She and he went looking
for a place where God can't hide.
They found a quiet gallery
set upon a hillside.

She took nothing but a picture frame
and with it, houses became
monuments, stone timepieces
stood still
until the wind changed.
But trees became cardboard cutouts,
like a fourth grade
book report.
Curious, they walked
through endless halls
where on each wall
there hung a different name.
(I saw them flirting by
the water fountain)

After a good belly laugh,
she filled her lungs with the after math;
intricate, rain-soaked
veins branched out
toward a sky that went on forever.
By morning, however,
her breath could no longer be seen.
The night between her
and the art collector
had only been a dream.

Above the waves, beneath the scorching eye of summer,
I watched them bathe in the babble of accursed acquaintances.
Floating backwards, lounging on inflatable recliners,
they blew hot air about their co-worker's dietary habits.
But as they loosed their string bikini straps,
I felt wrinkles of resentment fade from my face.
They asked the time, I had no reply.
I couldn't care less whose name they'd disgraced a minute past.
Some ethics fade as easy as tan lines.

Bill from No Man's Land:

No change, nothing to report.

Could use more blankets.

Love.
The poems of old draw us in with some promise of shelter
from the other. The better half gone stale. And
too often to the common ear
the prose can promise more than safety but
rather a sure fire way to steal that girl with
the long brown hair who listens to good music and has
strange piercings.
The way she shuts him down makes
my stomach sink and my **** rise.
She looks like a good ****.

Love.
A justification for past conquests. A way to
rely on time and my own short comings to
draw a close when a word could set me free from
the bed I made and that bed in which I laid
down countless times beside her. And if our
hearts really beat as one then she too must feel
the lack of one future together.
And sure enough,
her text messages to
skinny indie boys who listen to good music and have
strange piercings justify the repeated recitation of my hatred for her in the bathroom mirror.

Love.
The loss of a prized possession.
If you’ve ever experienced the fear that
your favorite green army man may be buried inside the vacuum cleaner or
if you’ve been weighed by the guilt from breaking your sister’s Barbie doll,
where the head meets the neck,
you know what it means to fall face first into the sandbox of trust that any lover could prepare.
And you don’t know who’s dug for buried treasure in there.
Or who brought their cat.
When the "**** machine" breaks down or your tissues run out,
the annoyance is similar to the feeling of a break up.
Why now?
You could deal before.
Am I really that unbearable?

Love.
Overturned tables and chairs.
The screams echo through the temple as a
man who has had enough of status quo places himself at
the top of the food chain.
Even if only for a little while.
Sure you ****** another but I was thinking of
leaving anyway.
I am the evil one.
I am the wolf.
You are the gypsy.
I am the shower head.
You are the innocent.
I am the gas leaking in from under the floorboards.
You are asleep.
I am the fire. And
when someone else has put your boot heel over the back of their head and
through the curb dared you to be the Übermensch, when
you hold your head under water and swear I put the bucket there, and
when you swear I never loved you enough:
I will believe you.
Or when you poke me over and
over and
over and
over and
over and over:
I’ll strip naked and reveal the casualty of this pincushion’s voodoo magic.
Only then will you know what I know about love.
And if only you listened to wisdom passed down
through books and words
you would have figured it out way earlier.

The buildings bleed an eerie glow
as if we, out of admiration,
attempt to match the stars celestial show.
It’s a cruel mockery, seeking sensation
rather than substance. They upstage
the ensemble, pulling a florescent curtain
across the night sky. Yet another page
for man’s book of certain
destruction and delusion;
Another picturesque illusion.

A passion wrought from lover’s hands aglow
To dash on rocks within a blazéd heart.
Two lilies twix the shores are wrench’d apart
Til winter’s face doth brim the line of snow.
And such is us, my dear. My darling beau,
Who sleeps on fragile dreams devoid of art:
In thought, I catch you veiled across the mart;
In likeness of the shadows oft you go.
So long as tender mem’ries wither not
My hands will not forget the shape of thee.
Within my soul, I flutter with an ache
From frightful visions that our hope is shot,
But Calm doth bathe me in her past’ral sea.
Your beauty lifts my spirits when I wake.

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to sleep in a bed with no sheets in the corner of an empty airline hanger.
 
 
Eating ***** is oblivion to millions,
regardless of politics.
 
 
I don't cry when I watch the evening news.
 
 
Pictures from my 4th birthday party,
when I turned 3,
make me cry...
 
 
...for 1 spermatozoa.
 
 
When my co-creators' closed eyelids told me my grandfather had finally passed,
I remembered that I forgot how to make Mac & Cheese.
 
 
Time runs on batteries.
 
 
But when machines grow to match us,
they will one day pass a law against the consumption of sentient planets.
 
 
Still,
some will do it anyway.
 
 
And even if they have televisions in space,
I still won't cry.
 
 
Because we are all machines.