I can almost taste how tense those muscles are when they swing the red-hot tire-iron into my face again and again
And oh, how the blood keeps coming and oh, how it pools on the uneven concrete
Steamy and globby and staring at my contorted jaw and the hard lines of arms using my skull like a drum
More thwacks and now human barbecue as teeth drop into the syrupy mix and float like islands and I think of A.1. steak sauce

One second of silence and I wipe my hands on my thighs
The only difference between jeans and a dress is about six inches and I start to wonder
Which six until my head jerks left and then right again and
God, don't those ******* arms ever get tired

I lick my licks and lap up the red that must be running down my chin
Tastes like maraschino cherries and some other flavor I can't quite grasp
I search the tip of my tongue for it but find only the holey ridges in my gums and suddenly I realize
Maybe that flavor is the six inches that separate jeans from dresses

But then I laugh, and somewhere far above me someone else does too.

Like...it feels like whole world and the, you know, uh...all the smily candy teeth and ******-out-of-their-mind ******* with their lip service to some techno-God of...what? Acceptance and power dynamics, or empowerment  or whatever... It's like they're out there building these monoliths to themselves...like, mirrors made out of diamonds that's all positivity and critical theories and ****, even Heidegger or Nietzsche thrown in there, Foucault, Lorde sometimes, a lot of other names, too...so much to remember when you wade into the world of identity, right? But it's also so sugary that I get a headache, like, when I see the steel roots that they're...repurposing? I keep tripping over them and stuff, I dunno.

Queer's a word I hear mostly coming out of only my own mouth, maybe the walls...if wall's could talk, right?...and that really tells me a lot, I guess? About what it means to be a ***, but like, not really? And how I'm totally not trans? I mean I'm still BASICALLY a boy, right? Like shouldn't I be like, calling myself a girl if I'm not a boy, etc.? The stony monuments to Liberation...they're using the big L right?...tell me so. I'm so close but still not good enough, or something like that. The binaries are there for a reason, etc. Not even that. Just a quiet, like...exclusion? Joke? What I wouldn't give to be a fully-fledged ****** or a true ******, y'know?...card-carrying member of the conference, where I can actually cry and my voice comes out in something other than a croak and people look at my tears and hear my words and say, Yes, that's real and that's okay?

Whatever though. I'm probably wrong anyway, right? I'm just half-baked, or not exactly full, or...what's the word?

None of clothes are right and so I am not human. Only cold winds and crazed neon. I sometimes shine a flashlight under my fingers to remind myself of my bones. But they're as breathlike and photonic as the plastic tears I will never be given the right to have.

We know that **** ain't real.

How brittle a (we) can be. What sound is my voice allowed to have other than the violent dance of glass on concrete? My happiness always hangs from the end of a baseball bat.

And that's the way things are.

Of course, my mantras are just idolatry or faggotry. Systems of oppressive heat and chemical equations either pat me on the back or slap me across the face and I can never quite seem to catch my breath or feel an embrace, not really.

My forehead burned, but I closed my eyes.

How heavy must my skin and eyelashes and all the things that encase me, engender me, hang about me before I can finally count myself beloved? The question is as impossible as my own humanity, and my existence is not so self-evident that kiwis taste like queer fruits. So until smiles lose their tartness and I can breathe at last, *******.

if only radiowaves tasted like honey
or each incandescent laugh was lined with sugar

and I could close my eyes and dream away my burning forehead
being cooked by alien eyes

and these hilltops would finally yield milky wheat
in breathless smiles and airy sighs

hard teeth and candy apples might seem a bit less hateful

my teeth are sensitive too--
candy smoke strangles them
they are the crown jewels of some British empire

one day at the circus he bought me popcorn, and boy how the unpopped kernels cut my gums. I laughed and the iron taste blanketed my tongue. I noticed my chair had only three legs, and my scarf was red and sticky

o world, how I want to shake your head
and tear wires from the fusebox
to taste the sound of incandescent crackling and burnt popcorn

o shining irises, where is your citrus now?

The way the harsh light bounces off your skin makes me think your face is electric. Soft pores and sunshine fleshtones. Almost like your face is the sun, and you are the son of the sun. The Son of the Sun. The Son of Man. On the wall, the clock ticks loudly. Ticking is just another word for stabbing. Looking across the room, I can see the angry, inflamed air. It has pus and blood. It's gaping. I draw a shallow breath and taste saltiness. You draw a breath and taste nougat. When you do, I can't help but look at your teeth. Your pearlywhites. Vanilla gelato. Sweet and good to eat. Were we ever friends? Could we be? A smile sneaks its way in at the corner of your mouth, and your foot begins to tap. I can't tell whether the ticking is making the noise anymore, or your foot.

Twelve years from now, you walk down the street with your son on your shoulders and your wife at your side. While you and your boy eat Baby Ruths, she snaps a picture. In it, the nougaty center is clearly visible. It looks like your skin. Sunshiney and soft and not salty at all.

it's late
and the first thing i hear is the clock's bell
ringing for each hour like a stab wound
smelling like salt and New York Harbor
as if i were a navyman like him
but silence washes over the room in a wave
and in its undertow the sands of my father are left behind

if my father was a poet he'd love all the white space
his room is a short poem, then--
an archipelago, each island
a monolith:

near the navy clock (born from saltwater and teenage dreams)
a dresser that could tell stories of wooden teeth and Blackbeard

then another, even heavier and dripping
with ancient handiwork--Marie Antoinette ate cake off it

a tv crowns it, almost aggressively
simple, burying history under Technicolor

a rug kneels in front of Marie & her crown
geometric paradise in brown and white

emptiness otherwise, just white walls (comfortably clinical)
and no extra space used (except for the bed--
large, a remnant of divorce)

and then, once again, i smell the sea
as the clock strikes something

or maybe something-thirty

in that moment
my fingertips could almost taste you,
your delicate wig powdered with virginal white,
the crushed velvet of your robes

my fingertips could almost taste you,
not this still museum air--
the crushed velvet of your robes
stank of oil and nothing like you

this still museum air
and the arch of your back & line of your jaw
stank of oil and nothing like you,
but i wanted to be in your arms,

the arch of your back and line of your jaw
o cobblestone eyes, why couldn't i see you just once?
i wanted to be in your arms, but
i felt the kisses of the gas lamps

o cobblestone eyes, why couldn't i see you just once,
your delicate wig powdered with virginal white?
i felt the kisses of the gas lamps
in that moment

and on the air I taste the
brine of your laughter (but where is my
crown?). I can feel my skin cry out for better
days; some long-gone
error-ridden age as it
feasts on my memory with hungry teeth. Only

godlike garbage grows
here, where among the grey matter, divinity
inches its way in in
jumbled fragments. These images can't be
kept in messy tableaus for
long: entropy stops for no
man (or woman or beast or). Our
neverland is top-full of hymns:

o, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!

Prayer comes in bizarre
questions, and answers drawn out in
raspy breaths. I want to
see each one, smoky and staining the
teeth that asked (like they could ever
understand). I want to feel the
voluptuousness of the unknown, riding each
wave to the sandy shore. I want to never
x-out days again, never wait to hit
yet another
zero.

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought.

oh
to see my mirrored image rise
and fade into smoke
masking divine faces and beautiful pillows
(laced with gold so pretty)
in an ***** den

my body bursts with imperfections
and i can't bear to look
while shutters flutter over lenses
where prettiness blooms like sunflowers
yellow and bright like so many better
than me

how can i ever match
the daisies and the crisp cool shirts
that move them to tears?
what sandy shore has my shape earned?
reflecting pools sing in shrill
tongues like earbleed

eyes and heart are locked together
eyeline to lifeline
a rome-born French Connection
and i can only look
from miles away
heavy

but Lord was she ugly.

and everyone I know.

what air-conditioned heart is this
here where mothers meet and ports sing crusted sugarsongs
where I remember the synthesized forget-me-nots kissed by lemons
in chemical yellow

and blasphemous portraits seem to cry
with tears light as baby's breath against the heavy frescos
in the matchstick cathedrals lined with crumbling gouda
and bitter wine?

stags wear ruined antlers and crown the hillside
above the gilded city as it slides into the sea
to the echo of violins in a sprightly sigh
and then your laugh

(plaster-of-Paris is as beautiful as blood diamonds)

oh god, can i still picture snowy teeth
and breaths like wolves blotting the hillside

gray wolves
such teeth

your hair smells like brimstone
in my memories that swirl under the pale streetlight
and in the reflective shards fogged over by our words

swollen overripe sicksweet mangoes

colors are more than the sway of hips
or a glint in the eyes laced with starbursts
and a face contains no infinites

i remember the smoky silence

drowned in fiction

o divine aphasia
the words dribble from my lips
and die on the floor alone

my confessions are meaningless
in the face of the crown
bedazzled jewels and gaudy plastic

that's all they want
all i want
smile and take the electric throne

it's always an ocean
grainy and washed by the sun
seafoam floats light as your laugh

rosary beads left on the beach
while the salt rolls in from the hilltops of *****

and when i breathe in i can taste the sweet smoke
and your perfume reminds me of the desert

exhale and dance in the brine

Their hands touch in listless syncopation
While hearts beat the blood,
Gone bad long before in a half-dreamt wish,
For each muscle retreating to the whitewashed bones.
Eyes are starstruck and peppered with screams--
Songs harmonized with the clanging of shackles--
And all they have is the gentle heat
In lukewarm coals of revolution.
(smile at me)
They claw at each other in an embrace,
Clinging to their scents, the flesh and skin
Reminders that their shadows are real.
(let me see the whites of your teeth)
Lungs inhale and air rushes and sheets flutter--
Their fandango sprints onward
(the gleam of your eyes)
To the abyss, loud with the songs
(i love you)
Drowning (you know i do) the hate and
Quiet contempt (please) in their bad blood.

(and i was dancing with you)
(and we were both fast asleep)

Their laughter scratches up against my heart
And drifts far and away
Like spilled milk that the stars cry over
So I open my eyes and smile

The only thing to do against the black
And the milk spreading out on the floor like my laugh

my dollars have kinder eyes than most
money doesn't talk
it listens

Every night I dream of my
Bedsheets protecting me
From all the evils in the world;

But still their light sends chills
Deep within my bones
And my heart, seizing in the winterglare.

Let's go with two exclamation points

Rip the air from my lungs
Shriveled and lonely and pink inside
The flesh dancing the salsa for a breath

Atrophied arms reaching out
Locked like my mouth

(Screaming for a kind word)

el día de san Valentín

wet eyes quivering

echoes of laughter around corners
screaming in my ears
and my deaf heart

amor y amistad

How can the cities ever thaw
When all we have are our eyes,
Greedy for a smile and emaciated by the winter wonderland
And deadened by ennui worn as armor--
Trashbin fires consuming the smiles and sighs and frightful, lovely
Words we can never say

it's just too cold to say them
with frostbite in our hearts

Do my eyes scare you?
Do your sins live there,
Like monsters grinning at you from
A wounded abyss while you cover your ears
To silence the dark verdict (sure as sugar and no medicine
Goes down with it) that bleeds from their smiles?
Or do you turn your back and avert your eyes to celebrate the
Victory: drunken sailors crooning as the steam from their burning
Ship succumbs to the icy blue ( bright like blood diamonds)?

I'm slipping away
Piece by piece word by word laugh by laugh
Consumed by their smiles
Decaying at the bottom of their hearts

(where am i)

for my best good friend, who I love dearly. thank you.*

wild hair reaching for their hearts, she bleeds onto
the paper in runny rivulets like tears shed for the electric love
fleeing to the corners of the earth
off-target but shocked with excess

she weeps among the broken glass and ignores the mirrors
reflecting the afterthought that lies at the
end of each laugh or haircurl

heart thumping a metronomic beat to the hammers
building the palaces gleaming with sweat and preserved with salty tears

secret city under construction
eyes wet with worried incantations
pen scratching plasma onto the trees
hair alight defying the buzzcut season
in love with the sunbeams (and moon rafters)
that float with the dreams clinging to whispers

and everything glows in the haze while she closes her eyes
smiles dancing on the guitar strings
music on the heart pumping the
blood on the paper

and everything glows when she's there

our eyes starstruck on the moon rafters

To my best friend, for everything. I love you.*

definition seems to elude the soft smile and eyes (the teenage dream desperate to run)
stunned by lightning flashes and ghost hands waving in the dance that--
measure for measure--her limbs follow

how easy it is to love a monolith

where the sour limelight mocks the sweet
rough and uneven and sugared over with the words
echoing in my ears like the thudding thunder that our voices obscure
torn and laughing on the checkerboard we mock

the storms drag on in her eyes while she teaches me
glints of possibility trailing off in abandoned thoughts
poems rising in the night air she breaks
her glow streaming admiration onto our tongues
while the afterimages dance and touch and sing behind my eyelids

the whispers may die and stay stranded on the tile floors
the light ripping holes into the long-dead words
but

suddenly the words are loud
and they float from the unknown and mingle with the revolutions softly dancing
between us

she saved me

floating like the planets
our mouths twitch and our teeth
shine like venus

the love goddess hangs alone in space
light screams in the skies

end this venusian nightmare

and we admire the beauty of her desperate plea
marveling at how bright she is
brighter than our smartphones and
the dim reflection of the limelight in our eyes

our own citrus dreams tangy
with the kisses born in tearducts
and lit up by the cries of venus

please

We're supposed to be better than all that.
And so my eyes brighten,
My mouth sings its usual overtures--render
Unto Caesar, as they say. But
Every time my eyes discover you (like the
Columbian trifecta--every time), or
Your voice sends the Weeping Willows scattering,
The glinting stars in my eyes burn with more than nitrogen and flashing teeth.
The hate staggers with newborn horse legs--a hand on the heart, the
Other shaking its rattle, sending the lovely chords of your laugh to strangle and bind my thoughts.
Its acrid taste stings my mouth, where
Your name sits like something foreign.

But it's the only thing that keeps me warm in the snow.

Hi (I love you)
(but)

the limelight is bitter like scurvy's cure
and yet I still reach for the plastic crown

the camera flash burns purple circles behind my eyelids
my finger twitches under the weight of the promises told with
crossed fingers in everyone's eyes

fishhooks tear my face and force the smile
skin taut and reaching for their arms
a touch an embrace
anything

why are computer screens so cold
the light bouncing off my crown
and into my eyes

so hungry

Mirror of "love in circadian rhythm" by Samantha Adams*

I wish I could have stayed asleep
The dream, filled with smiles, could have lived
And it'd be simple

But the truth silently snapped into the world like a twig
And laughter dimmed to silence
Except for the tears, brand new and salted with fear, shed each night
At the emotions chained up and left to die
A heart left out in the snow as your head turns and arms cross
Anything to forget the sin at the window
The lights from inside flicker in my eyes
And all I want is to be let in
And thaw my frostbitten love, the pain like pins and needles
Reminders of the dream that broke at a twigsnap

As soft as a window closing

Can these crimes live forever?

Let me go to Trinidad
And escape the sins that live in the cold
(Even computer screens can't thaw it)

Near two decades since they arrived
The two geminis that would change the world
Fumblestumbletumble to teenage dream (phone screens are like stars in the night)
Two sets of eyes long for the landscape beyond the foggy window they share

They are specters like all teenagers
Shadows floating down hallways with the echoes of laughs left behind
But magic lies in those lilting giggles
As if to mock Plato himself for ever dreaming of the shadows (and the caves and)
Heads tilt as eyes gleam
Hair puffed with the tempest of their heredity and half-remembered fears
(Assuming fears can be so)
Shakes with the head as the laughter begins
Self aware at the kabuki theater

While in the vibrations of the beat to their dance
The poet's heart throbs and the champion's digs into the ground
Roots to dig and battles to win
Love (they say it's all you need but) in each wrist-flick and hug
Defiant in its drive (to what end)

The air is warm inside when we sit on a couch
Unaskable questions flying like the teenage dreams
And even though the wind blowing freezes
Sometimes the only warmth to thaw the skin comes from a loosened tongue
Or a smile with the unfindable answers shining on each tooth
So they laugh

And I am forever grateful

She won't pick up a pen.
Words stand at the exit, shivering at the winter
Outside, unable to compare with the Elysium on the horizon.

So the story goes.

But the tapestries that sit at her fingertips are colossi,
Towering over the rest.
Those bottled-up words are dreams deferred,
Screaming and beating on the glass
To be recognized for what they are:
Prophets of the world that is,
Harbingers of the love that should be.
And still, she sits patiently with the world
Under her telescope, in her corner of the universe
While her heart beats, content to echo beauty onto others;
A Venus with the mirror to the world (brighter because of her).
She is Athena with a placid smile:
Inspiration at the snap of a finger,
Or a shoulder touch.
But she always hugs,
The brilliance in the eyes,
Happy to rest there.

I can only imagine if she wrote and freed her poet's eye.

there's something sad when it snows.
the flakes falling under our sighs
the world buried a little deeper

a little more lonely

hats and gloves and soup our only company while
we shiver

Almost like a mirror to
Look at you. A sort of Alice on the other side
Of the looking glass.
You are a reflection I never thought might exist.
But there are flaws spiderwebbing cracks into the glass,
The picture so minutely cracked here and
There that it might all just
Fall out of the frame.

Words, picked like highhanging fruit,
Stack and
Form the
Edges of your
Mind--
brilliant walls of Buckingham but also the boxes of fruit
(high hanging like the words) floating down congolese waters
and into the heart

--of Darkness? only kurtz knows
but does it matter? still Grand as ever--

They're words I see in myself on my side
And music from Mechanicsburg Anchorage Dar es Salaam
sings down the same Congo we share

But the only cracks I see are with me.
Your words and wit are the envoys,
Celebrated diplomats from the Heart that lies
downriver.
eyes flash and the Fruit is bountiful and
Hail the heart (wherever whatever it is down the River).

The words are strong as the man who sent them
(somewhere in the Heart)
Such strength to speak and shout
Respect commandeddemanded in the fruit

I often wonder if I have it.
And each time I know I don't
Another crack is born.

the tally man sends his beautiful fruit--
strong as everforever
To the world, smileonface and gleamineye--

and you're him
on the other side
at the Heart.

I never mean to be that guy,
But every time a friend uses another friend's Facebook,
The go-to gag will be a status saying "I'm gay," with
Eyeroll emoticons and LOLs promptly following.
Giggles and pointed fingers echo off the walls and
Into the ears of the suffering silent.

Those two words used as punchlines are the heirs,
The progeny of a past bathed in blood.
They are words weighted down by chains linked with laughs
And locked by the smiles and eyerolls.
The free ones revel in the fire baptismal they impress upon
Those left chained to the wall in the shadows.

Like children, they delight in the minor sting of the fireball that destroys those they mock.
Eyes sparkle and smiles flash at the fictional thrill that entertains them and murders the ones who dare to speak.
Their drums beat as the celebrate the chic
Game they get to play--playing Chicken with a train that isn't there
While others are strapped to the tracks by their shadows,
The darkside of the dance.

Songs and howls fill the skies and mix with the screams of the tortured to put the icing on
Their twisted fandango--a brilliant spectacle to distract from the cries for help;
A spectacle as brilliant as the screens of their phones as they type the jokes stained with sadness:
"I'm gay LOL haxored," with the laughs following
At the circus, while miles away a boy sobs into his sheets,
The cold stars his only company.

The great tragedy is that
We never look at each other--
Little gods dancing to a Billboard Top 40 together while
Being unbearably alone.

All we do is look at the ground and the sky,
But never the eye.

The beat drops and our feet move and our arms flail to
Disguise how meaningless we think we are.

If only we knew our gospels are in each other's eyes.

look

Who do we cry for when all there is
Is the sound of shoes clacking on the floor
And our tempered breath in the dark?

Dance with me in the street under the
streetlights flickering and stars crooning.

hand in hand
us and no one else
the lights
the stars
the silent music and

our hearts in orbit

why do we love
open the door to be robbed
raise the portcullis for invasion
leave our frail hearts open to the skewers and the pain
open our arms for an embrace at knifepoint
put our neck in the guillotine
feed each other our torn-up hearts?

for a smile or a kind word
in fair exchange?

the story of love is loosened ties and running mascara

The diamonds and silk we drape ourselves in are how
We scream and stretch and reach out to each other

the rough around our gilded hearts
wanting to be touched

The lights of the city are not just
Electrons and lightbulbs and screens. The lights
burning in the blackcold are sparks
Kindled in the hellos and goodbyes and hugs and long last looks and smiles and I-love-yous
Twinkling defiantly in our eyes.

From the icy waters the snow is born and rises over
the city,
Settling like the wilting pine needles on the trees,
Chopped and decorated in a glitzy promenade and torn from their
roots.

Winter
is lonely in
Its grief.

The chill of the frozenborn blanket that covers
the city
sneaks in like a thiefinthenight
And the blood retreats to the heart to keep it warm
All by itself.

We all retreat
when faced with
the cold

Coldshoulders and cold Hearts.

who are you?

The moment when their eyes light up
Their mouth twitches to make words and their vocal cords prepare to hum
Or the door opens
Or the corner is rounded
Or something is going to happen and all the oracles and the prophets refuse to offer their Delphine divination
And all there is
Is the moment
and You
and the waiting

when will
                 anything
happen?

She is the quiet champion
Nothing but the Truth and it shall make us free;
The pensive fighter, she sits, eyes down and mind a hunter for that Truth
to liberate her and me and us and all until It's done.
Eyes dart and heart beats on slowburn
the embers glowing hot in the center, waiting to blaze and lick and lap at the danger
as sword and shield are drawn and Jabberwock is slain
and then a slight grin a hug a sparkle in the eye as
-The monster's head in her hand-
She returns to her Truth and her love and the soft glow
of the quiet champion's eyes as they look to those around her
and the sword and shield in the corner for the next monster

the smile returns, the eyes kindle, the task manifests
and the work begins again--quiet and pensive the Gladiator
marches toward the Truth with her friends

peaceful except for the footsteps
and the whispers
and the love

The fire politely rages on at her center
The drive cascades up from the heart and out from the mouth and
Smoke rings forming the letters of the passion and blowing defiantly
(or pleasantly) In my face. Sparks escape occasionally, starry dreams from here to wherever whyever
nudging quietly the air to the side and lingering where they may as they dance among the dreams
All to the sound of the drums and the sound of her heartbeat
and the night air
and the sky

coldbreath and sparks forever in the Tango

They're all Titans, giants to be sure
With me in their shadows, marveling at the Titans

no shadow of my own

Frankness seems to be the running theme so let me be that
Why does the work the energy the life the everything get taken?
Nothing more than the playthings of a bitter god a bitter people a bitter world
But bitter isn't the right word no
Not bitter

                                                        cold

A cold world of cold people except for the hot tears that freeze on my face
icecicleman
How loud do I need to shout how much do I need to cry do I need to swim or drown
until I feel anything warm except for the tears in their hotcold rivulets?
until I feel anybody touch me or care or look or respect or love or anythinganythingany
until I feel someone
                                 anyone
                                                at all?
until for once i actually get to come down off the wall the flower stuck there forever
until the frostbite ripped into me by the coldworldcoldpeople warms
until i finally can be someones friend or anything or
just
       matter
                    ?

[redacted] I totally agree but [redacted]
and you have no idea how much [redacted] and still I [redacted] but
you are so [redacted] I'm [redacted] so then what [redacted] to
say except [redacted] I l[redacted] and nothing can ever change that
even though yo[redacted] to redact it and maybe i do t[redacted] but i refuse
iloveyouiloveyouilo[redacted]veyou

I love you

i am the madman in the cave
talking to the shadows