today I began to leave my body on the seat of the bus,
so I leaned into the stretch
and pull on my spirit's shoe strings
hoping faintly
that I might feel your hands
reaching
from behind my eyelids.

to tell the truth,
I dream of you far too often
slid between sheets
wet with fever,
and sometimes
my thighs feel sore of running
from ghosts
so I concede to being caught
fingers plunging down my throat
and I gag
on time travel fantasies - but
I've stopped drowning
memories in whiskey, instead
I get high off
the lingering traces laced in my bloodstream.
nightly I ignite my veins to hear you
moaning
and my bed frame
quivers
with the knowledge of your absence.

I've carved the story of us
raggedly into my skin,
a narrative to tell round the campfire of my heart,
where trees parade heavy
with questions I've been whispering
for a decade,
and leaves rattle
made-up answers in riddles.

I play butterfly hopscotch when I can't sleep
due to tsunamic activity
in the aftermath of earthquakes that frequent my bones
as their tectonic shifting shelves the continental plate of you
over
me.

I urge you,
do not grow complacent in my volcanic dormancy.
the compiled magma will
leave you in a heap of radioactive ash,
which will in turn erupt
violently.

take heed.

this is your silent warning swimming in my eyes.

I am too full to hold casually,
marked "handle with caution"
in fiery green,
slyly grinning
as I slip ever faster into entropy.
the laws of the universe are
consuming me,
breath
by
breath,
blink
    by
      b
        l
          i
            n
               k,
     b
    

         y

belated



    good
    bye.

With brain bashing into head cavity,
the gelatinous mass of neurons screams out
to white blood cells swimming in eyeballs
to evacuate before drowning.
"Quit clowning around in there and
save yourselves!"
The moody mistress creates her own hells:
congratulations!
Sleeping alone in a sweat covered bed,
she spins saccharine thoughts and pollutes her head
with taffy, thick like molasses,
cooking sugar in the kitchen with
the wrong end of a spoon in her mouth.
Dried up *** stains litter her couch
as she wakes up to turn the cushions
and search for loose change
to fill up her coin pouch.
"Ouch! Ouch!"
She calls out, clean
sheets on a new day,
his fingers firing in a frenzy
and introducing the fusion of
pleasure and pain.
He smells of benzene and
she's afraid of burning,
stomach churning and
using gasoline as lubricant.
He hit her, she said, and it felt like a kiss.
She misses him at her day job
when she runs around town
robbing banks and
picking up handkerchiefs
that grandmothers drop on the ground.
He would pound
his manhood into a brick wall
if it moved like her,
but the skin-and-bones combo
woos him to coo at her
as swarms of sparrows
nest in her ***** hair.
Spit shined shoes and
riding leaves blown on the air,
she dreams of him awake,
listless eyes alive and pulsing
behind a film of glassy, viscous mucus.
She makes magic potions out of the scents
left over on one of her
mismatching pillow cases.
He tastes like roasted red peppers
and lingering mace:
her eyes water as she
chokes back ***** daintily,
like a queen.
His eyes gleam mean as
he steals her breath to
add it to his bursting bank account,
releasing her to give her back only gasps,
the 2% interest.
She crafts road maps of his back bone while he sleeps,
but he sees her as a phantom,
creeping through the floorboards,
a faceless specter with an ace up her sleeve.

To which ports of our
pasts do we
find ourselves tethered?

Towards what unreachable
futures do our
hands slide with pleasure?

the ocean is roaring over herself vacuuming space with sound
and when I close my eyes she gets closer than ever
washing me over, cleansing sandy pores
and I find myself floating above her gently fixed to the horizon
and she laps at me
licking dirt from my feet, clutter from my mind
and she bellows louder and louder
shhhhoving open room inside of me
creating new shelter for breath
and she winks sun into my heart
refracting rainbows from a rocky harbor.
I am awestruck and speechless as she tucks me under rolling sheets
and I dream of
letting go
letting go
letting go
til she lullabies me into watery peace.

the sea is roaring over herself hoarse and deafening
summoning her darkened volumes to surface
churning ceaselessly
with no purpose but to churn
against porous boulders raised sharp into salty air who swallow her spit
kiss after ecstatic kiss
biting lips and
breathing
into her fullness.
tree skylines peak up as cardiograms pumping, plunging
daggers into the sky and raising valleys in dusty ground
kicking dirt plumes
to mix with the low hung clouds
drumming up potions where
earth meets air
fuming
and beating soil into the certainty of sustaining
life and decay
decomposing symmetry to divine disarray
nature circles it's prey
all are one
and the same in her eyes
she bows to none
yet loves blindly
providing without agenda, taking without malice
equaniminous
balance of zero
random nonsense coalescing
to a flat line
emptiness
so vibrantly
alive