoughts smothered.
One more hour to let it all go.
Several years to spare to rekindle.
I'll lie awake.
You'll look at me.
We'll rekindle.

Call for the most fitting to love you
not one who whispers
in the garden of the sun
to bring showers of night
until day comes no more.
Come as a woman whose days
are filled with perspective
and dreams of golden skies
to quench her thirst
evermore.

If you must go into the forest
where you may not know
who sits and waits to chase the sun
always wait a minute
to see if they are weary.  
As whoever does not know
how to listen
for the clearest voice
that calls to begin the race
is the one who meets
all fury.

Sometimes you will hold all you thought lost
when you walk off
into the distance
with your heart beating
as if it has become boxed in.
Always remember
you have more than one night
to find what you think lost
so please do not cry
for what sleeps
within.

Outside of your window
there rages a fire
that is deeply satisfying
if you will open your door
you will no longer remember
your greatest disappointment.
Always call out to where there exists
all that you can find
inside of balance,
no time like the
present.

A stripper does not command the same feelings
when there is no music
when there is rain
when there is **** beneath their feet
when there is no stage
when they are
naked.

Step off stage,
peel their eyes from your skin.
Layer after layer
of pervert,
of bloodshot,
wipe the trails of loathing
they leave behind.
Take a cotton swab to your navel
to dry your mother's tears.
These are nothing you haven't seen.

Find glass where it is not broken,
Break it.
Pull on your face until you can see your cracks
echoed in kaleidoscope reflections.
Let your tongue swipe your teeth
and slurp down the dollar bill smile.
Chase it with the cat that was
swimming in your eyes.
Imagine what you would look like dead.
Make silly faces in broken mirrors.
Turn away before they fade.

Shake your head in your hands
until music flies from your ears.
Shake harder.
Spill the hypnotic equilibrium they sold you
Watch the room start to sway.
Sit down.
Stand up.
Find your legs.
*****.
Heave,
feeling there is much more poison
than will ever come out.
Cough into the air,
knowing your hands are sacred.
Wipe your memory on someone else's sleeve.

Walk to the door.
Let your profession slip from your shoulders.
Become human.
Become blending into the crowd.
Become busy with something in your hands.
Open the door, then your umbrella.
Do not breathe.
Take five steps forward and wait to exhale
until your hear the door slam behind you.
It isn't healthy to mix the sight of rain
with the smell of broken pianos.

Walk forward.
Out of your shoes.
Wince as the concrete speaks to your heel.
Bathe your toes in the nearest puddle.
Let your umbrella slide from the warmth of your hand.
Watch it fly.
Notice the people.
Move your sight from the ground
and rest it on their chins.
Realize you're wearing no clothes.
Pull the confidence down and off of your walk
and turn to the closest alley.

Step off stage.
Peel their eyes from your soul.
Become an individual.
Forget "the people."
Notice the persons
wrapped to their noses in professions and smiles,
confidence and ignorance pouring from their eyes,
heads tucked low beneath charcoal umbrellas.
Smile.
Without trying when you hear the clouds roar.

Stop when you find there are more walls than bodies
and the smell of ***** is stronger than your own.
Forget your smell.
Open your mouth.
Forget your taste.
Bend your knees and raise your head.
Close your eyes and feel it rain.
Scream.
Strip the religion from your prayers.
Scream the ineffable confession.
Forget your body.
Drink the rain.

there is no music
there is rain
there is **** beneath your feet
there is no stage
you are
naked.

Crawling,
nimble fingers curl,
green tongues speaking,
the prairie grass buckles
under weight of the fickle wind.
Cool weather and farm dust
thrown from its right hand.
A solid left hook
burning holes in its pocket.