how i will come to haunt your home
is bound to surprise even you, buddy.
i will attach myself to every corner,
my hair intertwined with plaster,
slowly forming indelible bonds with the walls of your home.

in time, the walls will become me.
they'll convulse, strong and heavy, if not untested,
loom they will,
in each cold breath that draws steady from the vents

a certain clarity steps in from the night.
it shakes off a damp umbrella and fastens its closure.
the small ‘clip’ echoes in the hall.

or maybe it’s a snap.
clarity lays the umbrella down and there is rain water at my feet.

that these arms should house me should be plaster.
they’re all i know. at their ends are fingers that cannot bend,
yet i press my hand against them,

caress a dormer window or crown molding
            and they’d feel more compassionate.

but one doesn't need a home to love you back. there is no soul residing in between these walls. no greater being within the woodwork.

it left one morning, a note scrawled and barely legible made its way to the counter, and almost fell, november-soft under the garbage.

it left no forwarding address. but a quiet light comes and goes. flickering in its tiny dagger stabs at the interiors of your eyelids. let it flood the room and keep nothing covered.

i never really appreciated the wealth of light afforded to me.
yet i still have cravings,
for graceless dormers,
naked and looming.
quartered divisions with their faint, finger panes
intersecting in the middle of my forehead.

i really love the feeling of walking through a wooded path at night.
maybe not wooded, not so looming and treacherous.
but a place much warmer in light.

i live by light.

i remember the city because of its light.
its muddled outlines,
pin box interiors you only see for brief moments in passing.
eight by ten foot worlds
partitioned only by your doing.

what other place can make sense to you,
so perfectly that you tesselate within it,
one multi-minded collection of elements
in swarms of others,

what place,
besides the one that drives you up a ******* wall.

She followed stitches in the road
and they led her, finger ( )
straight into the mouth,
where she tumbled, eave on ear,
careening down some flesh corridor,

emergence is its own special hell.
born twice, corps within corps,
so that a doyenne is entombed in my screaming infant.

when he lifts me, i rise, airborne swimming,
and i cannot see his arms.


what do you see if you they’re not before your eyes?

a clear sky,
its only blemish are size 8 words i cannot make out.
they ripple behind a flea-sized plane.

i see the sky.
a clear sky, wide and naked and unashamed.

i am silent today like i am everyday.

what do you say, then.
in its stead what shape are your lips?
are they still that red,
the one i could never see replicated on the outside.

my right hand won’t stop shaking,
its fingers reject central authority from their tips.

the sky from down here,
trembles in step.

you know what no one really brings up?
what.
how the flux never wanes,
the seconds evaporate almost instantly,
hitting the pan and running upward,

then minutes, and the rest of them follow.

outside, it smelled of canned peaches,
and i knew the world was fertile again,
or i was fertile.
no one is more boundless ,
simply surviving a passage of time.
intimate nothing from gazes encountered,
no loss, and no redemption.

i’ve been standing at a folded alter for four years,
laundered, stiff white collars in iron maiden

pin ****** cascade,
it’ll be just the tip.
lol.

someone once told you to cover the bedroom mirrors before sleeping,
they’ll drain you of life by morning otherwise.
maybe it was the gourds. the ones that looked like birdhouses,
eye-socket pools gouged into dormant skin,
or you think it’s dormant.
you never assume your vegetables to be predatory.

i only ever feel most like myself in the mornings, immediately after waking,
and around 6:00 pm after i’ve peeled off my face.

when was the last time you howled with the wind
your voice curled upward,
jowls hadn’t formed yet,
will they ever?
will you roll out from under that lens?
the one slowly pressing itself down on you,
it’ll crush you in your sleep,

the last thing you’ll think, unfortunately,
is of its efficacy,
graceless, effortless motion of glass the weight of the world,
reducing you

but

don’t stop.
not until you fumble around in the bedside drawer,
(you know the one)
hardspine thick and full of fleshlights,
receipts, and ticker-tape fortunes.

within it, is the melted resin bracelet,
the one meant for dangling above a 3 am fire,
so its klein blue string burns,
slow, gentle flame against those wrists.

this is what it feels like.
there’s a reason the birds stir a little after midnight,
winged extras, lovers, and postal workers,
former mothers, pageant queens, and cannibals.
they’re here to remind you to rebuild that place within,

there’s a dock there,
fixed in a lake,
on it is our covered vessel,
its wooden frame forming a muslin tent.
sleeping, three minutes before sunrise.