The hell to come… Lucille Harrow drowned herself and they forgot… She would’ve been the mother he needs… Evening tides lick at docked boats, silhouettes in the night working softly, wet wood, time is lost and they’re paid in *****… I cover my face, the sound of strangers filtering by hushed and hurried… “The streets stay empty most of the day”… A woman out at sea, heavy with care, she’ll sink to the bottom of the ocean… “My air is my own I don’t want you ******* breathing it”… I’m alone. Aspirations and motivation sinking to the bottom of a bottle. The moon is too tired to rise and so am I… They pinned you down with rope and words and you bore those marks forever… The boat rocking a lullaby, thoughts aimed at the interstellar, the darkness thick so I inhale… Still masts litter the shoreline, still bodies fill the mind… The boss pays in ***** and the deck hands drink in solitude, in defiance homeopathic… A woman with a heart too full… “She would have been the mother he needs”…

I run my fingers along your
spine as you lay
Curled — weeping.
That house is no longer home
and my heart has no vacancies.

She needs put down
like an aged canine
       whose poor health and deterioration constantly remind
that love dies with age
And we move on.

Flats $10
Red, sweet, lemon $1.60
City lights are far away
As my lungs fill with soil and seeds

A locomotive
Floating down the tracks
singing in falsetto

Flashes of skin against skin
erratic breathing
Blinding calcification of desire

The sound of eggshells cracking,
of bare feet on tile flooring

Laughter     Not mine
Frequent idealizing, projecting

The soft whirr of a washing machine
and her lips pressed against my own

The click of a disposable camera
and shoes scraping against gravel

Embrace     intertwine
enveloped by her being
intimacy that puts the world in stasis

A locomotive
Floating down the tracks
Singing in falsetto

synapses firing
sleep, so smooth, is lost

carpet stained, walls talk
voices cleave, claw, claim

a love has been found

infer: ephemeral, impermanent
believe: indelible, predestined

bruised knuckles knock, knock, knock
and one rock, rock, rocks
back and forth

"the moon," he calls her
the moon; he claims her

a world lies between

The sea is deep but he can swim.