is it really necessary? to come and go as you please? to share the fickleness of these autumn leaves? to bat your eyes and drain the blood from me? to wrap that filthy crook around my neck? are you prepared for that? to walk in front of me out of reach like every october breath? wont you reconsider? for all the possibilities and peril? for fear of what could quite possibly, probably, and preferably be the end?

yet you continue? and interrupt this perfect re-clusion? and break apart every sentence like a rotten soaked november twig? is this all truly necessary? to please yourself and go and come into days like a drunk naked december wind? to howl down my street like some great holy christmas beast come to correct me? to show me all the preferable, probable, possible, and parallel worlds? to burn all the red where the Tennessee hills once slept under blankets of green? to hold a conversation with this snow as you please to come and go like the first tiny snowflake that will begin to bury me? as you insist? as you pay me no rent, tax, or mind? dont you know? that you should take apart those frigid winter layers? that you should disregard that preoccupied, parallel, preferable, possible, and most probable gaze? why, oh my god, why must you play shy? myrma darby, wont you look here? wont you look me in the eye?

why must i constantly be humbled?
need i press my forehead to the floor, my lord?
any pride or confidence has been slain before the altar
my lord, what else could i offer?

i have not much, and i am not much more
than a rag doll stuffed with a cotton soul
casually i will be sat at the table and forced
to watch you take your tea with six spoons of sugar

what a tremendous joke, what a divine comedy
to think the gods favor civility and peace
carried like a twig in a doves beak
angels singing through the dissonance of a deaf mans symphony

a dot within a dot within a dot
if there is much more to it, i've already forgot
i am a carbon copy, with atoms bonded sloppily
and i am not worth much, i am but a penny.

why must i constantly be humbled?
do i not already speak softly? every longing had only been whispered
(till now) i have never dared, nor intended, to disturb
a laughing remark for the placidity of my universe

kept hungry and at the door
a beaten pup and i am not much more
i am brushed off of every skirt
and still when every letters been returned

i still place the vowels with the consonants
into these cheap shoddy words
like rusty flowers in a transparent vase
trying to capture beauty in one place

so many lights chased
on the way home from the store
i am constantly humbled
and i am not much more

My skull cracks open at the eye lids,
as the light pools across the morning.

And Heaven is not peaceful, but spiraled, turbalent:
as ivory continents drift, aimlessly, about the hollow firmament.

They foam and twist, and I ask again,
for uneven patience.

My shoulder blades bend, I cannot pray, so I ask again:
for seven severed seraphs wings,

each outstretched against the dawns edges folding in.
My cracked hands hold equal parts water and oxygen,

though I'm still unsure which is the more transparent,
each is fleeting, and will not be cupped,

and will not be pressed, drawn into, dry desert lips.
I shall not pray, so I ask again:

for pale landscapes to be first outlined, then colored in.
The light and the distance,

the unaswered question,
the curious reply of morning,

as all the world bleeds out from my eye lids.

sheep do not exit gracefully
no, the shepard
no, the dogs
must bring them in
yes, the crook
yes, the growl
must turn their necks
toward pastures
toward homes
much greener than
the barren deserts
they have wandered in.

Where the soul stirs,
   in a maelstrom of fear:
       Spinning me down into
             a mote of dust.

‘Oh why am I

             here?’

Where the sky sinks
   and the sun drips, crystalline
      finally exposed

                  for what it really is

The great golden insignificance,
Cold,
         calculated, and still

                                       disconnected,

Is lost on
me.


         over the edge of a thousand cliffs
consumed
         just for the sake of consuming
the summer is frozen
         and even more brittle.

‘oh where are we going?’

under such tremendous weight
              the chest still rises
      but falls further


the distance, my only recollection
      of hugging the coast
                   in desperation

     the sea, turns and flees
ignoring
     my burning witch inquisition

looking up,
        chasing pinpricks.

the Night's veil, glittered with dead light

*'and there is no

                        direction.'

i wanted to show you the
swamp lights

because i am not quite sure
but i think they came here for you

like me
every speck of moss, every scale, every
quivered breath in this bog
has been impatient

and finally
you are here
with peace like snow
and hardly weighing a thing

you
were like a feather over the shore
carried like a torch
hands reaching out
to pull down the shades of night

you
who i've been waiting for
for who the swamp lights sway

you
who turn men into monsters
and monsters into men
solutions rest on your lips
and i am waiting
for your
exalting press
again

making me
no longer a beast
but something civilized, something renowned
not quite a prince, not quite the lead
but your giving me shivers, these sensations
of flights and crowns, these fevered dreams
of stepping onto dry land
and not looking down.

you always come home with this armor
like your hiding this great big jug of happiness in there.
is this image of her a one sided mirror?
or her bed time clothings reflection?
cutting out the curves, leaving only the armor

and these shaking words
'explain yourself! your eyes
are dull they must
glimmer for someone else!'

you are a shell within a shell
a self-sufficient snail
judging by the oxygen packs
strapped on your back
you're too good for this pollution
turning her lungs a midnight black

and you wear it well
a chest with no heartbeats
only clicks and beeps
absent minded
messages home
to the mothership

but she can see through you,
'just be gone like a demon
back to Nibiru.
circle the sun. your path
now altered in degrees.
but from your caustic debris,
your persisting memory,
still orbits me as a moon,
making me drunk and dizzy.
so still i must insist you leave me.'

and so you do
with your jug of happiness
successfully guarded
still intact
you are a fortress
a dam holding back
the ravenous waters
you cant share
with the indigenous people
here
your head floating
up in the
atmosphere
an unfamilar creature
safe inside the walls
of your space suit armor.