Here I stare, At this screen...
Until words come out.

In hopes that I can somehow convey this feeling...
What am I feeling?

An emptiness so hollow that my thoughts consume themselves.
Why won't the words come out?

Am I mad? Sad? Depressed?
Is this for a reason? Is it all in my head?

Okay, okay.
I'm lost so lost.

I've been trying so hard since you left.
Everyone always leaves.

But you were the only one that made me see...
I need to be stronger.

I need to keep pushing on.
At least until the words come out.

“Edith Black” By Emily Austin

I felt my wife's hand grace my shoulder.
I brought my hand to hers, held it and I told her
“I love you Edith Black”
But she doesn't say it back.

I heard my wife humming through our old crickety house.
I got up and I told my beautiful darling spouse
“I love you Edith Black”
But she doesn't say it back.

I smell my wife making coffee at about half past one.
I follow the scent and I tell my dear sweet hon
“I love you Edith Black”
But she doesn't say it back.

I remember the olden days.
I remember when she used to say
“I love you Alan Black.”
And I'd always say it back.

I can no longer take her hand in mine
Or see her smile of bright sunshine
But only in my head
For my darling Edith Black
is dead.

If I could change one simple thing
I'd bring her back so she could sing.
Or just so I could say
“I love you Edith Black”
And have her say it back.

Martin may have been
******* by the Trump,

no matter what words
he strings together
the other side
holds trumps,

& Martin's only human,
but the other side
seem of baser
matter,
fabricated out of
cast-offs & junkmetal,
empty gourds
of echoing nothingness,
aching voids,
fathomless chasms,

with truncheoned guardians,
subservient menials,
boot-licking lackeys,
fawning & scraping
Goebbel-like go-fers,

Trump might have ******* him
cos Martin is plumb
tuckered & its
only day 30,

but of course
Martin has the luxury
of not being from
South of the Border,
a very poor man,
a junked-up hillbilly man,
a desperate man.

Martin can give in
to his so-heavy fatigue,
that could be
his choice,
& he's lucky
that way.

******* I'm so tired
of this idiocy.

from what we have heard she is senile
she will smile and the sun will rise.
take her out to pink pasture, do not heed her caveat,
from what we have heard she is senile and
it is all for naught.
the war did her in, she still bathes there,
in the clouds,
in the tepid spring of father's rigorwater
the dewdrops are full of gas, they must have made her this way
(or, retrospectively, the bombs)
the old war did her in
the sun is risen over pink pasture and i can hear her seizure scream
the clear air fills with smoke and the curtain closes.

A crescent moon

glows white

with

It's angelic

halo through

a shroud of

dark clouds,

soulmates

within the

shower of the

pouring rain,

love

Is the only

true sense

that's felt

when the

desert

Is misted

In dunes, when

the souls begin to feel

the depths of warmth

and the monsoon revives

the barren sands, and all

Is paradise.

Feet are the best place to look in a crowd
because,
even if they aren’t painted,
toenails offer a reflective surface
that reassures our presence,
no matter the floor we walk on.
I look down so often
that I forget I have that identical shell
on my fingers too.
They shine the sun in your eyes
when I blindly fix my hair behind my ear.
I know it disgusts you,
but I bite away,
in fact,
I chew that casing away
from my forgiving palms
and tuck them safely in my nail beds
where I drip bedtime stories from my gums
like a blanket fort of crimson comfort.
My stories get so crusted
on the nights when
you’re not here
that scar tissue
becomes less than something I blow my nose with.
I long for you
to tell me your stories
and let them faint into my wrists
so then I can carry your pulse
through my veins and feel alive again.
Let your heartbeat
guide my wandering hands
down your ventricles
and let me be the reason you stir at night.
Let me shake your bones
until the birds trapped in your rib cage
start singing again.
Let me be the cool tongue that
laps your broken heart back together.
Let me be something more than debris
hanging loosely from flesh,
but less than a bomb nestled
between the hollowness in your skull.
I hope you look down
and feel the weight of my lips from last night’s goodbye
pressed against your forehead
and realize
no matter how lost you get
in a swarm of shoes,
you’ll always have my bare feet
next to yours.

Touch the sky with me
and we can fly, fly, fly
away from these places,
wrong faces, all the traces
of the spaces we created
between our lonely hearts
and forgotten minds;
the parts of us that shouldn't exist
crying in their cavernous
pinholes, echoing
and rupturing in feeling
through the waves of something
more, something undeniable
and true. The pinprick
in which my emotions
are contained
is gargling with a blood
that pours black yet,
as it trickles through
me, I can feel it restoring beauty
to the yellowed valleys of my skin.

Never the one with a safety net,
having to move quickly, silently,
and calculated.
In a house pulling me into
depression,
further than I could pull myself,
I refused.
Never to be trapped into
ammonia soaked walls and
defeated thinking of years
past,
a "golden child,"
I moved on.
How it hurt to hear those words,
from someone that has
never been hungry,
never realized that the hunger
never fades and that I
never had a choice.
It was get up,
get out, stay moving,
or die
forever.