just a lovesick boy
who's sick of love

i think someone stitched my pockets closed
and the fluorescent light above me flickers,
as if it's possessed by a lonely ghost.

these days grow softer, lines fading into watercolor
and my mouth tastes like a hundred cotton *****
from all these pills i've been prescribed to swallow.

i remember when i wanted to be loved,
now i only want the beating of my heart to cease
but the pulse in my wrists belongs to someone else
and when i look in the mirror, the creature i see isn't me.

sundays are the days i was tangled up in the sheets suffocating
and choking out sobs i couldn't form into proper words
if only her arms could finally envelop me in gentle darkness.

As I exit
the world of green dinosaurs
fused from abandoned rusty automobiles      
and steaming in  the sun,
a child offered me a giant peach
harvested from a Palisade tree
grown in the valley’s katabatic winds.
  
It tasted of harsh-sweet stolen pleasures,
lust and greed and love and dried fruit,
full of Ute tears and diverted waters,
memories between prayers and laments  
buried deep, sprouting new
on rolling plains laced with spice
breezes and Buffalo.

It had evolved flesh pregnant with two hemispheres  
to be split midway
by thumbs meant to be coated with pulp
juice pooling to palm lifelines.

I knew it fed me its sweetness
in cupped hands, not a gift
but a sacrifice to be sniffed
and tasted like an old vintage
barreled decades for a loving tongue.

Its red blush collapsed into
a  tawny mass that matched the day’s light,
remaining fuzzy flesh a gold skull—
the ancient colors full of guilt and redemption
and red shame and love and twilight,
a thing existing slightly
out of season, fully sweet
yet almost taboo, almost cursed,
the lustful last bite of life.

I bought a half dozen more peaches from the parent
standing slightly just behind the child
busy cradling them into a paper craft bag
rolling them into darkness far from light
and the frozen extinction crushed
by the din of overpass traffic from above.

I noticed the sun fade from the earth,
a scorned lover removing her gaze,
until there exists a tattoo
memory of love and ripening peaches.

I took the small change
aware that the peaches would rot to
mold, uneaten, unwanted, the pit unplanted.

Notes:

A katabatic wind  is a drainage wind, a wind that carries high-density air from a higher elevation down a ***** under the force of gravity.

i wasn't always this way
i want you to know that
take it in
imagine me happy
imagine me full of life
I'm sorry that you didn't see that
I'm sorry that all you had was the destruction that i was

As midnight approaches
a calm floats over the terrain,
with the sweet sounds of night
and the patter of light rain.

Getting lost in the musical tones
thoughts drip of soft dew,
memory tickling giggles
a moment of Déjà vu.

A peacefulness through the heart
outside, the wind a soothing sound,
the light tapping of warm rain
hearts loving, souls bound.

Hearts of love, souls of light,
a touch of magic, rhythm and rhyme,
enchanting dreams, fill the night,
of love so beautifully divine.
~

somehow you found me and it was like-
pomegranate suns i could swallow.
i haven't been loved like this in a long time.

i remember when she first smiled sweetly,
danced lightly, and kissed my sour lips
and she said she loved me, but i knew the truth-

she intended to use my body like how mom scoops
out red melon flesh from a rind, to pierce my heart
with black pins and eyes that never looked right.

she whispered secrets to me and found my own.
exploited my nature and soon i was hitting her across the cheek.
she said she liked it and maybe she did, but i was crying.

when i try to speak it all comes up in tangled string
and people don't believe me, even when they can see it.
how could god make me a vessel only to be dissected.

now you're here and i can't even touch you without
flinching, without feeling a phantom fire of the pains
past "lovers" ignited, without a spark, a match.

you have a dark past, twisted through violet fumes.
so do i, but only a reflection of the pages in your book.
i'm tired of living with trauma, when we haven't moved in together.

i.
every moment with you
feels like another memory
to keep me warm at night
when you leave again

ii.
every jacket i take
loses it's 'you' scent a little faster
or maybe you just stay away longer this time

leaving me with a jacket smelling like my empty room  

iii.
memories and jackets and "this number has a voicemail box that has not been set up yet"
you have spent more time in my dreams than in my arms
this isn't how i thought love would be

As when his son, a pensive animal lover,
on his first hunt,
had to face the doe in his scope,
his first **** lined up for the taking,
breath held firmly before trigger plunge,
the forest circling, fear trembling his lips,
doe moving from view, gaze,
his father behind, a looming granite mountain
crushing him
like an avalanche of scold that he could not,
despite his determination,
could really climb from,
his finger unwilling to pull the trigger,
even with his father
tugging his arm in death’s directions
as the miss hit sap and freed doe
from their sight.

so facing his death
the father gripped the old bedsheets,
trigger fingers cocked
and son did not dare
slap his hands
away.