A man poses at a dimly lit table,
a light hangs directly overhead
with a cobweb ribbon-wrapped around
the steel wire escaping the ceiling.
An inverted roulette table,
a man betting against the house:
It is always this way.
Light flickers, flipped on,
and off, and on,
without a switch
with which to assert control.
He is alone in the squeaking chair,
sipping tea and dipping his crumb-covered
hands into the napkin-covered basket
of water crackers and salted peanuts.

Sitting, he poses for practice, but for now,
he practices for no one.
The house is empty.
In the back of his mind, there is no worry
of what one will find upon entering
the kitchen: A scarecrow at a table,
full of straw and teeth dulled down
from night grinding,
sitting in, what could be mistaken
as, a pensive position.

The scavenger hand makes him look wanting.
It's partner is propped on chin,
accompanied by his half-sculpted smile
and the dark-light contrast of his hair and eyes
with yellow shining off of his two front teeth.
The color is not the fault of stumbling home
too late to care for the mouth, but of the old
incandescent staring him down
and the obsessively clean, marble surface
at which he puckers his face.

A tapping in the hall stirs his bones
and his body darts up.
A crow, it seems, with small grey beak
has wandered in from the overgrown fields,
the fields that haven't been tended to
since this boy began taking himself too seriously.
The both of them with stilts for legs
and no breeze of running feet
from scream to sway the pair of pairs.
Their eyes connect and neither moves.
Who should place the first bet,
black or red,
and who will set the ball in motion?

The light goes off.
Denoument is a bad time
for a bulb to die.
As calm as a hand
with razorblade against skin,
the scarecrow sits down once again
and poses.
The bird observes his motion,
calls, and waits,
but the man moves no more,
overjoyed with an invisible audience,
a full stomach.

Two wandered brazenly up the hill
and trip-tumbled down
faster, faster still,
while sheet lightning licked
at its manicured toes.

Once at rest
one woke up,
the other not yet,
waiting for a signal
of safety, safely he sleeps.

She waited on him
noon and night
as raindrop breezes blew by
from short summer showers
and cream daffodil skies.

They're laying in the field
awaiting the arrival
of Eternity:
she sits cross-legged
while caressing his brow.

"It must be fear," says one.
"I'm just comfortable here,"
comes reply.
The truth is,
he wants back up the hill,

wants to descend in butterfly spins
again, 'til spiderwebs and weeds
fill his knotty chocolate head,
and his sweet lover sings
of everlasting green.

She dead-still waits
while golden trees die
and powder begins to fall
on a hill never to be tumbled
the same way again.

She dead-still waits
while he heavy slumber sighs,
ear cupped for the call
on the hill never to be tumbled
by the two of them again.

I don't know if it's the caffeine
or imagining your stoic ****** expression,
but something's got me shaking, violently.
Not with anger, but with fear,
do I drink this *** of tea
shouldered with an innocence
in love without possession.
Part of me has died a very lonesome death,
and yet, with every passing
comes promise of a wailing newborn.
A sense of solitude is born again
and in that, I am
am born again.

I don't know with what blanket
to cover my silver, Saint-Christopher-shivers
from the cold, elated stare
that your eyes possessed.
Yes, it was the cold, elated stare
of your eyes
that chilled my spine.
A newborn you are,
a world inexperienced,
a longing fulfilled.
An empty me,
a teacup without the shakes
of spilling over brim,
and a table sacrificed
from experience.

Sated is the wood
from a lackluster lacquer
and spot-drops on the knots
that will never be noticed.

Caribbean waters wrench my gut
with an instinct to sail too far
into the blue plunge
of shark-finned waters
and sharp, yellow coral structures.
Those nature beasts rip wetsuit,
my sleek, stone shade wall from internal chill.
I am, feel, like a tanned fish
on these tire-weathered, cement streets.
Towering above are the heavy looks
down
from windows of sunned glass castles
of plastic and sweat.
They're calling,
pied pipers, to what is steel-stable
and rooted, in unforgiving fashion,
to the death of primal sense.
The urge to rip apart is tied back
around collared neck.

My boat is ashore
as I sea-dream-see of horizons unseen
while clenching an ill-fated
armrest desk of destiny
unexplored.

With each rap-tap at keyboard,
my shoulders lessen ground-downward.
Every line bears the weight of
three blond hairs lost from
stress-worn crown and temples.
They fall to freedom from pain
and stretch-clenched jaw
of words unsaid.
My mind bears witness to the head
of cold winds blowing north as
my body decays and illumination
seethes inside my being.
The coal-bearer brings warmth
to my lungs, my blackened lung
that cannot express through song
the path on which we travel.
We: Me, Myself, and I.
My pale lung runs against
sideways rains in a summer shower,
crackling lightening,
trumpets of thunder,
and such fear of finally being stuck.

Hit
with
brilliance,
scar-tattooed
by Gods.
Spiraled electricity
fills my mouth
and my teeth
chatter
no more
for lively
expressions
of weightlessness.

A fine mixture of smoke and breath escapes my lungs
as this letter flows from my pen this evening.
"This evening:" What does that even mean?
A moment in darkness, shadowed is the life-giver
high above us,
well,
me.
Strawberry tobacco smothers my face from hookah pipe,
eyes fixed on the lines before me,
and I have nothing to say.
We have nothing to speak, I assume.
I am wordless but maybe in the moment,
this evening, you have a tongue of prose
and no pen to mouth emotion back,
no way of knowing that your time is time is now,
and it's my turn to listen.
Wait, no no, not emotion.
Just "being,"
ways of being, strewn out like a fortune teller's
knucklebones. A lie, the truth, the way that
your eyes wander to the door as you lie
on the pinstriped couch across living room
from me.
I see you glancing, I feel your yearning
for skies where wings can spread against
a star-sun-lit moon and clouds of pink and red,
a longing to dive toward god-given green earth,
near to here, but so so far.
Needing clouds to dream-slumber in, as beads of water
mask your body in my mind, mixed with
thoughts of pure love and pining for your growth,
as dew drops form around my long blond-brown-blue eyelashes.

It's all I see, I've seen,
that's all I write to you this evening.

Black and White
create no boundaries,
just blurs of grey, of fighting,
of shade aspiring to color, well,
aspiring to be it,
enveloped in the folds
of canvases without brush
or artist,
and hands
stiff-stuck glued to table.
Constricted
within so much space
are snakes as serpents,
not vice-versa,
pulling prey apart
vilely, peacefully.

Yes, they do that, no?
I swear they do.
I’d bet my life on it.