love is
high
sunken
anoxic
breathing
to feel
all
nothing
between whispers
vague photographs
i am
whole
fractured
stitched
seamless
demand to
come
*******
love me
hate you
we want
pleasure
pain
knowledge
ignorance
something

she is
     the sap of the rarest tree
     forever watched
     prodded
     commercialized

the slow descent
     to swallow everything
     leaves her encased
     vilified
     sprouting spores of dust on a shelf

into a clockwork flower
     plucked and plumed
     sanitized in all the right places
     harlequin smile for the stage
     nipped and tucked for viewing pleasure

the drums in my mind lie silent
and thundering static surges like storms
in the night I did not map out or perhaps
I did and it eroded, erased
like the fading smoke of a dream
but I could not dream you and
you and you.
caverns carved over years
and well has run dry
and my hands, they've ceased to bleed.
there is reason in the madness
a framework in the chaos.
you fold me like a ribbon into a bow;
how can a glance make me feel like
air subsequent leaving and entering
my universe shifting and mending
out of my control.
I am free.

Queen,
I am.
My crown may not adorned with the largest sapphires and the most sparkling diamonds
Silver or gold or rose or platinum
Crookedly a top my head
It may possess bumps and caverns, the ones in my road
No Michelangelo and no Botticelli
Just essentially me, melted down by fire and molded by ambition and brain.
You may doubt and question,
Resurrection of the inquisition
(Do we sit under the Barcelona sky?)
But under the eyes of your God,
I am truthful always
To myself.
a broken promise is a crack in the earth so please keep your feet
Because I promise you
I am a queen and I bow
To nothing
But what I wish

i wonder, naked and exposed,
wrapped in yesterday's cologne,
how many times must you leave
before it is an arrival. do we not
grow so accustomed
to the tread of retreating steps
it transforms into a grown lullaby?
i should sleep peacefully,
not claw for you under the moon
rabid with memories that dance
and bleed in my head so fiercely
at times it is all i see.
you have been all i have seen
you have never seen me.
i have wondered how the lightest touch
leaves the darkest bruise
the smallest promise,
the harshest cut.

victory is not always
to score the goal
to stand atop a podium.
victory is
being pinned
to the bed
couch
chair
wherever
suffocated by immeasurable weight
and rolling off the bed
a sack of sinews and synapses
to the floor.
this is victory
one inch
(for a hundred tears
god I've yearned to run as fast)
closer to being free

summer is fading
like the cologne on the clothes you left behind
dangling on her like second skin
clinging.
She is but a petal fighting for the sun,
forgetting she is a fragment
a constant
but when plucked you take
inch by inch,
a husk for your filling
until next summer.
complete(ly), destroy(ed).