disbelief suspends
as third eye arrhythmia
drum circles forehead

My Abandonment Issues cordially invite your Abandonment Issues to usurp their lack-of-****-togetherness with a fusion of festivities!

What: A.I. Fusion Fest
Where: Sunny Padded Land
When: Now - You Can Never Leave

Activities Include:

- Acro Yoga
- Tandem Biking
- Graffiti Affirmation Wall
- Cuddle Puddle Grotto
- Synchronized Trust-Falls
- Sock Puppet Heart-to-Hearts
- Fear Archery w/ Custom Targets

Don’t miss the main event!

Three-Legged Race

Utilizing all the greatest affixing technologies (including, but not limited to: rope, Duct Tape, Super Glue, Gorilla Glue, wet cement, bungees, resistance bands and all variety of *******), the race will begin by the Fountain of Unknowns, ascend over Mount Paranoiac and finish down in the Valley of Chillax AF, where there will be infinite punch and pie.

No need to RSVP. You’re coming.

:)

the night before
the moon grew bold

I felt the darkness
move in from above
in ominous grey
opaque

it reached for me
half asleep, I
acquiesced

relinquished
pillowy clutch
splayed sheets
like legs

for his
chatter bones to chill
where my sallow
is tissue thin

his hail knuckles
affixed to wet tongue
drug me to the floor
raking my hollows
over and over

reeling terrors
on sepia filmstrip
some scenes repeating
some to-fro rewound forward
some hovered gory ending:

frigid tools cutting
to expose my insides
stirring entrail with bone
tugging ruddy strings
to see what sounds
they made as I
buckled; choked
on my leaks

I closed my eyes
tried to escape body
but he projected on
my shuttered
darting

knotting esophagus
around the backbone
fingerpainting my end
on worn flesh walls
in char-red spectrum
choreographed in
perfect harmony
with rote fear
chanting

this is how
you die -

alone

I felt it all
happening.

dangling my happy
memoirs with nooses
ungraceful reanimating
decayed draggy dancing
Xs where bright eyes
were once upon
and wide

open

every ache and
smothered secret
chirped by dark faeries
too quick to swat

but when all
the pushed down
were given mallets
they crescendoed
into discordant jarring
and in its peak came
a piercing shriek:

so loud -

all stilled
to look around

I couldn’t tell
if the voice
was him
or me

but after terror climaxed
the hear ripped and
grip released

I allowed myself
to loosen, breathe
headthrob slowly
melded into felt
beats:

limbs and tips
all pulsing
relief

and I
could see
no one was there

but me.

wielding expertly
book in my own hand
thick with tested maps

to exquisitely torture
every tenuous strand
in my fragility

with so-called God pulsing your palm,
why the need to wedge between
backward and forward covert
kamikaze escape plans?

A:
you lost your faith

I can't figure out
if I'm supposed to be
an oddball Eros-laced
poetic artist of sorts

this revolutionary
evolution redesigner
with wake-the-****-up
typographic punches

or a sower of seedlings
via silly rhymes scheming
with wacked-out visualizations
for story-time imaginations
to mold future generations

ideally,
I want to do all three...

praying for the mind
time and energy
to manifest all
I can
Be

(including
rocking the ****
outta this day job
that's molding me
into a better model
who knows how to float
merrily upon her dreams
obsoleting false me)

*happythankUmoreplease

even when it goes cold
and pushes the pull
out into undertow

our ****-ups
even reek

of meant-to-be

it's all so
I can't even...

but
I will find
a way to say

how our
dominoes tripped
over each other

flicked from
the synchronic fated one's
luminous middle fingers

yours, left
mine, right

colliding in
the in-between

I've been knowing
for quite some time

and yet,
my brain still
tries to deny
it's all so...

no ******' way

but
yes way
it

- truly -

sure-as-Shinola'd-****
did

go down
like so

when I'm five
next time

we'll skip
hand-in-hand
to the head of
each other's
lines

share some
psychedelic ice cream
before we know quite what
is happening on our tongues

no reason to fear
this mystical flight
OS fresh messless

and we will
like each other
before we know
how

or why

boring saucer eyes
through the other's skull
no drywall, no cement
no mortared bricks
just

staring straight in
and into

the place in the wires
where pulse currents
traverse higher than
power grid switches
flipped lit

messy hair
summer grass
skinned knees

laughing until
we can't breathe
at every nothing

and we run
into the woods
build a fort on the moon
brew lunar rock stew

you carve our names
on the side of our dome
with an asteroid
misspelling mine

and I decide
to write it
that way
forever

both bums me out
and ignites traces
of magical ether

like emo glitter

could it be my tummy
trying to digest all these
heavy conflicting feelings

the love and the pain
the missed and the discarded
the conjoined and the severed
the forgiveness and the blame
the righter and the wronging
the know and the dismay

or maybe
the wine and the pizza...

I'll go with
C) All of the above

blab fuckity **** **** gab
buncha tryin to be some-
thing real or whole

x-press(ion) squeezing pleads
into hypnotic hymnal
humming breathe

up my thighs
now, not numb
but tingling throes

I feel all the
nothings winking
at everything con-
tained therein

and I squirm
toward the right

where it
overflowed

300 thread-count tent
stars chart scars in shadow
overlapping bullet hole trends

in here
these wounds feel
something near normal

black rain plummets
drowning out
the outside

I don't trust
the ****** moods

it's like, I hear ya

but I hear more
what's underneath

the unbridled hope
charred to dark spectrum
from an indelible rainbow

underwhere I sit and play
with all these words

that insist on having
their way with me

my hips
skim petaline
love every flit lit
in the direction
of my reflect

in those moments
I remembered

>>>   e v e r y t h i n g   <<<

I ever wanted
and was

by rollicking reminders
ringing the spine

set prior to
this life

pretty white
pages inked

with all I've got
in black, sticky words

I'm here
for you, always

even when I'm not

I know you hear me -
echoing through your
bones plunking
lonely chords

energy works in rising
falling, harmonizing
and we make music
on lips and skin adrift
and I know

we are
one

no matter
how far or
weird

it all
becomes

because I
still feel you
surging inside
my ribbed space

so many things

resuscitated tongue
mouthpiece
heartbeat
more ******

and the iron will
to resolutely
saunter out of hell
immune
to the too few, too late
tears of the devil

with clear, dry eyes
I stared it down

I was
- so -
happy

just
to be

something like
a long-lost friend
incubating inside jokes
on just-pierced ****** tongues
muzzled formal flirting with hmm

more than anything else
I just want our talk

so right everything else
just left

behind

I would trade in all my *****
for more conversations
like that

it's like, there will always
be part of me that sees
and wants more

but the crux
of all that ****

why I finger locks
on fated gates
is because

our talk
is

best. thing. ever.

ranking
formerly dubbed awesome
alongside rigmarole

like, I prefer
talking at you over the wall
even if I know my airplanes
won't hit you quite when
or how I want them

that I know
those ears will hear

is better than
all comparisons
that I have
no more of

****

and often I think
we could just keep
talking forever

and I could
be happy

with
only that

I walked it
to keep me from
walking back into
the slaughterhouse

read renewed obit daily
spattered on asphyxiating
pulmonary walls when
you moved on in
an attempt to replace
our magical rarity

maybe it was for
the exact same reason
you put the gun in
your lonely mouth

preferring suicide to waiting
for unsuspecting heart
to get massacred

again

choosing instead to stroll
hollow self-made planks
with egoic illusions
of control

I won’t

walk it again
I’m stronger now

though it will hurt if
you repeat the bore
boring stale pattern
into open skull

starting
to flower

it will be no
surprise

and I know I
will be OK
this time

look
I know I
terrify you

quake your bones at
thought of home foreclosed
U-Hauled, stooped alone affront
cold locked door

too bad
there’s no one else
who understands what that’s like
who’d hold your hand and dive inside
your diverting fractured ice in melt
saying silently, as I turn to pools

me.
*******.
too.

my tongue
could strip you bare

the way the doorslam
and sound of my steps
dissipating

seem to
so effectively

toward Christmas
and I feel you
more

you were
the best present ever

black satin
loops and tendrils

escort stress by the wrist
compound cravings caged
echoing faintly at hole bottom
where chalked stars summon
emotive salve revolution

I think this has all
been harder on you
than me

not your load of strife
but the realizations
accompanying
our thing

for me,
it's all been
validating

an embossing seal
stamping papers official
I'd filled out and mailed in
for processing already

but you...
you got a massive dose
of holy truth even as you
spouted ***** defeat

that's a lot to swallow

and I think
it's not really me
you're not ready
to face

it's all these
paradigm-shifty
mystical beliefs
flitting in and out
of inter-D

challenging
relationship history
with faith in sacred things
haunting ***** discordant
pipes echoing up into
your rafters

sometimes
I wish

those things
didn't come along
with me

maybe then
we could be
friends in 3D

without it being
so overwhelming

we really did birth
a world of words

and it's fused
to both of us

no matter
what?

like our thoughts
ran off together

and left
these bones

in the dust

of underling
arising

viewing
of

past preceding
swirling now

it calls eyes
and demands
walk-thru of heart

I knew
the other night
was gonna be
intense

when I put
the chemicals in
the ones that tend
to make elate

it’s what
they’ve done
every time
since
you

to varying
degrees

they’ve become
therapeutic purge
leaning lone

just sit
in my ****
under the gloss

you are not alone
in thinks
in feels

they want air
and mouth
and hands
to catch

you know...

facing you
was the hardest thing
I’ve ever done

harder than
walking
out

of that
dead-end

it summoned
every shred of every
insecurity ever felt and
every failure face-planted
every inner negative creep
and ear-jammed program
the toxic false news
of six long years

to think I
get something that’s good
and not just good, but like
made special just for me
with this secret switch
somewhere that goes
glowy unknown
like too few are
lucky to know

after sucksessive bad
it just didn’t compute
when I looked
in the mirror

if you had not been
so ******* stubborn
I would have
never

returned.

I can spin
the webs in mind
so thick, my stories
my characters
and how I’d
painted
self:

plain, dim
undeserving
unduly inadequate

it comes up
for processing
not to road-block
but be cleared...

thank you
for what you said

I needed
to hear

precisely that.

the residue
of smoke remains
but I know

soon

I will
breathe deep
get meshed with
dodecahedrons
trickling down
my walls

whispering
the things, all

then pushed into
grey matter *******
asphyxiating pump white
from red life

rising together
then falling
apart

I walk
through forest char
reminiscing, not so much
plumes of combusting hope,
as the feeling of
not alone
in core

you were my ooofo
come to wake me
home

I will love you
past the brackish fits
of irreverent split rifts

I will love you
through bruised indigo blues
stalking shadowed ceiling stares
down to your pulverizing pupils

I will love you
beyond my known limits
pushing my pulse over
the wall to hear beats
echo through you

and I will love you
from afar

if I have to

the moon
rises me

I'm more home

locking eyes
with you

than anywhere
on Earth

work out for you
real swell

being fond of my
I-told-you-so face,
that is

;)

this is the part
where my ragged hope
and intermittent rage

give way

to mouth overrun
flooding pain

me thinks maybe
you are chameleon

too

but you'll never
see all your scales
in rainbow gradation

if you don't let go
of that black twig
you're clutching

and walk out onto
spectrum colors

it will always be there
if you need to go back
and meditate upon it

but
I promise you

hopping swatches
is much more fun

especially with all
these holdy hands
the two of us
have got

smell like my Mags -
mad puppyish

steeped in sweet
unconditionals

I should probably
wash them
and her
soon

but I really
kinda like it

and also,
procrastinating

have
the words

burned

on each other’s
tongues

to be corona flares

just
see me

that makes
me glow

and your reflection
visible

on the darkest of nights

you said
I replayed

between
my ears

and legs

staring down stars
seeking signs inside the fire
I can't tell the color of my own eyes
anymore

just the bright whites
staring back into mine
flitting above the smile
that I struggle to give

where, who, what, when

why.

the Q’s transfuse into
plasmatic stew on spun plate
overfloweth

af.

seriously, the W’s
bend me over without even
a hello

i’m glad someone is effing me this hard. tattooing finger trails along the spine of the universe.

just break me.
i don’t pretend to know.
i just puppet words and try to say
the stupid unsayable.

which is all so, sooooo....

much.

you know.
it is.