On the last day,
in nervous & incoherent scribbles,
clinging to the lines of a
crumpled & stolen piece
of office memo pad paper,
I confessed:

I can no longer tell whether
people have distinct faces.
Focus escapes me.
How, despite looking,
seeing has become impossible.
Their eyes all melt in the dark,
into a blurry array of blue & violet,
(the way fresh oil paint smears under thumbs,
as if the painter himself felt betrayed
& then submitted the canvas to some frantic violence).
The same panic consumes me,
now that the others all begin to appear the same.

I was perhaps,
born with too thin of a shell.
Sometimes, I feel
like one of those dolls from the old country,
You know, the ones that sleep inside one another,
with their faces painted
(mechanically these days.
all the authenticity has been stripped away
just for the sake of appealing to the masses).
Maybe I too crack easily,
(I shatter at the slightest touch.)
I thought once that there was beauty in fragility
but I alone held such a belief.

Just as those figurines,
I too reduce continually in size,
Always shrinking by half,
In the hope that if I am just small enough,
No one will see my emptiness.
In the end, I think I hardly even exist:
I hardly even bother the dust settling around me
& if anything,
that internal void takes up more space
than I have ever wished.

I’m disenchanted by those idiot boxes
& their flavors of the month.
Whether it costs you a penny or a fortune,
I’ve somehow always felt Truth
had to be more than whatever they are selling,
Good God, something in this life must have value.
I need to know this.
So I’ve been out looking for it,
But we are at war,
The people are always at war,
because peace is for the birds,
(or so they say)
Yet I always step on land mines,
By now, they’ve blown off my hands
& also my feet.
So, I can no longer touch,
& I, sure as hell,
cannot run.

You know, my lungs just may burst.
Patience tastes like a barb-wire
in the back of my mouth.

No matter those sprawling views,
& the ever static landscapes,
I am starting to forget what
it feels like to have a home,
(as if before, I truly knew that,
I don’t think I did
but you know,
the mind has ways
of making things feel
softer in retrospect.)

In this way,
I miss what I’ve never had.
I am still so eager to taste
the fruit of a tree,
I’m coming to understand,
grows nowhere.
& so I’m going to rest my bones
Along with the other dead idealists:
somewhere between complacency &
blood that runs ice-cold.

(Do you think that dreams can rot ?
Or do they only ever petrify?)

In the space
of a moment,
your hands unclasp
and I unfold.

All of this time,
I have dreamt
of lost vultures,
awaiting dusk.

I did not starve
on memories
of flesh: those long
fever dreams.

Through the tempest,
the mind slept
but surely now,
this body knows

What it is, hunger,
and how bones
****** dry, taste
only of dust

I’ve been lying awake,
suffocated in plastic,
in the wooden vessel,
the people from town,
have left for the dead.

In my sunlit sleep,
I allow my eyes to roll
into the back of my head.
I spend the time dreaming
and poisoning what Tender
remains inside of my heart.

When I was younger,
it was never a duel.
My mind was home to singular thoughts
I was never playing ping-pong
with the mirror.
But now, I suppose it’s all I do.

You could say that I once knew thirsty color
but I’ll admit I’ve grown to forget
It was dragged out of me.
I once was pretty.
I no longer am.
But this is how they want me to be.

So I, myself became a
lazy Snow White,
paralyzed and possessed by
the emotional Fascists
and their ardent marching
which has made a doormat
of the monumental feelings
I once sheltered.

We laughed, we spoke.
I drank your ideas like a parched man on a dog-day afternoon.
We laughed.
You spoke, spilling “life is one big joke” to passers-by
I laughed, we drank,
I fell, you pulled.
We drank, we fell,
I pushed, you pulled.

We fell asleep at dawn.
I cursed my alarm clock.
We drank, we ran,
I tripped, you jumped.
We bathed my body covered in bruises.
He left, they left.
I slept, I cried.  
You called, I confided,
your mouth remained shut.

We laughed, still.
We drank in lonely streets,
licking bottoms like we were empty
We ran, we tripped.
We slept still at dawn.
You pushed, I fell.
You pulled, I slept.
Paralysed
I split apart.
I left.
You stayed: laughing, drinking, screaming, jumping, pulling.

You pull.
I push.
You scream.
I speak.
You cry.
I run.
You drink.
I sleep.
You call.
I call you
the Catalyst.

"Life is one big joke"
but no,
no, it’s not.

And there we were,
just the same
Metal hooks, green leaves,
& doors that don’t shut
you left yours’ wide-open!
So I walked right in…
I don’t need a key after all

On the walls,
of a delapidated city home hung
atlases & art
Memories taste sweeter in ink.
You want to put a map of Buenes Aires
on your body
I said your belly
& made you laugh

I like the way your smile
reaches the corners of
your ember amber eyes.
It dances about the ledges of your lips
Soft & corporal Hermes of oxytocin
You light up, oh well I do too

Fireflies, summer heat
blades of grass & midnight dips
in shallow pools of abandonned hotels
In the gentle release of a humane kindness
I remembered that it’s a falling
& not a pushing that we’re all after

sing to me
tell me your secrets
feed me beets & chardes
brown sugar
leave your window open all night
I’ll love you in the morning