when I was a child I was told that the earth and I were water, so I grabbed a snowflake between my fingernails and pried its glassy bones apart, wondering if I would see in its chemical flow some evidence that I was anything more than a droplet of mist on the hair of your memory's arm

( but today, I find it comforting)

from behind my eye I glance at her and wonder with what shades she sees the world
and I think about how tightly she grabs her body,
as though her heart were falling out,

through her tissue skin I see that her blood is grey,
her brain is grey,
her grey guts spilling like inky oily sludge and flooding even the sun,

in april, living in an endless december, the weeds now soggy in her veins,

and as I peer into this rippled reflection I wonder how my little fish soul,
moving only with the pull of the stream,
lived in that lightless world of death

are you there?

listen, i'm going deaf, you can go on without me,
i need to wait out the post-sound cacophony in my ears,
to clear out the sonic clutter,
the finely-braided metal radio chains in my head, you know -

it's soothing, the sound of silence, it's bliss, that rich, negative space -

you go on ahead, and after the war,
the ringing detonations,
and the harmonic riots,
after the static on my tv is carefully rearranged
grain by grain into a colorless frame of the past,
a pointillistic polaroid,
maybe i'll catch up, that is,
if i can somehow hear the world again

you, the one who is fluent in the language of my flesh, temples to neck, hips to         heels

        who cradles my name on your tongue like a peppermint, your chapped         lips twisted into a grin

        who carries ***** words around in a matchbox then dances dangerously         around my body of fire

        who, with plaid cotton patches of tan and rust, muffles my mouth and fills it         with sweet ash and dust

will surely be the death of me

Delicate breeze brushing through trees
(if you're quiet, you can hear)
Frogs conversing
(cricket sparklers crackling)
People hustling
(by the rolling ocean roads)
The sky is clear, a blank slate
(if you squint, you can see)
Stars begin to etch themselves in the marble
(yellow threads of old light)
The spring air sweeps the chalky clouds away
(floating down the back alleyway)

i was motionless like the moment just before a storm
my hair clinging to the sheets, my eyes on the ceiling
and my hands draped above my head in a solemn halo;

my blue gasping fingers swallowed your kisses and
my mouth filled up greedily with your breath and
my body consumed every thought you gave to it;

in a dusty sweet voice, your words enslaved me politely
as the blankets of stars wrapped us up with love
and the rain courteously offered its applause

once when we were speaking candidly
in the car or maybe at breakfast
I told you how much I love the you
that comes out at night in your room,
the Bogeyman beneath your glasses who
leaps out of the shadows and, like a
ravenous beast, topples me over to
devour my tasty flesh —

you shrugged at my suggestion and I
wondered if it ever occurred to you
that your lust simmers so near the
surface on those nights that smell
so heavily of *** —

when I asked if you noticed any
Bogeyman in me, you only admitted
that I become more “blunt”, not
commanding, necessarily, but
straight-forward and concise —

it makes me think of those shivering
nights without clothes when we haven’t
made it beneath the covers yet
as something like a ritual where we
shed our daily roles and put on
those of the beast and his master,
where I conquer you and clean up
your spoils, leaving only a
slick orange sweater and a
hasty a capella symphony, a
prelude to sweet and somber slumber.