the white of your eyes polished;
blade, so perfectly placed
as i beg you to take me;
release me from this existence

When I find myself entrapped
Amongst the glass walls you built
I find that you are just on the other side
I want to shatter and break and destroy
I feel that old feeling in my throat
As it also begins to freeze my heart again
I bang against those clear walls that bind me
Where you are just an armreach away
But even then you are ignorant of me
Oblivious to the way I aim to serve you
You are the air I breathe and the thing
That still bridges me between life and death
I am under your complete, total control
Emotionless, you watch from the beyond
As you admire your creation and your ****

She wears the worn lives of her past,
It graces her skin, so delicate and rare—
Though still, she moves elegant and fair
Her hinderance still her most punishable trait—

I catch a glimpse of you
Through what’s left of that bottle—
Flavor—nothing I’d ask,
The burn and grimace still the same—

Your inverted image slips away
So tender, innocent and new—
The shade of the dangerous liquid
Painted you so tall and golden—

And there I continue and drink;
Trying to get a taste of you—

Paradise, 2018

I traverse the somber night
Gone; alone with the wind—
The music that is your voice
Guides, aimlessly, amongst the concrete

And in this aimless state
I try to occupy myself with
The sound of pedestrians,
Trains, buses and taxis galore

But you still remain distanced
and I—infatuated with steel—
Reclaim the civility of New York
To keep for my own—solitary

And in my selfish practice
I find you, beautifully alone—
Depraved of myself,
And devoid of your own—

Paradise, 2018

you dissipate faster than the stars
that shelter themselves at dawn;
but compared to your eyes, my love
the stars are nothing in comparison

and at last, i leave you
because i have failed you;
no longer shall i see your eyes
catch the sun in such a daring pose

Paradise, 2018

I never got to see you again—
Well, I still do,
Just not in the usual sense,
No longer do I catch the gleam of sun your eyes.

But that doesn’t matter anymore—
At least I thought it didn’t,
It is odd and scary to think of you in such a way,
but I thought it didn’t matter anymore.

Oh, but it is that place of sadness that defeats me—
It is quiet and your thoughts live there with me,
Where I wash away your sins from my back,
And where I learned I am nothing without you.

You become one with my own sins—
Where I tried to justify yet you would not listen,
It wasn’t intelligence that you sought,
It was just sweet nothings.

Gems, so precious they are—
Here in the abandoned alley where I would wait,
Where I would hear your voice coming from my phone,
“Hello?”—You’re still there.

And though I still ache for November,
Still, I am alone in the pale, grey summer morning,
Metal and concrete chills me to the core,
Three beeps—You’re not there.

Paradise, 2018

I stare, on my screen,
A grid of aligned numbers
You’re just two taps away
But I cannot reach you

Alive is the burn in my throat
I drink, hoping to forget—

“Please leave your message for…”
Says the machine on the other line
I try to use my best words
Which can no longer come to me

Paradise, 2018

I

I still exist in your symmetry,
In your crystals, in your lines
There is a secret history;
A passing of marble and bronze
I leave my room and here I am,
Surrounded by the fake daylight
Memory still exists on the most
Aged asphalt and white plaster
Weighed by a sadness older than age itself
As time sags their wooden frames

Then there the fire begins
It burns with fury and rage;
My artificial paradise departs from me
As I gather what I can from ash
They remain unamended and raw
In their original, solid state
I begin to mark each line of sweat
The strands on my head now aflame;
Fiery hands remove all of me minus heart
Left with my frail bones that rattle, alone

As my spirit departs the scorched crust
I dust away at my improvised grave;
I carry myself to the edge of time
Vanished, no longer to be found.


II

The quietness after a harsh panic
Paints the ordinated New Age
There regrows the willows where
We are off to sleep;
I mix the soil with our love
It grows and grows and grows;
Their strands a brilliant green
It comes and joins me
My hair becomes the willow
Where I still hear you, asleep

There I flee to the ocean
Your memory amongst the particles of salt
The water’s ephemeral substance
Their fluidity draws me in
I am drawn in by the cool water
My skin slowly becomes blue;
My eyes replaced with worn, ancient shells
My hair a bundle of slippery kelp
I molt in the clear, wide expanse
As you consume me

And now in the darkness
You rejoin me again on the sea floor;
Again, grows the willow
The marker of our joint grave.

Paradise, 2018

There is fire above the neon
Their shine and burn so eloquent yet brash
I am trapped beneath Fremont Street
and I hear exodus—

I am trapped beneath Fremont Street
My coffin is lined with casino carpet
The embers of cigarette ash
Burn wild within me

I want to move to Sahara Avenue
and live amongst the cracked asphalt
So I can catch a glimpse of
The Genesis I am missing

So next I am under Main Street
where the sweltering desert meets
the diminished pavement;
the metal statues that hold blinking lights

I am trapped beneath Fremont Street
As I gaze into the deep, wide Mojave
Oh, Deuteronomy, it is I,
the one you so eagerly seek!

Paradise, 2018

we bleed unto a frozen tundra
alone, in the brazen cold
i feel your final warmth by me
which makes passing all the better—

Paradise, 2018

i am consumed by your skin
as you ask me
“isn’t this what you wanted?”
yes, my love, yet—

Paradise, 2018