Sharp breath
Carving out the carcass
Shaving away sanity
Cringing.

Shallow plunge
Into sinister sea of shards
Crinkling cracking
Cringing.

Cowering for invisibility
Hiding behind folds of
Crunched eyelids
Cringing.

Hollowed by fire
Raw red remnants
Crumbling, ashes ashes
Cringing.

Projected perfection
Diabolical demons dream
In absence
Cringing.

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

sun sizzle pop-rock hopscotch round the rowdy block of troubled spots,
and iron-lock your dirt-soaked sock to a gumdrop your friend forgot the last time you stopped to watch the lilies bloom
in slow motion loop-de-loos.
sinking smooth waterloos,
darling just look at you! beaming with gooey honey dripping sooloos -
woohoo baby!
the lazy river bends her neck to spend extra time with the water bed,
so shed your excuses and wear your heart on the tippy-top of your head,
if it falls, mend it by sending ends of threads spinning fractal patterns round the edge,
crafting a hand-patched garden to bake batches of laughter from.
latching your fingers, pull and tug those weeds into soot underfoot tearing remnants of long lost looks your lover took and shook off your balcony in a hazy dream.
alchemy your bones to seeds
and feed them with tears of gold sweet memories.
reading poetry from socrates thumb
won't translate the sacred humming running through your chest,
only you can sing the refrain of broken hymns and lift the soul from the rims of the black hole pit.
the universe lives in you, don't forget.

oh darling, i wish i could be
your big ice cream cone in the sky,
but i am no longer searching in the rye
for a catchers net woven
of arms, heart, legs ****** open,
i am just beginning to arise
on my own horizon, arise
into my new wild garden,
and my nectar is ****,
but if you'd stop *******
all the berries from my bushes
dry dry dry,
maybe you'd stop being poked
by bare twigs in your eye.
see, or rather UNDERSTAND
my side of lines crossed, and don't bind
in hindsight my once defined mind,
it was cracked wide open
with the strike of pure lightning,
skies poured in to no end
and i learned to float on remnants
of half-baked sentiments,
you barely took the time
to stir the eggs shells out,
or maybe you never noticed
them crunching in your mouth,
but i saw every last white message
of your hastily harnessed hostage.


you keep telling me that you don't know what to do without me,
but frankly darling, you never did anything with me.

the factory workers of my prefrontal cortex
are on a raucous strike because,
the train chugging them to lunch breaks at my amygdala
has been broken down for days.
and the now strained relay of packets of faxes from this neuron
to the one all the way south on Abbey Lane,
is creating untold pressure for Wernicke -
so forgive me if i ask you to rephrase.

despite the absent hoarded salivating mouths,
the deli in my amygdala keeps on producing
thousands of ******* italian subs,
so now the place floods with grease-sweat from old meat
that would make a carnivore remit...
and it's seeping, leaking poison to Broca,
who is now refusing to explain herself
to the confused face projected on my retina's blurred screen.

the mitochondria housed in my somatasensory
are all comatose from last night's debauchery.
so everything is still,
numb to the touch
blank on the face
dead in the eyes -
unaware of the incessant twitching
that's rolling through my joints, muscles, skin, sore red thighs.

every nucleus of every cell
restarting again, again, again,
but rebooting isn't clearing the glitch in the system.
so just lie here with me,
broken machine to broken machine -
our hearts still glisten.

Let me be the first to warn you:

I am wildfire and catastrophic destruction,
I am consuming fever and searing passion,
I am possessed by infectious radiation, a contagion
for all things surreptitious and sacred.

I will vacuum the oxygen from your gasping lungs,
blister your lips,
and plunge you deep into my inferno.

I will gallop as chopping thunder across your oceans,
etch lightning streaks zigzagging behind your eyelids,
and illuminate veiled dimensions of your incandescent spectrum.

You will know me,
in flares sparking your night sky
into snapshots of opalescence and shadow.
You will know me,
in relentless flames licking your woodlands
skeletal and hollow and barren.
You will know me,
in remnants of cinders, ashen palms,
and smoky ribbons evaporating through your skin.

I am celestial pyromaniac:
daughter
of Hephaestus and Artemis,
incubated
in the womb of a supernova,
birthed
in the creation of Andromeda,
purified
by internal cycles of eruption,
hurled
through the cosmos by shooting stars,
magnetized
to earth by gravity and destiny, carried to you by entropy and choice.

I am volcanic and heaving
beneath the crust of the planet.
I am ultraviolet hallucination, I am firework destruction, I am spontaneous combustion, I am electric incineration, I am smoldering embrace, I am all things cataclysm and rebirth, interlaced.
And when I pierce molten and ecstatic and untamed
through your reality, you will know
what it means to drown dancing in flames.

as the fingertips of my heart
reach out to yours, we intertwine -
I am you & you are I,
there is nothing that holds us separate
besides the illusory vision of our eyes.
so close your blinds on this physical plane
and open your intuition,
invite in another domain - infinite connectivity.
let your bruised ego stop playing its game
and join the endless chorus.
dare to put your spirit on display -
there is no jury, judge, or gavel here,
only open arms to grab ahold of
while the walls you've clung to fall away.
bask in your liberated weightlessness,
there is no fear in true selflessness
for a singular organism will not compete
but practice generosity to its full being.
your puzzle piece in this mosaic
is a morphing tapestry,
let the wave of colors wash over you,
soak in every brilliant change of hue,
and know that as you are in all of our hearts, all of our hearts are in you.

jumping jumbled thoughts
hop-scotch, double-dutch, criss-cross
getting lost in mish-mosh
scratching a vinyl
stuck constant skipping,
unfinished rounds of loop-de-loop spinning
speeding down stream
leaping across time warping lilypads,
memories interrupted by what-if daydreams.

my brain places haphazard bookmarks
when it runs into a lump,
then hops on a new train
ka-clunk ka-clunk-clunk ka-clunk,
tripping over decaying stumps
and mountains of over-processed junk.
always falling back to distraction,
instant satisfaction
was taught to me habitually,
so i look the other way when
my will bends instantaneously
at the mention of insane
raucous romping renegades.

i throw hand grenades
to prevent unfinished fragments
of insight from cementing.
wishing my words would
spit themselves out,
or dive off a cliff to utter calamity
cause effort is lost on me -
passionless revere
and bottomless see-sawing.

just stick me slack-jawed
in front of any cookie-cutter size of
plastic rectangle-god,
they all repeat the same chant
commanding me to stare endlessly at
screen after screen after screen after screen after screen -
my screaming pacified by flashing lights
and buzzing jibber-gabber.
infinite scrolling consumes isolated nights,
meticulously crafting a self-projection
made from inverse other-reflection
to deflect nagging fear of
detection and rejection.

can you really hear my inflection
from this typeface
and condensed pre-packaged mind-space?
i feel like i'm speaking,
but feedback is empty and misplaced
only muttered out by thoughtless mistake.
well once i pin me down
ill stick you beside,
and we can melt into cork board
a collage of disintegrated insides.

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.

there is a universe inside your chest
infinitely expanding
though infinitesimally slow
at times
boundaries stretch, breathe
though confusing at times
destruction feeds growth,
dichotomous paradox forms whole,
stars implode, give way to supernovas,
give way to planets filled with lava and snow
there, inside, a universe
constantly churning,
the incessant spin of all burning
that births light and shadow

here I stand on the precipice.
here, in an amorphous dusk and dawn,
unclear if day or night
is about to kiss the horizon
unsure if I should call to moon or sun
or neither,
or    you.
here in limbo, arching my spine to
sneak under the guardrail of loving
here, instinctually shoving myself
into bottlenecks and genie lamps
oh, how my gypsy soul wants to run,
yet feels so enchanted it stays, here
on the precipice,
itching to gain entrance
into the universe brimming
inside of you

there
there, inside your chest
there I said it.     and I'll say it again,
and I'll say it even louder:
I confess! I'm enchanted!
I'm enamored, enthralled, enraptured,
I want my heart
to know your heart,
I want to dive chest-first into your outer space galaxy nest
an astronaut without a helmet,
I want to explore, awestruck
never trying to label, box, or understand - simply experience
your universe

there, I finally said it
I'm finally starting
to write the poems I'm afraid of,
the ones I don't want to say out loud
I'm starting to write out shadows and solar flares and floods,
starting to let my heart bleed out of my pen, cause
what the hell am I hiding from?
what are we all so scared of?
we were ****** into this strange world
blind and wet,
groping in the darkness for heaven
meant to rip ourselves open again, again
meant to feel with the depth and tempest of oceans
meant to risk and be fools and fall to meet rose-hued ends

I just want to make love with the light
of a thousand candles, a million stars, and the moon turned on
and panting
silver dripping from her tongue,
dizzy with the heat of solar undulations,
stripping down to the heart of the matter
down to the simple truth of it all:
I was born to feel,
and my god, you...
you make me feel universes
you make me feel thunder and lightning and bedroom churches and power surges
you make me feel sunrise stillness
and it makes me fall silent.
so here I am, writing the poems I'm afraid of
and sending them out, messages
in bottles, adrift
in the endless oceans of your universe

Fumbling fingers yearning for connection,
Reach out through negative space,
Crash headlong into rejection.
Curl back in defeat,
Clenched fist to deflect,
Fiery agony of regret.

An empty, disparaging inflection
Cut from a hot pink tongue, flapping
Dispassionately disproves theory of interconnection,
Maybe myth, fable, love story --
Or maybe lack of detection,
From calloused palms,
Roughened with each ingestion
Of honey suckle poison.

Was this the original intention?
Or did the son choose to elect
Another hidden path, indirect.
This haze manifests crystalized predictions,
Of hands meeting thighs, meeting hips,
Pushing forward climactic introspection,
Or just another muddled reflection,
Of my endless projections,
Always  failing tests of retention,
Mind permanently trapped in suspension,
Of spiraling tension.

Excuse my bliss-trance
I've been seduced by the fragrant floral pheromones flooding the air,
The lilac-laced wind has wrapped my lips in splendor and
Left my eyes heavy lidded hazy
Enraptured gazing at the velvet vulvas of lilies.
The blossoming world casts it's spell of subtle sensuality
And I am left stunned in a stupor,
Heart oozing out of my orifices,
Falling in love with everything I see
Simply because it exists.
I'll caress every snapdragon to uncover it's mysterious caverns,
Stretch to kiss the slender necks of tulips,
And weave violets into my crown so our essences intertwine.
My collarbone is blushing crimson
And my head is drained of reason -
Tis the season for romantic abandon.

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

Thunder claps blood red,
Splattering souls down from the sky.
Rain pouring in sheets,
Undulating waves of shhhhhhhh,
Shining lightning, lighting the land,
Pictures in negative contrast.
Purple pop, poisoned pole,
Hit with pristine precision.
The storm gods must have seen
The sinking holes in me,
Since they're filling them all in
Floods of fragrant liquid,
Pouring out from me into the
Sob-soaked soil below --
Symmetry of the sky and I.

{if you would let me:}

i want to unlock the steadiness of your hands and the tranquility of that knowing gaze,
unfurl the scroll tucked deep inside your ribcage and
set a metronome to the beat drumming in your chest.
i want to decode the secrets folded up in the corners of your crooked smile and chant them mixed into sacred hymns -
gibberish and syllogism.
i want to feel the electricity pulsing vigorously in your tempest
and the crack-crack-BOOM visceral quake of thunder shaking at the edges of understanding.
i want to chisel at the surface of your caverns 'til the exterior gives way and the inner waters surge through.
i want to stand waist-deep soaking in the river
and learn the intricacies of its currents,
the way it flows over-into-through itself and smooths jagged surface.
i want to hear the song of its roaring waves and whisper harmony into the wind,
trailing my fingertips along the waterbed
i'll spin with whirlpools spontaneous.
i want to hold the heavy earth between my palms,
and let the sandy subtleties slip through the cracks.
i want to caress the faces of rock formations crafted
by the weathering of decades as a blind man discovering through ardent touch...

meditating on intimate geography, i'll construct a map to the sacred space where our spirits meet
overlapping in synchronicity.
and if you commune with me there,
i'll uncover the mysterious universe bursting forth in me, and we
can learn how to integrate our corners of infinity.

There is a calm center within me;
It flows from deep rivers of breath,
Spiraling up and out in every direction.

There is a calm center within me;
Grounding me with sturdy roots,
Soaking up the sweet soul beneath
My rocky hard surface
Through twisting tunnels, tumble torrents.

There is a calm center within me;
Laying soft and still under rushing currents,
Reflecting patience, serenity, consistency
To my mistaken misplaced preconceived perceptions,
Oh they appear to be everchanging,
While the truth is they're stuck going round and round and round
Over the same cyclical trap, making me dizzy.

There is a calm center within me;
It is my mountaintop of mercy,
Where my mind meditates and marvels
At the we of conscious connection,
Spreading from me, reaching out to other frequencies
Emanating from peaks which surround me,
Where the dichotomous
You-Me, ******, Us-They;
Melt into a spectrum of WE --
And oh, I am just beginning to see.

There is a calm center within me;
There is a calm center;
There is calm.....

There is a calm center within me,
Let it flow out.

I can still feel flight
Of buoyant fleeting
Motion flowing through
These now weighted limbs.
And my heart still sputters
In 5, 6, 7, 8 time
To Balanchine's divine
Choreographies -- Oh,
Spinning in ecstasy,
Visions of ghosts in me,
Waltzing with ******* and,
Overworked tendencies,
Blink -----
And you'll miss
That moment when
Dreams became ash
Falling from rafters.
Dust glistening in afterglow
Appears to shimmer
Even when it lands in your eyes.

seconds
     ticking
          tick-tick
    flip-flop
         ti-
             tick-
                  ticking.
poking     at      me,
c o a x i n g me
        to move:
stand up, get out, be, hear, see, do,
everything's right in front of you!

those two
        idle hands
                
should be crafting a cat's cradle of cathartic creation…

but easy comfort
         in apathetic

                                                               ­ nothing,
in slowly
         being e n v e l o p e d
cuddled back into, back into, back into my bed of
                                                                ­                                        blank…
slate, blank mind, blank hands.
blankets covering a blank stare at a blank ceiling.
smothering the murmurs
of the matador
in
     my
          chest,
I  s  l  i  d  e  into a hazy half-dream.
the light slips past,
going home with the sun
and listening to
lunar lullabies,
I
         sigh & hum
              slinking
                            into yawns
excusing myself for d r a g g i n g
        tiredness
                     pulling on   my   strings.

sinking,
       sinking
                   into sulking.
staying
        to sit
                 in sadness,
                                            sinking.
tic­king
       ticking
                   t i c k i n g
TOCK

the blocking of
      my eyes,
             ears,
                 hands,
                      feet,
                          heart
stymied by my own will.
and it will
continue
      for
             e t e r n i t i e s
of absolutely
                   arbitrary
                               nothing.

expect for cookies.
I will pledge my honor to soak up all sweetness so that my bones might
      rot
          faster,
             sinking,
                 weighting,
                       wearing,
                          tearing,
                                        s
                                           i
                                              n
                                                 k
                                                    i
          ­                                            n
                                                         g
                                                              .­

spiraling out faster,
                                              sinking
into another
                                               sinkhole
black void of destruction
                                              *******
the color
the dimension
of
me
into the next bed
                                             dungeon
for sleep,
dreaming of
                                             sinking:
plummeting past plumes of poisoned plum trees
plop perched atop an immobile glass-sealed sea
yet,

I
        sink
                     in –
                                            apathy.

the fathers of the forest turn a new chapter,
all silent like ripples of breath upon a lake.
under the gaze of a waning solar mistress
they rotate their pigments and shed their costumes,
revealing decades of patient listening.
the stars tango in unison to the left,
holding hands and spinning so quick they appear
motionless
to the eye of the beholder.
I stand in awe of the illusion of stability
as I hurtle through the milkyway on a melting rock.
the sheer impossibility of unveiling meaning
at the ephemeral core of this reality
stings at my stomach like one thousand hornets drunk on whiskey.
and as my laugh echoes orchestral through the meadow,
I discover the secret of everything.

I curse my body daily.
Waking up with the sky, my tongue
lashes red sunrises onto my thighs,
my lungs vacuum a familiar
poisonous plume. Oh!
the relief of mortality!
the sturdy promise of decay!
An ancient blood pact with the moon
turns me sour at her zenith,
and I slink down in my weather-torn coffin
smirking with anticipation.
Crashing waves of maggots pour
over and through me,
shaving away this amorphous effigy
to dust, debris.
Released back to the soil,
soaked in dew,
reformed in clumps by absent-minded shoes,
bled dry by stelliferous roots of sycamores -
my body giving birth to life
in ways I never could before,
in ways only revealed to me
by death
the spurious specter becomes pure again.

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.

my nostrils spit fire
sandpapered passageway from boiling lungs
cracked and ragged,
bursting rivers to dust bowls
try to keep breathing, dragon woman.

so naive, how I believed collecting miles upon miles of rusted road signs and concrete structures
between
us
would wash your face from my mind
as if I had not already seared your eyes
into the sky of my daydreams
even now, you stare into me

I gnaw bloodstained lips,
scratch fevered fingertips on tweaking knees
and you,
you are rabidly foaming in my memory

how does an addict quit cold turkey
and not remit?
I ***** your name to strangers any chance I get
just to feel it
crawl out my mouth and tumble through my ears
back into the creases of my mind
pupils ****** open, I can hallucinate your breathing in my lungs
bartering oxygen for ghostly touch

werewolf mistress
haggard howling at a new moon
leave me to commune with absence,
to laugh in the face of doom

metal mountain majesty,
rest your weary bones with me.
calling all concrete angels to the streets
time has come for spirit and sky to meet.
transmutation of me to infinity,
intimate touch inspires divinity so
treat the porcupine souls with an extra kiss,
remind their soft underbelly of the
strength hidden in bare skin vulnerability and knowledge from within.
there, there delicate dandelion,
keep finding cracks in the sidewalk
to push up through,
beauty and life will follow you even into
the unforgiving jaws of iron gods
that rip bone from sinew.
and remember:
all life is but cosmic comedy,
the universe giggling in paradoxical remedies
riddling harmony in a discordant key
unfolding rigid arms into gentle giving -
notice the earth's truth still living
in the metallic city.

would you please drop me a line
send out a space in time where,
we are intertwined in serpentine spinning.

my mind has been imagining
the harmonics of our laughter
and how our limbs would fit together
resting weary muscles against each other.

trying to decipher your eyes
foreign tongue, flitting broken morse code
across thick air, heavy unspoken load.

doubt wields a sharp sword
that splits my desire - reaching & running
backwards, retracting hands that yearn
for things they know will burn -
searing truth into naive heartstrings,
that tethered themselves to dark misgivings.

my professor tells me that
'we often infer our attitudes through behavior
rather than direct action through intention'
so i'm picking apart
my every move - rewind, re-watch, repeat
the black & white play continuously fluctuates
through infinite shades of gray
as i'm retracing, re-reading between my swiveling lines
to interpret my flip flopping flightiness
i'm flitting across the floor
and my forward motion propels me backwards
into a merry go round of maybe, possibly, & sort of
blurred up & down, up & down, round & round
past decisions that I regurgitated
and now re-ingest to reinforce their meaning
but the recurrent ambivalence I taste
keeps my see-saw heart swinging
and i'd love to have a hand to hold
but all i'm finding are holes to sink into
and the blanket of darkness provides a comforting
lack of sight, but growth lies in the light
so i'll backpedal with all my might
hop on your rocket ship & take a deja vu trip
to the land of indecision where our hearts live.

chirp-i-derp chickadee!
flee across the sea with me to seek foreign fantasies,
we won't need anything but our hands our feet our lips reaching.
kick the dust up and make a ruckus,
we were born to spit fire.
funny thing, desire, always takes you into the inferno,
burning the whole, cleanse and resew the form from hollowness.
in all of this we are but sand in the wind,
minuscule molecules floating on the whims of something much greater.
so I plan on claiming myself, and naming myself
captain.
I plan to trust my intuition to bring all my wildest dreams to fruition.
because what is life worth if I concede to to bow and serve the scemes of men who believe they deserve to hold power over me - HA!
as if anyone could mold me hold me fold me up into cookie-cutter slots.
I spit on you!
catch me if you can, big brother,
you might take my body but you'll never touch my soul,
she's already soaring through saturn's rings,
slinging sapphires round to isis and winking at the moon,
being rewoven through the mother's loom,
knit back into the cosmic womb.
now begin again.

there are some things that do not wash from skin.
even more that can stain a mind
beyond the finesse of chemical cocktails or fire to purify.
birth marks and blood omens and
calling cards of demonic henchmen.
harmless helicopter seeds shed
flakes into a ****** garden,
a second-hand inoculation, mute until retroactively
activated.
a forged acquiescence
to a sprouting voice of dissent:

                                                "you?we­ren't you wise enough to know?
you, fortune-teller, mystic mistress, reader of skies, you
how did your intuition lead you blindfolded into a werewolf's den?
you, knowing the heart's riddled map of blood,
you, knowing the incessant looping of events,
you, knowing the enthralling
addiction of desire, shame on you, after all,
boys will be boys - don't pretend
you did not suspect it of your friends, too.
sayings are rooted in truth,
and themes on that mantra have been force-fed to you since age five, you swallowed
that pill dry (remember? throat surrendering its gag-reflex
like a good little girl, masking the strain) and its been re-administered
in endless refrain
as medicine, as supplication, as pledge, as training - don't you act surprised.
by the ripe and raw pulsation of twenty-two
you
have surely learned the golden rule:
your body
was not built
for you.
your skin,
your flesh,
your
body is:
a pilgrimage to grasp the heat of god,
a beacon on moonless nights,
a temple to spill hungry prayers upon,
an ancient altar of blood sacrifice.
honor your obligation, your tribute, your destiny.
submit to the iron-rod trademark upon your breast.
it will not wash clean, trust me, there are some things
that do not wash from skin."

even more that can claim a mind.

there's a certain feeling
that creeps up
through the hairline fissures
in your brittle bones,
on frigid hollow nights
at the bewitching hour,
when silent stillness descends
a muted film of
forgotten bittersweet memories
over the darkness.

and honey-yellow street lamps
cast ghostly shadows on the sidewalks, who
hold your hand in solidarity
as you trudge through
empty space,
and the dampened humming of the buzz saw
never really fades,
playing tricks on the music in your ears
spinning haunting discordant loops over
sullen sugar-coated melodies.

it's as if you've stepped through a portal
of time and space
where there is no singular destination
but transportation to the
eternal place
in you
where that feeling has lived
every time
it has arisen in the past,
where that feeling will return
in all the visits to come.

and the place is familiar
so you settle into the bed of nails
comfortably,
breathe in the sharp sting of ragged pain,
and float through the museum
of recycled thoughts
on angry waves.
reluctant transparency
plays its hide-and-seek game, and
you re-learn the methodology
of picking up the particles
and packing them
into steel cages
into cardboard boxes
into dusty attics
into black hole space ships -
sending them into the void.

the mundane madness
in the
mystic mirage of memorializing  mourning.

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.

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.

please don't
look me in the eye,
I'm trying to pretend I don't care
trying
to hold an empty stare
without breaking
the nonchalant veneer
I've smothered my telltale heart in

my skin is soft
satin snagged by hangnails
hung in loosened sails
to catch the wind, but go
nowhere,
nothing can rip me in two
if I am moldable goo,
yet I grapple with ghouls
who snicker at my boo-boos

boo-hoo little foolish one
no one is remembered
once their hands have
disappeared into foreign lands,
a lacerated tongues spews
sinister commands
and my brain swallows them whole,
slip-sliding into the wormhole
to become the nothing I feel so

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.

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.

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.

Act I: get triggered by smell

Act II: gaslight yourself

Act III: guide your demons back to hell

Here we go, here we go,
Round and round again,
Same mile markers, same land mines,
Running like a mobius strip.
Have we not learned to jump ship?
Have we not seen the signs?
I always thought we'd never be here,
On the opposing sides of a think line,
When was it that I kept moving forward --
And left you behind.
I can feel your gaze on my neck,
It's boring down my spine.
Won't you see through my viewfinder,
See this upside down landscape
All the homes falling, falling, falling,
From your face rivers running
Fast and furious, ferocious forget-me-nots
Finding failing facets of faith --
Can I ever believe in us again?
I wish my mind would whip me into shape,
Searing lines of us into my truth,
Make a believer out of me,
Ever following your holy footsteps,
All the way across county line
Tracing into California, promised land.

But I am no herded sheep
Bah bah humbug, my little one
I will not flee from wolves with snarled teeth,
I will not be cuddled into a cage.
I am a moth in love with your flame,
Drawing me to my fiery grave.
Well, I'd love to crash and burn with you darling,
But I have dreams of kissing the sky,
And with my fragile wings I'll fly away
Oh glory, I'll fly away.
Do not reach for your butterfly net of guilty conscious,
You will not catch me this day.

But baby, baby, in my bones I'm breaking,
A bitterness -- I was born to love you.
But you so love your chains,
You prophesied they would choke your love,
You wrote the writing on the wall,
You foretold the end of everything,
But I saw it long ago,
Hidden in hazy half-truths,
And I tripped on the seed of doubt that was planted.
And oh, I've watched us fall apart in
Ten thousand different ways,
Each piece more jagged than the last,
Drawing pictures in my blood,
Sidewalk art for hopscotch and lost hope,
Held in the ground.
I'll build a shrine to this lost love of mine,
Candles, pictures, a vile of tears,
Surrounding our hearts buried below.
Dead flowers strewn across the floor,
I'm picking their petals with poisoned precision.
He loves me, he loves me not...

He loves me, and I love him,
But at this hour, in this place,
It didn't pass the test,
Our love must rest.
Let its grave be a wellspring of new growth,
Let us water it with compassion and understanding,
That it might rise a fresh garden,
Someday, somewhere, somehow.
I will diligently tend.
I will not lose sight of those soft, soulful eyes,
That first drew me closer, closer...

May you always feel my hand pressing into yours,
May you always feel my love surrounding you,
And may we meet as new spirits soon.

Excuse me,
Can I squeeze past your apathy?
Get to the heart of everything,
Where spikey pillows
Lay on gravel beds.
Do you want to paint the town red?
Or purple, most likely.
Won't press into
Reforming bruises,
But you'll be elsewhere anyway,
Too far for clinging
Fingers to wiggle out,
And grasp sturdy hands
For support on the balance beam.
The composed serenity,
Laughter and glee
A marvelous masquerade
Covering the demons in me
That you know well.
But I'll set down my baggage
To fit between stolen seconds,
To sit in hand in hand
Silence.
Our heartbeats meeting at the palms
Sewn to lovers
Beckoning you with magic
Tricks I can't replicate
When begging for morsels of reciprocation,
And chastising myself
For expectations.
Silly sullen child,
Waving toys at you,
Please play with me,
Drop a line,
Drop your excuses,
For dropping promises in the dirt.
Wish they'd turn to dust
Rather than sinking me
Through lightning sand,
Sprinkled with shards
Of broken glassy hands.
Can you feel my desperation?
Like when we were
Interwoven in ineffable stagnancy,
Stifled in sticky still summer air,
Muffling every sound
From this moldy mouth.
But it's an orchestra in my mind,
Dissonant dirge repeating it's chorus
Into infinite insanity.
Call it like you see it, darling
But I've already
Drawn my line in your sandy heart.
We're both treading water
In this tumultuous ocean,
Both been tossed
Headlong into tumbling waves,
And I tried to
Throw you my life vest,
But you floated by
On something else,
And here am I,
Drowning in disbelief.

you felt like a new texture, a fabric i'd never slipped through before,
but darling,
you and i are merely old habits gussied up in
tulle and a paper mache artifice - ghoul masquerading as prima ballerina
fouette for me baby, twirl me dizzier than a whirling dervish
and flounce me on my head to spin out over this choreographed failure.

i've shoveled so much chocolate in my mouth-hole this weekend
i think i'm rotting from the inside out,
made of only sugar blisters and quicksand sores
that are bursting new caverns to life
crafting a base relief depiction of my longing into my throat,
how deliciously destructive!

i'm loony-eyed swooning over this 90-watt moon replica
and these reflector paint stars!
oh, i think i'll trade the entire night sky for this masterpiece
and a macrame bandage for my chest,
much more utilitarian than the atmosphere i drown in these days.

my reckless howling and witchcrafting whimsy
have loosed my lungs from their cage,
wheezing out an incantation into the far-reaching wind,
Everest is ablaze under my spell
sobbing it's ice into the earth and
melting it's bones to ash in my palms.

some men just want to watch the world burn,
i, however, merely want to reconstruct it
from the bottom, up
shoveling all of its innards to the surface
and making the unseen
known.

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.