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.

i fear i am
translucent
and
forgettable.
a vapor that is constantly
dispensing
and
dissipating,
accidentally breathed in by absent-minded victims.
forming weak phlegm at the back
of numb throats,
coughed out with the thought of too many cigarettes.

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?

sticky grasping fingers
unsatisfied with holding lovers at arms length,
greedy to encompass
the entirety of another's being
face-to-face.

crawling up your heart's rickety fire escape,
they toss pebbles at the window
and pray
for a sleepy conscious to emerge.

daydreaming of caressing skin
bare to the blazing sun and gentle wind,
they practice tracing figure-eights
longing to skate
from collar to hipbone
drawing invisible treasure maps
and collecting jewels from creases of elbows.

twitching with anticipation,
swelling with life,
full veins racing to congregate at the tips that would
make contact with the your planetary surface.
they orbit spinning as a moon,
reflecting glow after midnight
and pulling in tides to kiss the rugged shore.

longing to memorize the rise and fall of supple valleys,
they would search like a blind man
fervently running over porous exterior.

hungry with curious wonder,
they purposefully linger centimeters from your edges
begging to be met by your fingers
reaching back to form connection.

chained up on a visceral boomerang to your apathy -
disembody, then shrivel back into my chest.
infested with a vile peanut gallery
snickering in the belly of my ears.
cursed with an over-active mental ***** reflex,
born with the habit of re-ingesting bile and lies.
gag-order on the heart so it doesn't whip me
with it's crown of thorns
twisted from plucking the horns of dead roses.
he loves me, he has no room for me,
beyond the tip-tap of trembling bones upon his shoulder.
i've trimmed myself down with neglect,
i've perfected the presentation of deception
as a romantic encounter,
monotonous plunging of doubt across layers of skin.
carouseling a patch-worked mantra of ambivalence,
motion sickness riding on my collarbone dressed with a grin
heaving and green.
i caught whiplash from sneaking glances at you
while creating the illusion
that i was forever turning away -
always leaving, always shaking out a no,
always building up a wax paper wall
(always clumsy, always patching holes with cotton).
i'm wasting away on the offerings you drop at the pit of my stomach:
all lead anvils and hurricanes.
i wish i could carve out the part of me that thinks of you,
drown it in cyanide, and mock it's funeral with fireworks.
i am toddler-tantrum-flinging my limbs wild at the sky,
eyes pinched shut, and teeth blooding my lips.
loving you tastes of salt and iron,
what a balanced palette for dining on a soul.

I will map the constellations of your sun-born freckles,
obsidian cinnamon blooming on forearms,
trace the reflection of starry foremothers onto skin
as a remembrance of origin.
And when we are light years apart,
I will draw your ancient imprint in the sand and lay amongst your roots,
soaking spirit into my heart.

I am a child with a dusty attic for a mind,
barren but for phantoms drifting through dust motes
suspended
in beams of light sneaking in
between cracks in the floorboards gnawed into existence by
feeble mice mistaking decaying wood
for answers.

I am sculpting my fears
onto bark with the blood of a squid,
outlining the contours of uncertainty,
breathing in-
to quarantined corners.

I have spent twenty-one turns round the sun
searching with empty questions
and a map penned by a charlatan,
blinded and bound
believing my fingers had grasped more than my own flesh, yet

I am huddled in my attic,
scrawling gibberish onto the walls
endless and irrelevant,
swaddled in a flea-infested blanket
of regurgitated beliefs.

"God give us this day our daily intolerance."

I am helpless on the edge of the multitudes,
speechless in the face of unmarked territory,
with wide eyes and clenched palms
in the sight of divine anarchy.

your silence is deafening, darling.
pour me another cup of misunderstanding
and i'll chug it down to ease
the choking passage of razors through my throat,
the singe of blood soaked vocal chords.
the emptiness of your bones
has propelled me to project ancient tomes
to consume hollowness, to color in absence.
i have cued all the thunderstorm songs
and i'm humming along in watery refrain
sluggishly off beat and out of key
to keep the fog from suffocating me.
there was a roaring fire
that's been smothered
by the vacuuming of oxygen.
void swallows void,
fantasy births ghoulish reality.
the moon stands half mast tonight,
stars falling as tears into the sea,
flooding tidal waves rolling over, over
churning lost hands up to hold a choppy surface.
forsake all promises
but cherish me, still.
love takes her last steps off a jagged cliff
and into an etherial hell.

lulled into a false sense
of pure and final release
i let my resentment assemble silently
under a sea of single malt whiskey
and layers of unfinished poetry soaked
ink bleeding blackened tar
to suffocate the forgotten and blind my hands
to the universe hidden in your worm hole.

sand crusted eyes
blinking wildly to **** and clean
shake the dust
bleach the dirt
wash and preen.
my long lost darling
i wonder what evil is lurking
round the razor sharp corners
of the looping maze that's
spinning from my center manically.
maybe if i burry pandora's box
she will no longer haunt my heart
or whisper in my ear
when i lie with lovers in the dark.

the accidental spark of anger
burning at the mention of your name
sets wildfires raging over woods and sea
massacring entire ecosystems in flame.
the only way out is to call a flood, but -
i've drowned myself too many times to keep this up.

heavy hands pressed
into hot skin, slick running
down to escape
a heady, spun mind firing blanks.

find forbidden release -
slide, push, grasp, bite,
moan into open spaces,
to fill empty pauses
of hesitation to ease frustration
through undulations crescendoing,
and breaking into staggered breathing.

covered heartbeats thump, flip-flop, flounder
under oceans tide rolling up to shore,
ensuring the footprints will recede
with the pounding waves, erase
all evidence of pointless bliss
into layers of sand,
churned over & over by ruthless repetition,
over & over into thoughtless submission,
over & over & over & over to climb over
the cliffs of insanity, jump with me,
to infinite depths of jagged teeth
crouching low to cut the heat spilled
by dilated pupils twitching to the driving beat
of some over-worked melody.

painting a precise manifesto
of a knife singularly longing
for supple curves of backs to lunge into,
and carve it's home from bone & sinew,
to nest & fester - rotten refuse.
a bed made of metallic missteps
and unspoken truths
it's only home when your heart is
shredding to fragmented shards
that wish to sink into their own kind.

but beware of the shadows
lurking behind the door marked "escape",
you can run from your monsters,
but you cannot fool fate -
your dark thoughts will inevitably manifest one day.

rigid steel creaking,
squeaking to announce
it's monumental motion,
defying once static devotion
hear ye! hear ye!
the rusted machine is
jolting back to life
like clockwork, completing
patterns encoded by
calloused fingertips, pressing,
pushing, prodding, pleading with
stiff, achey keys to
punch
the storyline
back
into
place.

naive program under illusion
of sentient choice,
springs open arms
to rejoice the repeated reinforcement
of recurrent information,
fed & regurgitated & re-ingested to be fermented
in crystalline form of mind,
tinkered into alignment
by sinister hands with crude cracks,
leaking oil.

discordant dance of metal,
twirling tango
wrought with perilous footwork
to outline the model of assumed complexity
that shrouds the simple harmony
of one-two one-two -
one step after the other, followed by another
steady rhythm of cause & effect.
go head, neglect, or reject, only to
crawl back in reflection to beg for
one more turn round the ferris wheel,
to glimpse the heights of insanity
that reach ultimate clarity
of infinite perspectives unfolding,
one into another, projected onto lovers
and strangers - all alike.

add your rambling writing
of realizations, remembrances, & rehearsals
onto my hard drive,
I want to reiterate - I am learning slowly.
rereading &
restructuring pages
of this minute history.
maybe one day I'll recall
that practice
precedes progress.

if i float on in
with flowers brandished
twisted into curling waves
tumbling from my fountain,
and you mistake my mind
full of mystery and marvel
for a dainty, empty vessel
to be filled with your creeds,
                     may you choke on my knowledge.

if i bounce between
bookmarks of laughter
that lift my heavy pages
aligning my beginning and end,
and you mistake my comfort
for the ditzy daze of a doll
fashioned to be played with,
and put on a collectors shelf
to scoff at imperfections,
                           may you be blinded by my light.

if i am flowing round
fabric billowing to catch sweet
wind of movement, spinning
glee of gliding off the ground
to glimpse golden gates,
and you mistake my joy
for a pair of hips to clutch,
and sneak your jolly rodger
past into pillage and plunder
and poke a broken flagpole in,
                         may you drown in my crashing waves.

if i am still in silence, serenely
lost in my clarity, presence of being
holding my unruly tongue, sleeping,
and you mistake my peace
for a void, desperately empty
to be cluttered with your
ostentatious masquerade of manhood
or statue to your *******,
                         may the wonders resting behind my sturdy walls
                         rise up rumbling pillars of awareness
                         and demolish your preconcieved
                        patriarchal perceptions of who you want me to be.

broken mirror of emaciated imagery,
stupid, slow, sorrowful ****, simply here for silly sulks to stick their sweaty sliding cylinders down to search for silk to steal and sell and sew as seeds of slandering stigma to slinking sailors.

may it be shattered in two and remade, a new
unified whole of harmonious equality,
shaking the chains of dichotomous value,
break the monstrous institution.

slither singed and sullen back to your tree
little snake boy, you know nothing.
and you cannot fool me into eating your apple,
i already know my truth.

I am still reeling in mistakes I cast
When I was seventeen,
When I was already stuck in my past and my doubt and
Testing feelings with a likert scale misread,
Misfortune on my heart and confusion on my mind.
I still think in meter, still answer in rhyme, still fall in love with ideas of men
Projected onto flesh  and blood and skeleton,
Carefully crafted concepts of cavernous consequence.
I am still reaching to grasp bare bones without carrying a fantasy complex,
My head weaves a life of it's own
Reality be ****** to drown in my sea!
You see,
I thought I fell for your eyes, but maybe it was the mountains staring back at me.
I could never tell your soul apart from nature's majesty, and
I still don't know if I've ever loved anything.
Forgive me if I've trailed my karmic goop through your bedroom,
I am still learning how to tame my longing.
This poet's mind wasn't built for easy detaching.

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.

I found god
while cleaning out my childhood bedroom,
he was buried all dusty
in the left corner of
my mothball closet
underneath the boxed remains
of other men who have left me
guilty and
hungry.

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.

does your mind ever wander to me?
flash visions of my face
across the inside of eyelids
movies of slow motion embrace.

                                                       ­                                    do you hear my voice?
                                                          ­                         moan and giggle and hum,
                                                            ­             whisper profanities into your ear
                                                     and beat the pace of your chest's bass drum.

do your fingers feel my ghosting skin?
brush across those calloused tips
sliding closer, slinking clarity
calamity coincides with conscious choice,
i clutched the corners of certain collapse
clinging to clumsily curtained clues.
crawling cat claws over a carcass.

                                                       ­                  do you remember the very start?
                                         the moment when one of us - i'm still not sure who
                                                             ­     leaned in too close to the other's face
                                                            ­                and sealed the unspoken space
                                                           ­                                       with a deadly kiss
                                                            ­                             which dropped the rain
                                                            ­                                 which broke the dam
                                                             ­                             which released torrents
                                                        ­                            that had been held leaking
                                                         ­                               by tense bones creaking.

and when you gazed into my
melted honey eyes
with you piercing black pupils
and earnestly said:
"they were all mistakes,
but not you -
you
are not
a mistake",
were you lying through your teeth?
did the tumbling
kiss
that followed
seal your deceit?
grasping for my puppet strings
to dance me to your beat,
fog my mind with steam heat
to save your ego from defeat.

                                                        ­                                         i gallantly applaud
                                                         ­                     your flagrant charade darling,
                                                        ­                                                though flawed,
                                                         ­                                    your mask of interest
                                                        ­                             fooled me to blindly trust
                                                           ­                                              and helplessly
                                                                ­                                                            fall
                                                                ­                        into a bed made of rust,
                                                           ­                     glass promises, and folk lore
                                                            ­                              of men who transform
                                                       ­                                       in the womb of love.

does the last night haunt you
stuck on repeat
below the surface?
                                                        ­           do my words float through dreams
                                                                                 ghosting over melting trees
                                                                                       fleeting sinking feeling?
does your running
tug at you,
ripping loose seams?
                                                          ­   and did you feel the weight of my heart
                                                           ­                               as you denied my truth
                                                           ­                      and our harmony fell apart?

i feel i knew from the very start
that this would simply bring
seven layers of pain,
broken nails twisted into my brain.
but hammering down loose memories
and painting over fantasies,
won't cure the disease that sprouted in me.
i crave the impossible,
insanely desire to hold onto those who run.
i surely cursed the sun,
when i turned nocturnal
to answer your cicada phone calls,
because though i have returned to the daylight,
the blight of night-vision
engulfs me,
and i can only see your love's excision
and the remnant debris.

baby i crave rose-petaled
cigarette romance,
let the smoke rise from my lungs
and curl through your canals
caress you in dark alleys and
lead your lips to embrace hushed defeat
reflected in the moon-lit puddles at your feet.

baby i desire the electric plume
of your poisonous touch,
every meeting of our skin causes volcanoes to erupt
spewing lava from my eyes but
my phoenix feathers will keep us
from plummeting asunder.

baby i get lost in the technicolor
pictures playing in slow-motion-reverse,
where sugar coats the screen
from the edges inward, building mountains of
sticky residue for my memories to fossilize into.

baby i chase after loud-mouthed contradictions
with pupils the size of dimes,
i fall in love with vagabonds
and flippant lost causes
who commit heartfelt crimes.

baby i'll track down every demon in you
and take them all out to lunch,
i'll piece together your black hole tar soul
collage of a universe waiting to burst forth,
and i'll hold onto the remnants of whispered secrets
until my museum of you turns back into a live exhibit.

deadly desire for
heavy-lidded gazes and lightning hands slick sliding,
grasping and groping, ground-flung from under me
all assuring this hummingbird heart
"you are wonderful, wistful, wanted"

averting anticipation of
deadpan eyes locked on distant nondescript figures,
the end was wrapped in the beginning, fumbled attempt
at a weightless chemical explosion, gravity is a cruel master - whispering
"that which goes up, must come down"

up and down and up and down and up and down
and back and forth and inside out -
round about box stepping, and white lie butterfly kissing.
seal my coffin with the mangled guts of that mixed tape,
so if i try to come back for you i'll hear
"mute your foolish heart, he was born to flee"

cold sweat startled wake,
to blinding grey light
cutting through torn curtains,
splaying skeletal silhouettes on the floor.
squinting crusted-shut eyes,
trying to determine the ghostly hour
lost between fragmented fever dreams.
head twisting inside-out to wrap itself
around old virtues, stand true
true blue friend, I'll surely desert you in the end.
hand on my burnt Bible to swear
my oath of destruction,
on a war path to eradicate
everything i resurrected
as an effigy to home, love, and identity.
structural anarchy - from imposed symmetry,
to the empty abyss surrounding me
where a single whimper can bounce
off itself, into crescendoing agony.
gather all the rubbled remains
of the once sanctified temple,
but piling stones straight to the sky
won't build a shelter for the aftershock.

dragging  lifeless limbs out into
gnawing-numbing-whipping cold air,
forced to trace worn-in footprints
trod by weighted soles, simply doing as they're told.
blind flight through the same
mile markers and blurred road signs,
of a grey scale town filled with dead ends and cul-de-sacs to spin out in.
meticulous repetitious maneuvering over towers of steam,
skin shielded from burns by a molten patchwork
of scars festering fearlessness on the surface,
and covering  layers of pages of crossed out phrases
left unmuttered to undisclosed faces.
nostrils filled with pipe dreams
blocking the taste of bitter reality
that's dripping down a swollen throat.
lips hinging on the promise of a cigarette
or a cold brown bottle to sink into,
to deflect the rejection of a soft forbidden kiss
projected by sinister ghosts sworn to inflict
nothing but uncertainty and instincts to flee.
soaking in their shadow is crippling,
but its all chocolate and mashed-potatoes
coated with sugar-laced pleas
when i crawl out from under a tomb of old dreams,
and slither into a porcupine bed
to count old regrets until my mind succumbs to sleep.

is my emptiness
bleeding through, into
silent conversations
lying heavy in my mind.
laughter blanketing constant
lack of words
and blank stares.
stripped down to reality,
from a shared shelter of
vision, painted with
radioactive mist.

what once resided
in holy tabernacle,
dwells in the shadow of doubt,
projected back from an
insurmountable shattering of truth.
that which once appeared
to be covenant & sacrament,
heaven-sent righteous intent,
now only heavy sealed cement.

but a chance to reinvent
is beckoning you,
from the other side
of the torn holy veil.
step into a new color of light -
your eyes might squint,
but adjustment is processing,
slowly running through those veins.

but god knows how I love
to cling to old ghosts.
so I buried you in the
bedside table drawer
in a dogwood box.
& I may not believe anymore,
but your spirit still haunts me every night.

a spindly girl scrawls narratives
upon her walls in red ink,
candle flames splash shadow and light
flickering across the window pane as rudimentary morse code
to Venus who hangs heavy in the night.

the howling of invisible wolves
ricochets round alleyways and up crumbling telephone wire,
crawls inside the ears of a hypnotized veteran
"remember the bodies of crooked mountains,
remember the barrel of steaming guns,
remember praying to a god you never knew
crouched into submission."

big brother's hands don't rest in the dark,
every silent minute the masses slide into their coffins
cushioned by LCD screens and soundbite slogans.
an endless barrage of information lullabies people
numb into their heaving dreams, and they don't question
when they wake shaking and empty.

Somewhere smothered --
In between sprinting feet,
And a hazy head
Heavy spun with dreams,
The image of you - dissolving.
Slipping slowly like sand,
Through cracks in a desperately
Clenched fist, seeping
Out through pores,
Glistening a ghostly sheen,
From ghastly truths.

Sometime released --
In between blooming bushes,
And the infinite inhaling
Of passages - hungry, hunting
For fragrance to fill the lungs.
Expelling old dusty promises,
In a windy whirlpool,
Your roots were dug up
From my garden, and you
Dissipated into clean blue sky.

Somehow forgotten --
In between toes dangling,
Off a precipice of golden possibilities,
And the plunge of faith,
To the inconceivable depths
Of my expanding soul.
A cosmic flight to air me out:
Empty slate, open arms.
I am slipping into light,
Reclaim, repurpose, renew.
Back cowering atop the cliff
Lies my memory of you.

a dusk-lit forest full of branches sprouting car keys walks toward me,
reflecting the blood red moon.
stairs form beneath my feet as I step
escalating me up past
the jangling silver canopy into cool green sky.
night darkens with each breath.
waves crashing through the atmosphere tumble urgently past my head
to meet with the spies of the desert floor.
I sigh out my thoughts in bubbles
and they ping-pop up,
exploding
into stars and planets.
standing at the edge of the thick glass lake
that covers the earth, I spew rainbow jacks out of my mouth
and they echo
tink-tink tinktinktinktinktink
across the darkness.
I watch them splash into the sun's paint bucket
off the end of the word,
splattering
yellow and orange up onto the black glass.
stretching my arms a hundred miles long, I dip my fingers in
the glowing colors and taste it on my spiked tongue.
the lily-pads laugh at me for ingesting poison
as I balloon over them
and the lake.
I begin to float, up up & away,
into the green sky.
when i reach the stars, their pointed corners pop me
and I rain down as moonstone,
running iridescent veins upon the earth.

the leaves of the forest are erupting into flames,
flaring orange and honeysuckle red,
swaying, stretching their fingers, dooming their neighbors to burn.
embers catapult skyward and tumble to the ground,
the fire devours itself, withering to reveal hearty skeletons beneath.
the sun is perched atop a golden throne
ever slip-sliding down the earth's dome
to embrace the horizon.
his smoldering gaze fans the kaleidoscopic furnace,
igniting ****** pockets of wilderness,
hovering for only a hushed breath
before bending to kiss another expanse with incandescent pigment.
the wind fondles scorched leaves as they sigh
and curl into their chests.
after sailing the departed to their ashen graveyard the breeze disappears, whistling through a maze of branches.
it carries the scent of the inferno on it's charred palms to the city beyond,
running residue swiftly under the noses of sidewalk dwellers
who absentmindedly look up from their shoes
to see if signs of smoke hover in the darkening sky.

red-eyed pigeon pecking for scraps in the sand
staggering through white-washed ripples of land, and
separating cigarette butts from orphaned leaves.
the sea is heaving her depths
ever toward the static shore,
sure that sore feet will willingly greet her
refuge from the blistering sun.
sons of fisherman
scuttling about on waves no bigger than your thumb,
humming drum beats
to the wind and romancing the sky.
the clouds dome over the earth,
mountainous and whispering wisps upon the water.
my hair is bleached, painted by the daylight
and I am gradually washing, washing away
into the sea.
the world tinted cerulean
my tongue rolls out mysteries, doubts, prophecies
trying to envelop contradicting truths
in a shrinking shoreline.
disillusioned, hands fall slack
from the choke hold at my throat
and salted air rasps into lungs
grappling with the gravity of  tides.

my body is too numbed to speak
to my desperately straining ear drums.
hollowed timpani ba-***-bums echo back ad-nausea.

I've found this magnifying glass is a mirror,
and you can only inspect your shadows in broad daylight.

my heart is full and my tongue spits spite,
biting eyes drink the blood of the blissfully ignorant
as I hand out gold medals to the reapers of the night.

can you smell the crisp air that swallows bonfires
rolling in from over the distant mountains?
the turning of seasons has played its magic trick again,
blooming in a cloud of smoke.

as the beginning fades, I slink into the familiar dance
of the incessant machine,
spinning hypnotic hallucinations.

I stack you upon piles of hay bales and whinny at easy lies,
stamp up dust in hopes of maintaining my belief in illusion,
thinly veiled and wearing rotten.

I don old metal shoes to retrace the path carved for me
before I learned to breathe and blink,
it feels like syncing into cracking expectations
and reciting lines of poetry I pretend to understand.

I am static running in all directions,
stagnant and unstable propulsion,
pinning paradoxical buttons to my lapel to scream my confusion
in silent revelation to the audience.

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

darkened dreams
lead to clouded thoughts
and misplaced steps
of hazy intention.

twisted down underneath
gilded dreams of demise
don't you let the demons rise
out from the land of maybes.

well this turned out exactly
how you thought it'd never be.
giggle and throw that heavy head back
now forward into another drag
of a cigarette laced with promises
of eternal pleasure, endless bliss -
you know it'll never be this color again.

the first is the sweetest darling -
all that follows is singed with
disappointment, or discontent.
pour another dissonant tone into my cup
and i'll drink it right up
drowning my expectations
in sweet, sensuous sorrow.

but hopes are easy to borrow,
and i'll sign up for two thousand
just to watch them fall again and again
into utter darkness-
i know the game of muffled secrets
too well to spill this toxic dump
so lets keep pushing the buttons, harder
til the pump steams in overdrive,
and my scarred scaly skin
is burned, cleansed, and shed.

i'd love to tell you that i don't mind sleeping alone,
that i have tough skin, that i don't sink into my pesky thoughts
and let them marinade me as raw meat to be devoured
down a ravenous cavern burnt to the point of
tasting only its own fiery scabs and blisters.
i'd love to tell you that i never whisper obscenities
to my chest about itself, that i am in love with the way
my hips bulge uneven and wavy, that i don't pinch at my
skin and curse it to dissolve, that i have explored each
inch of my earthly terrain and found it magical
and full of life and wonder, instead of finding
unfortunate mountains bubbling forth where they should not be
and unwelcome things i want to scour from its surface.
i'd love to tell you that i am full of humbled pride,
that i don't question every move i make,
that i am bursting with more of myself that i know
what to do with, but the more i live the more
i discover i am not my own, not an inspired
or unique soul, but i am piece-meal plastered,
shafted together from cherry picked muses
and i find my form unraveling as i wade through
these foreign seas.
trust me, i have long since
woken from the illusion of my permanence, but
i still long to feel true, honest, unmistakably myself,
and each morning i grow more and more and more
aware of my subtle shifting and morphing and reconfiguration
and i find that my environment is constantly reshaping me
with my hands helping.
and i don't know when i signed that permission slip,
but i find myself barreling forward out of my self-conception
my past, my roots, my image,
and it feels terrifying and terrific, trying to listen to
things i have ignored and shhhed for decades, but as i
attempt to reclaim my ground, my existence, i
find it disappears as soon as i think i have a grasp on it,
like chasing ghosts and playing with jello in zero gravity,
it keeps me reaching, fumbling forward,
and at night i wonder when i will be standing still again
and i wonder if i will even like it anymore.

Bubbles boiling over my
Hot-hot-hot tea ***,
Rising up like the tingling
Corners of my mouth.
Toes tap-tap tapping
Along to your soul-swinging
Tune tearing straight through me.
Oh my feet could fly away
With your endless running riffs,
My head reeling with fantasy
Fabricated figments of mystery.
Can't hide it! Can't hide it!
Wearing it on my hands, arms, chest,
Screaming it in soft whispers.
Oh racing round and round
On the edge of my seat
To jump into your lap.
My legs won't stop bouncing
Gotta shake it out before I burst!
Teeth been showing since
My eyes glimpsed your shadow,
Head falling back with laughter
To watch the stars that are twirling
Above my crown
Shooting blinding light into my sight.
Oh baby, won't ya dance with me?
Quick! Before I drown
In this sea filling faster, faster,
Teeming with unknown possibility.

I've been forecasting a wild fire,
It's bursting forth from my furnace,
Ferocious and consuming.
Be careful baby, you're fanning my flame.