There is a god somewhere
Who is marked with orange
And speaks of fury
(He looks a little like you
With secondhand creations claiming Him as Father)
The deathless hero
Who chokes the souls
That never tire
Aglow is His chamber
Marked in conformist magenta
And dying melancholia
He'll never approve
Of someone as bright
As you

i exist beyond metaphors
there are things even poems
cannot tell.

the music is fleeting, transient, waltzing in the middle of
an abandoned church parking lot
i know i'm not supposed to remain here
fixated on the bite of the chill
but i can't help it.  
i don't love you anymore.  
we've both known this for a while,
but i can't find the righteous strength to let it slip from my mouth
i'd rather live in a lie
of unhappiness
and petaled dishonesty
than ever tell you how i feel.
i had lunch with him this afternoon
he had his guitar
and he plucked the songs
he knew i would want to hear
i'm not saying i could fall in love with him
but i can become obsessed with the way he doesn't hide behind
false silence
in an attempt
to make me affirm him.
we aren't working
you and i
between your character of meek silence
and apathetic ignorance
and mine of bold conversations
and tones that would get me kicked out of libraries
your gentle touch
and my cold tongue
we were never meant
to be in moderation.  
i can't write this
i can't write this
i can't write this
not if i can't tell you first.

i.
mental map.  
kingdom.
a peasant's land.  
monarchy.  
soliloquy dreams.  
there is honor in being noble
there is serendipitous fate in being transient.
left to choose between a palace of exquisite marble
and expensive murals
or a life of poverty and mud-dusted fingertips
the ability to walk out upon pavement
cry in the company of a stranger
feel dangerous for a change.
ii.
chimera holds a flame above my memories
fraying the edges of sweetness
making livid to peaceful retreats
i took as a child
behind embers and coils
matchsticks and lighters
the gasoline is poured all the way across my chest
reduced to cinder
chimera holds the match
iii.  
i wish i hadn't told you
i figured that once i did, it would be in your hands
and now
it's strangled between your hands
choked and mumbled back into my scorn
i've never understood
the power of being ignored.

We are not autonomous agents
Born from split atoms whose heads are placed on upside down
Metaphysical refinement atoned upon us
We are a cycle of washed out fragments
Bone marrow and plastic debris
A graveyard flattered by dying light
The candle flickers wildly in hallows
It feels so poetic
We both know it's divine in an irreverent fashion
I've never believed in free will
To think that I can set blaze to my narrative
And carve out my own caves
Would be such a foolish illusion
I am formed by the ones who came before me
My life inked before me on the very first hospital bed
I rested upon
You may think it's unfair
I find it to be of sheepish solace
I will never
Find myself
If I am just
A split second of refracted physics.

to make a cut is to make revision
peering daylight onto flattering blame
a sin out into the open
so vulnerable to observation and hypothesis
(can you replicate it?
can you hold it in your hand and brush it away
with hysteria?)
my dependent variables
make the narrow corridors seem suffocating
soil supporting sadness
the microbes grow in the shadow of death
i'm no scientist
but i know that experimentation
is three steps back from platitude
and two steps in front of madness
i can't revise my method
to do so would admit to failure
or an error on my own scale
instead
i'll watch my own environment
be given looks of scorn and contempt
while my pseudo name is smeared with mud across the glass.