My brother is a drama queen with no morals.
He cheats on his wife with everything with a pulse.
So many of my nephews are the result of my brother’s lust,
I would be surprised he is still married
If I did not know his wife as well as I do.
His wife is over possessive, and angry,
However she is righteous and fair.
Forgiven on that front.
However she is also our sister
And if I had any right to judge, I might.

My other brother has no cares.
He has had an ongoing competition
With our niece for ages,
Since the spring and the olive tree.
My nephew enjoys arsonry and war
And I wonder if he is a sadist sometimes.
He is my other niece’s side piece, essentially,
Whom is married to yet another nephew.
Our history is riddled with ******,
And I wonder if we are really all powerful gods
Or just afflicted by advantageous birth defects.

I am the most normal of us all
And I spend my time with dead people.

We need help.
Send your best therapist.
Maybe send multiple,
The first few might meet an untimely end.
Sincerely, Hades.

I see the sky crack open
And try to paint it closed with starlight,

But lo and behold it does not wish
To mend itself tonight,

And as it falls so gracefully,
I watch the sea lap at the city's ticklish toes.

Serene as ever, but still deep with mischief,
The sea plays with the city until it is bright with light

Of laughter and joy
Until it decides if it should sleep this night.

Sonewhere in the distance sits something,
What? Nobody knows,

But it sits there in waiting,
Like a sanguine sentinel, somehow hopeful.

And mark my words,
The cracking sky opens, opals

Pouring from an endless beyond
Just to shake hands with a never ending sea.
It is how the sky reaches out to the sea:

For once, just once,
I wish it would reach for me.

The sunset throws the people into silhouette,
The rolling hills into sharp relief against themselves.
It romanticizes the world,
Like for once there is such a thing as freedom.

Age watches the clock and the calendar at end of day,
Youth watches the setting sun.
Dreams can be so fleeting after all,
And time so indelicate.

Long live the youth in a world of disarray.
Long live dreams in a world of age.

Age searches for the meaning of life,
Youth finds life in the meaning,
Why else would we run away for but a single day?

The sunset paints brown grass gold.
Time paints gold moments brown.
The ocean sits behind the trees
But long ago it sat in the pockmarked sky
And fell,
Like sand to the bottom of the hourglass,
The House of Usher.
Long live that aging ocean,
Long live that youth in the sky,
Bright blue-white pinprick footprints
Left behind in existential black.
Long live the never ending sky,
The forever ending sea.

Naught but a memory of a dream now,
Petals of light catch on rivers of roads,
And we remember it like pirates do the ocean -
Free, formidable, fierce, forever.

Age throws memory into silhouette,
Light shines photographs into spots of glare.
Youth romanticizes the world,
Like once upon a time,
We were free.

How fleeting are we as people?
Asked to give ourselves up,
For the greater good
For the King’s greater good

How fleeting we live as people,
Bones like feathers,
Blood like my enemy’s
Blood like my brother’s

A strong will can be mistaken for teenage rebellion,
A strong will can be bent only after death
And until death do strong and will part
Until death do us part

How fleeting the mind of a madman,
The heart of the bravest kitten
Bathed in brother’s blood
Bathed in Human blood

As those who exist cease to,
Let us hope that we are free to,
And that we are free, too

Once I was a ray of unfiltered light,
The star-lit, wild-eyed night,
A sapling taking root in the banks of a river.

Now I am here
And joy is the gentle sprinkling of dew on the spider’s web,
Sadness is the expanse of the ocean, the outgoing tide.
Quiet comes from the petrichor scent of the woods when the storm is over.

Soon I will be faster than the speed of light,
The newest star in the age old night,
Reflected in the eyes of Sirona by the river.

I

After the fall, I would never feel the same.

Nothing comes easy anymore,
Like the fall closed every open door,
Like the fall had so much left in store,
Like the fall became me.
Like the fall consumed all that I knew.
Like the fall walked around in my shoes,
Sang my tunes,
Learned my lessons, wrote my notes, wore my glasses,
Like the fall attended all of my classes.
It used up all of my bathroom passes
To sit in the stalls and mourn.
Nothing comes easy anymore,
Like the fall clothed me,
Like the fall closed me.
I don't live here anymore,
Nobody's home.

I never knew I would never be the same,
Same veins, same body, same brain,
But heart would never be the same.
Nothing would ever feel the same.
I never knew I could be evicted from myself,
Could be placed on a shelf
In a bedroom I have never been in,
Told to live in,
To fall in.

I never knew I could change so drastically,
But welcome to reality.

II

I never knew I could fall in love.
I am the fall and not enough,
People are the mourning dove -
They fly above my reach,
Above a surface I cannot breach -
And someday I hope they will teach me
How to fly with grace, but none look down.

Of course none look down.
That's how you fall when you're flying,
That's how you become the fall
While trying to be the fly.
That's how you become me.

Their feathers are never feathers in reality,
They have this kind of duality,
They are feathers and they are blades of grass.
They are steel and twine, but alas,
Strong as a bull, but shatter like glass.

III

A while ago, I wanted to know how to draw,
So I figured it out.
Now I want to know how to thaw
My heart out of its icy case,
Let it shine through the skin on my face,
And maybe feeling things
Won't be such a game of chase.

Learning to draw took a few years,
Learning to thaw may take a few tears,
And I doubt I will ever thaw at all.
That is a part of being the fall -
The thaw is so far off.

I wish the ice were as thin as people tell me.
No matter how much I skate,
There is never a crack to see.
I suppose that's the fare they charge to skate,
The height of the fee.
It never breaks, never melts,
Not that I can tell.

All this after the fall,
And the fall was only part the first.

She is made of the fires of Pompeii,
The waters of the Mediterranean,
The leaves of Tir na Nog.

She is the eye in my storming skies,
The confused time between dark and dawn,
Violet, calm, navy, bright and ordinary.
She is my Lorelei, my forest fairy.
Her voice paints my glasses in green and gold,
Hues of sunsets and city lights
Dance across the horizon.
Only I can see them.

The ocean is full of stars in direct sunlight,
And so too am I under her gaze.

She is the fires of Pompeii,
The waters of every ocean,
The whole forest of Tir na Nog.

To her,
I am a rusting penny,
A grain of rice sitting in the cupboard.
She is my Bridge of Sighs, she is La Seine,
And I am her bright red pen marking suggestions,
Never corrections.
She is my Lorelei, and I her nothing.

I

The city is in decay -
Has been since it sprouted from the earth like a sapling,
Will be for as long as it still stands.
The only permanence is entropy.
Nature makes its bed
To unmake it.
We are eternal and mortal.
The jellyfish unbecomes itself into the polyp.

II

A millennium ago,
The ocean fell from the sky, drop by drop,
And dragons were a myth.
Dinosaurs came around
And dragons were a myth.
Humans came around
And dragons are still a myth.

If time is linear, time travel is impossible.
If it is cyclical, I have met my descendants.
If it does not exist, then I am still two and twelve and seventeen,
Young and old, a child of Schrodinger,
And eternal.

III

A cup of tea sits hot and cold.
It should one day be ice,
But not today.
Today it is full of salt.
Moses parts the Red Sea
And a motley crew of revolutionaries
Wait for tea leaves to steep in the harbor.
It is somehow simultaneous and distant all at once,
Another child of Schrodinger.
The sea rushes closed on an ocean floor
That is still made of sand.
Dragons are still a myth,
But the fish neither know nor care.

The tea goes down the drain,
And I replace the salt in the shaker with sugar,
As it should have been,
And for now, All is Well.
I walk into the adjacent room and
Immediately forget why I am there.
All is no longer Well.
The world forgot where it came from,
Mammals forgot the dinosaurs,
****** forgot he was Jewish,
And I forgot what I wanted here.
I want more tea,
But I don’t want to remember the salt.

IV

Time is short,
Born, spent, and dead in an instant,
But born and born and born again after that.
The city is in decay.
Teotihuacan was once New York.
Machu Picchu decays into the mountain again,
Venice and San Francisco will one day be underwater.
Kings held slaves when the monarchy thrived,
Nazis rose to power in their wake..
The people revolted against the crown
As their descendants march for peace, pay, and freedom.
There is no originality,
Time has proven this.
It unbecomes itself into the polyp as its feathers turn to ash
And pyramids are born in Egypt, the Americas,
In the courtyard at the Louvre.
Only time remembers when dragons were more than a myth,
And quarks became friends with each other.
One day, humans will be the myth,
And no city will stand, so no city will decay.
Tea will come in only salted flavors,
And dragons in none.
The only permanent is entropy.

The whole world is wrong.
Wrong -
     defined by not being right,
     defined by people who know themselves better than I.

The whole world is at my fingertips.
My fingertips -
     wrought in rust,
     wrought in hues of iron butterfly wings,
     wrought in the language of dead, forgotten things.

The whole world is somewhere in the universe.
Somewhere in the universe -
     lost in the void of space,
     lost in the void of time taken to meet ourselves,
     lost in the void of where lost things look real,
     lost in the void of what could have been and what could be.

The whole world is wrong,
     wrong
          wrong.
The whole world is wrong,
And it is right,
     Wrong and right, full and empty,
     Timeless and running out of time.

The whole world is gone.
     It was never meant for me.

They talk about their relationship problems
Like it's nothing.

My body is a pine tree,
I am more plant than I am me.
I am driven to read, driven to love,
They are driven to ****.
My body is a book,
My binding never shook,
Pages never read,
So many words running through my head,
And all they want to do is touch.
All they do is touch too much
And I a made for talking and to look,
They are stories, and I am but a book.

My body is asexual,
Is a plant and an amoeba and
I do not exist.
They want me to look for more than
A person to trust, to hold hands with.
I look for love where they seek lust,
And they never meant for that to be real.

They talk about their relationships like it's nothing
Because it is,
To them.
It is empty.

Bright fall leaves hold branches of thick fall trees,
They hug them tight against the brisk fall breeze.

None fall to the road, they leave it clear,
And thank you for that, for I shall pass here,

And onwards and forwards, I will wander on,
Farther and farther, it is time to be getting gone,

For this road stretches on through tunnels of fall leaves,
Over hills and under skies, between walls of fall trees.

Where it ends, I do not know,
But that is where I intend to go,

Here, it is fall with its leaves and its trees,
But onwards march and what shall be seen?

Will there be beaches of bright white sand?
Or dark black sand? Or another brand?

Where the fall leaves point lies my compass needle,
And just behind I, though, sometimes feet are feeble,

But I suppose fall trees will give strength where I lack.
Is that not the purpose of their bark at my back?

But while their color is strong, fall leaves are feeble as feet,
And will be swept away by storm someday, swept by winter breeze,

And the dead winter leaves will make cold winter trees,
So cold that winter branches will freeze.

And with branches, too, shall I?
When the ice freezes fast, shall I?

And shall I follow the leaves that disperse with the season?
Or shall I settle down? I have every reason.

There are tests that need taking, diagrams need gluing,
Study cards need making, work that needs doing,

Winter...will that be it, with schooldays I must attend?

Does my road stop running around in loops and bends?

...So, is this where my adventure ends?

Will my adventure be swept with fall leaves in winter winds?

No, I let it not, as fall is here and time is great,
So I won’t let myself think of winter hate,

There is good that comes with changing seasons, too,
And every wanderer must rest sometimes, it’s true.

But for now I will run, like the brisk fall breeze,
And wind up somewhere new by the winter freeze.

(Maybe, just maybe, far enough away,
That I’m not there on that first school day).

The sky hides behind the bushy fall trees, invitingly,
But sits so softly and asks so quietly,

So the road is serenely empty, open for me,
So I will go and see what I shall see.

And if you like...maybe…
You could come with me?

Merwin saw lions in China.
I found a chessboard on the ceiling.
I saw a hookah in a caterpillar's arms
Cradled like a child.
I found no rabbit
But I did find Alice.
The caterpillar claimed innocence
And I hope he's right.

The white knight never piped up form above,
He never took a step.

I think I'm losing the game.
Chess was never my thing,
But then, dead people were never my thing,
And here I am
And here she is
regardless.

Those of old saw meaning in the stars.
The stars in her eyes are too cold to hold any
meaning.
I can't decipher my next move from her eyes.
Stars make terrible chessboards.

I don't think I want to play this game anymore.
Alice is offputting
And the wonder has left
Wonderland.

Merwin saw lions in China.
We never made it that far.

Love is strange,
Can be bold,
Can be old.

Can be between two,
Can be rotten through and through.

Can break laws set up from the dawn of time,
Can bring into the darkest of the dark some light.
Can turn violet loneliness into something bright.

Love is strange,
Can be small,
Can be tall.

Can be between men,
Can be lustrous, Can bend.

Can break barriers between worlds or create some,
Can make one drunker than drinking straight ***.

Can be between the light, the fair daughter of the field,
Can be with flowers in her hair,
And the dark, the sly son on the throne of the killed.

Follow closely, follow quickly, follow quiet as a mouse,
Will creep in during flower picking, or while cleaning the house,
Hides in the heart beneath nightgown, button up, or blouse.

Love is powerful,
Can be igniting,
Can be frightening.

Can be between anyone,
Can be lost sometimes, and be for no one.

Can make people do stupid things, like spirit away his lover,
Can create both good and bad between one another.

Can be between wealth and simplicity,
Can be between ****** and purity,
And all that they possess, and all that they signify.
Can cause one to fall, can cause one to fly,

Can cause a good hello,
Can prompt a sad goodbye.

Can freeze the world, **** the crops we work to grow,
Can heat it once more, can be warmth on its own.

Love is a tie,
Can bind together,
Can make better,
Can be more valuable than treasure.

Can be soft and sound and velvet and kind,
Can pause time, can make it rewind,
Can learn, can teach,
Be the rose left on the beach,
Can be the woman, can be the man,
Can be the cold touch of death’s hand.

Teach me where I belong in
A world that believes in absolutes

No place takes reason for reason
A cruel world it is where the liars are in
Control where the truth seekers are paid
In pennies and pain and where
Can I find you here

The absolute truth is that nothing
Is absolute but no one believes
Little red

No place takes good for good
For good always ends
I am no good at fighting but fighting
Is the only good these days

Teach me where I belong in
A world that doesn’t accept indecision
I am on one side or I am on
The other and I don’t want to be on either

I just want to be allowed to live

I miss the days when I did not
Know the good old days when ignorance
Was bliss five years ago
I was still innocent
I didn’t know

My home is drowning and
Nobody cares about whether we can
Breathe because we don’t breathe
For him because lives are only numbers
We are only stories in the end but these
Days people only care about the
Past is the past and no one can forget it
Not even me even I cannot
Escape the allure of the rearview mirror
When I’m running
Out of road my future is futureless when
He doesn’t want me to
Succeed he thinks he is God but he is
Sinking like a lead zeppelin and he
Will have to drown with us unless he is
Dead before he can

Teach me how to belong in
A world that does not exist
Step one is to find forever where hides

The future doesn’t matter anymore
It is futureless unless we
Save it now but now is over in
A decade or so
I do not know whether I will live
Past thirty I think not

I don’t want to live in
A world without color without coral
My home is on fire and I
Cannot breathe but we have already
Established that my lungs are full of water
Anyways we have
A decade or so

I feel I am the only one left
who cares
who cares

It's a small bottle with a cap.
It smells like cinnamon
And it's made of glass.
I filled it with as many languages as I know
And sealed the cap with wax
And I filled the little bottle with all of the things
Middle school me needed to hear.

I hope she finds it.
I know she won't.
She looked at stars but could not
Reach them.
She watched the scalloped water, she would not
Touch it.
She always saw the empty in the ocean,
She never saw the future I put there.

I put a message in a bottle and sent it into space.
I filled it with hope for someone
I've never met,
The people I have always been.
As I watched it wash away,
I knew I needed it back.
I am not done needing it.

I told them all
eres suficiente,
you are enough,
I never got to know if I was.

I never got a bottle back.

When I died, there were stars.
As the blinding fury leaves my eyes,
I can blink them open and watch.
The creek marches sluggishly forward,
And my body is there, below.
Immediately, I regret it.

I will watch my father scream,
My mother cry, my brother hear the news,
And wonder why.
Years will pass, and her next tears
Are at my brother’s wedding,
Which I will watch, but not attend.
I will never meet my nephews or niece.
When my parents join me later on,
They will ask me why and why and why.
That night, it will rain.

I will reach for the family that I never knew,
And never knew me,
Whisper in my niece’s ear
All the things she needs to hear
From someone who has been there before
And followed through.
Even further down the line,
My brother will join us in his old age,
But he will look exactly the same
As last I saw him.
He will ask me why and why and why,
And the only answer I will think to give
Is silence.
Silence and rain.

All I can do now is wait for morning,
For them to find me,
And hope that they will forgive me
When next we meet.

The night is crisp and clear,
But in the morning,
There will be rain.

I have been many people.

I have been clueless,
thoughtless and shoeless,
I have been a dream spinner,
have been a trophy winner.

I have been sad and I have been lost,
I have been made to pay the cost
of all of the things I have found,
have been the coin tossed to the ground.

I have been broken and on my knees,
have sang to the birds, listened to bees.
I have been small and I have been weak,
have been the rosy hue of my own cheek.

I have been afraid of the world for so long,
I have forgotten what it is to be strong,
But I will always remember when she was me -

         I have been a flower picker and a lover,
         Been the angel under cover,
         I have been hearth-fire and friend,
         Hoped to be something to be proud of,
     And in the end,
I was.

I will always remember
And be proudest of
When she was me.

I am the color of snow
If snow could tan only slightly.
I melt like snow,
I dissolve into puddles and pitfalls,
And no one knows where to find me
On the dark days.

I wake like a candle,
Slow, flickering, wavering.
I burn like a candle,
Bright only in the darkest of times,
I wallow in my self pity,
I adore my deepest pain,
And no one needs me quite like they used to.

I sing when no one can see me,
And dance when none will hear me.
I find my greatest attributes in the loneliest parts of me -
The starving artist well fed by fear of living a full life,
Fear of feeling loved and being loved
And being alone
All at once.

I am the texture of the dark
When the sun and the moon
Elope on the sidelines
Somewhere else in the universe,
The time of day when the sky is empty,
And the time of day
When stars lose all meaning
And no one really cares who is awake
Because it is only me.

I am the creak of a house
That is empty and always has been.
I am the big empty house
Where no man or woman or child dwells,
Only spiders, only spirits.
Only me.

IV

North of Never lies Nothing
Lies more never.
Lies a voided ether,
My future.
North of Never lies the Fall,
My sleeping quarters.

Selling this property
Will not be easy.
Not in this county,
Not this economy
Or country.
North of Never is freezing,
Property value is low,
It's time for me to go,
But where?
I've only ever
Been North of Never,
What else is there?
After the Fall,
There was nothing.
What better place is there for me
Than North of Never?
My future North of Never?

V

North of Never is South of Society,
An inkier sea than nothing
Is the heart of society.
I live on the border
Where Society ends and Never starts.
Where Society ends is where havoc starts,
As if, for all of its flaws,
Society is still worth something more than nothing.
No longer strange how fearful they are
Of being kicked out.

Havoc is the name of the county
North of Never,
Hence the low number of inquisitors
Looking to buy my property.
I only wanted it because it was so cheap,
The true price was not listed.
At the time, the true price
Had not existed.

When I bought this property, I was alone.
I was satisfied with being alone.
I had never known any else,
Any better.
When I bought this property,
I bought a lifestyle,
Where morning starts at ten am
And sleep comes never.

VII

I am burning in a fire I lit.
I made my bed and now lie in it,
But I never realised how thorny
A bed of roses would be.
I have made mistakes.

This house is my biggest mistake.
Becoming the Fall was my biggest mistake.
They are the same thing after all,
For North of Never lies my home,
Lies the Fall.