When the last ink spears
have dried
on the white blush of battlefield paper
sheath the pointed crossed teeth of letters
to whom was fashioned a vain likeness


I can take no more poison
and you have no more pigment to spare

It rained between the heavy blankness
in the fissures of a comma stained tear
a mark, a year.

The wasted hollows
in the vowels of your syllables, were almost a crime.
so I pulled myself into the void
with a graceless sigh
to hide in the drainpipe d's
wait for that  storm to pass.


With a weary eye you travel the pupil
shadow in a glazed nuance, I could never quite
find a place for
an eyelash moment.
Was it tender? or a bruised sunset
tattooed in a canvas of skin.


In the river running though the banks of bone in your neck
to the blockade of the doors of your mind.
I find the crossing point
at the maze created by your ear
You rolled the silence around on your tongue
a tornado breath amid the humid
necklace  of lightning.

dear December,

I know we
never understood each other
quite the way we should

although we spent
the time it took.

please watch over the buried
in your sallow snow fields
I lost myself there

along with smiles
my face was never suppose to make
I'm not sure
the indent I left
will soon be replaced
by tender new skin.


december,
i know we will never quite heal
the way we'd like
so please
let this memory lay
along the side of the road
to be scattered by the crows

let the bones bleach
in the fresh spring sun


dear december
I never meant to cause.

hot breath
printer
through plastic jaws
silicon veins throb
black ink  an invisible scribe
I swear it is more alive
than some I have met.

we all play in the dust
still just children
stripping  more
than could be created

gaze to heaven, lamplight
halogen painted nights
a haze we lid our eyes
to dim anything
with the scent of emotion
the thunder of progress
roared from the mouths
of deception

Look at them for
who they are
the things that knit and pull
the tender threads
of thought
dragging them across tepid
pools of punctured peace

You come traipsing through my mind
like a herd of deer
grazing on the patches
of thought
I'd tried to keep a secret

Oh- you know I tried,
but the forbidden things always taste better
with a glass of disdain
to wash everything down
I am a small pebble
laying at the foot of boulders
somehow both get ground away
all the same

and If I could find the way out
of my own head
I would humbly give you the keys
I'm sure you'd do a better job than me
so since there are no keys fashioned for such a place
I will keep making
my own mistakes
and I'll leave you to yours

Like certain lovers standing
amongst a slant of light

face to face
as if a public place fell away
hand touching face

I am just a pillar
of a building
quietly austere
made of pebbles pressed together

our lives will pass one another

momentarially brushing,

the particles of a second
would dust  fingertips

with the years I have spent
trying to attain some certain
something

all the shoes that pass, tied to feet
sewn together by ligaments
woven muscle, embroidered with nerves

in a puff of smoke
the only fragrance to this bitterness
on a threadbare winter day
the sun shone from squinted eye
we stood face to face
through thin curtains of blue

maybe it is all shadows that I see
an overlay drawn in china white
on tracing paper
laid over everything
with a crinkled sigh
and a puff of cold breath
I am on the verge of finding
as I have fallen over the hill in fading
and painfully telling myself I have forgotten.
yet none of that is true

if it is one thing we are all masters of,
finely tuned lies we ingrain into ourselves
as if it were the only way to keep afloat
and to slowly sink at the same time
as the leaks stream grey blasts of light
into those dark places
we try so hard to keep

and why hold onto the shadows
when they just serve as places for
things to doggedly survive
and age.

I am not sure there is enough tape
left on the spindle of the spool of my heart
to quite fix you.
I could try
I could lie
I could run away..
or just procrastinate
to wait until the unsavory fumes
have blown over