he pins you to the earth and
you can feel a lightness pulse
through his veins like ichor,
the way it was intended to flow
before your ruination.

for the first time, you feel small
beneath his gaze.

you whimper,
"what do you plan to do to me?"




he whispers,
"forgive."

my love is building a building
around you,a frail slippery
house,a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning

of your smile)a skilful uncouth
prison, a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

my love is building a magic, a discrete
tower of magic and(as i guess)

when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall

crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He’ll not my tower,
                        laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile
                                hangs

                                          breathless

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

I bought you the last meal we’ll ever share together,
a far cry from all the other food pressed between our lips.

quietly shuffling damp twenties from my pocket
amidst your insistence to proceed otherwise

three months and twenty two days shy of our anniversary
I don’t have the kind of money you’d like me to
my bank account is empty and
hemorrhaging a nine hundred dollar debt to you.
you’re flicking silver cards between your fingertips
tongue like gravel
all I’ve got is cash

the day I leave you, I lie in bed naked
alternating my excursions between brushing my teeth and *******
sometimes both, at the same time
like I’m cleansing the filth from all my crevices
clearing out the decay and rot

It’s poetic to think of your absence
like the gap left after a rotting tooth
pungent and expectant
but in reality clearing my bowels
or the spaces between my molars
makes no difference to the dark
cavern that lives inside me

a space with no sharp corners or dead ends
but an endless death

one I know too well
and spent too many wet nights
trying to force upon you

alone in the dust and clatter I succumb to it
unable to distinguish between
the sore of an infection
and the sear of a wound

One day, you'll see me and wish you didn't say those things that you did.
You will feel sick because you look at me and feel jealousy, inspiration and awe - all at once.
The words that you threw at me in the dark,
behind your bedroom door, will become all you have left...

Your lies will eat you.
You now die inside knowing what you really are:
A pile of ****.

The truth is that you don't need to stay there,
you could bring yourself and your dirt.

You could learn to encourage,
change your narrative,
target your goal towards feeding Life...
Instead of opening a can of old ways and calling it
a meal for your family,
when it reality, what you put out has no salt.

My prayer for you is that you grow.
Even if all you did was tear me to the ground.
You showed me how the dark felt,
so I faced towards the Sun completely.

I became stronger...
I watered myself with my tears...
I called out to the Sun.
He gave me Life,
but you taught me how seeds can rot.

Listen, this is not a "thank you."
What I'm saying is that I love myself more now.
I know you didn't mean for me to find out.
I'm not saying that you're evil,
you're just more awful than I had thought.

it was plucked from his eyes, his heart,
and the sheer wonder that left them,
stunned.

some cacophonous reverie,
a discordant daydream, pure wants and hopes,
and loves and laughs-- all faded.

what eclectic energy there was in them,
some flicker of familiarity and warmth--
led to a slow, burning descent into some place
he might call home soon.

the truth, fettered and afraid,
hid behind pain and silence.
the poet, his eyes bagged and blurred,
tapped pen to page with ink-stained fingers.
per steady grip and endless drafting,
truth came out, and cried.
it didn't know why it hid
but teased the poet to try again.
as such, he rubbed his eyes once more,
his other hand caressing bourbon and ice.

i was told that every poem is about death,
***, and love,
never in that order.
that it's our job to organize
the chaos in a way that makes us feel
as though we won't be forgotten
when we're reduced to atoms and scraped,
bit by bit, from every etch
we've ever made
and the earth retakes our homes,
our names,
our loves,
lives, the lost.
but it's just a feeling.
what's important is embracing
every curve, every laugh,
every spat of anger. and learning.
that hurt won't always last unless we let it.