Life goes on.

Like an endless spiral of frayed thread hanging from your favorite dress.

Off the flower petal of the floral pattern that blows in the wind above your knees.

I'm going to write a novel about the one time we danced alone in my room.

We sat on my bathroom floor and you looked me in the eye and I was trying to figure out what you were thinking.

It took me awhile but finally, I realized you we're trying to think of anybody else that you would rather be there than me.

And you stared in my eyes.

5 seconds.
10 seconds.
30 seconds.
1 minute.
2 minutes.
and you couldn't think of anybody.

You wanted to so bad.
You wanted to think of anybody else that wasn't me.
But you couldn't.
And you hated it.
Because you did the one thing you said you would never do again.

You let me in.

You let me into the cage of doves that encased your glass heart.
And all I did was sit and watch it.
I became a dove.
You never let me out of your sight.
You wanted to make sure I didn't break it.
Then you decided to look away.
You looked back and I was still in the same spot, admiring you.
You still didn't trust me so I gave you my wings.
I didn't care about them now that I had you.
I didn't need the sky if you were on the ground.

You smiled and I loved you like breathing in mountain air.

I took that feeling and put it in a jar.
And I watched the firefly dance.
And I watched it die from lack of air.
And I watched your glow vanish.

Now the flowers are blooming.
Petals are falling off your hips and I'm still falling off your eyes, in the same way that leaves fall off the trees in Autumn.

Somehow, a night with no sleep and a cigarette reminds me of you.

In the same way that the headlights of a car read the lines of a road, I read your harlequin lips.

And I swear on all things that are good, you were the softest thing I kissed.

Wrapped in a thin layer of ivory.

I find my watch timeless.

I drip alcohol on some nights but not as many as "at first" but still enough as "end it" and I can never feel what it meant and how I meant it was to mean it. So, for now, so far, I've been taking my rib cage and hoping the bones don't break as I expand my lungs for a fresh breath of new skin and flesh. My tongue rams the back of my teeth in hopes to slither a word in edge wise as the bite becomes a copper numbness in the back of my throat.

I hope you know what decade I lost the hue in my eyes as it turned black and white like piano keys to my heart and soul.

I sit on the piano bench with skeleton fingers wondering why the graveyard is so quiet.

I look at old pictures and photographs and I replay moments in my head that sink into my chest like a ship that's been abandoned.

Someday or sometime soon.

I hope it never ends.

And I hope the flowers on your dress bloom again when Spring comes next year.

Every butterfly
was first
a WORM!!!

Soul Survivor
6W

We are drunk again.
The smell from the dustbins below
rises up to our luxury balcony
that overlooks a building site.
A phoenix is going to rise
from the ash, when the city burns.
I think it will come in half-price rentals
and coupons for a sack of rice.
Nothing makes sense
in this dying skyline,
all the people in planes
will go back to where they
came from before.
If they are lucky.

You asked me to talk some more.
To acknowledge your existence.
A selfish mood and darkened clouds
cut in by September.
It kept us inside and barely alive.
Everything became a block of thought,
each separate from the rest.
I lost my peripheral vision.
Could only see my sadness,
and not the wave-breaks that it makes.
We sat on a beach in Indonesia.
Ran to collect shells in the peculiar
ocean retreat. When the waves
came back as a cathedral,
we never stood a chance
in the blood-shed
and lack of air.

There is a rubber ring
out there for me.
Beyond the paranoia
of possible sharks and oil spills.
When I get pulled on board
they will slip me into a suit.
They will let me write poetry
in the day-time, and be cradled
by the sea as I search for sleep at night.
In the morning I will eat without sickness.
I might talk to the waitress,
prove myself sober with an orange juice.
She could laugh at a joke
I would only tell about myself.
If I was lucky.

I can run when we make the first port.
Whatever tongue, whatever lips
to set upon, I will take it.
A bed for the night
or coupons for a sack of rice,
I will drag the loot home
and fall asleep in my clothes.
Learning Spanish from a folk-singer,
he stubs cigarettes into my fingertips
and feeds me whiskey
to **** the pain.
The wine is cheap and the people
are easy, they let me smoke inside
if the weather is turning blue.
They bring grapes when
they sense a sadness,
and will not gripe with me
until I am ready to gripe with them.

I tried to write you a letter of apology
but it read more like a suicide note.
It is hard to talk about circumstantial meetings
when you can see this nonsense world
dissolving into parts.
The sun-set makes no sense to the poet,
and still he will quote it all the same.
A convenient landscape for any occasion:
you can use it for the end-piece.
Everything I could write to you
would only sound formulaic;
the best melodies have now been played,
and so we are left with imitation.
For now I will have
a plastic-bag career,
walking home on foot
and sleeping soft at night.
There are no chances
of new landscapes in the present.
So I will lay open in bed
and allow this landlocked town
to be my paradise.