Do your lungs feel heavy,
weighed down with sand?
Has it slowed your breathing
nearly to a stop?
And your throat,
is it all cut up?
Those unkind grains of
salt or sand,
are they what has kept you from speaking?

Take a close look at your hands
don't you sense something foreign?
The creases in your palms
or the shapes of your fingernails,
doesn't something seem
...off?

Even your clothes;
they don't fit
like they used to.
How could they, after all?
Your memory is hardly what it used to be.

From the start she had you pinned as the forgetful type.

I propose a toast
to a honeycombed crux
charred black
it wanes but it's no moon.

Molasses streaks the sky
disguised as light
it will not calm the alabaster globes
bobbing in the icebox of her gut.

Stolen
she wanders ghostlike and barren
expectant for the cuckoo's cry
consent to come
unhinged.

An overture in reds and golds -
hardly untruth
the hues bury shame:
eggshell-white and stuffed full of monsters.

Take heed
and never trust the oleander
the fox-eyed traitors
of the flower patch.

These hollow bones
are shaking, shaking;
boundless seas of skeletons
quake beneath my heels.

Fear saturates my skin:
it chokes, it curls
- an inevitable
forced descent into infinity.

I stumble into the cosmos,
crushing me beneath its glory
it's deafening
but suddenly, I am real.

Handprints stain my heart.
They're yours.

I am plagued; comatose,
a ritualistic rebirth
I claw my way out by morning.

Steady, inescapable,
and raw, colorless thoughts
I wake, a hollow shell
a crescent.

Crumbs of my Eden remain
they linger as you linger
burlesque, a temptress
stepping softly.

I'll not let the words crawl across my lips
I'd rather let them form brief, violent hailstorms
than risk it all again.

Wrists heavenward,
breathless, I submit.

The dawn of October
stains my palms
how the nicotine stains your teeth.

The cinnamon leaves
storm about
raking your dusty lashes, like stalks of fruit.

Ocher crumbs and cocoa seeds
besmirch the damp soil,
clumsily.

You are defined with:
pulpy cider hues
my slow, chemical solstice.

A cornflower symphony
hummed by the trees, bare and trembling,
the fruitful pining of their inner bark,
the ****** that lines my pumpkin patch.

I squint at the flaxen sun
that drips golden beyond my shoulder,
where the sinuous maple tree, gnarled branches and all
will breathe your name.

Your body is a coal mine
me, an irrelevant dilettante
I cannot winnow you out like the flame of a match
or peel you from my sole.

Tired eyes
shame envelops her body, like gauze
shoulderblades dripping with chagrin, a tattered pair of wings.
Freckles dot her nose, a miniature map,
sanguine lips on milky skin.
Stale, intangible disgrace.

Her eyes are drawn to the sunken sky,
and puffs of breath dance around her lips.
Acid boils within her
rippling throughout her body, threatening to tear her in two.
Fingers pressed to lips; drag,
a tiny ember. Ash away the agony.

A script, perfectly mastered:
a whimper, a moan, a buck of her hips.
Expectant with dread:
a low grunt, heavy panting, and slick, salty sweat
and at last it comes to a close.

And then: a fistful of bills.
Stiff, unyeilding, she will swallow hard.
And tell herself it was all worthwhile.

There is a hole in her heart,
dimly lit by a frenzy of pale, crushed stars
the smell of their flames: chalky, thick charcoal
whisper a faint reassurance.

Penance stains her cheeks in lacy contours
ageless, crooked bruises lace her body and blister to the surface of her skin
unable to rinse herself of sin,
she will choke on the sun.

Time is spent
unfolded,
melting into itself.
Roots, like an oak,
extend from me,
a tired stretch.
They coil themselves
around you,
catching your skin.
A sluggish act
of self-preservation.

Prose is spent;
each letter fluxes and fuses --
shaping nonsense.
Words hang in the air,
dangle and drop;
my serifs and cross strokes
litter the floor.
They soften,
and you're ankle-deep in verse.

Comfort is spent.
Restless nights ensue,
doubled over in mourning
for nothing;
to rather curl into you,
like a shell
a beautiful,
disastrous fit.

The future is spent
spread before me,
a rich expanse of black.
I feel the desperate longing
for constellations
nothing to name after you
but a slow, dull ache.

I am spent.
Vacuous at last
I've bled dry.
Like dust,
you have absorbed me.
Press on, press on.
And like everything else,
the tar on my lungs
looks suspiciously like you.