The con men were catcalling from the mountaintops

and dropping serotonin dipped in cheap gold

that they called the color of the sun. 

Underneath were we, buried deep in relics and bribes, 
sitting eye-level with the sea
where walls of salt hit our eyes.

I saw God on a street corner begging for change

and drawing chalk veins on the concrete,
whispering, “Let them grow.” 

There are types of us: lustful, proud--
mankind made of dilated pupils

that shrink for the sun in desks by tall windows.

I shot an arrow into the sky
aimed at a fleeting invincibility
that only the acidic youth and dopamine fiends
can pierce with bitter tongues.
Freedom for the burdened
with shots among the blue
to lasso the sun that burns our eyes
and removes the shadows we know.
If you are afraid--crooked mind--
that's the allure.
I, too, have loved my demons
but they will pick my brain no longer.

The adults think it's funny how we hunch over some device
that taught us how to forget communication.
The arbitrariness of a phrase folded into gray area
leads to an unexpressed panic.
A child is born in a nearby hospital
and welcomed by four by five inches of folded paper
and a car crash down the street pulls a life and we frown.
We never open our mouths
but lower or raise the corners accordingly
to generate some symbolic expression.

You will hurt when a certain stillness turns to silence
and your thoughts become memories
trapped inside you like figurines in a glass case,
delicate and stunning, and reflected in windows behind you.
Halfway through the day, when the sun throws prisms
upon each angle of such memories,
when they look more beautiful than you've known,
smash them, for they were never so lovely.
Maybe they were mistaken for dreams
or wishes you made when you knocked on the heavens.
Then scatter them among the universe.
If you let them go, they will light the night sky.