The clouds dipped low,
low enough for our fingertips
to touch perfume to their necks

glancing over the town lights,
filtering darkness into a
sick pink haze, they lay and swell in valleys
like gaudy jewels on the neck of a
woman laying at a wake.
Maybe her lies are the
most believable truth
we'd never take.

we were two doves,
beaded on gossamer wires
early windswept sunlight
it cracked our skin
metallic melodies
bathed listening
ears in it’s soulless rapture
a call of illusory progress
lifting above sagging rooftops

sky packaged in brown lace,
and at her feet
glittering blankets white.

although it was the bitter
rinds of a passive love
cellophane days
crackle loud in a static mind

Swim in hot
manilla seas; Where dreams
fail to be a membrane to
protect from waking

we were two doves on a wire
intertwined between dusk and daylight
the weight of the day
settled with a hazy sigh
upon our bones
shadows spreading
like spilled ink bled
from trees.

Headlights hang.
trapped in eyelashes
aspirations wandered above
struck down into
the musty grass of a church lot
there was no mercy to be had
I swore it heaved
the floorboards bled purple,
Clocks tore themselves apart
while the frothy whispers of flowers
haunted the humidity.
to get lost here
among the carnation sky
would almost be better.

In a shrill corner
with overcast clouds dully wasting the day
for contemplation washes in brackish waves
flood mouth and eyes

I tell you but
no better words hover lazily
like dust caught in light

In the shrill corner
held with fierce intensity,
the best way small palms can clench.
you were some treasure I'd finally found
which might slip
from my pockets, of threadbare fabric
burying between the thistle and trash
by the sidewalks'  path
by my own oversight

you make a promise
I can’t swim to the bottom
for fear of what truth might look like.

Consumed without discretion.
without abatement.
smoke and ashes will settle
into bloodstream and bone
leaving  fossil traces

If one day you want to slip between the fibers
to be among something new
I will understand
let you pass

with fists clenched.
around their flesh
I will make a promise.

shed that shell
translucently
lacquered
by childhood

that insect
fluttering  behind
the ivory
bars of your ribcage
was once buried
under funerary mosses
of a fallen oak tree
three hundred years
of aged silence
basking in it's demise
saying
"I stretched
to the heavens
but they scurried away
every night  of every day"

You are the last sliver of light
my rods and cones can find
a chill clings on the shoulders of an iron clad  morning
perfume she put on trailed behind for days
as the globe turned a maimed face away
from the heat of it's helium lover.

Even wan hills
looked better in
threadbare light
You were the whisper
of a neon lights
noses to the sky
in a pitch plastic night
I walked by their obstinate
legs, haunted by a plastic bag
gliding on negligent bursts.
upon arrival
roughly hung doors
of understanding
lit by cheap sulfur bulbs.
The handles too large for
small palms to turn
my feet knew better ways home
they ambled on beside my plastic ghost.

He clings to the bible
carrying it as if were a dog carrying dead fowl
its stiff brown spine
sometimes I wonder what kind of
clicks and and sparks happen in
that maze of a mind
staring with shiny slack lips
they reflect the heavens I’m sure of it
although usually avoid his eyes
there’s too much turbulence.

Today, a hot breath of steam
from the mouth of the sun.
I stood shifting-
my thoughts can never keep my body quite still

"Were you there that time?"
"no I wasn't."
a pause skated a fractured silence across the floor

"I'm glad you weren't there.. hell. I wish God wasn't there to hear that."

our lives are but lightning scars across father time's spine.

Did you find it?
by the chipped asphalt shoulder
colder than the stares you could scare up
Did you find it?
in the wandering stars tracking across
this scarred summer sky?
I watch your search
while you  kiss a cigarette's brown
speckled paper skin.
you look past me, just clouds floating across your vision;
as I am a poor container for satisfaction
nothing but scuffed plastic tupperware
missing it's lid.
did you find it?
under the shades of abandonment
or in the shallows
graced by shadow.
did you find it.
the slippery sweetness of
satisfaction?

Today. I was almost hit by a car,
wearing a scarlet dress
the way I least wanted to die
by the grill of an SUV.
The engine grinned hotly in my face.
the look on his face was priceless
I bet mine was better.
as I gasped, no room in
vocal cords for screaming
held my hands out
as if that would stop the metal from moving
tires screeched.
I don't know why he turned so sharply
I don't know why I put my arms out
or had to walk that way
that particular day
my hands shook  in line
at kinkos, holding back every chemical
mixing violently.
saying please and thank you
for two sheets of paper
that could have mattered less
pulling sunglasses
over my face with a case of the shakes

life just stamped me with an appreciation
for itself
only taught by almost getting hit by an SUV.

life went on around me, the workers in yellow on the corner
got a few moments of thrill.
the folks at Starbucks
the other people grinding their teeth at the stoplights.
a moment excitement.

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