a quatrain is not a tomb. it's an altar of cellulose and low merchants chanting.
we sell the individual curses of our seldom mirth. songs sting as they must -
for they must not !  if they will not hurt...
if they will not be beautiful, for the asking.
a poesy is a feast.
a revenant of our choosing, unless you had no choice.
i am the receptacle of This voice; and solve ridicule with ranting,
just because.
i fuzzy the logic to inspire the haggard hopes of our refrain; unrestrained.
remaining on vigil,
i mark the stars passing in a waking slumber -
with a fool's mask. and a talent's masking.
i am the urge.
how my mind works is my heart's domain.  a wrench in the parsley we hardly; i daily.
i parsnip the rube barbs of a bards assemblage.  i revisit Atlantis.  Polaroid pics -
with graining.  with irony
i photo
shop.

a quatrain is not a tomb, but a rarity,
as we say new the old things
that make us
we.
for i, for one
am one.
i continue
from no sum
and eventually
add up
to something
because -

why not ?

Broken conversations,
empty lungs,
doors half open,
hearts almost out of love.

We used to talk of how
we used to be infinite.
But now every second now feels
like a stroke against an unforgiving current.

Our conversations broke
as the flaws of our souls
fell through the cracks of this glass foundation.

These upset words that escaped you
left the air around me a little sad,
a little awake,
and with a lot of echoes.

My lungs went empty
talking you down.

I left the door open for you.
So you can walk in
and slip in quietly-
I won't say a word.

And this heart could never go empty,
not mine.
Yours,
at this point,
I know not.

Flowers never lost their color
as long as you walked this earth.

He told me his favorite part of summer was my hair dancing circles on his face.
He loved to gather all three feet of my locks in his hand and raise it up to toast the wind; each strand ricocheting off invisible corners of the air.
He never minded getting his fingers caught in tangles.
Twice I let him cut the elastic binding of my hair tie
just to see it all fall down my body.

I stood calm and sober starring into an unfamiliar bathroom mirror as I made his favorite part of summer fall into piles around my feet.

the problem is I can't.
I can't trust anyone.
I have issues going across railroad tracks without making sure once, twice, three times that a train isn't coming.
when I muster up courage to look in a full body mirror, which isn't often, I check my reflection five times to make sure a scar isn't visible.
when I read ten word poems, I count each and every word seven times.
so why would I trust him when there is no proof to check nine times?

our withering is changing. we have new lungs and the sour mercy of our discotheque is no longer
earth shattering. new bells that'll ring, ping the sonar of thus far, and right now. our iguana
is bothered but our cactus is out of practice, so we malice the wrong people. brown scotch
botched in the locust plume of our nothingness.
all in the night jar.
we palm the coin of many realms but snooker the genie into 4 wishes for kicks.
we split the bucket list and enlist strange agents to embroil the liturgy of our silence
with the umbrage of our slumbers.
where rumbles the blunder of our measured steps
as we stumble through the rapscallions of our private thoughts in the after hours.
we empower our oblivion
by kissing on the mouth.

this is how we keepsake sacred, but escape velocity by way of quiet... this loud.

As i tip-toe through the violence of our steamed peaches
i'm at least speechless. a weak link-ness
in your valley. a thorn ! -
of unreasonable size. you vie for the deep regions
of our shallow demise,..
for thine is the kingdom of no Mercy !
yours is the thing that screws -
where the knot is trixy.
we forgot how our terrors nursed the oblivion of our kisses.
we forgot how to lie.

as i tip-toe through the two lips, like low hanging fruit to wax eloquent by...
i delight in speeches. in the thunderous hush of fairy wings in a hurricane
as i blend margaritas on the back porch of our squalor....
with a terrible blender. i'll toss in
the splinters of our tyranny.... how we waged war on innocent fallacies !
how we gathered our storms in the basement.
tripping over land mines
in the shape of human hearts.
YOU had your nerve.
and I had us both
blind.

as i tip-toe through the violence of our steamed peaches
i'm at least speechless, but yes !  i'm most ******.
for mine is the kingdom that has no sun
but on Thursdays we have these banquets that starve you to death -
Right in front of Everybody !
you might get to talk about sport
but you're more game to wander off
from the insipid herd
to gather moss from dark pavilions.
you might nurse the ****
of **** all !!!!

but you'll  be ****** if she's not there
to see it !

we have gardens that have no center. wild things in us.  

believe.

Silence has opened it's mouth,
I unfold before it,
Strands come undone,
The story of a man gets swallowed,
The strength of my youth falls with the wind,
A veil takes the stars from me

winter has crept from it's cathedral with it's blue loom of white sod
against black crows and over-coats. we awaken in our separate pause
and modify our crumpets with thin icing,
drizzled over moon faced scones -
as golden as your marmoset of port wine
and wrinkled wheels of cheese...
at a moment's notice.
you float through the open window where crescendo the crisp winds and the bacon fats
rendering in the musk of firewood, oaking the nose of the decanted day
the early hearth of heaven, now powder blushed and rustle thrum
with skylarks larking in the luminous icebox
of barely sunrise.
your eyes sparkle and my antlers score the aspen bark
on a lost acre of our thickening plot.

we love a lot.

" i always wondered if fish drooled ? "  she said... and left it there like a cartoon tumbleweed, caked in glitter and sprite phlegm. she stood across an ocean on an island of outlandish abandonment, where all the mirrors crack.  her passing quakes the stain off her daily betrothal
to a toothless bigot in the land of freedom's end in the hovel of her heart's fall from appointed grace. a place of a thousand cuts and no car. waaaay out in the country of her diminished affections, her eyes could be seen wandering the burnt out villa of her lost love, where she recalls the fairy rings piercing her lips and the trembling of her youth, finding a slow hand to explore the wet *** without peril, soaring with her palm, plastered to a feathered bed in a guest room, in a time-share.
grampa sleep. and bird's nest pitch black.

" i always wondered if fish drooled ? " she said... she slept through it... on to the next disconnect  to get intimate with. she left me there, like a chocolate mint resting on a pillow made of shards of habitual flagellation by candle light and instinct; resting on a bed of nails rusting
in the flood plain of her fondest wish.
she left me there
to conspire with her better demons, to witness - the benign desperation of her frenzied exploration
of actual actualization... to watch her ****** from the jaws of a dire wolf,
her bleeding heart and her ransom.
with her bare teeth and a naked
Truth.

you should have seen her face.

i tattooed her secrets on the iris of a blind ghost, i swore it " abide in her broken heart like an open door with a cool breeze slinking through the fetid air of her self defeat and stale bread bumble bees.
and to abide by her rules
when she finds them... then to ghostly fall
upon his ghost sword by midnight
with a smile that tells hell it cannot claim what rises.
a smile that spat at the devil and pitied his children.
a ghost smile that stole a book from a museum
and never told his other
books why.

girls are made of glass crickets and sunshine. they eat words that float.
they wear shoes that hate feet. girls talk.
girls are made of dark secrets and kudzu. they seep through your ghost.
they wear moods. they play deep.  
girls are soft.
girls are soft bombs with long nails, painted.
they buy clothes. they wear food on their hips. they impair speech.
girls know that's ironic. girls dance naked to pay for college.
some learn from it.  others tarnish.
girls are made of everything that's wrong with you.
they have eyes
that sing babies
to sleep

that can **** you.

I heard it in
the rustling
of the dead leaves
swirling below
my tired feet.

Today is the day
I look west,
to watch
the moon rise
over a dying sun.