fit to burst, *****, coat you
  in tepache
ginger and sweet, stink of
  the slow gelatiny we keep

or kept

it’s just energy, right?
  this momentum is my entire chest
we are deer frolicking through
  a summer forest
especially you with the white dots you put on your cheeks

it’s cute
  and I tell you, and you hide your face
and you laugh at me for the sound I make when you hug me
  and the deer step, ginger and sweet, steep ***** down

a rock unwedges. it doesn’t mean anything.

the alien, the absurd
intrigue you, we share that
  watching pink spaghetti
absurd is the way we are donuts
  and the absent filling
  and why you can feel at home
    on the seafloor with me,
    losing at stupid games
you know, a tripod fish can stand?

we felt it coming, or I did
  and we watched it for some time
  watched the shadow of something bigger than our imaginations
  that should have been soft and lively
  fall. and by the time it was to us, it had bloated
  bulbous in the abyss

but more time has passed, it may have been years,
  and we have found way to eat it,
  scuttling and gleaming.

there are more of us than it felt. crawling out of the
  sand, immobile for eons, staring as stars fell from
  the sky, or nasty anglerfish, or from ourselves.

but this meteor is nurturing. our own little cambria,
  and we spring to action, claw in claw,
  turning rot into joy

the sludge from my toes,
sweet and leaking marrow, secreted
into roots that eat the earth
because once, i bled
— my head didn’t have antennae
before i met you, lost you

and i’m sat alone in this grove of whispers
not the only tree, or the last moth.
the only voice is mine,
“oh, i’ve grown, have i”
and i’ve healed, but is it
  the sun my dripping branches follow?
is it the sun?

If I could, I would make my fingers longer
and crack, I would lean forward in my dim-lit cottage chair
I would leer down at you, taller than me
I would swell in shadow with the smell of poultice around

You would think I have more eyes than I have

And I would say
“Young Beast, finally, you have joined me here in the Present. So I curse you again.”

And you would leave without your fur.

every string in a knitting wheel,
  all color and texture and progress.


sometimes, a poem is
  stapling Time to the floor
  hoping, as it hops out the window,
  it leaves you the tear of its train.

make it from a glass of water with two ice cubes in it, or three, as long as it’s
  “a prime number less than 5”
  it’s less about the cold than feeling right
and find a dandelion, picked from our yard together
  blow a wish, and bring me one of the seeds, and
  tell me how it’s a fruit, so that makes it a vegetable

shake in the coffee shop mornings we kept together,
  playing cards and gossiping, thinking about holding hands
  while sharing my favorite breakfast (was it yours?)
bring me an espresso drip from anywhere; it would all be just as special

crush the little moments you’d bicker about
  which of you would play as our drummer,
  or when you’d chide me for my pronunciation of “petrichor” —
    i was right, by the way
  do you remember when i thought a cobweb was just dirt and static?
    i was okay never living that down.
  how were we so playful?
so find me the dust in our house, our powdered history
  
boil and distill the hack nights and projects and dreams we’d hatch together,
  never needing to finish, always burning to
  we were going to bring the world so much joy. do you think we did?
we had too much to do. so bring me a poker chip, some mac & cheese,
  vanilla ***** and peanut butter whiskey

it is selfish. but anyways,
give me the tincture of those rituals
  let me live a moment as each of you,
    and drink it in
  so that when i pass from that penultimate casket,
  we all die together

i love you, and i’m sorry

I.
firm, calloused with adventure,
brown and pink, muscled and silly,
the femininity you finally found.
the ball is always so tense. your
cute, powerful wedges, keeping you up,
meeting the earth with the recklessness of love.
the tapping of tight tendons as I push
into the density you walk. the smooth, convex
curve down from your ankle. it is calculated,
carefully considered, like you give gifts.
there is no brighter sun.

II.
light, small, soft
pliable, cohesive, self-certain
the arch defined but not severe,
(like you think you always are),
a shape like your self, something
you have always protected,
hidden, kept inside, kept from
the rough of the outside.
granted, you can kick
(and dance!) just fine.
each precious, slender digit
lays against the next
like new bushes
in a family garden,
sparse but friendly,
known and touching.
connected. and to me, as
I press and roll you around.
you taught me that someone
might like having their
ankle rubbed. I didn't even know.

stuck between panes of glass
  cared for, no smudges,
  only a small gathering of dust

the light comes in behind me all day
  for you, soft rays, magnified past
  my wings that flutter in the window

and you, you've lived through so much
  have you been here? what were your wings like?
  dull brown, like mine?

there is a little hole in the screen
  and i am not the first to enter
  but maybe i will be the last to leave

i am not afraid, but i am hungry.
  you will tarry with your meal.
  you joke about finishing last. it's funny.

and in the eve, when darkness takes my back
  when there is nothing to see but you
  and the book you're reading

you smile on the couch
  you look over, you see me,
  you smile then too

my little antennae, my feeble arms
  cannot press into you with the weight
  of relief, or release, or the reality i would give you

if only i could flitter a little harder
if only i could crawl beneath that second frame
if only i were a little stronger, i would press you tight,
  my flame

Orange and shamrock,
  blood of the mountain,
  the bite of cement:
Pronounce the boundary.
  Seek it.
  Stretch it.

Sharp city glass,
  butane and flint,
  gravel-crunch graffiti:
Sever and stroke.
  Shatter it.
  Stitch it.

Fourteen earthworms after rain,
  petrichor, bottled,
  cinnamon, bergamot:
Remember your tethers.
  Strum them.
  Sing them.

the far fog,
  obscuring the castle,
  you breathe it out,
  I didn’t come here for this,
  but I am here for this.

the blue is missing,
  rolling hills,
  choked out and cozy.
  just like smoke.
  just like home.

checkered, flaking plating,
gold, electric like the Bronze Age,
dented, cracked teeth in the mouth
of a brazier blazing at Delphi

makers’ dust and an eternity inside

warmth of nations conquered in the drums of us
subtle tears crumple our spinebound pages
  warping invisible ink we never wrote, surely
and we won’t ever speak again
mom, please

the worst dream --
  a storm rolls in, all bolt-cold, fierce,
  drowns our peat in what helps huckleberries
and your leaves unfurl
  leaving me, root-bound bog butter
  for some scientist to find
and you, so tall

The lights buzz, alight;
    now we can see blood.
    It's everywhere. It's ours.

And you, endless kindness,
    "Good work, team!"
    "Have a wonderful day!"

The slow decay in a dragon's lair,
  lichen lycanthropes snuggle, sleeping,
  against a massive mound of mushroom.
Spore-shackles lie, a layer
  bridging between the rot and denizens
  and the hoard of items
  lost, left by a long-gone species.
A hungry dog arrives.
Snags a bag, *****, writhing, but hope --

  "No. No. No. Our hope, our hope.
     Our pride, our hope. No."

The dog flees, empty-stomach.

With jawbreaker eyes
  and a rot-you smile,
  they wash you again.
Dissolved, in solution, rinsed
  around the glass of a warm beaker.
"Get cooking," his voice comes through
  the pleasant taste of a grin.
It won't stop. You will react.
Judgment has no weight
  against the pace of a smiling god.

Ich ging durch den beschmutzten bevölkerten Korridor mit den Reben, die drinnen und draußen wuchsen, entlang und ich sah in jeder Tür mein Spiegelbild, während ich vorüberging. Ich wohnte genau zum Zimmer – nicht einhundertfünfzig Zentimeter weg; die Entfernung war fast nicht größer, als ich war, und nicht alter. Ich erläuterte meine Angst vor dem Dunkel mit einem Frösteln. Meine Zähne klapperten und klingelnden Münzen, die in meiner Tasche blieben, schrien in meinem Ohr gewohnte Lieder.
Eine Tür öffnete und einen Moment lang hörten wir das Weltall. Wir allesamt waren in dem Korridor. Ein krystallener Stab wie einer, den Leute in der Versuchsansalt oder in der Kneipe benützten, zerbrach. Der Stabinhalt floß in die Hand des Mannes, der sein Zimmer verließ, eine silberne Flüssigkeit. Das Echo des Wortes „Quecksilber“ klang in dem Korridor.
Jedes Zimmer ist gleichbedeutend wie das Letztere, aber es ist auch unterschiedlich. Jedes beinhaltet grenzenlos Fähigkeiten, und unterschiedliche Chemikalien, unterschiedliche Chemie, und unterschiedliche Emotionen.
Ängstlich öffnete ich meine Tür und trat in einen millionsten Anteil von mir selber und ich war ich selber. Symphonien flossen von meinem Kopf weiter, und von den Symphonien kamen fliegende Fische.
Es war nicht wichtig, dass andere Menschen ähnliche Zimmer wie mein Zimmer hatten; es war nur wichtig, dass ihre Zimmer verschieden waren. Ihre Zimmer waren Käfige, genau wie ihre Herzen und auch ihre Hände. Der Mann im Korridor, der hirschartige Augen hatte, blies das flüssige Metall, das seine Hand fasste weg. Die Flüssigkeit wurde Staub und glitt zu mir wie Backpulver oder Schnee im Schneesturm. Ich konnte alles hören und ich musste mich von dem Weiß, das der Staub brachte, trennen. Ich hasste den öden Morgen, den das hervorbrachte.
Ich wollte meine Tür öffnen und wollte den silbernweißen Straub vorzeigen, dass ich auch Sachen in der Luft erschaffen konnte. Ich wollte, aber ich konnte nicht. Ich konnte Sachen in der Luft meines Zimmers erschaffen, aber nicht im Korridor. Man braucht Ressourcen, um etwas zu ändern oder zu formen. Ich besaß Keine.
Die Welt schüchterte die Leute ein, die Verstand hatten.

A cold place
(long hallway, dying breed)
paints itself warm with
the contagions of
skewered cerebellum.

A void of frame
shows a warmer, longer
hallway, with monochrome pillars;
opens up into charcoal sky:
painted by the charcoal eye.

Yet, fear –
later, below a wooden cross,
rests the screaming of a thousand
souls.


I SHOULD FLEE

Escape is not an option.
It has me;
the color has me.

A sworn, torn man stands at the top of the world’s longest staircase, and my friends and I have signed up to ride. Millions of others stand between us and the top, waiting for their chance, their prime, to resign. We sulk in the depths of the sea and hope that someday we may be free.
       The man holds penned paper that the depths cannot perceive, but we know it. Our ticket to the roller coaster lies, with number, on a digit. I and my friends were anglerfish before, but now we are eels. We no longer need dangly lights to guide us to prey, and now we tie ourselves and each other in knots.
       Life is fun later when we are dolphins, then porpoises, then whales with legs, walking onto the seashore as brisk as can be, drinking our saliva as though it were a river overflowing with our survival. We walk in to the forest and steam lobsters over a log-fire. The wings with the tickets laugh at the monotony below him, but we’re below him even in that.
       Grey skies cloud overhead, and we realize where we are. I and my friends run from the thunder that comes in every drop, the acid in every drop; where the water helped before, it now forms uncomfortabilities in our skin, nonconforming to the mutations of standard evolution. We need shelter, now, fast, and together. A huge tree is mostly protective.
       Eventually a ladder of clouds drops down and draws us like a magnet. We can’t stop it, the clock has rung fourteen for two days now. We then have arms and can climb it, so we do, though the rain left pimples on our faces.
       We ascend to the front of the line.
       “Hello, ticketman, where are we headed?” we ask. He says, “Darlings, you haven’t been anywhere in the first place; how can you be headed to a where? First, go tackle a why.”
       The rollercoaster takes off, shoots off – a rocket propels us through precarious stages of life. We have ups and downs and sideways parts we can’t really decide the morals of, and we enjoy it.
       Then we are dead.

Passenger seat, looking through–
dark window, tinted sky,
and black treeline.
Pairs of yellow orbs float by.

We’re almost to New Orleans now.
Soon, the world
and its atmosphere
will have a dance around you and
your money.
Oh happy, frugal dance –

But tonight it is dark,
cold
(bitter cold)
and it rains with the tears of risen demons;
it rains with the things that came back
from a place beyond the grave.

He never should have come back.
I’m sorry you have to deal with this, Mom.

He stopped mid-sentence.
He took their offense
quite seriously
and, with a dash
of omnipotence,
saw the fall folly.

One and only one arrow
points to this tree, narrow
and quite bleached and,
with a European tint,
sheltered a girl.
Leaves burnt on the skin
of Mother Nature,
burnt by lack of chlorophyll.
Pumpkin-orange yearns to
cause tree-white
harrow.

Back in the debate
“Kannst du nicht warten – wait!”
Mahogany trends
designed this room of
uninterested people with
hunger to sate;

His powerful, wintry heart
is taking a step back
in time. He is harboring
fate in his heart like
iron boots left aside –,
grievous greaves weighing things down in ferrum.

He fell back from
his wooden podium
showing a modicum
of care
by yearning the boat to come.

A cryogenized hull of darkness
was his mind, melting
in the warmth of a
dying tree a ways away.

He clutched his core
agony pushing far beyond sore
OPEN THE DOOR
HE’S GOING TO DIE

But he had a dream –
However black and white
he spoke to seam
and seal
would never end the color
of the turning wheel –
He had erred, but now
Winter ended “how.”
How he wished to
return to the girl in
fall, but
too late.
He already fell.

Zip up the tux
and put it back
in the body bag
it came in

we danced, but
it didn’t make things
more real

i, with my
fake, dead skin –
someone else’s –
and you with your
cute pigtails

“make sure
you return
the body,”
mom said.

this is all we are
skins under death
someone else’s passion and style
we fit the frame

triangular shoulders
show stability
i hope:
please tell me you notice

death provides me with
a sense of being
just because it reminds
others
of someone i’m not

I hope you notice –
Now, this:
This is who I am.
I am capitalized,
With proper grammar
And order.

I walk down the *****, populated hallway with the vines growing inside and out of it and I see my reflection in each passing door. I live just down there — not five feet; hardly taller than me, but not older. I exemplify my worries of the dark by shivering away, jammering teeth and tingling coins in pocket screaming familiar songs into my ear.
       A door opens, and for a second, we all hear the universe: all of us, out in the hall. A crystalline rod – the thin kind they use in labs or bars to stir drinks together (both of which are alchemy) – snaps, pouring a silver liquid into the hand of the person who leaves his room. With insanity he glowers at the speed of the gods. Echoes of the word “quicksilver” mutter down the hall, motors flare, and explosions go off.
       Each room is the same, but different: infinite capacity with different chemicals, different chemistry, and different emotion.
       Afraid, I turn the **** of my own cell, and I enter one billionth of myself, and I am myself. Stammering within my own mind, I quell my heart with symphonies of norm, letting flow thousands of flying fish from the forefront of the fantastic sound.
       It does not matter that other people have the same room as I do; it only matters that their rooms are different. Their rooms are cages, as are their hearts, as are their hands. The man in the hallway (short, stubby thing with eyes like a deer) blows ether from his mouth upon the liquid metal in the palm of his digits, and it floats down the way like baking powder or how I’d always imagined snow would look in a blizzard. I can hear all this, and I must divide myself from the whiteness it brings. I hate the bleak mornings it makes.
       I would like to open the door and show the silver-to-white stuff that I, too, can throw a gust at things and have them take flight, but it is not the same. Today is a world with solemn toast -- intimidating those with brains.

hope crumbles like
leaves in the fall
It seeps from emerald and orange-brown, the
show of coral in the Caribbean Sea.
Melancholy gathers in the veins of the fisherman
taking a ******* the seashore.
He, as many, put lead arms over the sea. Twin
suns intertwined, produce solar flares of
sea-blue and scarlet changing the air.
Too bright ----
Ruby and sapphire pour through pores
like oxidized blood flowing from an open wound.
Four black mountains,
molehills---
depends on who names them.
Blue-green the sea washes back unto itself
carrying away drift wood as
happiness carries sadness with heavy hands.

On some distant island
The fish swim –
In the air
And upside-down.
And they talk like people
And they talk unlike people
And they always look silly.
I’m sure of it.

I know because I want to know.

Has a curious vision-arrow ever glanced your eye,
Forsaking your pupil and enjoying your iris?
One or two have mine.
I think to the bowman always:

A black hole, and at least as complex,
But not a hole of darkness.
Nay, in my own, I see the fish.
An extravagant concavity that appears convex.

Eye – flipped funnel
Man – flipped funnel
The mind works like class notes,
Disheveled.

A realm of those aqueous creatures
Can’t be possible and
Must be possible because
I want it to be.

Even holes are filled with earth, air, ether
Even funnels.

Who is to tell me
That my fish can’t have their reality elsewhere?
Some infinite alternity where
Things go and are made
And holes, filled, are emptied?

Who to tell me?
A man who sees colors
To describe to a man who sees black
Some ethereal place
Which is neither black nor color?

No.

On some distant island,
The fish don’t fly –
They swim in the air.

I promise.

All the wild ones are gone.
Their feral claws and nymphatic strings
Drug through the earth they held so dear and
****** underneath the waves

An Atlantean world of
Great sound and rush of current
A blue land with little breath
****** underneath the waves

Sound goes not from water.