Your face, the moon
not unlike craters,
the mark
the scar
the fierce reminder
that there was impact
and after the fact,
a surge of dust
that left me.  Clean and free,
feeling better, like I could survive
another meteor shot to **** my heart’s desire.

It was raining on us, like a cartoon,
just us, and it was hard to hide
when we got outside, as it dumped.

Yet still, no one noticed— which was nice—
when we were sitting
soaking wet in class.

Clear the little storm cloud from your head.
The world doesn’t work that way,
but as sure as water— vapor or droplet—
falls from the laws of physics,
the pilot of a helicopter
could park his firefighting *** right on top of us.

I couldn’t blame him, we burned like wildfire,
but I can still hate him for shouting,

“Told ya it wouldn’t work out!”

stolen, sealed away
in hard stone walls
soft tissue pushes
with every pulse
for freedom

passion stains

drifting through darkness
suffocating
even the earthen prison

passion weeps.

A sun rises
a thousand lifetimes away

purple dawns
the caged heart’s crown.
Blackness retreats through cracks
that grow with every heartbeat’s pound

passion never sleeps,
it beats harder
bleeding while breaking
stone walls
carved from emptiness

after William the ******’s love poem to Ceslie*

like unfolding the sun. like
leaking lava-lamps. like
******* stars. like

ancient language lit
by flashlight.  like
candles warming
keyboards. like

whiskey soaked
eyes weeping.  like
emptiness that keeps
on hoping. like
sick of smiling

when it doesn’t make sense

Two hundred and forty pounds, and not an ounce of confidence.
I’ve got weight enough for two women, and a heart heavy enough for three,
but I’m still waiting for the one.

Not a single date to my name, with Senior Prom a week away.  
What happened next, the blind man who walked into The *** of Gold
called miraculous.

It was five feet, four inches, one hundred and twenty pounds of she’s too
good for me.  Miss Horizon High School: the past star of my silent affections.
I cue my minstrels as the fairy tale begins:  

First it was the ‘yes’, followed by a date that ended with a fuzzy crown.
Then it was a quiet love that lived in awkward poems, freed from text
by her appreciation.

Graduation came, the two of us on stage, Valedictorians bringing in the future,
helping turn the page.  Life was like a book, and I the people’s king, the
man who’d conquered everything.

I knew this more than I knew myself, I knew it better than anything
I’d  learned from life.  I was surer than any man had ever been
that this was God.  He exists, and He loves me.

When I’d fall God would catch me, just so I could keep on jumping from
the tree to see if I could fly.  This feeling was His gift, and as a humble man,
I thanked him, instead of her.

Amputated human beings, only
gears, nuts and bolts that make up
the machine.  Oh woe, who are we
post industrialization

but the first positive proton
to survive its opposite, the first
fiery bursts of fusion
to breathe light into blackness.
The first hydrogen atom
to find its partner, the first
galaxies to swirl and dance
to gravity’s tune.   We are
the Earth’s first rain, mud puddle
and microbe. The first furry mammal
and the last dinosaur.

We are the last breath of humanity,
the Sun’s last ray of visible light,
the first collision of galaxies
and the last supernova.

We are the last breath of the universe
the silent second before heat death.

We— not humanity, not Americans, or any nationality, not **** sapiens but we, the consciousness that exists to say the universe knows itself— are the widest rings in a ripple, riding waves set into motion over 13 billion years ago.

I don’t need you,
last time I checked,
there were two lungs
     in my thoracic cavity,
a heart that pumps fluid
     at 2.13 psig,
eyes that guide fingers
with forks to my mouth,
     and feet that parked me
     in front of the food
     in the first place…

…So I started popping
one of your lungs—with that fork—
so I could help you breath,
clamping arteries
and ventricles, poking out
an eye and cutting off
your feet, but
that’s a lot of work

breathing, pumping,
seeing and walking
for two.
You know what,
     I’m gonna go try the dip.