in dreams, her heels dig into the soft overlap
          between ocean and beach, an underbelly
she ebbs and flows to phantom melodies
          of spectral murmurs, un-broken.

she is adrift, with the liberation of seabirds
          amidst salty, swirling sea breezes
all gradients of blues poured over ice,
          and the cocktail of fluttering wings,     beating, pumping

                                  like an undamaged heart.

Down by the sea
where the marram grass grows
there's a ******* the beach
in a rusting boat
with a tablecloth sail
and it's rudder broke
and her eyes are an ocean wide..

Deep in the creek
where speckled light kisses the saline shore
and mud hole bubbles leave crab trails
I knock upon her door.

She opens with a whisper on her skin
licks my **** with her southern tongue
winds rise the dusts within
the mangrove falls quiet to her moaning song.

Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me . . .
I tapped my own head;
it was glass, an inverted bowl.
It's small thing
to rage inside your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself.

Another day
     to wonder
if vows
pledged
       last night
will
withstand the
  coming light,
if they will
sprout
limbs & rise
with me in
this
      reality or
if they
will fade,
     grow pale,
shrink back 
      into dark,
never to enter 
     this world
& make their
    mark

i. ablaze
no canvas can hold your portrait
all fine lines and smudges, 
like this crumpled paper heart can.

no acid earth blooms sickly flowers 
so vivid and surreal, 
like your lips formed falsities
hollow insignificances, haloed in sickening silence

no song croons heartbreak
quite as heart-wrenching as
these words you leave unspoken. 

and nothing lights up this darkness quite like 
the dazzling glow of how 
i burned up for you:

                               
ii. fluorescent
at night these empty streets whisper 
rumors of embers stirring, rekindling
the remnants of a great fire.

out of ashes i rise, singed and searing to touch.
lights and cigarettes line the paths forward
and backward; i wander them aimlessly.

nothing lights up this darkness 
quite like the glow of how
hundreds of streetlights burn for me.

iii. ceasefire
nothing lights up the darkness
quite like the glow of how
i illuminate from the inside out again 

no longer an all-consuming blaze—wild and destructive,
or a fluorescent light—the artificial brilliance a borrowed comfort 
i cannot call my own;

i uncover my heart to find light again,
not an uncontrollable fire, or the reflection of a stolen light,
but the halcyon glow of a ceasefire.

iv. light up the darkness**
and nothing, nobody can light up my darkness
or line my street sides
quite like i can.