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ATL Sep 2019
4 A.M My Lai;

in the lowlight
colors move off my skin at different speeds-

i’ll smear them into filth,
a vignette
plastered and permanent,

and beg
for my face to be scanned like a barcode.
ATL Feb 2020
it is unique to us
(pontification)

the way in which animation
attaches character to absence-
(coincidence)

how song compels memory,
and how specks shift to color.
(abduction)

Today, like other days,
I lay in result.
(in a tomorrow I will rest inside an Eonothem,
reborn in unconformity)

and think of how
(felicity)

Extremophile
is used as a descriptor for organisms
that can fold proteins efficiently...
(method)

and I am rutted in stone,
but I love lava all the same.
(human)
ATL Aug 2019
how melodious the voices of old were;
the way they poured glitter on mud.

the way they questioned the sky
as the land shifted all about them,
sweet arrogance.

but their songs of love are alive;
beyond you, beyond mud,
buried under palimpsest memory.
basal links on a chain of refutation; palingenesis.

Is it artifice to call then into now?
ATL Jul 2019
I stare
at clouds to become overtaken
with a roiling awe
folding and unfolding unto itself.
I want
to paint myself falling into the jet turbine spreading into a mist that’ll cling to the condensation nuclei in the sky...
I think
of the worlds morbid brilliance; floating between the beauty of vapors dispersion and senseless death.
ATL May 2020
some talk of a foolish necessity in nature and hierarchy to beckon
and tear a flame from its comfort in chaos,
to wrench its light into shadows it did not deign
to brighten...
ATL Sep 2019
when I awaken
I extend my finger
towards a panel of dancing light-

did you know that its veins were torn from a mountain?

a whole hierarchy of angels
living inside the earth
were turned to transistors

so that my letters
could glow in your hands.

when I learned this
I began sleeping beside a stream,

in the places where I could watch
wires dance-

beneath wooden pillars and their flimsy black arms
whispering secrets in permanent embrace.

every night I would dream  
to the forward noise
of churning water;

of fluid drifting through the air unseen
or pouring from life long past-

terraforming
for the maintenance of symmetry.
ATL Aug 2019
it is in that endlessly cascading awe,
with mouth ajar,
and the soft spot behind the knee
folding sweetly
that desolation runs to hide
like a shrew,
in a meadow too dense to show its skeleton

these jests, flying through the hollows,
molded by tongue and tooth,
varying in sound in structure
through placement and growth,
sweet jests
tip horizons askew

veiled wings,
do you hear me?
you are destined only
to drift towards what illumines
the very room I lay in...

many say this is not your home-
they are wrong.
ATL Sep 2019
remind me that i’m not a nag
and i’ll build you a boat made of
frilled marigolds & thornless roses,

i’ll float us along
and talk about how

it upsets me
when i see pieces of my father
mix into basic interactions.

my fear will leave
to go sit next to triangles in heaven

and i’ll wait for a scarecrow from high school that i loved but never slept with,
i’ll wait and think of your eyes.
ATL Aug 2019
the harmless introduction,
of a new figure
carelessly unwinding
a knot stuck deep inside a dip (sulcus)

marbled eyes
scrunching in
amused perplexity and
intrigue,
a face filled with
intermingling shades
of ochre and wood

an ache to make a medley...
a macédoine
ATL Aug 2019
I thought
you could explain
the philosophy of vacuum
and Spinoza
through chattering teeth
and lips too numb to form labials.

In winter;
whenever your face
began to freeze
I wanted to remind you
about occasionalism and
quanta.

I wanted to tell you
how your eyes
could be heat and god.
ATL Jan 20
I want to razor-hatch my grandfather, his father- for laving womb with his seed-
And I want to witness the creature coming out of my mother,
to see the clung-rag of my bone-
my flesh,
given to the floor
to look at the floor  
   and remember that the floor is also a wall
ATL Feb 13
And what foul mouthed moth
borne a foul cocoon,
carried his tilted wing:

I, star speckled speech,
perforate an eyelid-
and hang the foolish nail of Christ's hand
from the slack in tow,
dodge the death addled rut of a *** hole,
in a careening vehicle there, for me,
to cling to life.
ATL Sep 2019
questions undue
stuffed folly into the throats
of mathematicians, priests, and poets alike.

i nearly burnt all of their books,

but a paper boy with wide eyes greeted me at seven o’clock on sunday

and untied a parcel
with careful young hands.

i saw his legs shake
and thought yes,

god is tension;
a string
with both its ends pulled.
ATL May 2020
Shackled in ambition,
sweet loves tied through in
sorrowful yesterday’s
searching for warmth as in birth;
a thousand becomings,
a thousand boundary lines.
To promises of life stolen.
ATL Mar 2020
This is not familiar.

This ground upon which I have graced
and spun drama
to placate the self and its itches
has grown dry.

No longer does the brook sing to me
in its ceaseless fawning...
it is quiet patches of grass
strewn about like gravestones.

The wooded perch where a falcon
sat to whistle danger in my ear
is a husk cradling pinecones
that couldn’t find the ground,
and my eyes know not doubt
nor reprobation.

but the clouds
are the same.
ATL Aug 2019
this vessel
houses gold;
without bearings in the flatland,
untarnished and eager.

it was born in small hands
jabbing at polypropylene beauties
spinning on a mobile
above dampened eyes,
uniform and bright.

the spinning never ceased;
ligaments lengthened
and seashells,
once musicians,
became resonant cavities.

haggard winds
stirred glaucous and ash into storm;
the sky became a clouded palette
of every shade between
stone and lightning.

what a fortune it was
to be carried away and found
again and again
in the endless above.
the wonders of tactility,
sweet sky as a stretcher...
carry me into tomorrow.
ATL Oct 2022
Natura, as in birth,
deceiver, material fact in perceptual fiction;
to which the bird sings and flesh returns, shallow earth roiling with worms in mud;
your body is mine- on great gusts you carry my breath.

Your skin, parsed, has become a word of my soul; a flesh folded dove unclasped in freedom from a party trick,
soaring outwards on dreams turned luminous through countless lies and premonitions, unfurling in worldly frenzy.

You have inveigled me in flattery to become an exertion-
an eye, an ear, a mouth, a hand, a nose, a science;
to study the motion of which I am indifferent consequence, to crystallize the miracle of myself in my skin-
to learn and forget.
ATL Nov 2019
I give you toys
to prop and position into forms
frozen halfway through pirouettes,
and a light for showing the
stillness of a shadow stuck in
beautiful contortion.

I rest as a creature half dead from
eating the sun with his skin,
showing trinkets and colors to toddlers in high heels and keeling over at the thought
of ever pulling myself towards something more than.
ATL Aug 2019
A.C Hume called injury his own;
he became the ambassador of
the olecranon,
and died a pedant mending bone,

how many fell
before he entered abduction
and set his stern hands
on ailed elbows?

how many could tell you
what such an injury was called
before he laid claim
to the fruits of misfortune?
ATL Sep 2019
no more ligands
uptakes or exchanges,

just a wall,

a wall erected inside of me,
that rejects all attempts of a raze.
ATL Aug 2019
aubergine wandering to form
streaks in the sky
above the crest of a hill that turns flat
in a tundra littered with flecks of life
scurrying rodents, silent birds
moving endlessly in the same pattern
how trite
ATL May 2022
and everything is a little too easy,
and a little too hard

it is hard for me to call upon myself as an invalid or anything approaching its opposite-
I remember my english teacher in sixth grade exploring basic grammatical principles in our language,
and I remember exercises in temporal deletion
like video games and platitude

I remember eyes, blue or brown, colored hair-
everything has color except to those unfortunate few

I remember when I did not drink for fear of becoming something other than, but now I do it in efforts to return to myself

my father tells me that I began to speak at less than a year old,
that I did not babble

I do not know what this indicates, as parents are reluctant to give their young to scientists-

in his mentioning it is an effort to grasp at something more than,
but I am alone in regularity,
taunted by hopes of this prospect-

and I am fickle, laughable in this denigration, dramatism, insouciance

some other words
ATL Jan 2022
People like imagery and trinkets and things-
they abide by the boundaries of themselves and move onwards, emboldened by this recognition- this worship

but I am a pike made of flesh-
bloated like a fish,
wretched, unknowing in mirrors.

This world is my species-
my species indirect,
as bloated, as wretched.

The beauties I find I create,
and even then I hate them afterwards,
I hate too much for the sake of my love-
my embarrassment.
ATL Mar 2021
a rough bit of it all
torn about the tinged straights-
a bridge to build,
a brick to lay,
another day gone by.

the ornaments inside my house no longer serve amusement-
my clothes mismatched all habberdashed
rest sullen on my skin,
the glow of screens tear at the seams of mildly sane perusement-
and I cannot drink away the ghouls with bucketfuls of gin...

what to do?
o, what to do?
another click or brushstroke-
a painting made for debts unpaid
to some stew of soul and self...

I’ll wrench some “purpose” from the pulpit and stuff it on a shelf.
ATL Jul 2019
Decalcomania,
porcelain skin
and
a lava-deluge

episodic angst,
in actu primo
I heard a voice

in actu secundo
I closed the shutters, drew the blinds
and split the wires linking my home to the others
ATL Sep 2019
I heard on the news
that the Apinae are disappearing,

“the what?”

“the drones darling, bumblebees.”

“and?”

“you should decorate your hair with daffodils; the yellow offsets the onyx.”

you thought
I looked at symbols too often

I thought
you were thirsty for color

“you have never mentioned dying
bees before this moment.”

“oh, up until today,
I never knew that they danced.”
who
ATL Aug 2019
who
Bashful genius;
the architect of bone,
this lively puppeteer,
this Prometheus.
whirling in hot sand-
becoming crystalline unbroken.
Giving order, lack,
order, empty;
carrying all on great tides.
ATL Sep 2019
I am unborn,
clawing through clutter
and encouraging my salivary
glands to push moisture
through the will of hypotensive
medication.  

Laying next to my betters,
begging to die of a heart attack
while I *******.

It’s nothing like falling asleep next to someone.

I am nothing
but half-breaths lent as largesse to
a hypothetical togetherness
hurriedly collected in the night
and burnt into reels of film.

I ascend ladders,
my favorite has its base resting
in my spine,
I climb it up,
always up-

only to find lacerations  
in the fibers comprising my thigh,
and a lovely image of
a love that is not.
ATL Jan 31
You are a lampshade,
a breast, and a trumpet-
OR
A reed,
and handkerchief.

Every candle is a rhapsody built of your breath.

NO, no- you are a body, with a midline, dispersed
and given function to move throughout and with intention.
You are an extended substance, where I, divisible, become
the cry of a boiled lobster.

I would love to count all of your eyelashes,
and sleep next to you.
ATL Nov 2022
A backwards promise tied through in pittance-
an empty confrontation
closing in faces stern and the usage of shoes
at the end of some chapter,
some example of life.

It is a things beginning,
a wandering womb that is myself,
turned gangrenous with twisted mark
and feature, crawling up into my chest
To make home with all other things motivated by the cloying and eyeless angel of the house, all things falling to the usage of shoes.

— The End —