Down from his gate,
two shadows donned courses.

A lighted shadow curved
keeping from lying gray besides the body,
harsh like pain, like combat.
Watching quietly,
the head rimmed red and strained.

Hit you back between indiscriminate, tasteless sounds
into an empty pail-
no one drawing inhalations.

Empty at yesterday; pulsed with exhaust.

dry eyes and tired time
heart race but quiet mind
take this, chest unclench and
mind swims in liquid
weary rest on a bed with
warm blankets to tighten like
straps

no boundaries, really
except for the fear
of compounds and
being right when you were alone
in the dark
in the first place

I swear, the summer never looked so vast
the clouds never looked so far and full
though lonely
and the sky never looked
so purely, tearfully blue.

I think I’ve
fallen a little bit in love
with that sky, with the sun,
with the song
of the fire in my belly
and the sea in my eyes
and the hole my chest.

I cry, and love
because my youthful muscles
are running on empty.
It makes me free-
like I’m at the bottom of a pool
looking up from the deep
at the rippling blue dome,
hollow arms stretched out to
take it
with my curled fingers.

I reach out and
plunge into the heavens
the summer heat devours
my palms and
I can own it and
shatter the air like glass
in my big sky summer.

You cannot know
the sting of your
haste-made blades
as you cut my threads bare,

as you clip
my long, lovely locks
clean through
and take my power with you.

This is not what should be-
the metal-wielding villain should be me-
this is not how the fable that
bares our names wrote it.

It was me in ancient texts
that brought down the
selfish blade
to trade your love and curls for coins.

But in my stead, it’s you
cutting strands, heedlessly,
for the currency
of foreign flesh.

My thoughts race as
I lay my head down
and watch as I am shorn
by loving hands.

You cut the ties-
rip the seams
of braid and scalp.
My disorder screams of

your betrayal, this-
your shearing burns
like hot salt
searing down my cheeks.

Oh my friend, were you afraid?
Did you doubt my trust
as I lay in your lap to rest,
eyes lidded heavily in dreaming?

Did you notice that,
my sweetest friend,
my softest side was upward, turned
to you?

No, treachery is blind
and an uncovered heart holds
no more weight
than the severed mane that kills it.

So snip!
You cut my hair.
Clip!
You burn my skin, and muscle, too

and bid farewell
with sharpened scissors
till I am not but a scalding,
scratching, naked head.

Hello, dad, how are you? He replies
“it’s a big dog”
Eyes rimmed in folds of ocher skin swim
Sliding over a sterile room

The little yellow band has the word risk on it
And a purple blotch consumes one cheek
And the nurse says that he quakes and shakes in anger
He sneaks from his quarters
Where’re you going?
“nowhere”

And he’s never been so thin,
Looking like a melting candle, sinking into the bed
Like he was just another blanket
Made of skin

The nurse was convinced he was watching
Watching Star Trek after Wild Wild West
“what’s happening on there?”
Captain Kirk and that alien lady swapped bodies
Captain Kirk is trapped inside another body

Trapped- nobody believes him, but he’s trapped
Confined, a strong and powerful man
Inside the frail body of an alien female.
And it’s horrible, nobody listens to him
Nobody can understand.

We’re gonna go now, okay?
“i l-lurmph, i-“
But his mouth won’t listen and
The drug-thick blood in his brain isn’t helping
Okay, bye, dad. I love you.

And maybe if she holds the loving hand on his head long enough
He’ll finally let his whirling eyes rest
And with hope she whispers to a fragmented mind
Maybe the angels will listen.
Visit the angels for a while, dad, they’ll help you sleep.

The yellow light of the under-water lights
flickers like a fading sun,
masked in the bright blue.
The smell of the chlorine bites at her nose,
stinging cleanly.
She shifts on her cushion
of scratchy hotel towels,
naked feet tucked beneath her, dry,
as she keeps watch.
Nathaniel and John squeal and splash,
their sweet young faces marbled
by the light of the water
that ripples as they play fight.
Being older, and by nature, more cruel,
more prone to shows of might,
Nathaniel leaps in a cascade of flying
water beads to
drive his brother
beneath the surface.
Unwillingly submerged,
John’s blond curls fly free in the water,
brushing his tiny white face like wind,
suspended there.
And it is then she remembers, as she watches

those pretty blond curls he shared

with another who’d once hung in water,
though in a porcelain bowl with faucet
instead of a blue tiled swimming pool.
She could see this other’s face,
brazen always, brown-eyed
but grey in melancholy.
Tired eyes that, lidded,
swam in water
finally asleep.
Finally resting,
rid of the worldly Atlas weight
that was so dripping like the water, the
moist and liquid sadness, pooling,
puddling,
dripping,
splashing,
John cries out in anger,
flapping limbs,
and Nathaniel laughs,
strong and mean,
brown eyes turned a sinister black by the weird
reflections of the swimming pool.

Her red lips pop
with displeasure at their arguing,
and they turn to her with faces so familiar,
attentive and ashamed.
The water licks at them,
a cool temptation,
swallowing their flesh
in a way that makes her both fear
and fall to envy.
Her own skin,
white and airy,
though too meticulously perfected to drip,
thirsts for the water’s cold tongue.
But instead she keeps a
dry watch
carefully over two little ghosts.

“you can’t be proven- you’re just sensation
you’re too outside and cannot touch
my cerebrospinal fluid.

I could close my eyes and I could wake up and
you could be just probes that the aliens
have placed inside of my skull.

I can’t prove you- what is scientific testimony
it’s just letters and numbers
figures and factors

and why should I want to prove you?
you spiny thorny being- you
make my hands bleed when I hold you

the ancient Greeks gave me an excuse
to dispel you as myth
and lick my leaking wounds

So I Will.
dismiss you as not existing
I think therefore I, only, am.”

(Darling,
I’d all but swim in fluid
if you let me).

she is-
red like autumn leaves
lashes skirting fair skies and
a white birch shell
in her cool breeze you will shiver
and your skin will turn bumpy.

you knew her as a little boy.
she, your favorite term
whose embrace once wrapped you up, unprejudiced.
her, a friend and Season,
her passing perfume then
didn’t mind that you were alien.

you know her, still a little boy
as you remember how she was

and see how pretty she is now
how good she smells like fallen leaves.
how her cherry boughs smile
and how her crisp air clings about
your thin and lonely body with ease.

how happy for a while she’ll make you.

as for me, I can have no argument-
I have no leaves to show for.
I am made of only bark
I am so damp and bitter-smelling
like death and dark and Winter’s biting
I am not beautiful with color;
I am barren
and though I too can make you shiver,
my cold will always grab your bones.

Money muffles passion, you see.
We cling to it, weeping,
leaking weird nouns and verbs
about how we cherish
the cool cocoon of cold hard cash,
forgetting about the shallow grave
where we killed and buried our art.

We forget, amidst the chatter
and the chaos and the fodder
and become an only sometimes-true friend
to our notebook and our paintbrush;
we become the boring, wretched thing
we used to hate for being false
and turn ugly, quickly.

It’s terrifying the flip-flops
that a rumbling hunger will make.