the seam of your undershirt,
stretched straight across the valley’s crest
of your back, creasing through
the fabric of your shabby purple
sweater, highlighted by shadows cast
upon your form by the languid yellow
of the streetlights lining the street at
six in the evening, when everything
is blue & black, & dumb gray
is the atmosphere, ringing with the
revving of the cars passing us by
in streaks of red & blindness,
blurring past us, to the rhythm of
the rise & fall of your shoulders &
the sway of your hips, perfectly in
view as you walk ahead, unaware
of my stare, boring deep into the
dip of your spine’s abyss, thinly sheathed
by the taut stretch of your undershirt
draped over by your flimsy sweater,
mauve in the dim light, & through the haze
of gray escaping my lips, forming a wall
gossamer-thin before my face, streaming
in between my vision & your form, your
image of purple, mauve, silent, in the
blue & yellow, of black-brown bob hair
glinting in the sharp pierce of the dull
fireflies overhead, dead, undancing,
fixed atop their posts as beacons,
but jaded, faded, & damp,
like the purple of your sweater.

Lift it to your lips
& let what falls adrift in the form of ash
dissolve in the wind
as dried bone thrashing,
bashing against dust & grit.

Pull; take a long hit.
Dregs to be kept until last in the bottom
of your broken lungs,
taken as deep as breaths:
to rattle against your teeth.

"O", takes the lewd shape
of your chapped mouth as you break free
from your caged-in chest,
skeletons left sat, to wallow
as ashen bones & yellow teeth.

Hold your knuckled joints
against tenderest flesh of your upper lip
& sniff, as if a try to void
all signs of violent backslides
to clandestine nicotine meetings.

Flick blanked eyes to lit but
dying embers ground between sole & soil,
& morosely swear never
another, not one more; after
this next one, this last one, never.

As I lie awake
flying inside my universe,
I wondered what it would feel like
if my lips, buzzing high,
grazes against yours.

The very thought
is not at all lewd;
it is modest, intimate,
and beautiful.

Shivers run up
and down my insides,
just the same.

The high is nothing
compared to this.

Feeling this, this, is my flight.

At this advanced stage
of our labiodental skirmish
& alveopalatal explorations
Words won't come anymore

Only mangled morphemes going
in & out of you going
in & out of me
Only tangled utterances tripping
over themselves in utter haste
Shapeless & shameless

Proper articulation is abandoned
along with all other senses
of propriety

& The critical period is past
& The critical period is coming

& Words won't come at all
but even if they don't

Using my tongue
I can still make you

I am a crevice.
Everyone steps Close—
never in,
always on.
How can you?
It's Too Small.
Nothing in it will fit
But It.

I am a cliff.
People are Afraid,
of course.
To plunge to their demise
by Accident.
But would they skirt the edge
court the precipice of darkness
if they didn't want to know
Where it Ends?
When it Ends?
How it Ends?
If it Ends?

Of course, of course,
they never find out.
They never Move.
Nothing happens.
It tends to happen.

Then I become an abyss.
People are attracted
to the Mystery,
but they know it's Dangerous.
So they never fall in.

People can be wise,
holes can be empty,
and vice versa,
and what other adjectives
have you.

It's all the same.
Those who Almost fall
only futher Rip
the fissures apart.
Nothing is filled.
Nothing is healed.

Looks like burnout
Tastes like failure
I Can't Believe It's Not Butter