Your portrait carved on my soul
—burning masterpiece lasting forever—
I feel your eyes on my chest
you wrote your name on my lips
for forever
                                              
I wake up with swollen eyes
—make up won't ever cover up
the pain I carry—
I feel
black holes swallowing me whole
I get lost in old books no one reads any more
I am a ghost
wandering in a nebulous world
I fight daily for a slice of air
I'd stab the sky and drink its blood
if it would bring me a crumb of life

regrets
they haunt me like poltergeists
can't sleep at night
their sound is so loud
everything I've done
comes before my eyes
I can't breathe
I want to make it stop

I've kissed devils believing I was buying love
I've ran miles and miles trying to reach the horizon
I've cried tears
and tears
and tears
trying to forget what wasn't mine to love
I've haunted black birds disguised in the angels of the night
I've kept the dirt in my pockets believing it was gold
I've walked to the light
but it was just a fire burning me whole
I've turned into devil then into angel
and demon and angel and so on
I've let myself fall believing I would land on clouds—
the ground, it broke my bones—
I've drank all the glasses of poison in the world
I've eaten sorrow as dessert

I've lost my soul
my brain is shattered
my lips bleeding
my arms longing

and still

nothing is as bad as the fact
that I've never shown you
my true heart
and how much
I
love
you

I wish I were not so cool
When I go to the desert
it turns into icy tundra in seconds
Less cool people stare at me with envy
I can put out fires with a quick glance
If I died, the universe will turn into
A hot desert.

your blackbow words
melt my syntax
into a scarfelt dew

things
feel
possible again
when i lay myself down
along your darklit spectrum

my words
prostrate before you,
crowgoddess,
ruler of all
that twiststurns
and licks clean
this lonely vessel of yeses no'd

Another day of anguished waiting
My earthly life, now put on hold
Another day, that I am hating
Of my death, I have been told

My life is now an hour glass
My days, those grains of sand
Veiled by tears, I watch them pass    
As I am funneled, to my end

I cannot slow or stop the flow
Each grain, thus bleeds my heart
All earthly things, I should let go
But I'm yet, not ready to depart
  
My sorrow strikes like lightning
Piercing bolts of what’s to come
My doubts and fears keep heightening
Until deaths hand does me succumb

In this world, I’m just a speck
My life, sifting into death
As that last grain, slips past the neck
I’ll take my final breathe

I wonder if, I’ll fly on wings
Or be prodded by a scythe
Will my remorse, then save my soul
When I am forced, to leave this life
BOEMS BY JA 498

People come
People go
We get so close to people
we don't ever really know

We're all avatars
in this
the real world

Private self
Public self
Virtual self

We're all avatars
in this world

As real as the real world
As if it didn't have a delete
re-set re-post twelve more lives
power-off button

Real worlds converge

Real hurts
Real drama
Unfriend   Block

When the virtual world
replaces the real world
which is the "real" world?
Real money for virtual tools
People fall in real love with people
they don't even know
People come and go

The real world
The world that really matters
The real world is real to me.

Take your pick in the real world,
which is really real

Private self
Dream self
Public self
Virtual self

Real pain in the real world

Are we all really avatars
in the real world?

One day the AI robots
are coming with skin
3d printed
speaking your language,
real relationships
going the way of cigarettes
outside
better done in the garden.

The  AI's will be singing every night
"Happy trails to you "
When they know they are the
new real.

A virtual
real relationship
in the real world

Imagine that

Are we all avatars
in this world,
the real
real
world?

And which is that?

One day when we have dream machines,
is anyone gonna want to wake up?

We're all avatars in this world
the real world.

Once I used to drink
with this girl who told me
we could live on an island
if I never touched her

she had this way with words

sit at the foot of my bed
she said, like a ghost

watching the boat in the cove
lose hope for its shadow

these days she hides
behind the shades
still wanting me to find her

somebody to love.