the coffee was cold.
a day old.
i heated it.
poured it.
fought through it.

put on a b-film.
something about crap
films made our lives
feel more fulfilling.

we laughed.
exposed every flaw.
we held hands.
snuck
loving glances.

i have to wake up in three
hours, but all i can think
is life is luck,
even for the dumbest of us,
when you tell your
eyes to open up.

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
     finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
     throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

We grew like a tree into a fence
Barbed wire buried under bark and wood
In flesh and bone we find our homes
Together we’ll strip the world of all its good

I’d give until I starved to death
She’d take until the roots were gone
And we’d pull each other down
And we’d sink into it going wrong

When the wind would blow
We’d cut each other deep
Regrets would overflow
We’d **** and fall asleep

Branches hurled down at the fence
As fences do good neighbors make
Each new gust stirred up the dust
Neither knew who’d be the first to break

wind kept blowing, tree kept creaking
I reached for poison and fell in
Cowardly flight into that night
She wept and kept herself to him

It went out in one final flourish
The last summer for blossoming
The rot set in, the axes came
This was the end of everything.

Eat my heart like a sideshow geek
Taste the blandness of the meek
Make pulp of every last piece
Of the hot, quivering, meat
In your blackened teeth and eat
Without cease and never speak

I am swimming in my coffin,
A plush cage of silk and satin.
Hollow housing what's gone rotten
Cold vacuum of the forgotten.

Backfired plan, ran from a quagmire.
"Departure" from unquenched desire.
A notionless naivetty,
Breeds ambitionless apathy.

I'm placid, pallid, on the floor,
In yearning dreams from days of yore.
An idyllic end depicted,
To deep rooted pain inflicted.

Yet...

Curtains' fall is ill-begotten,
By memory I am sought in,
A cacophony, my casket.
No sanity can outlast it.

dear old sir, poor father of mine
you've left me quite alone
all on my very own
I don't miss too much

dear father
I don't miss you

dear sister
I don't trust you

dear mother
it's not a bit real

there's a little baby bird with a hold on you

dear baby bird, sly thing you
with your man, watching clear and strong
may I take him along?

For my eyes are starlight black
With those spirits on my back
Somebody must be watchin'
As we dance these wicked tunes

The past has such heavy weight
like sunken ships
and ancient cement barricades,
so permanent
even in their irrelevancy.