Dear John,

All my poems are addressed to no one,
And no thing.
You see, I’ve been trying to braid scenes, create spaces,
To hide and for you to seek. A sanctuary, a sin.
We could dream of fortresses,
places to protect us
From the worst of all: ourselves.
But we are here, in this city,
And your mouth is a sky,
Setting, leaving words black.
Every dream is on water,
And every morning, I wake up sinking.

In my dreams are ships, are sinking,
Are floods of skies and no rain,
Are jungles dry and thick and my finger on the trigger
Of a camera, imagining a frame to fit everything in
Side. And outside, car rides on roads closest to the
milky way. Bells do not chime in America, only horns, only
a billion birds fly but have you ever caught one in your hands?

Do you unravel yourself before falling to bed, but only dream in your sleep?

it was a pinnacle of ideals

every time
it rained
we tasted snow on our tongues
and inside
we pressed our cheeks
to a fire

and when discovering grass is the tip to woven roots,
nimbly, we fashioned strands
of earth into crowns
that slipped away from our fingers

before we were royal, before we created
our kingdom

I could have sworn
  I could have sworn this
is what I needed. But,
regret (a
nasty metal)

And I wish I could drain myself
of all which it no longer needs,
when this is what I need:

Please, Listen, You
no longer know what you want and
what you do, you can not have it. Oh
God. Oh god. god, you say you are
everywhere. I have
not seen you in even
the most empty of spaces

Full and boundless and tumbling
across the plank that
is the universe. And us,
lay quiet as a breath but
don't forget to breathe. We, a seam:
holding together
two betweens.

Cool water in grains of sand &
undone stars.                     from here,
both are billions groaning
for less and more.

nerves stalk the battlefield, strangling,
only to beat out another breathe. only
to continue limping lamely and
timidly, I wander

home, holding my own
body bag. Tongue tied and
Toe-tagged:

forfeit!

Here: I've forgotten how the lakes freeze over. How the cold wears you, how the snow strips us all from the same tree. How breathing is breaking through the clouds.

How I was never ready.

Strange, from above, how the white of the world is an iris waiting to erupt. There is so much turbulence and yet not a single vein brings blood.

How the highways snake like veins, how this is nothing like a car crash  but a prayer to God.  How I was crashing next to the sea. Sleep soft, sleep violent

take me to the slaughter house
and behead me like the
pig that I know that I am
—raw and oinking,
squealing with gluttony
and delight

and shame:
the ugly ******* who
roasts me on an open flame;
licking my belly, large
and content and
although I attend church,
I never once prayed
for the body of a sparrow, this was always just
the direction in which I flew

I pray to be devoured:
finished with
licking lips & extended
bellies. I ask of you to eat me &
then never think of
my taste again

the hunching and the quivering
the way your hands are stripped like leaves
void of color
the way we *******
too many times to unearth ourselves from this
coffin of the bed. Morphing your face
into howling ground—those
days are hungry and wild,
moaning to be gone

remind me of the way it tastes on your lips
of the way the smoke is coy with you, holds itself around your mouth
for a lackadaisical second, the way you appear in shades
under the moonlight; is patient; is occurring slowly to my eyes

the smoke holds, breathes on its own accord
the lapse of lilac scent far removed from last summer in
the northern woods, teeming with a softness even in the ******* chirp of  birds nestled on birch

now it is gravel; it is jarring; it is the way you hesitate like cigarette smoke;
caught between leaving too quick or never leaving at all

i.
In your arms, I felt like a child
Not a woman.

Listened to warmth, the
Tin raindrops outside and this

Bright light. Accepted
it and laid on you. Worn

Like the Midwest flatlands,
many arid miles longing
terribly

To comprehend, I can’t.
A glimpse of the shadows

Of the mind in the day of you:
Stripped and tender,

Raw. I bury my head
Like a child.


----------------------------------------(alternate version)


ii.
Like a woman – like a child
In your arms – (is) – raw
I bury my head. I feel like child.
Listened to the warmth of
Tin raindrops outside and this – stripped and tender
Worn, the mind in the day of you
Bright light like the many arid miles
Like the Midwest flatlands, longing terribly
To comprehend. Accept it
and laid on you.

The carcass of subway walls brick paved ways foreign tongues the hulled out ribs of a train car drenched in scents unfamiliar:

You no longer know what you want.
What you want, you can not have it.

The checkered cabs have come and gone.
Hot melon, lime juice sipped by girls with practical names like
Petunia. “Fill me up,” she saltly said. So, with words, she swallows up out, erode the beds of fingers and of the sand, rode up the preying tide, rusting the shoreline like a spoon. Poison ivy and pennies, brass nickels and gums.
Flaking leaves from branches, barren and sad. Growing up from them are twisted spines, prodding the landscape of iris greens. Drowning pinks, hot melon, lime juice -- quickly,  swallowing raw.

What else can I say but a chest feels heavy with every moment
When you forget to understand fully
Memory is just time—and then time
Identifies us. Just sever the head and forget the rest.
Red. Red worry rests on a blue
Heart. It rests on the chest and it
hurts to breath.

I’m dying, now. Right now.
And it seems fruitless to worry about inevitable things but
heart throbbing head pounding twisting dance two left feet
             (on the brain) (on the brain) (on the brain) (on the brain)
       anxious sleeping on the brain silently on the brain

What's the difference between
Silent terrors? Stalking
In day bloom in life’s bloom
And the miserable future,
The hopeless past, full

The house burned down and I lacked the curiosity for the world outside of those walls,
now ground
up and spit out.

It's not like it matters to me; it matters to no one.

So I keep dreaming,
only in your bed or nothing
I cannot think without you.
I can only write without you.

Keep dreaming, only in your bed
Or nothing. Or nothing, flooding over the rim of the cup,
is everything—it used to be. Now
memory squeezed me dry and left the pulp

slowed to a halt:
a winter afternoon
or the sun’s departure in
the northern woods—
this is I,
and you as well with your heavy
eyelids and heavy hands.

we still are not light;
not the lithe feet of a
whimsical dance.

we are not the yellow light
in slits across the
wooden floor.

we are hot air
running thick in
the mouths of all who
dare stand in the heat

—yes!

for the sun has drained us of our green
but left us gold.

for this, we are enduring.
for this, we have tried
not to stab ourselves
with our own sharp spines;
the golden sword of
of thoughts.

time has passed. time has roped around the summer sun a noose.
dulling into an insipid tremor,
into a dull night that flags behind
the day, clinging on to what it can:
the edge of the grass, the
corner of the room.
spreads, rests; every day,
it seems, the clouds presents themselves
across the table of the sky;
laid out to be feasted & devoured,
   soaking with the lilac purples and, for dessert,
a red clementine sky.

Yet the man in the kitchen, after
a day of work,
humming over beets
                (a dripping hot crimson),
waits to sink his teeth into the
dinner plate;

behind is the
sun’s last reactive flinch to
her brief encounter with night.

it was not blissful
nor was it sweet.
not a plum—
dangling, juicy, & waiting
to be swallowed;
no, the days have been
seemingly deceitful.
rearing its head with delight;
throwing itself into the high of the
sky. but below, the smaller things,
they bend their spines deep to
bare the weight of
the plump sun, heavy with
her expectations.

I am 21
with more scars than years

a water soaked canvas:
prune

to be alone,
I'm still not sure.

So it shows:
branded.

Don't ask what I mean-
I cannot say with words
but instead

the cries
slither from a razor's edge:
joy.

I am prying myself
into time

into whatever is
more
than I.

back then,
it had a different smell to it

not rainwater or
ale on my pillow

I love you so much.

except so much is choking
sputtering
approaching gently
with your swollen shame
an unchanged bandage of time,
rotting

well promises are like roofs:
slanted, leaky,
tangled like a pair of legs
with scabs

I cannot tell you the way the ocean sounds, but
it is not the the wind roaring in waves
or
the sunset over durham, north carolina 
because i fell asleep, in the back seat
 with a face burnt through the glass. 

a night blinks,
starless.
chattering and according.

in night, I listen to the freckles
across your face.

here I am again, touching an echo.

I want to hold you the way
the trees do, the leaves
fall to be
caught
by grass.

the way you blink
makes me miss the
eyelashes
which fell selfishly
for wishes--

--take them back

bemoan
the daffodils-
death for
winter's advantage

carousing  from
beneath the
dandelions;
the world seemed lazy

please, honey
honey suckle, drip over
to me. to taste you would be
so delicately sweet
carnivorous  roses, the reason for
aphrodisiac desires

please, dear,
awake beneath willow
and wide and rest your curling head
upon the lap of the
lilacs-
unbeknownst
the queen of
backyard kingdoms.

the punch line of this poem
is sweeter than the
smell of old jeans, grimy
under the cuff. it was a disingenuous summer
on our backs. earth worms
belly up in the sun.
writhing. pleading. drowning.
sand rubbing the wrong way on the calloused
cracked heels of summer.
neck slummed against
steering wheels.
burnt cheeks from leather.
tough.
I can’t remember, though.
fed on my memory more than on my body.
the clouds less appetizing than
cotton mouth: violently quiet

touch me,
terribly
the way the bed bugs do.
through wiry holes in the springs. crawling.
mechanically.

go down like the sun, still hot
bothered
gnat bites in the armpits of the knees.
closer, closer they crawl towards
skinned palates

i.
But in a dream, my eyes were bleeding into cups, into my mouth; gushing. My father told me- "the ***** is wearing off," so he called the doctor. Doctor prescribed pills. Two in the morning. Two in the night.  

Diagnosed with a tick under my eyelid, it was ******* my sight: this is why I lack foresight.

But two days later, the bleeding began again. It was mixed with water, now, a hydrating blood running out of my nose, into my mouth. Choking on inward screams, "tell me." tell me. tell me, then, what else could be wrong?

ii.
Unknown questions, for they were never asked. It  took all the day to realize the rain. The rain was hitting the tree’s cheeks in the face and I bite my tongue, brushed my teeth, going on and about until in the kitchen, I look up and realize the rain. It runs in the gutter.

iii.
Somewhere else: a papa in the front row looks down at his baby girl, shows her how to perform the cross. How do you suffer? Oh, so sweetly.

iv.
Without vision, I have you kept behind my eyelids, in a hallway with
your head pressed against the paper wall. Between walls, there exists a moment when the world isn’t what you think it is. You told me you wrote a note that I never knew of until now. There are many things I never knew of: you until you, time as something other than a line,  
and right now.  I meet you between walls and that’s enough.

the moon's crescent muscle
nurses aching bones,
grasps the hairs on the back of the throat
until mourning leaks through
the slacks in the window:
cold and whole

I thought you thought
you made a mistake and I was
ice, hooked under the bottom
of the boat floating on the heavy bay

laid heavy like my hand rolled on the
front door **** to indicate your goodbye:
outside air brushes hair off the branch,
electric and alive.

inside, the stars make a mess on the floor and
I fall asleep smelling your hands:
dishes, soap floating on your spongey palms,
scrubbing the small plate of my back.

I thought the scabs on your knuckles was from peeling
winter but it's love- violet in its violence.

i.
you were a field report
of illness 
of twenty mountains 
and mounds which 
we could not
step over. 
instead, we leeched 
upon boulders in
the sky, which 
eyed us down with specific uncertainties.
divided doubles of 
destruction,
presently

ii.
it touches the lips.
you bought me a drink.
with the tip of a glass, nations, countries, worlds
spill down my esophagus.
cosmopolitan, please
cultivate on the curve of a tonuge licking the lips 
inching upon the longitude of the spine

iii.
i guess we were dreaming
of other things, instead of right now.
when we were dreaming,
i was chewing the inside of my mouth
picking apples from orchards
where we never went.

iv.
instead of a journey of the world
it is not taking motions while i had the chance
this is natural
flinch.
this is time weaving braids
of memories with nimble fingers

v.
I’m scared to remove the splinter on the underbelly of things,
like the mold under the carpet;
both are soiled with avoidance.
we cannot apologize for
now until later,
but by then its always too late

vi.
i walk on the sides of my feet for months because
of the fear of what lurks
under, the tiles
is a growth unfolding from the center
and not a journey out, but a growing up
apart

vii.
a criminal chained to the boy in
a bed which is a sea
arms wide
and eyes like florescent
light. unnatural and ultraviolet
infectious affection

when stomach says: "you are told with erosion
that empty is to be filled."
to fill, to fill with what? everything with words because
emotion emotion, a feeling so because words told you so
for disorder to play with order,
but no? what’s between?
another morning, then.
later, then.
when things fall, they always will
will they always fall?
they fall willfully, always

when the spaces between teeth is not enough
to contain what’s oozing in:
the edge of a back,
the corner of an ankle’s ***,
bile black belly,
no other place devours like home

bubbling up, up,
over, an avalanche over mountains!
maximizing the minimal-
with everything. With everything gushes out of my mouth over the backseat of the car and my head slaps the mirror and eyes roll over like a dog woofing for a bone: savage things, ******* on the concrete and stepping on cracks.

"Stop looking down little one," mama said, "my back won’t break"-
break/short break/rapid break. You plunge forward at the sign and my eyes drop downs to the side, and Coke falls over the knee.
Droopy eyelids snap open rubber bands:
the world flies around and I’m swatting at it
grabbing at the air like a firefly.

You grip the wheel as you gripped my tongue as I crawl my head between knees: little mountains, remember? Swing over, left foot, right foot, left foot, halt, swing over to the side of the road as hard as the cushions cracked.

Memory is not the same going down as coming up:
the slide of a tongue who’s playing catch up.

The answer was always to bleed but not like this, not with you

another morning
when you search
later when things fall
they always will
stretch out to
each day, a phenomenon  of
order and disorder but no,
what’s between?
bodies, fall the same way
each time
eyelashes too on the same place,
same spot on the face
feeding into it when that’s what
it wants what it wants is
for eyelashes to
keeping fall and wishes run thinning
since wishes unwork and unwind
and the same lashes
the same wishes
but chaos theory
avoids time
structure, we preside in
P.M.and A.M.
wall to wall
skin and soot on bottom’s heels and ears
and bodies, all the same,
aren’t they?
structure is
unavoidable
chaos theory is without
option
struvture without option
without sound but loud in consequence
its the same
for those like us
burying eyelashed face in
numbers and now-- words
always buried beneath something,
layers of clothing
or layers of pillows
across the belly
until straight enough to sit without
rolls
but rolls of breads, succulent and sweet
and rolls like child’s somersaults
and roles that you play for everyone
and yourself
when layers collapsed within
the walls of intestines
which erode
and the role is you
standing without
rolls and without much else, either
and skin cannot renew
skin cannot replace
you can try for ceramic skin
but thin is breakable,
cracking the hull
of the *****’s boat, the same
***** bandaging what you want to wound  
its structure for bodies
you and you and
the best friend you ever had
with freckles you cannot count
and a gummy smile,
structured the same and
what language do you speak in?
because
              wrapping            
your tongue       around
organs isn’t the same
speech
but the spaces between teeth is not enough
to contain what’s oozing in
the edge of a back,
the corner of a ankle’s ***
whatever it is,
is structured

praying towards the roof of the mouth, cathedral hallways
you said
on my knees elapsing
towards a response from you
but you’re carving out your tonsils in the kitchen
you said
i said
think of the excuses you left on the floor
roll them at me in between eyes
You can smell it
you said
You can smell it on my mouth
mopping the floor with your sight
it’s frightening
waking to
shattering keys
leaving keys in
locks and bed and shelves and waking to keys in loopholes and
a headache
like the swelling of a wave before
he crashes back in
to himself
back in to the shore line of
his face. his face of uncertainty,
uncertainty quivers
the tip of this wave
into a sea of uncertainty
flinches at outstretched hands
fingers readily echoing the ******* of mothballs under the sink
until the pipes are collapsing
upon the cloud we fell in love under, ripe and ready  to rain
when we thundered, and we did, it was not a
drizzle, a collapse, a clap from the gods but a murmur
but nothing.
"Nothing under this sun could hurt me,” I tell myself
(other than) myself,
With my counting numbers,
counting colors,
counting potassium,
iron,
ounces of water
like
128 is 1
8 ounces in 1 cup
1 oz, maybe one and half, in a shot of:
reflux, knee **** reaction, temporary relief
from scrubbing the sickness from beneath your fingernails
with nothing to gain
but body like a jackknife
but my spine cocked like a gun
a body thinning like winter
changing before my eyes
I realize
I hate things that change instead of falling apart completely
humidity picking scabs from the walls
and the rash on your neck.
brown skin running from the blonde of your hair
I miss untouched spaces on your body
the things that touch you but aren’t me
things that change you but aren’t me
like sea to sky, there is no definite line,
between what is
and was,
the first dream I had of us
fingers tracing fingers and I awoke to life-
a fantasy ever since.

But now,
I am sorry for
lashes that drizzle
their whippings onto your cheeks.
minute counts,
minute wishes wasted
Hammered away at my self
, wrapped in sheets unfurling,
peeling apart form my body like
snakes shedding skin,
the coil of his tonuge like
the coil in a car, burnt.
tar, gas, antifreeze drips from
words. Words.
I always get stuck
on words. a word, the words,
let me return—
While eyes silently ran the maze
of your arm, you tell me
“this is too beautiful to be an accident, katie.”  
but if this is not an accident,
then it is changed,
but not by me.

Let’s  begin
When you left  you were shaking off resentment from your skin like
what's creeping up the wrong sill like worms deciding too many things
Left footed thoughts, swinging right in the outfield, me
you up to
bat and ready to
swing  but

let’s rearrange, compose, like a symphony
no like
geometry, because there must be proof in sides

so
Falling to time,
a narrative begins between peeling walls and moldy carpets
here, this is
where, we fell into the hole you hide in the back of your closet
us, American kids, falling in love over fuzz free tv
and candy
coating our clean tongues with ****
playing with our time in-between friction and when time
comes for our tongues to throw pitches against the midfield of your mouth

Fast Forward
you’re carving out your tonsils in the kitchen
with plastic spoons cause us,
poor and unready, for grow up things except diners
silver stained spoons, when all we needed was a god
**** knife,
for two years we get at it like kids do
loving the can opener that rides our back, twisting our spine  

Rewind
up to the neck, wring like a rodeo
but all in good fun,  
cause you only saw it on the television set
and there’s no harm in that television set for now,
no harm in "for now", but only
for right now  for
us,
Purchase kids, writhing for the championship
of the some sea that
diminishes the second we ride the ground
spun, no longer won anything

Pause
sythentically sealed
and hemming like led
us, babies of the land stretching
his back waiting to wash us up to a home,
our silken thoughts snag on the line

so we ride. on the back of things, on the side of the things, on the subway, on the seats with no cushions in your car. that flash flood. thundered silently with no sound. I ride on your back, twisting your spine like a can opener. always on the edge of things, you. you who run round the roads, through forests unpaved. reminds me of that movie: birds cross above your chest as you heave through dead leaves, dying leaves, dying sun, but only for right now. you don’t run anymore,though i wonder the sounds you heard then (other than your heart beating). your heart beats differently now than before, in your temples. you pray in your temples, in your cortex, in your brain sending nerves to your knuckles. chapped lips, chapped words, chapped knuckles. kissed between the mini valleys of your finger’s rooftops. thought the ceiling collapsed from punch, not fruit, but punches on pavement. no skeletons in the closet except for a hole in the wall. we fell into it.

love was caught napping on the windowsill
with eyes closed on knees begging.
two springs, winters, summers, falls into
angry jaws peeking
through windowsills,
through shades of dew.
love snored awake
fumbling pupils looking upwards
in a blister

"you’re mumbling up pulp again, babe.
pick up your head."
give up that ghost that vibrates between quiet hands loud words
and think of the foaming fingers you left on the kitchen floor
roll them at me in between eyes,
I can smell it on my mouth mopping the floor with your sight
"frightening isn’t it, clementine?"
shattering keys
leaving keys in
locks and beds and shelves and waking to keys in loopholes and
a headache
like the swelling of a wave before he crashes back into himself
back into the shore line of his face of
uncertainty, uncertainty
quivers
the tip of this wave
into a sea of
uncertainty flinches
at outstretched hands whose fingers greasily echo
fingers mothballs under the sink
keep telling the rusted problem
stir it around with cheeks like plastic spoons
but a body like a jack knife
but my back cocked like a gun
my baby is back,
always talking about something unless head first into something else
although I’m never quite sure of what.
with refluxs of regret
by bumming cigarettes,
kisses, even myself
"let’s get stupid.” and  i do.
a haze of carnal avoidance  
wagging the finger,
blurred, curled, wagging at me
bubbling up like our own private pompeii
just a phase of the moon,
more like a perpetual elapse because
while humming orange lullabies,
he sleeps with the belly of the beast
and his foaming fingers remain on the floor

even the roots of your hair are warm
amid this dandruff winter.
tribal tracks stretch to melt with your sun belly, warm
twist tongues like bristles  
impasto scars left
behind in soft places
planting harvest in your nail bed.
between motions,
we fall into warm rays.
Stretch our backs- stooped roofs
a rat a tat cat caught in sunlight
tips of fingers crafted
like a porcelain milk bowl
the haven above your lips shatter
fits of grinding dreams.
fall back asleep to black and white sounds
and that **** street lamp:
our room’s own star
moon tucks away behind
clouds like specific uncertainty
curves the blanket upon the handle of our hips

a dance of dizzy precision
vision clipped like the moon
with no hindsight, with  no foresight
with "business, as usual"
i cannot bear to swallow
another one of your highly reactive
chemical reactions that
bursts out of the stopper
into temporary moments of anger
reeling bait like words
hooked; gumless and bleeding with splintered steams, then,
you speak to me
of  treaties, of proceedings, of compromise
you do not what compromise is
i wonder into your open mouth
why you pull away first
you plead for being
drunk on inflation and an ego like a broken thumb
cause you was craving a drink and a hit
for no reason
sipping up liquor leaks from
the roof of your mouth
like raw running yolk
purging pallid spaces between the jeans and the belly
"business, as usual"
a business of
dropping numbers like flies
but it will not matter
the difference between 89 and 98
10 pounds
plummets into a mouth of some savage beast
who gnaws away at my bones ******* the meat
i stand calcified
without collagen,
inflexible
I will keep feeding the beast, today
Today, a kink in the rhythm of some machine
whirling, cranking, spitting out
blades of a tongue pressing stealing into inter
locking steel
Startled, I awake to “business, as usual”
i cannot flex steel tounge
i cannot push flesh down
i cannot comprehend a home that should be
how it could be how  
home stitched up home stitched scars
a home with the worst air pollution in new york
how this effects me, no
how you infected me, yes
now inhaling your ash to my lungs in pipe and in sky
drowning in layers of pollution in the sea of home
drowning in the sea of my mouth
drowning in a mouth like a seagull beak
plucking bread crumbs and scabs
almost drown when i was 10
in that great south bay, sleepy pollution
now, i turn 20 and i stand drowning in sea of the seedlings you planted
how could i be so moldable?
how home would infect then?
it would seep chest and toes and space above my brow
14 deep and 7 to disintegrate
home imprinted on skin now
today,today  i will feed the beast, somehow

I ran like a head on collision. A car crash which you don’t look away, like a bicycle crash flung over the handles. Pondering then, in that moment, why I didn’t wear a helmet. I guess I didn’t have a thought to think about that before crushing my skull on the pavement. I wonder in these instantaneous moments, why you pull away first, before knocking the teeth out. Gumless and bleeding with remorse. Things that have foresight, but maybe no hindsight: an example would be falling on airbags like a grenade. I read once, somewhere, that 290 people were killed in 28 years by airbags. I wonder then, before flying into the sediment, if they had the same feeling of regret (or maybe confusion) when something supposed to save them, killed them.

Flaccid airbags, then. 1 to 2% of frontal deaths are caused by un-deployed airbags. Try to imagine the surprise before hurling through your windshield: “but? my airbag?” We can never really rely on anything, I guess, except for at 12 to 18 miles the airbag might, should expand. Marshmallow cushion, cotton ball fuzz clings. A white christmas dressed in harlot red; a sin of plain bad luck for those people. For me, it’s ignorance
I should have worn my ******* helmet

The world is not
like me.
I am not
the world
who cradles, nurses, spreads,                                          
the hours fall upon the crux
of my elbow. She responds.
Sprays across,
a shade drawn over my eyes.
do not mimic me, mother
earth

Dreams peeled upwards like planted weeds
Grasping to touch a saffron sky
Straining under lasting languish

These dreams, it seems, awaken to the day,
To repulsion of repetitive repetition of tarred thoughts of
Repelling miles away from you
You who, although now, curl inward towards one another
-another moment of
disillusionment, thriving on salted skin

Bruised spaces
Break the backs of arching bridges:
it seems, these dreams of parking lot birds fly never over, never above.

Waken to the sound of drilling teeth
Awaken from an anesthesia slumber
Shaken senses of novocaine

Every morning
undresses and dresses the hum of
Slumbered thoughts,
Who murmur of arising amber sun

Exposing blushing crater sores caked in crashing silence, lay thick like Pompeii’s ash
Powder thrush molten on
seedlings, exposed
being, exposed
Here lies a moment, stained

beautiful thing
i say to my body
but my mouth speaks back to me with
crooked picture frames on walls, a fraction off beat
microscopic holes in my vernacular atmosphere
from one too many aerosol words,
of not thinking before spraying toxic

beautiful thing
i say to my body
but my thighs speak back to me with
tallies marked on skin
a sciatic nerve pleading for no more flexing of
car wheels tracks on waved sand

beautiful thing
i say to my body
but my feet speak back to me with
pinching plastic between nails hammered heavy into
figures blinking upon flat bottomed arches
pliant pleading for weightlessness

beautiful thing
i say to my body
but my stomach speaks to me by
stuffing breadcrumbs down a jagged trail
of the small intestine, appealing

beautiful thing
i scream to my body
but my mind speaks to me with
thinking thinking thinking
that thought has no weight
so weigh on me

a swollen tongue, thick coat of sweat
thumbing the inner cheek of a half eaten peach
festering the breeding of rotten thought
fruit flies

2-[[4-[(7-Chloro-4-quinolyl)amino]pentyl]ethylamino] ethanol sulfate

Sulfate- dry collision with salty white plaster, plaster walls, my plaster teeth in the palm of my plaster hand, the same palm you touched nervously with your fingertips, when your translucent skin showed we have the same blue veins, you with no love line. I’ve ran into walls, trees, dead ends, bursts of hail, but worst of all– you

Ethanol- black liquid gas,a nozzle in my car engine, fracked through my exhaust(ion) burn my esophagus like sweet ginger ale gin, double chin. I’m drunk, so I’m seeing double. Re/frac/tion.

Ethylamino- alcohol: a drizzle in a rainstorm, i can’t contain myself, exploding inside a glass bottle. a defective windshield wiper, reprocessing my words: “ethyl and coke tastes like cough syrup”, I say. either or, neither will help me.   ethyl as fuel is not safe to drink
ethyl as alcohol is not safe either. swirled away in a plastic whirl.

Pentyl- discovered in a collision of ultra violet light with argon, noble gas. overdose symptoms include convulsions (check), drowsiness (check), headache (check), difficulty breathing (check), vision problems, (check). But not for the reasons, or for the causes, I’ve listed.

Amino- building blocks to a withered corn husk of my body. 9 essential amino acids. Find them in your grocery store: egg whites, lysine in sunfish, cod, dolphinfish but please, no mercury. Maybe I have 1 left, maybe 2, after each labored breath entrapped by porcelain walls, cool on my forehead, warm on my hands, dampened dew on fingertips with pressure on my skin, sewer raindrops on my nose, now i’m so good (to you) I can upheave my 7 other amino acids on demand. No more dew on this fluorescent skin, I've always been too artificial to be compared to nature

Quinolyl- you are created by the removal of one hydrogen atom. I am created by the induction of two. This is how we are similar: exposed to light, we change. Your ancestry proceeds you, impurity in a chemical science, derivative of quinoline, which is a derivative of coal tar. you are an dye, a resin, parasites feed on your smell. I lust on your parts, **** out your solubility, desecrate your elements. I own you, don’t think you own me.

4- one milligram less than what disintegrates on the tongue's bitter perception, each night

Chloro- back stroke, breast stroke, my favorite is dead man’s float. inflamed skin, cracked elbows, an allergy

7- years since you’ve been with me, although I own you, you do not own me.

4- exponent of the previous, the total sum of pop art pills by night’s end. sometimes I forget.

2**- the number of techno-colored candies in the morning

A body is made up of chemicals