tell me,
what clammors in your mind when you cannot sleep at night?
what are you clinging to when you do not rise in the morning?

a stiff lesson in letting go.
a fastball to the chest.
an image of death
approaching on his warhorse.

got a lot to accept about catch
and release,
about the karmic patterns chasing me.

i'll eat my own tail before i acknowledge
history is repeating itself.
a recursive curse
of love unreturned,
rebirths.

dizzy at the sight of my own bleeding/bleating heart,
i howl in frenzy and
deny i was bit by a werewolf
in the new moon's dark.

am i as translucent,
as you are opaque?
does my breath feel like an earthquake
as i quiver at the sound of your name?

nowadays,
i am sure of nothing
more than my spinning.
your elusive grin
pins me to the wet dirt of august,
and dares me to chase you all over again.

a lesson in walking away.
a slow burn in the stomach.
a never-ending plummet
into this fever-dream's abyss.

I am laced up in black.
Spurs skidding sparks at my heels,
striding up a leaf-smothered hill
during the golden hour.
Sun splayed upon my cheekbones,
holding hands with my long shadow,
grenade-pin heart, and brewing eyebrows.

I am forgetting what it sounds like
to lean into your slinking shoulder,
covering the aroma
of your neck's skin
with coffee grounds and wolfsbane
too ardent to taste like your mouth.

I am humming to myself, juicy and thick,
to slice your silence into fragments
that disintegrate ashen through my fingertips.
Just like the parting look you gave me,
sterile-eyed and hazy.

I am all splinters and sinkholes,
a tragic reminder that things do not remain intact
especially when you chase them.
My lips are glued to the horizon, begging the sun
to watch the dance of the moon,
enchanted and writhing.

will you remember me as the scent of lavender and pine,
a long embrace of wild flowers that sends your mind
into the silence of the forest.

will you remember me
as the golden hour tip-toeing its way through your blinds,
stretching it's warm fingers to touch your jawline,
laughing
all tangled in saffron sheets. will you

remember me as the sound of river summersaulting over stone and wind to reach your feet,
a wordless song
of change flowing freely.

will you remember me
as the taste of promise in spring's first peach,
an overwhelming sweetness,
the whisper of heat.
will you

remember me
as the taught reverberation of
metal string
against air,
the pulse
of love
returning
to itself
again
again, again, again, again will you remember me as the touch

of skin on skin during the rosy hour of midnight,
the magnetic kismet of feeling in flight.

will you remember me in the small moments,
alone
in the hidden corridors of your heart.

will you remember
me in the in between
of stop
and start. will you

remember my voice lilting 'round corners and downstairs
to kiss your eardrums.
will you remember the easy silence of mid-afternoon dream bums.

will you

remember my rooftop and spontaneous embrace and forest fire love.
will you?

will you remember?

remember me,
memories in a chromatic key,
the push and pull of harmonics on heartstrings,
the all but lost things
of a poet's loftiest dreams.

a rush of unspoken loving.

I felt your spirit follow me
ten thousand feet above the sea - floating,
flee(t)ing over aquamarine mountains
in a metallic bird with frozen wings.
In my dreams,
you are a wild sycamore tree who sings
lunar symphonies to bumblebees
sun spotted eyes,
sight of a man searching after ephemeral mystery.
I will whisper your name into the wind, send
my spirit back round the earth -
we will breathe the same air,
after passing through a million lungs (heaving)
see the same clouds,
after traveling distances unspeakable..

And will you remember me:
eyes brimming (in silence)
hips twitching (in stillness)
biting lips and picking skin and
itching to hold you with palms and fingertips,
head in crook of shoulder,
hand pressed upon chest,
stomach to stomach breath stolen,
heavy, wet -
having communion without the wine or bread
just the body, unbroken
no call to repent.

smoke stacks babble their chemical love note to the gods,
huffing and clawing
and spewing their pumice
at the morning sky,
a milky stairway to heaven
dispatching
the greasy whims of a faceless man with an unquenchable addiction.

it towers over the overstuffed veins of the highway,
where a once square body
contorts its aluminum frame to mimic the spiraling form of nature,
spilling its fleshy guts into dry winter wind.
the steaming rubber neck of the world cranes itself
longer than the Mississippi
to gawk at its own mortality.

in the distance,
the steely blue city veils her face with haze,
stoic and sturdy, she stares into the thin air
past the ardent, bleeding
display of humanity
gushing
awkward onto her concrete stomach
and staining the stubbly black and beige
with sticky finger prints.

the city takes a long drag off her metallic cigarette
and sighs
exhaust,
blanketing the sky in morgue sheets.