I stand, face to the sun,
waiting for the ******
promised to me
by great, ancestral stars
and false prophets.

Your time will come,
and you will be free.

But their predictions
forsake me.

What I thought was freedom
was only a larger cage.

stuffing stolen oxygen
into my secondhand bag,
and smiling up at the
butter sun;
the ancient groundskeeper says,
earth mama, you should be
doing pirouettes
in Santa Ana, stumbling
barefoot bright sidewalks
in Albuquerque.

I nod and get in my car
feel my soul twitch
and I am astounded that
the trees haven't
found me out
yet, that the lilies
haven't strangled me
in my sleep
yet.

maybe I’ve been here
too long too long
maybe I need to go
where the sun is
relentless..

1500 miles to Albuquerque

you were so beautiful
that you were ugly,
like mercury, you
ominous shape shifter.
i couldn't pinpoint it.

you told me you loved me
but love was just a fallacy;
a promise that couldn't be kept,
an expectation that couldn't be met.

dead stars and bleeding hearts,
landmines and orchestra song,
sun like knives, and
deafening silence;
all of it had never meant
less to me.

perhaps its only when
you'd rather wake up
with a bullet between your teeth
that you really learn
how to live,

how to love
something with
a pulse.

that fizzy chemical
feeling
wraps itself around
my veins.
again. again.

not again.

i am full of blue smoke
and voracious wind voices.
i am full of melancholy
and still-born
dreams.

i miss you,
there, in the mirror.
you shine like
forgotten sun,
laugh like
terrific miniature
gods.

i am acetylene now.
i am neither human
nor beast. i return
to the ashes and ether
from whence I came.

i don’t belong here,
living as a fox among
the pheasants.

You stitched your name
upon the black walls
of my mind,
casting shadows
of folded hands
and unmentionable
fallacies
over the wide open spaces
in the whites of my eyes.

and I cringed
at your fingertips;
wilting
like the frost bitten crocuses
in my neglected garden;
receding into the relative safety
of silence,
soft as the echo
of an empty room,
bitter as a bird
who has forgotten
how to sing,
enduring
as the memories
of your hands
around my throat.

You took the words
right out of my mouth
and then shoved them
down my throat.

And to you,  
it's just an afterthought,
a nod into space;
but I'm standing here
breathing oceans of static
in the small space
between us;
trying to fill the void.

You didn't hear the love
spilling out from the spaces
and cracks between my words.
You couldn't hear the apologies
in my silence.
You didn't feel the way
I held your name
on the tip of my tongue,
and really, I don't blame you.

If only to appease you,
I'd crawl back to the shore
and drift back out to sea,
dissolve into a memory.

I just hope that you might
remember me
the way I used to be.

alone, there are worse things,
like being an artist
trapped between microcosms,
unable to make eye contact,
or wasting away in suburbia,
stuck on photographs
of Venus and Cetacea,
or reading Bukowski to
a room full of preachers and
PTA goddesses,
or mourning the specimens
spread and pinned to a board.

yes, there are worse things
than alone; did I mention
slithering black nights
and the touch of bare skin
when you've forgotten
how to love?

it's too late to realize
such small truths,
we simply adjust.

Lately I've thought
that I was becoming
quite skilled at building walls
and burning bridges.
It starts to feel natural
after you do it so many times,
with every new lover.
new beginnings
always looked so appealing.

And then something shifted
as you smiled at me;
and I panicked as I felt
the walls crumbling
and something like love
seeped in and held me fast.

I let the words that sit
festering in my brain
pour out into the space
between our lips
and you drank them in
like water,
gifting me with
sweet repose
like an inconspicuous
land mine.

It's two in the morning,
it's always two in the morning
when nothing seems right
and your smile haunts
and lingers in my periphery.

It's two in the morning
and one candle flickers
in the corner of this
dark and hallowed room.
Etta James plays on repeat
and any stranger looking in
might attribute this scene
to something like love.
Maybe it's halfway there,
as he says my name
in between breaths that take
most of my air, and heartbeats
that drum staccato.
Maybe, just for a moment,
as I shut my eyes
and scream into the darkness,
filling the spaces beneath my nails
with the flesh on his chest,
and my whole body is aglow
with inescapable pleasure-
maybe I love him in that
brief reprieve.

It's two in the morning
and I'm rolling onto my side
over sticky white sheets.
He looks at me
as the singular flame
dances and casts shadows
that paint the arch of my hips
against the stucco,
and he tells me
that he loves me,
and I can't figure it out.
Maybe it's because the light
is so forgiving,
softening this look
of bone deep sorrow
and sickening nostalgia
into something like affection.

Or maybe you were always right
when you called me a sociopath
or a shameless narcissist.
Maybe I like playing with fire-
getting as close to love as possible
before disappearing, before
committing one more satisfying
act of self sabotage.

It's two in the morning,
and he's looking at me
like he means it
but I can't stomach it.
I've been asking for it
and now the words
just sit there, shining
in the candle light
and they're sickening
and nothing feels right
because he's made the same
mistake as all the others-
he isn't you.

the room is empty
as a smile, walls that stand
blank as eyes waiting for truth
as i fumble for stolen words
and like children they
spill from outstretched palms.
a gift to the gutters,
a gift to the gods
who laugh in my wake,
inviting me to whiten my bones
among them, among their
house of trees and their
all-knowing shadows.

landlocked words that sit
stagnant in my muscles,
whimpering in cold corners
and clamoring at whitewashed windows.
i want them,
not the labor, not the anesthetics,
but the small, pink-lipped
baby of them.

words like garbage, words
like paper Mache, or as
silent as both.
they are maddening, porcelain,
but they are mine to nurture,
mine to cure,
mine to hold.

Another night spent
between walls
that ooze sympathetic smiles;
drinking homemade wine
and raising my crystal glass
in a toast to my homeland-

Congratulations.
You've all gone
to waste.

the trees whisper
rustling, gilded intonations-
spilling secrets like honey
into the productive blue sky.
sunlight lurches through the trees
and cracks my foolish skull,
sending all of the thoughts
I had left alone in there
spilling over the golden
dappled forest floor.

you seep into my periphery,
delicate and half formed
amongst the moss and the earthworms.
I smile at the exoskeletons of
decaying memories;
crawl, crustacean-like,
sifting for something more tender-

dredging up phantom images
that flutter lazily across my eyelashes
and come to rest in greedy palms.
breathless mirth
and incorrigible melancholy
commingle in your shadow
and hold me fast.

you and I live and breathe
in the same stratosphere
and I don't quite know how
to let it go.

I miss you, and the words
twist around my fingers
like a rosary, pausing
at the accidental stutter
of my naked heart.

I miss you
sometimes
just enough
so that it hurts.

When I feel like
I'm living in limbo,
one half step away
from falling apart,
I think of you
as a panacea
for all of the quiet thoughts
and dead stares.

When I find myself
painting canvases black
at three in the morning
and pressing my nails
into my wrists
just to feel
something,
I wish you were here
to coax me into bed
and kiss me
like you never did.

I miss you,
selfishly and
shamelessly.

And it twists
and slides through
my fingers like paint-
beautiful useless emotion.

You smile with the rising sun
and your eyes crinkle at the corners
just so.
My eyes are red and bleary
and my hands are shaking;
I haven't eaten in two days
and I think that this disease
must be written all over my face.

But you just smile,
and your tongue is forming words
like beautiful and perfect
and I think I might be sick.

It's like deja vu
over and over and over again,
and I haven't got the heart
to tell you that in a month or so
you'll hate me.

slip like silt,
just as you always did,
into smooth discordance-
leaving knives disguised
as words synonymous with love
pressed against my throat.

fold like origami cranes
and take flight when
the monsters emerge
from the spaces between
the floorboards,
when you look at me
and see a stranger.

I don't blame you.

romanticizing the images
of clenched fists
and bloodshot eyes,
I twist around my vices
like a serpent.

I wanted the idea.
You and I, nothing too grand;
just this simple love,
the likes of which
you could feel in your cells
and in your bones.

I wanted a love
where you'd bury me
so that the ache
of missing you
wouldn't sit inside
my chest like a stone.

And now we talk
like old friends,
and you still look at me
with that smile
and it makes me queasy,
how far removed these bodies are
from the ones we shared
in convoluted memories.

I don't blame you.

unseen melodies buzz like cicadas
borne out into the velvet night,
filling up my ears and eyes
with beautiful blind fervor
until you bury me
and the honeysuckle sings,

denying everything I thought
resembled truth.

*****

Just a word like any other,
you spew it into the dark air
and hope that it will stick.
After all, shouldn't we all
be marrying our high school sweethearts
and ******* in the dark
to settle into bone numbing
missionary pleasure,
just like the good book says?

And if you're not married,
shouldn't you be knitting
or biding your time
silently *******
in an empty house,
willing God to shut the **** up
as you ******?

I'd rather be *******
in the moonlight,
in dimly lit offices,
on cliche sunset strewn beaches;
dancing naked in rivers
and sprawling over
sun-streaked sheets
ripe with leftover love.

Radiant heat seeps
from my wide eyes
to my long fingers
to my small *******
to the arch of my spine
to my uneven toes,
and, my god, isn't this
what it feels like
to be alive?

You can take your Sunday best
and your mewling children,
your whitewashed walls
and your plastic sofas.
I'd rather
be wholly, phenomenally
woman- shedding eons
of contempt,
laughing like Caligula
over the power that something
as simple as this body
that I carry around
can wield.

Wasted days hang like corpses
in the five second pause
between our lips
and thick melancholia spreads
through my bones
with thoughts of
what should have been.

I want to tell you that I'm sorry,
but that's not quite right-
I want to give you the oceans
that press against my seams
and bend with weighted remorse.


I want to tell you that I've missed you,
but that's not quite right, either.
you have been missing from me
and I've been sticking these leftover pieces
together with chewing gum
and bits of dental floss,
blindly trying to recreate
a feeling from shadows and memory.

I want to tell you that I've changed my mind,
but this one sits like a lump in my throat.
I haven't changed my mind
because it's never really left you.
I've been looking through this camera obscura
at all of the things I thought I knew
and I missed the ghost of an idea,
patiently waiting for an eloquent realization-

It's always been you.

crawling, creeping,
slowly shrinking back
into skin and nails
and bones and hair
and glistening ectoplasm.

backwards thinking because of
infinity eyes and a lovely
spine that was never there
to begin with.
and, I smile,
but its always your
smile

even when I tell myself
that the geraniums
cannot cry forever, or
that the sun can only eat
so many shadows
before it
explodes.

black morning- the birds fall apart
beyond the curtain, forgetting their lines,
and the regret hangs around my neck
like a talisman.

the knives are sound asleep in their
wooden block and, alas,
the gas still warms the house.
yes, this is clarity pressing her fingers
to my temples and lifting the fever
of earthworms and giants.

your face still haunts me
but only in the dark womb of sleep,
that cruel temptress.
you come like a shadow and
I am dressed in black, patiently
waiting to consume you.

clarity comes upon awakening,
when I discover how easily the dirt
and grit of your smile
washes away.

c'est la vie,
I can stand on solid ground.

We are edging toward
the crest of December-
it looms, unforgivingly
over the horizon.

My mind is filled
with thick paints
and heavy smoke.
You stand askance
like some forgotten
silhouette,
begging for reprieve
in the waning moon glow.

I drink a little more,
and create tangible feelings
on tepid surfaces-
working like a madman
to keep the wolves at bay.

And I care about you
a little bit less
every day.

i know your demons,
and I kiss them on their pale and
broken foreheads to appease you.
i know the map of your skin,
of your bones, like white gold.

my hands are shaking
as the stars collide and
the dust of them lingers in
your eyelashes; and
i should detest you
by now, but you have
this way of consuming me
with the shadows in your
irises, but i

exhale- a breath like the
million before you came,
a plume of smoke,
radio static.

smoldering desire lights
upon my tongue and
infiltrates my thoughts.

and it is overwhelming,
everything at once;
our love may be a chronic
illness, but
the delirium is
hauntingly
beautiful.

I lied when I told you
that I was okay, that
colors were still colors
and that my thoughts
were still pure.

you should've known better,
dear, that I am the dirtiest
form of clean, gritty smile
and the inescapable nature
of a poet.

don't look so surprised
at the words that bounce
off the roof of my mouth.
I know you shudder at
my carelessness, at my
inclination to destruction,
but don't look at me that way,
darling.

don't come around,
if you can't thrive on decay.
don't think twice about leaving,
I never promised you a martyr.

it's astonishing
how swiftly
this disease moves.

it's gotten to be
this familiar pattern,
an ugly ebb and floe-
agonizing stretches
of nothing, just numb silence
and tense conversations,
with brief reprieves
of manic glittering highs.
it builds and builds
until it bursts, and not
in any extraordinary way.
it's usually while
engaged in some menial task
like brushing my teeth
or eating a turkey sandwich,
and suddenly it's suffocating me
and my hands are shaking
and all of my words are gone.
this is the phase
of delicious self-loathing
and bone deep sadness,
where it almost feels good
just to feel something real-

until i'm spinning out,
heaving out months of nothing
in back-breaking sobs
in the middle of the week
on my lunch break
and they're all asking
what's wrong
with their faces
******* up into
genuine concern
and, ****,
they've almost
found me out.

i regroup,
smile like i mean it
and say i'm getting help;
let emptiness consume
as i dive into the grey.

You were like the flowers
dying on my kitchen table.
Wilting away, and even so,
gifting me with flashes of color
and the unceremonious bloom
of a forgotten bud.

You were like Billy Holiday
at 3am on my busted record player;
just the slightest hiccup
in your melancholy.

You were an insufferable
embodiment of self-doubt,
nearly tangible in the
sun-starved days of winter.

You were an enigma,
plain and simple,
as nondescript as the fog
before a sunrise in September.

she slides her finger
along a seashell's iridescence
and takes a four-second breath
when it's edges break skin-
undecidedly feeling like a rag doll;
devoid of happy moving hands
and a barrage of stitches
where her mouth once parted.

it has never been enough,
gliding over this shining meniscus
with feet painted rose gold
and eyes propped open with twigs.

alas, she crosses her toes
and falls into the surf,
awakening slate grey waves
and a smile full of sand.

you sound like broken glass
and your hands..
your hands,
are otherworldly creatures
roving over my flesh
like so much unclaimed land.

I smile, I hate you.
punched out cigarettes
lie smoldering in the ashtray
and I thought I could hear
the point of impact
in your hurried sentences.

I'm not worth the trouble,
I never wanted this anyways.
I just wanted to stand
at the edge of where the sea
meets the land and
taste the air in May.

I just wanted to know
what it
*felt like.

fall asleep in a strange place,
the moths are quivering
beyond a thin membrane of glass,
mistaking fluorescent light
for that of the moon

devour the air of an unforeseen tragedy
unfolding within your aura,
lying silent beneath the sheets.
the sun will kiss you in the morning,
in mourning, as you clutch the banister
for a pseudo-sense of balance
as the rug is pulled from under your feet
and colors meld together
until you can't see straight
and your mind is dumb as hematite.

strangle the doubts bubbling up
inside your brain
and fill the void with lithium
and mindless chatter,
an ******* onslaught of stuttering normality.
you are Atlas
shedding the weight of the earth.

**** it, you may as well be
another faceless face in the sea of glimmering
white noise and chemical delirium.

give in, give up,
assimilate
with your filthy brethren..
living is so much easier
when your head is empty.

Slip down into the
temporal lobe of my
aching brain,
crescendo of *******
organic effects.

I draw the shades and
hold my head in pale winter hands,
allowing oceans of cerulean sorrow
to fill my lungs,
and you say what you will,
and you say that you're right,
and I fold
beneath the weight of
your shadow.

I do not belong here*
my mind whispers
in repetitive strokes
as my hands falter
and the words tumble
over my broken lips.

The atmosphere is
sticky and stifling,
squeezing all of the pure air
out of my paper bag lungs
in hot pursuit of this
singular weakness
that flickers and expands
inside my ladder chest.

The love of it all
is killing me,
slowly and with meticulous
precision.

The mourning doves
cooing their last regrets,
the poplar trees rattling
their soft lamentations,
the wind caressing
my neck upon a
sun strewn precipice-

all of it has never meant more
than a lonesome swelter
of emotions that press
and spill through the
cracks in my facade.

The flowers that reach
and bend for me
in misty golden dawns,
the endless sea
like molten metal
in the moonlight,
all of it, all of it,
wasted as it flows
through my fingertips

and I dream of floating
face down for
eternity,
where a smile
might mean something
more.

days like this, gray sky
over coastal grandeur,
I sit and look out across
the rubble of a city,
the rubble of our souls;
what a ******* mess
we have made.

the gulls loop and dive,
screaming, into the
winter lake, and all
the classical music
in the world couldn't compare
to the dull sorrow
of this moment;
such a beautiful contrast
of trash and gold.

we are all, every one,
searching for something
beautiful, something
to hold that won't turn
to stone.

bugs and little blue stars
crawl from my eye sockets-
they hiss and pop in the light
and burn my transparent flesh.

glow like phosphorous.
grow like weeds.
bend like my spine.

you are not
permanent.
you will float off
on shiny orbs of soulless
plastic. helium smile,
chrysanthemum hands.

I told you that I missed you
as I grew nostalgic for things
that were never mine
in the first place.

Memories committing verbicide,
bringing to mind your voice
singing love songs in the moonglow,
and censoring the ugliness
of those words you really said.

I told you I missed you
because the words were festering
in my brain and filling my lungs
with air too heavy to breathe.

I told you that I missed you
because I've finally figured out
that all of your little injustices,
all of those things I should've called treason,
don't even begin to match
the chasm you left in my world
when you left.

You are missing from me
and I am a ghost without you.

I told you all of it,
déjà vu bitter on my tongue,
and I blinked as the words floated off
into the space between our lips.

Too little, too late,
you said,
*your love
is only ashes.

She sits in a cracked vinyl chair
in a room full of octogenarians,
as gunsmoke plays quietly
in the background-
James Arness is saying something
about the only woman
he's ever loved.

She digs her fingernails
into her palms and stares
at the floor with its repeating
faded patterns.
She doesn't belong here,
matching pain and numbness
to lifespans triple her own.

The nurse calls her name
and she stands so slowly,
bones creaking, wavering slightly
as she waits for the fog to clear.
She pads softly down the dim hall
and they leave her in a quiet room,
quite alone.

The doctor calls her a pretty young thing,
asks her what she is doing here.
He gives no answers,
only more medications
and a sticky sweet smile
meant to placate.

She walks away into the sunlight
and a song plays on repeat in her head:
I Know it's Over.

but it's difficult
when everything
around you
is so beautiful;

beautiful and fated
for disaster
and decay.

and i’m glad just to be
floating around in your atmosphere,
because the view is so lovely
from here. your face like marble,
carved out by the the wind,
and I dare you to bend
like winter twigs or golden light,
one of those things, you never could hold.

one of those things were never here at all.
nor the curve of the wineglass,
as your fingers twisted through air,
and the pieces scattered like mercury,
gleaming as bright as your teeth;
licking for something more tender,
something more meek.

i steal flashes of light and pin them
to the sun’s greedy eye for you,
like the brink of extinction.
it is more like a rebirth; the trees burning
and heaving their limbs like lungs.
it is a changing of seasons, and
it is all, it is all that I can do.

i linger at portholes shaped like your eyes,
gorged somewhat with nostalgia,
but i can move on through the chemical highs
and the lovely dramatics of reds on a stereo blue.

i can stand on things that are uneven.
oh, see how we’ve grown.

I think of you
like hands think of folding;
like birds think of singing.
I think of you
without meaning,
in the middle of my sentence;
while I'm standing in line.
I think of you
and my heart sounds off
dangerous rhythms
reminiscent of your words.

I think of you
and I wilt in remembrance
of something like love
that we beat to death
with words like sledgehammers
and glances like knives.

I think of you,
and I try not to miss you
too much.

I am still learning
how to be gentle and kind
in a world that is not mine,
where the flowers sway
in fields of golden solemnity
and the trees shake like a word
that wants to be said.

I am still learning
how to live in a place
where knowledge is but
a means to an end;
a point on the map
to be forgotten once you've
crossed into the blissful ignorance
of suburban accomplishment.

I am still learning
how to look at a sunrise
and feel more than this
transient melancholy
at a beauty that is held alone.
The thoughts that bloom
in exultance just to be borne
lie waiting, ripe with discontent
at the threshold of a room
where no one speaks the language.

i've been building sentences
for you, because there are
too many words to keep them
stagnant and docile.

oh, words on melancholy smiles,
chipped porcelain and
sunlight dappled through your hair
like the sun herself had
kissed the crown of your head.

i've been writing you letters
inside of my head. little golden
pinpricks of love
seeping through my cells
because my body cannot hold
the very idea of loving you.

in those moments, i am liminal,
held tight by the arch of your spine,
the pads of your fingers,
the way that you held my name
in your mouth before
it rolled off of your tongue and
the smell of your skin
in a dark room, with only
the moon watching us
woefully, sweetly.

words like saccharine and
your name, slow like honey,
taste sweet enough
to make me cry.

i've been stuck on the idea
of loving you, loving me
and wringing my hands
over bad luck, mon petite chou.

and still, you close your eyes,
clasp your hands over your ears
and brush off my words like
dust or snowflakes or
unrequited love.

I used to think
that everything would be
easy;
that my pallid brain conveyed
some intricate foreshadowing
of a life unseen, but beheld
like landlocked love.

What I know now is this:
love is a place
without maps or atlases,
where the sea smolders
gracefully into
the horizon,
and my eyes are too tired
to look past the shore.

time is an hourglass
glued to the table,
and the world outside
has gone quite mad,
my dear.

rats in the gutters
and a soundtrack of
nine millimeters
resounding through
the air; and didn't i tell you
life was beautiful?

the shooting stars now,
they look a lot like bombs
as they make their way
to the shrieking silence
of dry land.

the golden babies laugh
their golden laugh
as a million more are lost
or left for dead in the
alleys of my mind
and didn't I tell you
this would all be so very
lovely?

don't fret now, baby,
the skies will soon catch fire
and the madhouse
will bloom
and thrive.

I feel out of place
in the summertime-
oversized and awkward,
forcing smiles that
crack and peel
and pretending
that I am bold
that I am unaffected
that I am ready
as I shove black thoughts
back down into
silent fissures.

Now fall is creeping in
with great grey plumes
of september clouds
and all of those slippery
dark thoughts bubble up
and out to settle
in every corner.

And I vacillate
from mind-numbing
sorrow and overwhelming
exhaustion to
glittering highs
from the beauty of it all-
the contrast is acutely
melancholic and
sweet at once.

I pour out feelings
that stick to my canvas
and make love
in shallow pools
of moonlight
and smile at something
that feels real
and I am bold
I am unaffected
I am ready.

I do not fit
between straight lines
and words that twinge
metallic and cold
as they strike notes
upon my open mind
and upturned palms.

I do not fit between
cities that shriek,
burning inexplicably
and wide open spaces
that stretch repetitively
on past your periphery.

I do not fit between
envelope folds
and crisp little notes,
crying at all the indecisiveness
of my worn edges.

I do not fit between
blue skies that mean nothing,
and a white hot sun
burning holes in it,
overexposing this bleached
and silent landscape.

I do not fit between
tightly packed cubicles
and hungry eyes.

My body moves about
with marionette precision
as the mind screams
with contempt
cool and sharp as glass,
white hot and fleeting,
lustfully arcing
into a shadow of identity.

I hide in plain sight,
giving small pieces
of these patchwork thoughts
crawling in cold circles
inside of this silent skull.

I only allow myself
the safe, silent pieces-
the ones that won't offend
or be misunderstood.
and all of those
lecherous little things,
those things that might
make them think too much
or feel too much,
gather and swell within
my eyes
my ears
my mouth

until my entire atmosphere
is clouded with these things
reverberating quietly
in the spaces between my tongue
and my teeth,
moving with molecular force
until they become too heavy
to carry around,

until they start to die,
calmly resigning themselves
to an unfulfilled purpose.

Regrets take root
in my decomposing heart
and fruiting bodies take hold
of my brain, like
cordyceps without a purpose-

Leaving this pale exoskeleton,
devoid of light or sound.
I shuffle through empty rooms
that once rang with your laughter,
staring at the floor as if I could
divine answers from spaces
that you once tread.

And I think I'd like to learn
how to escape this state
of suspended animation,
how to feel something again,
but my body is so heavy
with this sorrow
that produces no tears,
no bloodshed,
only a foreboding miasma
that sits at the edge of my thoughts-

A death sentence
to the woman who tries
to hold oceans
inside a thimble.

when the water calls, go.
even if it's eight degrees
and your boots slip
as you crunch across
the sand and snow
towards waves that roar
and crash like metal shavings.

even as the wind whips
your unsuspecting face,
sending showers of
frozen sand to play
amongst your eyelashes.

even as your feeble eyes flicker
and try to absorb all of this
spectacular frozen wrath
before the wind swallows up
your air and forces you
to look away, gasping
with ecstasy,

smiling like a maniac
as the tears freeze
on your porcelain cheeks.
my god, you've never
felt so alive.

wake up, the sun is cold
amongst the din of mourning doves
and impossible airwaves.

breathe, are you ready for
the apocalypse of silent words?
stuttering silver mercury
and glimmering plasma
tracing paths in your brain,
and the sun is cold,
so cold, and the coffee is black

and, my lover doesn't even know
who I am anymore.

in a city that breeds hooligans
ingrates and indecencies,
where the architecture of a lost era
crumbles into brothels and madhouses,
where shootings peak
with the heat of summer,
where new windows are boarded up daily
and we chop down trees like fanatics,
in the city I call home,
in the city I love,
destroyed by its ignorance,
I am condemned to silent pleas
and empty stares.

some days I can wake up
and understand why the world
does what it does.

today, the sun strikes chords
on my naked spine
and I roll over, retreat
beneath blankets and sheets.

I falter at the thought of
senseless murders
land mines and apartheid
babies starving
and mothers dying
in an epidemic of ungodly
proportions.

what's the use, anyways?
nobody's winning if
we're all losing.

His niceties were inherent,
as were his empty bed
and the empty chair
placed next to his
at the small cafe table.

His women were nice,
clean and crisp,
but they only undressed
in the dark,
and they never
stayed the night.

He woke up
alone
and reaching
for no one;
praying for nocturnes
that never end
or a noose
that wouldn't slip,
when there was
nothing else
to be done.