naked of the cloaks of the desired,
even a deeply nestled petal wilts
of rhythmic imitation of the sun.
what effortlessly nourishes an animal but sleep?

effort to sustain a roadside presence greater than the gain,
did you grow thorns? or were they written in your skin?
(inscription: learn to give up, learn to coexist;
shut out words will always miss)

a man that isn't male, a woman free of feminine
left guessing at another ill-communicated notion

to open without expectations, thin of want
to miser, hidden coffers nourishing no passersby

when roots obscure the sun a rose may strategize
but some hands open only in the darkness,
pale and bright or yawning at a winter cloak
as if to ask: comes there a longer night?

medusa and i are pushing the
limits on stone and snakes.

you are the contents
of your context and

emotions are back,
exasperation backed.
dead stones draped,
messes to clean,
fueled by fire,
sure of rain.

fresh love a dripping peach
shared in fertile, scrubby fields
from bushels we were given.

we didn't gorge ourselves
on that sweet fiber.

instead we picked the basket clean,
sharing each lurid immensity and
keeping carefully the wrinkled pits
to dry and plant.

thinking we knew how
to grow our own orchards.

more bushels came in summer,
of which I did not partake.
juices soak the soil.

perhaps we'll know each other
still when the high flowers bloom.

each night be like can't wait to wake up
every day be like can't wait to wake up
from these explorations of these traces
of the past us

split fingertips and calloused hands
trace ingot memories & make me want
to peel off all my skin, excise, except
that's just the season and the cold
wet tissue origami bunny in my palm

you leap a pool of scrabble tiles floating
spelling out unwelcome, but you
smile at me unexpectedly and

bobbing wooden tiles don't have
letters only lines with which to read
these unexpected explorations of a
wake up

there are two fires in the fire,
this bonfire of pain I must avoid
by no longer seeing you.

two fires, one my shame,
the other my love.
I must avoid the love which
seeing you fuels.

for my shame burns the brighter,
and thus it's worth avoiding.

until this love for you that shames me
sizzles and subsides to smoke.

such love leaves burn scars,
dim-bright embers that itch
on occasion, when alone.

when will we feast on handfuls
of the ash my love has burned
of me, as friends? again.

I'd like to make spanakopita then.

my heart a wallet bursting at the seams with all these
worn, illegible receipts of simple but forgotten dreams.
an IOU to me flits free and drifts away in blood like
leaves upon the eddied surface of a stream.

start to finish
all songs are the same.

won't know if a pattern's
long until it lasts.

even amidst its repetition
aspects grow and change.

assume the integration
of its seeping, breaking down
amidst the slow erosion
of fictitious length.

as the relenting of a
vacuum to its contents,
opening's a dissolution
of the empty spaces
we produce.