Placate nature's dangers,
demons dwelling in the dark;
dismember markings sated
but not caught;
Marry the taken stranger's nectar,
and market snark to desperate
markers carting parted, deepened
larks.

The bored mold grows old,
rigorously boring mostly into the gorge,
moaning, groaning its barge jigs -
the mole roars at its grim bowl.

Leavening levers leave us
fishy, wishing without precision
for fettered fritter letters,
feverishly licking with distinction;
Finnish fishermen finish
squishily dished deliciousness.

Wet snow falls faster than the
dry, fluffy flakes associated with a White christmas.
People say when it is slushing or sleeting or otherwise drizzling almost-flakes,
the weather cannot make up its mind.
I think the opposite;
each heavy flake falls with great purpose,
reaching quickly toward the ground,
trying its very best to be snow,
real snow,
that will stick and not wash away on contact with the
earth, warmed from within.

On a Wednesday afternoon,
I sat
in a Starbucks,
sipping water and ******* a candy cane,
and I watched cars driving through flurries of snow.
Each left the flakes spiraling and churning in its wake;
they did not stop,
or even notice
the affect they had on the frozen precipitation around them,
and I sat
thinking that people, passing through each others lives,
are much the same.

So
it is said
she should be dead.
Her trials and turmoils engulfed the strength
beneath her thick, pallid skin.
Her hair frayed to puffy lengths of dried rope.
Her eyes seeking fruitlessly behind and beneath their
center of focus.
The throat a collapsed mine shaft, the men
who once labored in hopes for the reward of her ore
trapped within.

So dismayed, so drained, so damaged.
So frail in her failing strength that love herself would love her.

Near to bursting or imploding,
the skin stretches and hangs,
undulating in its near-death tug-of-war.
Her prisoners gasp for air, the canaries,
yellow,
sickened and grayed by ash.

So far gone that love herself would love her.

I love you conditionally,
and with all of the parts of my heart that aren't too busy keeping me alive.
I love you with the mediocrity of ten toaster ovens,
as opposed to the fiery passion of a thousand flaming homosexuals.
I love you in way that allows me to come and go as I please,
and in a way that is most convenient to me.
I love you no more than a wife loves cleaning,
or a husband loves working.
I am used to you.
I love you in a way that probablymaybedefinitely isn't quite love.
But I suppose it's the best I know, for I am far too scared to leave,
and seek out the “Mad, Passionate, Extraordinary” love that is the stuff
of what I wish my life to be.