What goes up, must come down.
What goes in, must come out.
What comes without, we keep away.
It finds a way, though, anyway.

Wounds,
     opened like a birthday present.
Junes,
     scabbed knees with no parents present.
Rooms,
     of doctors neither calm nor pleasant.
Blooms,
     in roses from my adolescence.

Blood pours forth from the gaping ****.
Disintegrating memories burning to ash.
As gore pours out, disease seeps in.
Facilitated by shifts to freezing seasons.

Labs,
     where scientists attempt to sew.
Cabs,
     of doubt I pay to take me home.
*****,
     not redder than me when boiled whole.
Scabs,
     as much a fix as I'll ever know.

I expected a chariot,
was trained to hold reins,
feed horses,
and know when to whip them.
Hours I spent shuffling across sheer faces
to teach me the balance necessary.
I took notes from oaks on how to keep my feet firmly planted,
legs bending, never breaking.
I suffered the hurricane
to learn to not blink with wind in my face.
I humored Time, to learn from its spinning wheel
so that I might know my own.
I turned to the trust of beasts
thinking they might one day guide me.
I glared at charioteers,
My coliseum competition.
I sat, eyes closed, by the ocean
To acquaint me with a roar
I would expect from an audience.
I stripped myself bare
So that I may learn the choices of judges.
I was prepared for a chariot.

But what arrived was a ratty coup of unknown make;
a wheezing, rusted contraption with wobbling wheels,
a cracked, insect-stained windscreen,
valves of leaky ichor,
a missing cigarette lighter,
a lockless glove box,
a tailpipe that belched black omen,
windows that rolled by hand and got stuck,
seats of the kind of leather your skin sticks to in the summer and froze in winter,
and an AM/FM radio filled with static.
No spare tire.

I was livid.


This vehicle was to carry me to my onward days,
to the paradise of my imagination?
I was to collude with my romantics in the passenger seat
of this rolling mausoleum?
To commute to my place of wage
and not have my vessel reflect my value?
To pass my days of leisure
knowing a bunker of my perturbation watched from the driveway?

I tried to hew a chariot of my own,
but first the wood of the trees of my garden proved too weak.
Then my crooked wheels seemed to want to separate away from each other.
And the only beasts to pull it were dogs,
made fat from the gristle of my meals that I threw them
in my days of anticipation.
I conceded to the coup.

Misery so often my chauffeur,
I plotted and plodded along with the wheels I was given,
Diverting my eyes from Apollos in the sky,
Pulled by glistening pegasi.

A friend,
also couped up,
Told me to make the most of it.
So I’ve been trying.

I tried to take its namelessness as something to which I might give a name.
As it wheezed I heard it breathing, liable to collapse, but
Alive
nonetheless.
The warped wheels wove their own way,
and I imagined the invisible burden of unseen beasts
with greater senses of direction than mine.
I saw the insects in front of me as company.
As the pipes oozed, I conjured hopes that they were like a gallbladder,
concentrating bile then removing it.
I sensed that the missing lighter meant I shouldn’t be smoking.
The glove box lacked a latch for ease of access,
and I read from the messages scrawled in smoke in my rear-view mirror.
The effort made to breathe through the manual windows
made me appreciate the breaths I took.
The broken sound system taught me to make my own music.
And the lack of a spare tire taught me to drive very, very carefully;
There would be no second chances.

The coup is a symptom of my broken hopes for my future’s reality.
But,
unlike the chariot,
it is real,
and its state of breaking can
Hopefully
be fixed.
I can sit when I wish to be seated.
I can bring others with me wherever.
The direction is dictated by me and not the whims of beasts.
The AC stutters, but it’s there.
There’s a trunk where I can put my memories.
And,
also unlike the chariot,
I can go very, very fast
if I want to.

Deon doesn’t let me go out much.
I hear friendly laughter beyond my door,
but when I twist the ****,
he presses ice to my chest
and tugs the cords on my guts down, down,
into my toes
and they get too heavy to move forward.
Somehow retreating is simple.

Deon soured my music.
I sang once,
poorly but proud,
but now, even when I just mutter,
he wrinkles and screws his face in contempt,
disgust,
and I interrupt myself,
get shepherd’s crooked off the stage of my mind.
I hear my shortcomings in the melodies of others as well.
“This is something I would sing,”
I’d think.
“This would displease Deon.”
I pluck those notes out of the air,
mash them into a black polka dot ***,
and swallow it,
and I feel it sitting in my esophagus,
unmoving, undigesting.

Deon doctors my photographs, imposes his face onto them.
My memories have his scowl watermarked behind every frame.
In the most radiant dusk he hides in the sun,
and when it dips below the horizon,
he lodges on the moon.
When my youth’s mistakes surface in my reflection,
he is the one below the tide,
pushing my guilt and shame upward to breach
and drowning forgiveness and redemption in the depths beneath.

He is everything I fear in the darkness.
He is the darkness.
In place of monsters and grabbing claws and plotting intruders
-that which I feared in younger days-
he is the haranguing of my heart beating mad,
and the disappointment of those I love.
My worth
in everything,
in myself,
are a light, he assures,
because he knows the dark is all I see.

He is the sound of an indifferent ocean when I dream;
a yawning, watery chasm hungry for me,
no dignity to even chew and savor my flavor,
sure to be salty from brine and tears,
tender from bruises from the beating of my own fists,
slightly sweet from a stubborn refusal to succumb to bitterness,
and bitter from that failure.

His body sometimes becomes mine in the poses I assume.
I am become Deon when my knees press to my chest,
when I am prostrate staring in my bed,
the uncertain scratching of my temple,
when I freeze seated at my computer typing words like these.
I am free from Deon at 4 AM,
when he sleeps,
when my concerned subconscious escapes the watch of my conscious warden
And desperately scribbles a memento reminder
that I am,
and am not him.
Alas,
the sirens blare and I am apprehended once more.

Living with Deon is hard.
His trials do not ultimately make me stronger.
They are cardiovascular atrophy removed from physical form
and given more destructive shape.

His knife is the one in my hand.
But the decision to use his knife as a knife,
or a carver’s tool,
or a paintbrush,
or a pen,
is mine,
no matter how firmly he grips my wrist.

The worst thing about him is that
he doesn’t want me living with him either.

You let me rub sawdust in your ears.
You let me drip wax on your fingertips.
You let me defenestrate your free time.
You let me run my voice across your lips.
You let me think I can.
It is of my opinion that the basement here smells
of expensive wood varnish
and it reminds me of what you are supposed to be;
an old thought.
A grimy vexation.
A copper colored conundrum,
antiquated and nauseously green.
I hate it when you waste time with me.
You make me feel like we're worthless.
Sitting alone in a stone darkness
with both purple hazes
hanging in the air like rhythmic skeletons
strung up in a celebratory gallows.
I'm happy when I'm with you,
you two-penny *****
of wasted yourself.
I love you.
Now leave.
Out of our lives.
I would be happier if you were out of yourself.
But you knew that.

I know a cedar chest of a hundred years
and you are knees-to-chest inside;
not dead
but breathing through the keyhole
in a white evening gown
with your skin growing tighter against your ribs.
One day I will open the chest
and your blood will flow
and your eyes will open
and your skin will hang more loose
under healthy fat and muscle and life
and you may throw your arms 'round my neck
and I will cry as I love your touch
as you smile with joy
as I take my hand and put it to your chest.
Push.
Down.
Hard.
You will not escape to make me love you.
The latch will close and you will be silent,
breathing through the keyhole,
and I will not mourn.
I will try not to mourn.

You are beautiful,Time.
Why?
You burn heart-shaped marks into the souls of lovers
and whittle them away through yourself
and that is horrendous
yet you change not.
Villain! A pox upon you for a clumsy lout!
You must undress in simmering water for ramen or tea
because you refuse to change until I look away.
You make the voices of a hundred years past
hiss and pop on gramophones
because you didn't feel like sharing 2008's MP3s.
Oh, you wretch,
you curdle milk
and Captain Crunch disapproves.
You make car rides to Washington, DC unbearable.
You masterfully draw out the suspense in waiting rooms,
dangling gender verdicts of newborns over the heads of expectant fathers.
You ****.
You ridiculously unfair goblin.
You murderer.
You toyer of lives.
You are so beautiful.
You make life short so it matters.
This hate is a necessary hate
but so is my love for you.
You will **** me one day.
For that, I loathe every second you give me in your pitiful pity.
I wish I could rip apart every second and return them to the sender
and have them ignite on your doorstep
and burn your house down
and have you cry "I was only doing my job"
as your home smolders to ashes.
But right after I would buy you a nice dinner
and tell you that it's going to be okay
because you made some months of my life matter
and enjoyable and happy.
I might even admit to arson
to make you smile
or grimace.
Time, you toothless wolf.
You spineless snake.
You stringless marionette.
I love you.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
and that of the hurricane.
Tumult whispered white,
both Aeolian and corporeal,
strummed on strings of solemnity;
the ugly undertaker of buried roses
labeled as wary victims of feel-good graverobbers.
All bled emotions are this.
The Louvre's flashbulbed flecks;
the notes woven within coke lines of symphony;
fingerpainted twig-men crafted by bright-eyed smilers;
this juxtaposed disgrace.
All Beau Sancy in the roughest granite jewelry box
with graffiti scribbled laughing like urban Sanskrit .
"I am become death" dripped in blood through the keyhole
so it now mimics a cherry popped in microwaves
unlocking discomfort, yes,
and crimsoning the cocoon of the diamond.
Peep, Tom, at the glittering Godiva within
and watch her grow in the sacrifice of poetry,
for only in the presence of forsaking and death
and anguish and discomfort
and pain
can she grow to break the eggshell walls.
Tears cut canals in Time's beard
because he consigned the memory of the shattered horrendousness
to oblivion
instead of honoring their homage
and paying respect by dropping tulips and gunships
into their graves at noon's meridian.
Opal eyed reader,
you do not understand.
My eggshells conceal themselves
within individual hells
of purple prose,
more of a lavender in my eyes.
But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The stakes are higher than some of my
worst friends on herbal fire
because every time I toss a buck to
Luck,
that homeward bound ****
who sits outside my door
and whistles at golden ******,
I lose even more
of my soul
from which I shovel the monetary coal
that stokes my furnace
and keeps me humble,
earnest,
and whole.
I want to let the ***** man in
so I can hear him confess his sin
and let him attempt to begin
a transformation
into a muse
that I can use
to write my information.
I wish I could write
of ice cube light
but all that comes to wish me good night
are the kisses of blurred sight
pecked by the fright
born of hesitant insight.
A kiss.
A kiss.
More so a bite.  
Beggar,I beg of you
if you are true;
Whisper to my hands
the plans
you can have them to do.
Because I'm tired
of being a liar
who screams on soap mausoleums
and puts exhibits in false museums
of how his heart
goes into his art
but all he really adds is the ****
part of the flesh
stolen from the mouth of Descartes.
Were that Luck were behind
every inky tittle and line
I wouldn't have to waste all this time
trying to weave together this rhyme.
I want to be my muse.
For now, though,
she'll have to do.
V^V^V^V^V^V^V
She knows better than I.
She does, she does, she does.
She knows better than I.
And she,
my muse,
makes me want to die.
She does, she does, she does.
I give her my eye and
never
ever
does she return my sky-blue eye.
"You don't even want it!"
I cry.
I cry with my one eye.
Screaming and tears.
Screaming tears.
Tears scream, you know.
I like to put on little shows
with my lil' screamers
and charge love
and harlequin femurs.
Exchange for tickets.
Exchange for a show.
And I cry like a proper ringleader.
There's no business like show business.
There's no business I know.
A quality show
Would be my muse killing me slow.
Maybe with her poetry.
Maybe with her face.
Maybe with a knife
keeping sickly pace
with the beating
of the heart
of a headcase.
Or maybe with outer space
like rumors of second base
with black lace
cast off
with grace.
I want the world out of my headspace.
There's no room for her there.
She knows she can fit.
She does, she does, she does.
But I keep forgetting.
I do, I do, I do.
I hope she kills me slowly
before I do,
I do, I do.
I do.

"Little lass with the pink parasol,
standing by the sea
where your face was forgotten
and your dress dirtied,
what can you tell me of the wind?
Have you noticed its paws
tugging at your parasol
and how it dances 'round your tip-toes
and freezes your eyelids
with icicle pins?
How it shields your drinking sight
from sunlight
by raising a blind of your hair?
Or
have you instead chosen to count the peaks on the waves?
How each pinch in the watery fabric
pistons up and down
in the oceanic mattress
with the nature sporadic
of a mad stellar twinkling.
What treasures belch age and air bubbles
under the surface
of a fingertip's breadth?
Of such sweet gems and precious metal
surely are the gifts of its deepest depths daring.
It has been counting the times you've dipped your nose under,
under fear of the fathom's fingers
finding your face to be pretty,
and withdrawing.
You'll catch cold, lass.
Standing by the sea so often; always.
At the least you will go mad
at the infinite sound of roaring laps
against the shore
and the gales born of sea and sky
scrubbing memories of stillness from your mind.
Little lass with the pink parasol,
what do you hope to find
standing here by thesea?"
I asked her.
She was silent.
And I heard every word her own,
though uttered tangibly
by winds of local overcast atmospheres.
In the wet soil 'neath my tarred heels
did a coolness rise,
finding my lungs dry and welcoming.
The horizon joined grey and blue
and she was eyeing the vanishing point.
My eyes joined hers in trek
and I found infinity.
Nothing was visible along the skyline.
Meaning anything was beyond it.
Nothing was visible beneath the tide.
Meaning anything was under it.
The wind suggested transparency
but a secretless wind is merely still air.
She said nothing
and I understood;
the sea seems larger
when you are close enough to be kissed by the waves
because you forget that the whole world is behind you.
I am right now
standing by the sea.
The little lass with the pink parasol.
She is here, too.