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So this is the ocean,
Poison from here to the horizon.
I ask the crab
"Is most of the world salt?"

He burrows in the sand
And I grab with my hand
His one of many legs.
I say to him:

"Is it that you panic
In the sun,
Or find pleasure
In the dark."

The pinching sting hurts
Though it could be worse;
I could be swimming in the ocean,
With all of the salt.
The cruise line veeres off-course
to a land of broken
lobes.

I swim in hairy juice,
peppered with blue sprinkles,
alone.

Later, I forgot to
buy eggs. Write a list next
time.

A trumpet player burps,
we laugh and blow our tears.
There is no moon tonight.
There is no moon tonight.
Aujour'hui maman est morte,
Or yesterday,
Maybe,
When the broken tree fell on her.

I will follow fear for us
With a handful
Of dust;
Dusk to dawn in a wordless echo.

We can watch the string show
With our eyes closed.
Tonight
A dark symphony plays for one.
Death
If there ever was a shadow--
Under this rock you should know,
A plain lilac root
Sips the sun--
Then his is darker when he grows.

Fall back on a green *****,
Where the ground rests with hope,
And the amber orb
Licks the blades.
He has no memory of home.

Pick the purple bloom,
But careful the palm crafted tomb.
A folded cloth from the
Crevice aside his *****.
Release the stem.

There is no shadow
Below the moon.
There is no shadow
Below the moon.
Lilac slumber.
Lilac slumber
We left our hearts underneath the red leaf tree that looks like fire when the sun sets.
She grabbed my face. Her lips burned. Her mouth was as hot as ever a mouth was. Her tongue punched my teeth and the whites of her eyes poked through her closed lids.
I pulled back with the wind.
A red leaf ruffled the silence between us.

This is it? she said.
There was no answer.
There is no answer.
There will never be an answer.

She said she wanted to swim, so we swam. Our naked bodies glistened with the water, and we made love under the winking stars.
As she nestled under my arm,
as she hissed with each exhale as she slept,
I knew we would never see each other again.

We woke up as strangers and left behind our memories too strong for the weak. Maybe I’ll find her there when I visit. We’ll laugh and act like who we were when love was exacted that day in Autumn. But we’ll never be those two lovers again.
Not much has changed here. The leaves are still red, and the water still glistens. The spot where we slept is packed with dirt
A grave.
Not much has changed, but we have changed. I know she won’t come, but something burns inside of me. So here I will wait, for death, for love, for what may come. We left our hearts underneath the red leaf tree that looks like fire when the sun sets,
where I’ll sit until fate decides otherwise.
Love is in the window blinds
“There’s magic in the hills,” said the old man.
His face wrinkled inward,
and smelled of the tobacco stuffed in his pipe.
He spoke of the dipping lights, the black tongued chants from the groves, the howling near the springs.
He lives where mist sticks to your skin.
He reared his head to titter and pointed sharply to a tree. A door **** ripped through the bark.
“One man’s home is another man’s prison,” he said, and invited me in.
A crow perched on a melted candle stick in the middle of the single room.
"Through the valley," said the crow.
The old man insisted the road ahead was a wasteland, the vegetation scarce and waters poisonous.
I declined food and drink.
Shadows and death in the valley, magic and craft in the hills.
"Fear," said the crow.
The old man poured tea and clinked his pointed nails on the surface of his mug and gazed through the window.
“You’ll stay here tonight,” he said. “And continue onward in the morning.”
He watched the sun set. My bones iced over to the screams of a coyote.
I rested my head on the cot, but forced my body awake, as the old man howled back to the sounds of the night.
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