Your conspiracy brings
what avalanche over
this paranoid spiral
forcefully traveled
as I cool hot black?
Under an awning
in heat below rain,
overpriced stale coffee
works like electricity
Jolt
Shock my brain:
Why would I explore
tightening veins?

Could it be,
maybe,

That you tore me from ear to ear
jagged through the jugular
and I'm redirecting?

Your deliverance calls
what genuine heartbreak
to our turbulent girl
who feeds stray black cats
then loses, clueless?
Wet alabaster skin
in heat under sheets
brings wanted dreams in tow,
almost realized and live
Hope,
squeeze my veins:
Why would I submit
to chemicals?

Could it be,
maybe,

That pages left in mud puddles
are best never resumed
and I'm redirecting
old losses until I lose it
all?

What a great unhappy waste
of muscle mass and jawline
Impetus in a mess
is what begs question of these confines
If things were not coming apart
in the ways we all saw under the surface
would our brave little boy
have robbed himself of his life toward purpose
as misguided as this?

Twenty three years staring into mirrors
with two **** brown globes of lightning
filling up with self deprecation
is a waste?

Somehow I knew you'd say that
and the news wrapped in words wrapped in plastic
glances like the spear tip to plate armor
aimed and stabbed from a distance too great

Colored nails, black or pink, or **** and gnarled
Painted face, totally, or face too **** and concave
Chest heaving open or covered from the world
Downtown or eating cereal in sweats from a mixing
bowl

On your couch

Be the bullet for all of us who took one
Be the blade for those whose voices drained by knife
And be the voice just by living
Even if hidden,
My Love,
You're real!

It all starts with you
You, in sun's rays
reliably became a haunting ground
Somehow
under mother dusk
You, bathed in moon
became the cradling arms,
somehow,
that nurtured the hurt
endured in living
Injured in living. . .

With our small moves
We move the hour hand
When we return
Rust catches up
It all ends with you
and in the ending
Grown,
We come home to flame

I thought you were stone
When you were nothing
I know this: we sleep in ash beds
Our retreat was no
garden but fostered flowers
And now you are
bones

Bright white light
guiding a freeway
with only one lane
Into grey mist
up ahead
So deep is the truth in view
it will burst the engine
urge to roar
Smothering courage
like the fog,
Comforting

Beat. Bleeding. Hands.
Grind the asphalt
One. Still Goes. Searching.
As pain demands
We speed into a breakneck rush until our heart's left
Wrecked

Dumbest one
Directionless soul
You're only one left
of many who
tried before
died deep in the snow when shown
memories bled into present
(Lonely, Lovely)
Best you sleep
where these festering
bodies release lingering poison

to the infinite wreckage
Or. . .

Icy bones
buried in our homes

Cold
stark
sharp
shadow

Threatening silhouette

She's coming
He's coming
Faceless
Androgynous
Every one at once

In time
frozen lips press to our necks
Every time
We become dreadfully bare
Shade borrows our breath

Broken homes
supply deathly tomes
but

Our words escape
Our wounds innate
Dig us down

Grasping, praying, godless, as soils fall

Over our gathering

This is the first time I've cleaned a kitchen in ages and even better,
next up is the bathroom, hands and knees, bucket beside, scrubbing
getting the grit out from the impossible to reach cracks in the tile
forgoing the thought of using my fingernails because I've seen too
many horror movies and I can't shake the feeling that if you try
too hard to fix an issue with a tool just not right for the job, then
things
     can fall
          apart
               or
come. right. off.

So there it is in the smell of my pail of pine-sol cleaner, long lost
smell of the rush and presence of the most refreshing kind of stripping
down right to the ****** at the core of these good looking bodies and
faces, the place of bareness only tangible and graspable where
it likes to hide beneath our chest plates and marrows until we find
the right combination of tools to use to choose to fix ourselves
before
     we all
          crumble
               into
dust. and. sand.

These bones know the sunlight heat and it's returning in good time
as if to say, in the exact moment it left it's come back into station to
stay an immeasurable amount of time.

You know.

For a little while.

Last time I left you
you left your wishes
in the sweet, slow kiss you attempted
before the twilight landscape
our figures injected black richness
to twisted shadows of the thicket
where we stood laughing afterward
What, in whispers I promised you
last time I left you, follows me
so in shadows

I threw away
your pictures
I burned it all
over the years for the fear of holding on too long
I still recall
the sneakers
you wore that night
drinking beer
at my side outside the mini-mart
each next time in the present when I close my eyes

and it fills me
and it kills me
with pain
I ate with the ice cream bar we
shared between the two of us
you gave me all when you had enough
and it kills me