She strides down the street,
Holds that cancer stick up to her mouth,
Takes a deep breath in,
Filling her lungs with lethal smoke,
Gradually rotting away her
Interior.

Her heart beats out of her chest.
[A heart divided between two hearts.]

He’s waiting at the street corner
Between the alley of lust and the
Path of ignorance.
She sees his silhouette in the
Distance, a dark apparition.
Her heart leaps out of her chest,
Towards him,
Reaching for him,
Propelling her to him.

She had absolutely no control over the matter.

The other man she loves is home
Alone, waiting for her too.
Moments ago, he
Held her in his arms,
Kissed her goodbye,
Told her to hurry back soon.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too” - the words
Suddenly conveyed
No meaning to her.
She told him she was
Running an errand, when,
In reality,
She was running away
From him.

[A heart divided between two hearts
Can never really be a heart.]

His love suffocates her.
His love drowns her
In its constancy,
In its predictability.
With him, she feels like a
Bird with its wings ripped off.
Held captive, in a wire cage.

[A heart divided between two hearts
Can never beat the way it should.]

How can a woman with two men
Who love her
Feel so
Staggeringly
Alone?
Who will love her until their
Disintegrating hearts turn into
Simply dust.

[A heart divided between two hearts
Can never really keep from rupturing,
Infecting the body with its own poisons.]

So she lets her underground lover
Envelop her in his arms
And kiss her until both of their lips
Are numb,
Until they both want more.
Until they cannot restrain themselves.

His love releases her out of her
Cage, allows her to fly once again.
The passion of these moments
Will never be forgotten.
His love brings the roses back to
Her lifeless cheeks, brings life
Back to the void inside her.

And, his love allows her
To fly back home, once again,
Straight into the arms of the
Man who is her keeper.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Faces without name, faces without purpose
Faces that are just like my own.
I watch the decrepit, old man
Standing, waiting for a train to nowhere
Wandering through the rest of his days
Like every second
Is his
Last.

The children playing there don’t know it yet.
Soon they will -- their weary mothers do.
Every day, growing older.
Every day, growing colder.
Every day, realizing our fate.

The tracks are wet from the cold,
Unfeeling rain.
The rain, which pours from the
Infinite sky,
[Of which we will all soon belong]
Floods the streets and earth
[Of which we will all soon belong]
The drops dismantle the delicate flowers surrounding us...

Petals
                Drop
                              To
                                        The
                                                   Ground
helpless.

Our days dwindle as such.

One day
We will all be these
Petals on a wet, black bough.

it is a sea of leaves -- a deep, bottomless, sea of leaves.
you can get lost in there, you know.
lost like an abandoned child in a city of strangers
and lost
like when you drive and drive and drive
aimlessly, mad, senseless,
when your only intent is to get lost and be lost.

but
this sea of leaves
[yes, this vast ocean of leaves on leaves on leaves]
this is myself only on the best of days.
my mind cannot and will not ever find itself.
sanity had been abandoned years before
when i came to the realization that
nothing really matters
too much.

and now i am autumn when all of the leaves fall down --
unordered, hysterical,
all of the time changing
all of the time varying
never the same as a moment before.
beautiful, but knowing
that beauty is impermanent.

soon i will be like the tree branches
when the leaves have abandoned them.
stark, empty, cold.
naked, with all of my flaws displayed to the world
[with all of my life on the ground.]
and i will still be lost.
and so incredibly lost in my mind.
lost.

so let me dive into this deep sea of leaves,
'cause lord knows it is better than being found.

there is a monster beneath
the lofty, billowing sheets of my bed
beneath the mattress
the box spring
the carefully crafted wooden frame.

[he lives in the shadows,
in the obscurity there.]

i should feel sheltered...safe,
underneath these sheets,
[like my mother’s arms
tucking me in tight,
don’t let the bed bugs bite.]

but when my arm dangles off my bed,
when i commit that fatal mistake,
i feel a draw to the ground
more forceful than the force of gravity
seizing my hand
paining to pull me under.
and i know it is the monster.
i feel his yearning
for the blood and guts of a child...
his desire to rip me apart
like a lion does his prey.

i take back control of my hand,
wrap my arms around myself,
feigning safety.
for as we all know
that monster could very well
clamber, creep out
climb onto my bed
and swallow me whole.

i don’t know why he hasn’t yet --
perhaps he likes the challenge
of waiting for me
to be susceptible enough to
forget myself
and leave my arm suspended
for more than
just a moment.

i am curled up into a fetal position
paralyzed by my fear.
the anxiety invades my joints
so that i cannot move anymore.
i fall into a fitful sleep
and wake up to sunshine radiating
through my window,
casting the intricate patterns of
my curtains on the rug.

during the day,
the monster cannot survive.
but when nighttime falls
the darkness returns,
my trepidation returns
and the monster is alive.
well, again.

[I can only survive my life in two ways;
wasted by the fire of my gratification,

wasted by the fire of my longing.]

Love had just woven my

intolerable shirt of flame, this

bedazzled blouse betwixt 

an area brimming with smoke

and my own heart.



this consuming flame...

the flame that fuels itself with

my everything.



I am a sorceress at the stake.

I feel the fire sear
into my skin,

destroying the weak,
frail covering 
to my body,

disseminating to parts

I didn’t know
existed.



The torment is utterly
consuming.



Everything within me,
every ounce of strength
that remains, struggles to

shed this shirt of flame.

[This devised torment

by love Herself.]


Yet, the blazing fire

is frantic for my body.

The flames

cling to me,
fast to my skin,

like you have

...and do

...and will.


We suspire the smoke from the flames which
destroy all that surrounds us;

it becomes a part of us that

our bodies will never be able
to discern...
to notice...

to erase.

And I recall that when I first l laid my eyes upon him, I knew that he was the one for me. I think he knew too. It was the power of the look we exchanged, the magnetism of it, the electricity, the immense power of the force of attraction. He had something in him that was irresistible and that something drew me to him like a moth to a flame. My heart sunk into the deep confines of my body, my eyes were ravenous for him, my body yearned for him. As if the world had suddenly ceased to exist, as if nothing else mattered in the world and all I wanted was to be with you and know you inside and out, know you better than you know yourself. Love at first sight does not exist, it is impossible to come to love a man at first glance, to understand him, to trust him. It is possible to be infatuated with him. It is possible to be consumed with his face, his nose, his eyes...to be in lust at first sight. But this lust grows, yes this lust swells into love and my life is empty without you here and my heart needs you to pump the blood through my veins and my brain needs you to tell me how to speak again and my hand needs you to be here to firmly hold it. A seed was planted with that first look and was watered with words and touches, and the seed grew to be the size of the universe plus everything in it and more than that. We are on fire and our sparks fuel the flames.

Just Let It In

this
language,

the perplexity 

of this language, 

is damaging to me.

how can there possibly

exist such an impeccably

imposing combination of

words that still manage to destroy 

a soul as wasted as mine? somehow 

words discover these fine little cracks in 

my wall, as thin as the head of a pin. words 

are like water, rushing into whatever space they 

can invade, occupying whatever volume they discover. 

this water trickles through the fragmented spaces, traveling

all the way to my heart, transforming me in the way they seem to

alter us all. it is these words that i take with me. words reverberate in my mind,

disrupt me to my core, degrade me. your  words are the ones i perpetually carry with me...

any...all of them. yours are the ones that elicit the simultaneous firing of every
single neuron in my brain. there is something about the magic of your words
flowing together...whispered into my ear. they move through me like
a stealthy, lone snake, undulating in a field, stalking its defenseless
prey; slowly...at first glance, not appearing to be a perilous threat
...then piercing me all at once with fierce strength and
determination, devouring me without appearing to 

acknowledge that maybe i still...still want to be.

to be whole. and i do. my body craves 

the sensation of being complete,
not torn apart by the nonsense
of your  daunting words
disrupting my spirit
and making me
despise the
necessity
of language.

i wish i could
void your words 

from my brain, but
my mind is helplessly
inconsistent; i can never
forget what i long to,  
scarcely remember
what i must; and
my peculiar mind
*
certainly* will never
forget the sound
of your words, 

just like water,

flooding me.

taking me

over.