I never read your letter.
I can’t bring myself
to confront the sting of
budding,
simmering
Regret.
I can’t bear to
part the veil which shields
my failures from my
body,
from my lips
and legs
to listless
hours
spent
avoiding variables;
violent
vestiges
I ignore to keep
my weary eyes
above water.
See, reality wrinkles
its nose at the fantasies my insanity
can concoct
when I’ve yet to find a reason
to chase you away.
When the tethers of my grip
have yet to give way to anxiety, leaving me to wonder
if I feel too happy,
look too good,
want far more than what
my karma will allow.
I never read your letter, as I’ve been
consumed with playing
dress-up, draped in finery and fixtures
fit to outshine all the glow of
unshed tears
under pulsing
neon
light.
I'll coax it open it yesterday, but never tonight.

For witless wonder,
I wonder,
do its servants
chase
winkless
wrinkles
in time long-gone?
Is a thin piece
of cloth
so performative?
So political?
Or are you trailing
crescendoes of
long-tuneless
songs?

sunset blood drains
from transient clouds
as the bone-white moon
hangs in haughty defiance
over a jaundiced prairie

and as the life-giving sun
descends into its earthly grave
centuries of ghosts
whisper their hollow secrets
on the northern wind

they speak only of yesterday
amid the coagulating darkness
having long forgotten
the radiant life of today
and the promise of tomorrow

Solitude is like a
feathered embrace.
Like a swell of moonlight
on dewy,
manicured
grass.
And should you go looking
for the magick--
for the secrets
unveiled
in stillness
and beats
that stretch for miles,
from one
shivering
heart
to another,
you’ll find realms of
untold dreams.
Rheems of
bursting starlight,
of long-squashed fantasies
in demand
of your attention.
Daydreams that unwind
until you’ve found
what you were searching for:
the secret,
long-lost
places
you hadn’t known
were long-since missing.

i wanted to die today.
i thought about
old wreckages
of wistful,
trodden
Glory.
i thought about
The Hanged Man
in mirrors--
all the stasis.
All the waiting
on a railway
for a train
that won’t show.
i thought of how
my bed feels like Heaven
and Hell
in fevered
spades.
How the doors that lead out
seem to be doors to astral
places,
terrible places,
full of Bogeymen
and Sprites
in untold waltzes
of consecrated
chaos.
And they’re all out to **** me,
anyway,
so i thought i might want to die
today.

Time is a trickster;
the ticking clock: its vicious heart.
It impregnates.
It destroys.
It heals.
It unravels.
It dons the skin of an imposter
in the coldest stretch of night:
a magician weaving fantasies
that sear.
Neutralize.
Inspire.
Though I wonder--
I worry--
are the days too long?
Are the nights too dim
and fleeting?
Do I dance through each
crescendo
in a lurid,
patchwork nightmare?
Or are my dreams so full of pain,
that soon,
I'll shatter beneath them
and finally wake up?