it’s the twelfth of can’t-remember
as i find myself marveling at the soft cadence of your affection
fluttering against my cheek in faint echoes of conjured memories,
and crafted illusions which bind me in turn,
to the hollow chambers of misfiring synapses
and daisy-chained coaxials tethering my lips
to this anvil-shaped heart.
the steam rises in wispy forms
from places where all is void
and memories are married with dreams
becoming those smiling faces
left in the picture frame i brought home from the store,
smudged by the cellophane,
and now conceived whole by the very absence
of a loving progeny to call my own -
pieces of me left to bloom amidst the shadows
exalting themselves sub rosa within the absence of light.
it is a moment to taste the waters
and wade out until my bristly chin
is beguiled by the ripples born
of *ulacia's stone finally reaching the bottom,
and cry out little pieces of nothingness
to bounce off of the shoreline,
if only to sate the grumbling deception
that my tears could float here without end or amen,
isolated within these painful shapes of you
to clot the cursive wounds
all the while imploring of elysium
that one day i shall awaken to a strange smell
and realize . . . that i am burning.

i glimpse the dawn
through alabaster-flaked rickety-pickets,
like the cavity-riddled ******* maw
of tom sawyer’s crooked-grinning demon
trying to reap its earthly exodus
and rail at the wind
for its squalling disposition.
i have a head full of grass,
and a trail of ants in staggered patrol
clambering in one ear
in hopes of alighting through the other;
their bodies breaching synaptic copulations
of thoughts and ideas assimilated in lucidity,
but turning, like the thrusting-seed of climactic joy,
only to find their first glimmer of stirring light
is merely a preamble to a yawning, abortive dark.
the sun is blinding,
and yet i stare onward - inward,
finding comfort in the dazzling blur,
like a drug redefining the transcendent pain,
and rending heart and brain to simple masses
without flex or flux to pierce the void
and conjure illusions wrought
of patch-worked memories and dreams
that i can no longer tell apart.
here i have come perchance to bleed
in pools to stain the shape of my words,
and your eyes to dance upon their drift,
like the mortician's arms embracing the husk
of cuckoldly bones and beguiling flesh.
here i have come to cackle at worms
that chew holes in the leaves strewn like a sheet,
to shadow the moment i stepped off of the page,
and splintered these whittled stilts
to tempt the proffered flames.
it is a moment lost in orbits spent,
revolutions spiraled, twisted and turned,
like bitter shells spat from that forgetful sea,
where i cast line after line of salty breath,
to avail the deep with my own sullied hook.
so here i lie with a head full of grass,
thoughts taking flight on thorax and gaster,
staring onward - inward, of the blinding sun,
to purge the umbrage of a threadbare soul,
and wander the void
perchance...
to bleed.

there’s nothing left from line to line,
as each word consumes the next
like prophets marking “x’s” on calendar squares,
and mathematicians feasting upon the sum of our selves -
bounding like fleas,
tickling feathers between the wings
the seraphim feared to spread and draw shadows,
like a tombstone across the sod-turned feet
of a man not worth the effort.
tears fell but no flower bloomed
from the crumbling soil
swept aside like eraser dust by a *****,
and patted down across a heart
that cast its beat in time with the shovels “shucks”
in excavating a soul at the cost of its weary bones.
time ticked despite the hands
wrapped firm around the hilt
of the driven-dagger
frozen somewhere between the three and four,
and teeth found each other like cogs around fruitless gears,
that’s sole ambition was to wind its own fate
around the process of begging alms for the ink
that mere poets came to bleed
upon his blessed crown.