One Thousand hands holding
One Thousand suitcases stuffed suffocating
One Thousand costumes and memories tethered to expectations,
One Thousand pieces left behind that
would not pass inspection like
fragments of self and habits to lean on,
One Thousand pairs of waiting eyes wistful and worn and wondering about
One Thousand ways to say goodbye,
One Thousand stories swimming in minds
reasons to stay devouring reasons to depart
parsing apart
One Thousand unfinished thoughts
stacked upon each other as layered
remnants of crumbling towers,
One Thousand coterminous beginnings and endings swallow
One Thousand middled narratives,
the taste of
One Thousand lives flavors the air
circulating in
One Thousand lungs huffing the
breath of
One Thousand neighbors estranged and silent save
One Thousand unsynchronized heartbeats
bleating and bleeding and belching
One Thousand rhythmic intricacies into
One Thousand hands holding
One Thousand suitcases.

your mind is screeching over itself
fast forward looping
stuttering to sta-finish it's own sentences
before they begin
begin again
again rephrase
in a foreign tongue
sputtering auditory train
each song sounds the same
same thought new place
pacing backwards yesterdays
yester-year's dream spawned oiled seas
see the lochness creature seeping tar from smokestack wings
cleanse the river
boil the stream
seems where the hydrogen and oxygen meet
the breath drowns
defeat
retreat to your fiery cocoon
lace your wounds with spit and delusion
dilute your medicine til it tastes like lover's skin
again begin
begging the stars to swallow you
howl til one becomes two
rebrand suffering to resume
your pleasurable consuming death

a river runs through a ghostly town
soaked clay red with the blood of the earth,
the land is marked with tire tracks like an addict's elbow crease
sweating oil and electrical wire,
fields tilled with the claws of a paper beast
sprout telephone poles and generations of debt
amongst indigo coffee beans,
rotting tin roofs striped with rust
creak folklore in the pouring rain,
muddied palms clinging to trust on mala beads
are stung with poisoned ink leaked from shrines golden and winking,
an ornate temple carves god sharp into a clouded sky
its steeple piercing his hands
shards of bone spilling ash onto upturned foreheads,
sun scorches unsuspecting soil and it cries exhaust fumes,
the sputtering song of a motorbike is answered
by the howl of a stray mutt in an alleyway
reverberating pleas to a clenched fist,
an unremitting flame sweeps ruin
across leaf barren trees
wind choking on smoke coughing up skeletons,
and the planet heaves
and the planet heaves
weezing on humanity's delirious daydreams

O child of the sun
landlocked lover of the sea,
do not mourn the death of the day.

The black velvet sky
will wrap you in splendor,
stars adorning your crown,
fireflies spilling from your fingers.

Howl at the moon,
dance and laugh and summon chaos,
remember that you were born
with wildfire in your veins.

chugging bile and liquor closed eyes smell the innards of a joint wrapped in oilslicked stain shoveling sugar thrice processed into vocal chords left silenced but for the coughing up of shriveled lungs set ablaze to ease the twitching triggered by the mistress doused in white who scaffolds into crumbling nasal caverns to numb the brain that dreams of god in guilty refrain and whips thorny obedience to words siphoned through ghosts of men and obedience to the inflated heads of state and corporate banks who play Skinnard's game and always win millions of yes-men nodding their heads in addiction to artificial green leaves printed with blood and even lovers twirling passion in their beds have their eyes squeezed shut clutching at darkness slick and disappearing at the touch of pulsing fingertips racing to bury themselves in skin and forget the achey organs that lay waiting within weary and smothered from covering up thoughts too sharp to breathe in...

--it's all hide and seek.
running and running and running
from bare and open
vulnerability
shrouded underneath
layers
of reflected identities
and neuro-chemistry
and material fortresses
and snarled teeth
and synthetic bliss
wrapped in bitter bumblebees.

don't you think it's time you swallowed
the wince it takes
to glimpse your fear's shadows?

I wear my watch on the inside of my wrist keeping time by the pulsing of overfilled veins.
If I'm honest, the seconds pass blurry when you are around, red pounding at the blue surface reminding my life of it's vigorous momentum as the watch face marks it's disappearance.
I can do nothing about it's circular cycle, nor the manner in which I mirror it, recycling threadbare thoughts and feelings in ostensible new purpose.
I am a walking contradiction formed of practical mysticism and coffee stained teeth, spinning poetry from numb fingertips onto the ghosts of birch trees, fleeing from my wildest dreams.
Meet me,
half way between belief and reality at the junction of duality and I'll reveal I have no true identity - no creed no name no history,
only chaotic shifting and angry bumblebees drilling sinkholes for visitors toes to curl into as they fashion temporary homes in me.
I am solar soliloquy.
Astrological antiquity curses me to orbit you habitually.
Eye of the storm, hand of the beast, souls of the many downtrodden and hungry, asking for shoulders to stand upon shaky.
Grant me your three wishes, and I will conjure infinity from our palms clasped tight in secrecy.
Tell me,
neglectful lover,
when did my beauty become a pleasurable void, to be touched
yet left unseen,
when did my spirit become matter
buried under the mind of desire and empty chatter.
Humor me,
say that the meeting of our skin is more than physical proximity say,
that you dream of my flowers growing from your ribcage say,
that the gods granted us an opportunity for greatness,
say that our kiss is a portal to Andromeda and that you could get lost there forever - I know I have.
Yet, even light years away I hear the tick tocking ticktick of my heart bleeding into itself.
I am fleeting.
I am deafening.
I am a forgetful timekeeper,

late to my own re-birthing.