Spend your hours with me,
and together we'll grow old.
You will be my silver,
and I can be your gold.

Offer me a smile
and I will surely swoon.
Let me be your ocean,
and you can be my moon.

Request my hand in marriage,
and you can have my life.
You will be my husband
and I can be your wife...

All the pretty houses look like tombs,
Trees turn to corpses,
dead without knowing.
Skeletal fingers scratch the sky
blot out the moon and the stars
and all the pretty things I trust.
Winter winds continue to howl outside,
demand entry into my room, my life.
I want to scream, run, close the curtains...
Instead, I open the window
and let the demons rush in,
because surrender is easier than fighting.

someone once told me
time heals all wounds

*i fear they were lying to me

don't write good things about me,
please don't write about me at all,
because i cant promise you ill write
beautiful things for you, and im sorry
i cant even promise ill stick around.

I drove to see you
but you were gone.

It's cold as ****
even with all those lights...

I wish I was at home where
the cat becomes 'that fuckn cat'.

And the tree
embraces  
the
Angel atop,
as the critter scurries up the limb.

Ornaments are broken and so are hearts.

It's whiskey and candy canes
and a long walk home.

maybe love is to watch a thousand winters pass, and still stand by his side because you know he's made of spring

ghosts of slumber parties past.
just a haunted betamax & a stack of oreo sandwiches.
sisters braiding eachother’s hair far past the witching hour,
contemplating life without supervision.

blue house. yellow lawn.
silverback gorilla in one garage.
two garage: empty.
three garage: a woman entombed in exhaust.

          [her bloated tongue]

a gang of bmx boys pizza-fed and friday-high,
hopped up on mountain dew and trading card collectible rituals ‘n rhythmics.
they conjure a demon just to **** and dismember it.
     for funsies.
     for keepsies.

a fang for the shrine at the foot of the old oak tree.
history on the skin, long history, long thoughts, long in the nod like a calm dead frog.
bubbled, boiled, toiled, and troubled.

the woods aren’t haunted.
you   are haunted.
you   are the conduit through which the darkness displays its vivid colors.

          [treefort aflame]

the seasons furrow/
                               / the leaves fall.
little plots of land etched out – subdivision and sprawl.
on the avenue, heaven
& hell made tame and tangible.
built, re-built, and refurbished – a lawn and a lantern.
a mortgaged glory of sparkle and decay.

          [dead cat is a new cat is the old cat ran away]

pictograms of morning light display on mom’s face
as she instructs us on the gusts of love       [scrambed eggs]
& teaches us the truth of nettles sprung
from violent pine.
                                      [toast with raspberry jam]
the television.
the microwave.
the blender beverages.
hymnals of an electric kingdom.
one mom dances, the other expires.

          [restless armless girls in orange sunsets]

girl with a gun at the edge of her lawn and selling lemonade.
girl in an old wicker chair.
save her horror story for another day.

boy with a bent frame bicycle limps his way home
from one end of the avenue to the other.
his pockets full of sparkly rocks found in the lime quarry pit.
one boy in a long line of lost planets.
the driveway.
the refrigerator.
the hum of a saturday night commercial-free cassette.
where’s dad?

                         the glow of an eerie crystal
                                                                     (continued…)

even teddy said i got the sickest tricks brah.
like my abilities source from some kinda legendary liquid
                                                                ­                      / praise the lord /
monster energy should sponsor me.
a kickflip over the king’s *** hole
& a halfcab for the looky-loos.
i feel so tall when i climb that heap of asphalt trimmings
& see clear from the water tower to the bluffs.
gimme a good day, any day at the bluffs,
bottlerockets & girly birds.

her body brings a swarm of worms.
decomp,
said the f.b.i. men one by one with tweezers.
not quite the homecoming queen, still
wrapped in plastic.

look up.
see that great mess of wires, nest of powerlines and owl bones?
it crackles and croons its electro-spectral purr
all night and day.

new neck tat &
cody spends his paycheck on a crossbow.
we target practice on a bull skull.
wet cigarettes and turpentine-soaked socks for a good huff
in the dry of the roofline as it dumps.

there’s that little boy in a ghost mask again, tap-dancing
in puddles below the streetlamp,
& oversized shoes.
his grandmoms always be watchin’ from the window.
[whispers] she’s teaching him magic.

lucky unit 19: where our young dead damsel once dolled
herself up, you see
men and headlights would roll thru thrice nightly,
maybe more.
& i remember her punch red lips &
big whicker hat; while she weeded and watered her garden of begonias.

the sheriff’s deputy, hart? hicks? hogan? well he loved her a bunch.
stole her clothes in the middle of the night,
& sat beside the river sobbing into clumped fists
of bra and blouse.
i bought ******* from that guy once or twice.
harold? howard?

guess who showed his face today?
josiah, from unit 08.
since the incident with molly’s beagle, he’s been rarely seen.
took a bee line straight for the mailbox.
a package. a prize. a decoder ring/secret map sweepstakes
to be seen and deciphered.