I married someone I don't respect
I won a job I despise
I earned the applause I don't think I deserve

I steal
only when I've learned
to hate those I steal from

Bull
his hanging swinging testicles
of his fellows lost them
for productivity.
he is not luckier keeping them
for harassment.

watching a bullfight,
victims center my camera.
whoever plays the role,
we once bled fighting a bull.
we still do.

and it keeps emerging
the exact way we bully in school.

Flowers,terrifying flowers.
A beautiful corpse,
plucked in the season of reproduction,
severing the cycle of life.
From eternal renewal
to something consumed.
No fate feels abandonment
more fiercely than the flowers.

The first to use flowers as a metaphor for love—
how I long to know you,
and admire your genius.
To pursue the process, not the result;
brief and fleeting,
and still adored by many.

It is not a farewell
when only I am leaving.
Leaving that life, I doubted
if I ever belonged.

The world moves on where I can’t see.
People grow old—
or they don’t.

If there were another life—
better or worse—
I would become another,
or become a god,
being, and thinking
through organs not my own.

The glass and steel high-rises
I always harbor hostility.
They stand like soldiers ranked before a city gate,
like guns aimed at strangers,
asserting their strength.

To shade the high-rises—there must be trees.
lush trees,
ancient trees—like bouquets
rest in tank barrels.
They cannot withstand the iron cold,
cannot withstand the searing burn,
but they can loosen,
the guard I keep within.