The ocean never cared, only carried.
The universe never felt, but swelled.
At the start must have been a **** fine time
to be alive,
but there then is the here now.
Nostalgia proud.
Feasting on the delicacy from
a moment of childhood blur.

The rapture is not waiting for you, nor me.
The rest of them neither, just entropy and ether.
A dalliance, daily fawning.
Morning stretches and yawning,
two moments of apex excess.
Then the dusk rusts the sky,
belts tightened 'round younger necks.
Begging to be bled instead of sexed.

Every margin scrawled with the cat-calls of handsomer men.
Opinions stolen from anonymous ponderings of "Remember when?"

The fates would have us conclude, due to their rules.
That taut strings fraught with change are messy wirings.
But if a slant rhyme can still give your skin ******,
Then perfection for its own sake should be dismissed.

Mountains stand higher than we can build.

Cough perfume.
Let's leave here soon.
Breathe with lungs wide,
diaphragm aflame,
nose wide open like only love can blame.
Let's set this place back a century.
Bring on the dark ages,
tug the heartstrings,
form noose from sweaty bed sheets.
Listen to rain on aluminum awnings.
Pout after you mourn.
Dream in past tense,
and use passive tone in your speech.

I'm with the trees in June.
Let's catch fire and leave here soon.

With the outset of your child
to a brisk, cold wind unfettered.
How do you stare starving virgins
in the face as they float untethered.

Lies are a currency, counterfeit only to etiquette,
and emotion, and love. We lie,
locked eye within eye, in ways
to boost pride.

When vainglory preaches to you from a
styrofoam podium.
How do you recollect your bargains
Made in dead of night,
blanket to your neck.
Lies can sate those fever dreams
crept upon you from *****.

Does love mean love if it is said with force?
Faint heart never won fair lady.
Without Victorian hysteria;
Our corsets are not so tight
We lack the need for chaise longue
May we lack the need for, indeed nor,
the lie?

What's the one thing you could talk about without rest?

Who's the one person that made talking effortless?

Where is the one that changed you for the better,

where is the one that made you your best?

When did it all occur, was it recently, or more in the past?

Is this one something or someone you wish you could have back?

People aren't things,
and also, they aren't chances.
They're the same solemnness
between the sonder and the glances.
We all have our thing and some of us may have more.
But I prefer the passions of the focused
for whom hearts with pulse on sleeve are wore.

In the afternoon of a Sunday evening, all painted
in the dust lingered in sunshafts, a giant
though smaller in person, entered my life.

She spoke in common prosaic, until she didn't.
And when the sunshaft lowered itself as sun did
in the evening horizon; so did her native naivety.

She met once, or more, a man who with hands,
acted as God. And in her life he swelled around
her heart a strangling deluge. Inundation of temptation.
Regret like the pirouette of dust as faltered in dusk.

By now I saw her stature as looming shadow,
and in moonlight I read her leylines.
Runed with the abuse of self and worth a penny more,
than the collection plate gathered at friend's expenses.

I watched a stumble in her walk that never molested her gait.
In her a sprezzatura, and finally, a person deserving of the word.

She woke me with a lantern, once, and pointed to the halo--
the beam encircled as accretion disk, the darkness pulled
and we were the gravity.
And so danced the dust, again.

As of many thoughts, and her my imagination, she had to leave.
A must. A certainty. And I will never be the same.
With each stitch I sew, forevermore, her will shall exist braided within.

Somewhere in the sinews of my chasm breaths beats in pace with love.
Saudade creeps into the same cavern, now darkening;
sonatas with no moon,
shafts with no dust,
art with no art.

I remember with fondness the last worry worth the strain.
It was between the advertisements bookending the
bus stop bench, and I watched a woman no older than I
cross the street without looking both ways.

I panicked despite there being no speed toward her, and
as rapid as no cars were traveling my heart was ecstatic.
At her carelessness. Peered behind turtle-shell bifocals,
and they weren't rimmed thickly; I hate those. They were
wired, and she tugged my heartstrings. With her joy in pacing.

She met my eyes with her glasses and peered strangely toward me,
a stranger watching her with a knitted brow as thick as the scarf
she wore. She paused on the curb a foot about to lift her up, I
think I scared her. Her lips tugged as her hands stuffed themselves
into her tiny pockets. What are pockets used for on women's pants?
Surely not to look nervous and pull away from the world as mine are.

I almost begged the question to ask for her name, or to be a gentleman
and help her cross the stone-few-inch-threshold that seemed to have
stranded her as wide river from her destination; then I realized if she
could cross the raging streets without the help of even reassurance
then I was nothing but another obstacle.

She smiled.
I stared.
And off she went, and I watched her still.
I thought, "If she turns around to look at me, I'll wave her down.
I'll ask her name. I'll pour myself out,
even foolishly."
Her grey knitted cap, of which I am sure hid a knot worth untying,
turned and I saw her profile as her peripheral scoped the last remnants of her
slowly-forgetting-me-memory.
I lifted my hand toward her, and flicked my wrist.
She stopped.
And so did my heart.

It's no longer the heartbeat.
Echoes instead, cooing.
Placating me with serpent wishes,
selfish desires.
Succulent, sustinent.
Cheap refrains repeated as a bridge,
before the heart stopping bass drop.
Echoes again, belting.
Three fingers deep into a whiskey,
and mind you there's an e.
Cheap American heritage bundled together
like a plastic suite of day drives and night caps.
Houses made of stucco, sticking in the heat of the summer.
Another simplistic S-word statement.
Another coughing mind without abatement.
Another ******* poet *******.

The son's eyes set low as green felt feigns grass stains.
The son does not cry at the father's funeral. The son
holds them in.
He, the son, is now a rung higher
and lower. Simultaneous promotions and
disappearances. He is the last line.

The son does all the planning. For the day of,
the week next.
The month's end, and the bills due.
The son does all the fathering that the father
has now left behind.
He is now a caretaker. A husband to two wives,
his,
and his.
The son and the father
were not strong in their love.
Not a single day.

The son will find humility where once was cruelty.
Where once was impulse he finds patience.
Where once a sinner comes anew virtue.

The son is now a house where once was a home.
The son is now alone.

The soul is missed by me dearly.
It contained within it, simultaneously,
spark, spirit, care, and glimmer.
Lit by an inestimable null.

The escape of which I now suffer.
Is a daily sick.
Of waking up with shuddered groan.

I miss the soul when it had chance.
Even if my end were purgatory.
I'll take the grey to the decisive ends.
Focused edge where bright meets blurry.

You were a girl and I won the privilege of watching you grow.
So darling, the porcelain; how trite a description for you.
But it made you smile, always. Even when I didn't put
any inflection in my tone.
It was enough for you that I said it, and only sometimes meant it.

It was Summer, if I remember of any proper, when we met;
or, rather, spoke, for the first time.
Then the Spring where I lost the last line of your beautiful mind.
And that willful fruit bloom from your high hanging branches.
You used to joke, "Don't steal my sap, but lick my wounds."

Arrowheads fletched from your leaves and flew unsoundly,
toward the open eyes of glimmer for those of whom you
allowed near. I caught each one and bled, and with my
oily fingers I drew wilderness and art on your bark.
Spring was meant for you to bloom, my darling.

Maybe you didn't hear, or know. You forgot things sometimes,
like to stretch your arms toward the sun and siphon goodness.
A gentle axe tap to remind you. To make you familiar with,
the pain of the care. The stone was heavy and often deflected.
It's Autumn now. Our favourite time of year. We never got to
make bouquets with your hair.

Winter is coming. You would hate that reference in a poem to you.
Novels are always better, "Except Kubrick!" we would say in unison,
and how you, this time, would always remind me of the night I said
something wittier than the rest of all my life. You cheered up a suicide
because you feared the same loss twice, as all old wounds heal sharply.

How did you do it? Give me laugh lines.
So deep they soak in water and are vibrant.
I don't blame you, all things in nature must wilt.
The markings of calendar, and I know when the rains
wash away the snow and leave blades of grass heavy
you will be there in support, lifting the tiny sprouts with a fingertip.

That they never felt before.