Camel brown seats pocked with burns,
Dry rotted with age and heat.
A booboo trap (many fingers were sliced opening its doors)
Stained with the stench of cigarettes and summer.

One year your bed was a winter snow catcher
And we used your frozen spoils for ammo,
Your body as a shield,
Our icy cannonballs smashing and exploding against your sides.

Death trap, playground, what difference did I know?
To me, you were daddy's El Camino.

Traipsing through alleys,
Awash in an alcoholic glow,
We play Frogger,
Headed to our usual spot.

PBR's and Mai Tai's disguised as Powerade,
The night elapses
In a haze
Of elaborate bottle passes.

The world is still.

Her artfully perched hat,
Elegantly arranged atop
Perfectly coiffed hair
Belie the workings of the
Mind within.

Gears grate--
Stuck, attempting to turn.

Striding the balance between
What-was, What-is, and What-will-be,
She is overcome,
Contemplating the
Embellished promise of
Yesterday's tomorrow.

Lachrymosial curls
Shiver within--

S
P
  L
   I
    N
     T
      E
       R
        I
         N
          G

Me
Into infinite slivers of
Individuated identities.
You break me.

A voice echoes through my head--
My name, sounding
Over and over again.

A thought flits across my mind,
And a smile alights on my face.

"Maybe it's my soulmate,"
My heart thinks.

My head shakes,
Dispelling the romantic fantasy.

Because hearts don't think,
And a stranger's voice can't speak in my head.

A lover and a fighter,
With a heart of tarnished gold.
You've been hurt and
Hardened to the ways of the world.
Like a tree in a storm,
You bend, but never break.
You always bounce back--
Stronger than ever,
And ready to try again.
Proud of your accomplishments--
And your mistakes--
You've struggled and learned,
Becoming the person I always knew you could be.

You,
Or you,
Or you, or you.
But wait--you're far away too.

It's like being in a zoo,
Where "no touching" is something I'll always rue.

There's a disconnect,
Between you, me, us.
When I reflect
On our relationships, all I see is dust.
We are not broken.

Distant, self-absorbed
We travel the world
In little orbs,
Caught up and whirled.
We are not broken.

You, me, us.
Our past is in the rearview.
All we can do is entrust
Ourselves with emotions long overdue.
It's time.

Notebooks full of death,
A gun in his bag.
This boy--
Who is this boy
With bruises on his face
And scars down his wrist?

BANG.

Famous. Nameless.

Jesus hovers, peace written in his smile.

A waterfall of emotions,
Crashing,
Churning,
Breaking.

A bleak, desolate cavern
Hides behind the majestic facade.

A rainbow sparkles in the spume.

Unsurprisingly, I'm numb.
I suppose it hasn't hit me;
Then again, I'm emotionally thrifty
When Death swings his scythe.

So many people weep and wail,
Their arms flailing
As they cry and rail
Against the All Powerful.

Yet, I am empty.
I've been to funerals aplenty,
And I'm indifferent.
Death is inevitable--it happens to us all.

For me, it means a feast of fried chicken
And lots of finger lickin'.

A body inert,
A mind listless.
Apathy champions emotion,
Drowning feeling in nothing.

Happiness is worlds away,
Asphyxiated by meaningless smoke.
Melancholy breaks like a tsunami on shore,
Consuming all in swirling, inky black.

"Can I buy you a drink?"
"No."
"C'mon baby, say yes, whaddya think?"
"I'm not your baby."
"But you could be." I'm gonna ruffie her drink.
"But I'm not. So bye."
He smirked. *That's what you think.

Turvy-topsy,
Windwhirl
Up-down through the rabbit hole.

Mushroom tea-gardens,
"Eat me," "Drink me,"
The world is downside-up.

Clusterfucks of growing and shrinking,
Dum-Tweedle and Dee-Tweedle guide/block;
Cheshire's smile mocks from above.

Twisters, misters, no sisters.
Confusion reigns supreme.
OFF WITH HER HEAD!

The Dazzling Divas
Have an elaborate plan in place,
Brimming with absurdity and scandal.
Their hopes far too high,
They traipse home rejectedly,
Despair and disappointment
Plastered on their heads and in their hearts.

You're a hard-core *****,
Aiming to be (as we all are) rich.
You're brazen and bold,
With a heart of tarnished gold.

Subdued, yet still a wild thing.
Struggling, but learning.
You're growing quicker than I realize;
Your mature-immaturity still comes as a surprise.

You lead a charmed life,
Yet it's challenged with strife.
It's hard to accept that things
Can't be as perf as diamond rings.

But one day it'll click
Like a heavy sack of bricks.
And you'll understand that Life
Is merely a show,
Filled with people and places that come and go.

I can feel it.
My heart severing all emotional ties.
Don't worry--you won't feel the hit,
And soon my absence won't be a surprise.

The crippling pain of betrayal
Drowns our past.
It was nothing, unintentional--
Yet this wicked storm has snapped the mast.

Merci beaucoup--
We had a lovely fling.
But it's thanks to you
My bulletproof-glass-encased heart can't feel a thing.

My soul screams for solace,
My body burns for rapture.
My walls are too high.
I pose atop the turret,
Unreachable.

Visceral, palpitating mass;
Solecism to the sight.
Crepitant lights
Sizzle and flash.

Cackles reverberate,
Louder than thunder.

Wriggling, squirming;
Mere adumbrated mortality.
Lightning strikes--

Caked,
Contoured,
Painted,
Photoshopped--

Perfection is
What Nature alone can never realize.

Love has an embargo against me.
Forsaken, forgotten, forlorn--
My heart breaks for the sound of a lover’s sigh;
For the solemn pounding of a treasured heartbeat next to mine.

I'll never find sublime perfection
In the face of another;
The arcane whispers and smiles
Shared by soulmates are barred from my purview.

The divinity of a caress escapes me,
The sacred secret of a kiss refused me.
Love denies itself to me.

I stand alone,
Waiting for seafoam to tickle my toes.
Waiting for a love that will never be known.

I deleted our pictures
So the World wouldn't know that
I
Had once been attached to
You.

You deleted our friendship,
So I presumed even that was through.

But you're back,
At it again,
Trying to weasel your way back in.

It won't happen.
Your looks and your smiles can't
Con me again.

Boy, you're in over your head:
My heart is not a game for you to win.

I'm petrified
Of the monster inside.
Locked behind the façade
Of a beautiful mirage,
It rages,
Rattling the bars of its cage.
Snarling and slavering,
It begins carving
Its way out of my soul
With one goal:
To expose the beast.
And the belle will revel in its release.

A whisper ghosts silently
Down the stygian hallway.
Follow Me
Rushes through her ears,
Silencing her thoughts as her heartbeat crescendoes.

Tempted,
She peers into obscurity,
Hypnotized by dancing penumbras.
Veiled in the shadows lie the Universe's secrets,
But she draws back.

Merely a glimpse is enough,
And she returns to evanescence.

Lost in the maze of myself,
Distracted by the glittering caverns,
The glitzy, glowing hallways of my mind.
Trapped in artifice,
Terrified of reality.

Sleep always wins the war.
The dead never rise,
The living always sink
Into the darkness.

Lethargy succumbs to nothing,
And no matter the struggle,
There is no circumvention of sleep.
No evasion of death.

We all end the same.

When I was young,
Smooth, young hands soothed me.
They wiped my tears,
Caressed my hair,
And these hands belonged to
Mommy.

Youthful oblivion blinded me
To the effects of time.
I never noticed that as I grew up,
You were growing up too.
You were perfect, infallible--
With all the wisdom of the world
Written in the lines on your palms.

An adult now, I know
The hardships you've faced, the battles you've conquered.
And I notice your hands--
Wrinkled by time's passing,
Lined with experience.
They still wipe my tears.
They still caress my hair.
And these same hands belong to my mother, my friend.

You, Mr. Right, are my
Adult Santa Clause.
I look forward to
Everything you'll bring me, only to be
Hit with crushing disappointment as the
Illusion of your existence is
Whisked away forever,
Leaving a cruel joke in its wake.
You exist only as a
Dream of what I'll never have.
A string of lovers bring
Momentary happiness,
(Distractions to disguise loneliness)
But they're neverlasting.
Love exists but not for me.

"I love you to the stars," said he
While with a sigh, she
Asked, "Why?
Reaching the stars is impossible because you'll never pass the sky."

Perplexed, he stroked her cheek
While he pondered what to speak.

He whispered, while a tear from her eye did drop,
"I love you to the stars because striving to be with you is something I'll never stop."

Baby-faced,
Shifty-eyed;
Briefly my heart raced,
It can't be denied.

Sweet,
Sketchy,
I thought it would be neat,
But it turned out messy.

Here's a tho(ugh)t:
I hope you know you had your shot.

Firmly pressed,
Lips on lips.
Hungry for more.

Eagerness and expectation fulfilled by
Nibbled lips, dancing tongues, and gnashing teeth.

   Lightheaded.
      Breathless.

Consuming you is consuming me.

Let the candle burn at both ends,
In the middle the flame will *****, then
                 COMBUST.

At our core, we are explosive--
Fiery passion, life, and love.

Kiss me, and I'll show you.

Gnawing desire:
Lips against lips
Burns,
Rages--

Soul and body
Alight;
Roiling passion,
Desire:
Fly--Ignite.

The chain that binds us,
Links forged in shared experience,
Grows longer with each passing generation.

None know beginning or end,
Merely what is in hand,
With the fabrication unceasing.

Curiosity sparks within,
The unknown rising in the foreground.
An evanescent whirlwind consumes all.

Shimmering rapture quakes on the horizon--
Tangible, ephemeral,
Eternally unstable.

I've decided.
I'm not ready for more than me.
Recent interactions have reminded
My brain why my heart severed with thee.
My past has imprinted my present
With fears of a recurrence--
Influencing the messages sent,
Preventing any occurrence.
Alone my heart is sound,
Yet afraid of a leap of faith.
Embittered, I've found
Affection to be little more than a wraith.
Leave my fears behind,
The past is in the past, you remind.

Paroxysms of the galaxy
Ricochet throughout the universe;
Stars ripple and quake--
Combusting eternally,
Shattering melodically,
Spreading prismatic haloes.
Blindingly, blastingly, beautiful
Is the collapse of creation.

I long for...
You.
The inevitable, intangible
You.

The one
I cannot touch,
The one
I do not know...

You exist only in my mind.

But out of the trillions of men
Existent in the world...
My idea of perfection

Is...

In  all actuality...

A reality.

Right?

Let's rewind, me and you.
Begin again, a relationship fresh and new.
Smiling, you made my heart skip a beat,
And everything you said or did was an amazing feat.

Wait.

Fast-forward to the middle
Where our love began to dwindle.

Keep skipping.
Watch the passion fading
In hyperspeed
To the moment where I made your heart bleed.

Stop.

Let's not rewind, you and I.
Our story's crossed in the sky.
I remember why we ended.
We were broken and couldn't be mended.

Life is nothing
But doors that close
And bridges to cross.

There is no path
Only a series of options--
Infinite doors and windows and bridges;
Each a choice with consequences.

One step forward
No steps back.

Smooth on the outside,
Rough on the inside,
Your ******* facade disguises your inner turmoil.
Behind a smirk and a laugh you hide the pain,
And I watch as your emotions boil,
Your demons begging to be slain.

It's difficult to watch and be helpless,
And for only watching, I ask your forgiveness.

You've struggled long and hard,
Playing the hand with whatever card
Would keep you alive longest.
You though, you never quit playing,
Though the game has changed for the best,
You're still staying.

I'm proud of you for looking past the bars
Towards the sky and seeing the stars.

I'm lost in a whirlwind
Flustered, blustered,
Tossed and turned
Churned.

Then I hit the ground.
I still don't know whether
I'm lost or found,
But I've weathered the storm.

Stubborn, bold.
Your heart's a tarnished gold.

Brazen, brash.
Life passes you in a flash.

You zip past, thinking only of you,
And it's hard because I exist too.

I love you but it's difficult
Because the end result
Is you over me
And you just can't see
That it hurts.

My soul wavers like moonlight
Scattered amongst the stars.
Reverberating throughout the cosmos,
Indefinable.

Locked to the earth,
My body is terra firma.
Tethered tenaciously to the tectonic,
Riveted in place.

Bathed in a bruised fire-glow,
The gypsy's ball shows
The future.

A life for the wicked,
OH, the sins it depicted!
Nature wins.

Elusive, you are.
Like a Tyrannosaurus Rex chasing a butterfly.

Destroyed.
By a mad dragon trapped in a rat maze.
Flailing, quaking, enraged,
You crumble.

Eyes empty as promises

Haunt

Follow

Stalk

Through the rhinestone glamour
And the gleaming twilight.

Predatory desire

Roars

Flickers

Vanishes

Snuffed by fickle hearts
And volatile tempers.

You, sir, are remiss.
I am not your
"Babe," your "sweetie,"
And I'm most certainly not
"Silly."

A reconsideration of
Our "relationship" is
Obviously in order.
You're too forward, sir.
Back the **** up.

Midnight.
Starlight starbright?
Past-tense, dead-like.

Simultaneously straddling then-and-now
Stars/black-hole-ghosts
Shine and destroy across the light-eons.

The perfect night,
Full of light, not flight--
With dreams of olives!
(And feta in our sights!)

The drinks,
The dancing,
Rock n' Roll--
Naked Munchkin fantasy
Stole my soul!

I miss you my sweets,
It's been too long a week.
I'm pining for Cookout,
Divergent, and Wednesdays wearing Pink.

Crashing--
Burning--
The ache of a new-found divinity
Instills my soul with a
Fire

Extinguished;
Another fire-longing is born,
Birthed as a
Phoenix
Rising from the
Ashes.