we are two anarchists beckoning each other
with alluring eyes full of longing, so sticky-sweet.
caught in the trance of each other’s honeyed promises,
we embrace with the elegance of clashing armies.

come closer, let my wandering fingertips find
            a home       in stretches of taut skin, valleys    
            and crevices,
                                     coy smiles, igneous eyes; can i entice
                                     you to dance?

but where there was skin she finds only armor plates,
       where there was vulnerability, only hardened resolve.
       where our thorned bodies join crimson blossoms bloom:
flowers of anarchy flourishing in the eye      of the hurricane,
the peculiar beauty of us.

we make the portrait of orderly discord.

but     can science explain why
people seem to feel
      especially insignificant         at night

can science tell us why
the moon    seems to smile sadly back at us
during our loneliest moments
and tell us ‘i know, i know’.


call a ceasefire.
extinguish     the burning city:

do not    fear    the night
it is filled with light we cannot see.

in my homeland,
the fishermen widows
salt their hearts
and hang them to dry.

in my homeland,
they say there is a cliff
where the moon gives
birth to the ******

and where the wind
whispers and howls
until the sails
get lost in the far.

I wonder if God
    sees our numbered
breaths, how many
     have been & how
many are left,
millions of digits
    shifting above
our heads;
the old woman
 on the park bench
        with just 500 left. 
The jogger with 100
   between now &
        tonight when he
will exhale
     for a final time.
I should scale mountains,
         stare at the sun
  make my amount
  count, every last one.

i still taste you on
the tip of my tongue,
sharp and silky and starry
even my neck remembers
your lazy lips and naughty violet imprint
i still see myself
fragile in your moonlit eyes
between soft blinks
and gentle crinkles

unwillingly slipping
into melting amnesias
and hazy evasion forces its way
down my throat
it dances fractals in my lungs
taunting me,
discarnate and disbodied
drifting ethereals turned ghostly fog
staining my crooked memories