I got strange.  Tonight I let loneliness get to me.
I left my bed to join others while remaining alone in my thoughts.
No gas. Couldn't drive far.
Otherwise I'd be on the streets.
Trading traffic lights a wave of my hand
for a sea of green.
It's always good to be grateful.
Don't ask why.
 
Strange, watching from behind a cellophane throat.
My words wrapped like salt water taffies.
Who would want to taste them?
I'd like to think someone would.
I want a stranger to break the seal;
I want a mystic to drink from my mouth
and have visions of the future.

She will be beautiful,
again.
 
The mask may re-carve itself,
twisting knots into a pure grain with every new model.
But I have always seen her eyes.
They are both ocean and sky,
mercury and velvet,
a torn legging,
windswept petals.
 
How her lips taste...

Beyond that, I get lost.
I can never remember the rest.
Can't spread myself to thin.
 
She works in glances.
With too many eyes
on me,
I forget who I am looking for.
 
I don't even know her name.

My life has been the slow motion opening of an eyelid.
Time rewinded in the snapping of an aperture.
Every time the body dies, the mind returns to singularity.
Center. The source from which a new universe shall sprout.
From a fiery phantasm to the spreading of lips,
this beginning is the same on all levels.
Time is an illusion. Space does not exist.
Pseudo-space: The distance between two independent entities.
Space corrected: The overlapping of all dimensionality.
Relative Time: God viewed from every angle in a consecutive order consistently into infinity.
Time Objective: Splitting the atom. One becomes ten thousand. And each one of ten thousand thousands.
To the river, the ocean is flowing.
I have witnessed the birth of stars.

From behind the hatch,
he could hear the groans
and moans
and screams
and cries
of all his former brides.
The wind whistled
through their throats
across bones
and rotting meat
that sounded much like
bare feet being dragged across tile.
But he was safe on the other side of the glass.
In the mausoleum, he could read in peace.
The undead books beckoning
a man burnt from the inside out
to unhinge their fettered spines
and **** ancient dust into his lungs.
But no male authors had left a page in this grave.
Austin to Alcott in the north.
Wilder to Wollstonecraft in the south.
The likeness of Hera sat on the hearth,
beside some red roses.
He had bought them for his funeral.
And against the east wall,
a shadow hung like Fall in December
cried every night at five.
All he had to do was lift her veil
to light the sky again.
She held the key in her mouth
but he wouldn't know.
Instead of leaving his home
with her hand in his
and exchanging pocket change
for a ticket to the west,
he licked his thumb
and turned the page
to find the remains
of a lizard.
He drank the ocean of his eyes that night
and wished again, like he always did
he had kissed someone at five.
But tonight was unlike any before.
He mumbled nursery rhymes as he paced the floor.
And while sleep hid from him behind the moon,
his True Love left the womb to join the others outside.

There are times
Much like tonight
When I want the city.
Nights when I want the gritty hustle buzzing in my ear canals
With liquid longing burning in the bowels of my being.
And through the lingering ring of restless machines
I would wander aimlessly.
Up and down streets past boutiques and café seats where people meet.
I would let the LED silhouettes of men and women in motion guide my feet until the beating of my heart and the grinding of trains and cars is absolutely indistinguishable.
Beneath a sky without stars, I can forget that I exist.
But only with a sentimental twist can that existence bring bliss.
Looking back now on the neon and grime, I have the time to take it all in.
Those subway rides when I would ride the snake,
Sharing the belly of the beast with those whose voices cease in the company of strangers.
Though eyes may align for a blink at best,
My mind would never rest on another
Especially
When she would breeze by
Hands outstretched
Mumbling humble rhymes with the hope that a few welcome nickels and dimes might fall from the pocket of a wall street man pretending to check texts on his black berry.
Or maybe those midday walks in central park when I’d skip my acting class to pack a bowl while I sat and listened to the street musicians who bled their instruments dry as if it were the only way to exorcise the city from their souls.
A taxi ride to Harlem
When we ****** in the backseat.
And though those free birthday drinks made me think I loved the way your tongue tasted
I knew in the back of my mind I was wasted.
Then
When we arrived to your private hideaway and your picturesque descriptions of a love
Once sung stitched my lips, it was all I could take.
And though our hips did risk the heartbreak, my unfettered balloon of misdirected affection flew out the window with hopes to impregnate the moon.
Cuz when the sun scrapes through the skyline,
Into your heart broken,
Hung-over,
Blood-blistered,
Hunger-driven,
Crystallized eyes, you feel so much less than empty.
Which brings me back to now.
As for how I now stand before you, flinging listless anecdotes from my chalky smoke coated throat…
Two words: Love.
Love.
So while I sometimes indulge my past perdition with immaculate midnight metropolitan musings steeped in sweat and cheap beer,
I am thankful that my intuition thought it better to put me in the company of those who I hold dear.

You are the smell of dawn in the evening.

You are the taste of champagne in flat beer.

You are the storm after the calm,
that calls a sailor to his doom, and his resurrection.

You are the pupil of my mind's eye.

You are the reflection of eternity in the backside of a spoon,
held only long enough to know on a level beneath foresight,
between bites of spaghetti and pesto.

I alone can call you from the trenches
to embed your nature in the navel of the world.
Your pulse is the very river Nile herself.
And as you pour your own prediction of flooding into my lips,
I know the life you give.

The moon can call an owl to its perch.
Just as the sun can burn a wolf to its bones.
But what loss is that?
They both meet destiny at a coffee shop,
sipping on the preconceptions of their parents, transposed into prose,
whose simple words will uphold the will of the world.