The metal streets whir
And the buildings creaks with the shuffling of gears
Progress and movement pumped with hydraulics
Steadily compressing us into a cube of 1s and 0s

But here I will sit in the centre
Palms pressing into the walls
hunched over a children’s book
First key to my world,
First window to my mind
These pages folded into Prometheus
From spark to fire to light

Those podium sitting,
silver-eyed,
shadow-head figures
Look through binoculars searching for
Secrets in their numbers and passwords in their data

But here in my shoebox observatory
I will hold the library of Alexandria
And I will not let the future burn again

Standing in the blue light
Visible for all but eyes
I’ve got ghosts that take my place for me
Golden dust when sun goes low
Sifting through the air and snow
Don’t forget me when I never show

You’ll know when I come home

I’ve got things I have to do
***** dishes, ***** shoes
These bleached hands are not meant
for you

This blood, these veins
I’ve traded it all off for
Grand escapes
Can you tell I’m making it up
each day?
It’s too late to say that I’m not
the same

Go ahead, pull the trigger
This is bigger than us both
Even if it’s just beginning
There’s be meaning in it too
I’ve made my bed
Will the world sleep in it?
Even if you’re late
Can you say that it looks pretty?

Mongrel in an alleyway
Bleeding but I’ll never say
You’re the snow I stain my virtues on
Skin me like an animal
Gentle hands and carved out bones
Will you still smile when you catch sight my ghost?

Only you’ll know when I’m home

Doorknob parties like every ghost of a hand
That passed the threshold of
Route and routine
Sometimes I feel the grooves where your fingerprints
Burned acid into the brass

It was boring
Wet cardboard and drywall
We say goodbye like any other day

Stange how the quiet feels heavier than the talk
But carry it anyways
There’s a meaning in that too

When I talk to eyeless peers
Inane weather and harmless gossip
my voice echos in my head
Perfect moment, perfect answers
But I sometimes fear they hear
incomprehensibility in my words
uncanny in my personality
So, for safety, I resort to binary

I grow flowers in my lungs
to cover the rot in my teeth
Sugar-spun cigarette
melting when I breathe
Recoil from comprehension
offer the barest curation
I live forever in three dots
below my name in your inbox

I find all the things wrong in me and justify
chemical imbalance and medweb certified
But I know, gently, when the house is quiet
I only face my terrible self in the silence
Just a conversation with the mirror
just a prosecution in these eyes
And no one else to know me
but my doppelgänger mind

One day they’ll ask me
(in my dreams)
Where my art is found
My resume for my right hemisphere
My creative licence card

And I’ll say it’s found
obviously
In these poems I write at night
Restless hands and wordless ranting

It’s in the little yarn projects
I’ve picked up and put down
across a year
And my crazed grin when I have to frog three ****** rows

It’s all the handmade cards I crafted for mother’s day
for every year in my life
Because she once dreamed of being an architect
And smiles when resigned to helping to do my art homework

It’s the dried flowers
from manic fascination and collection
Pressed under a stack of books
Sort of forgotten when I tell myself
I’ll stick them to paper tomorrow

Not a bone in my body is professional
Not a bit of me says Van Gogh
But only I see my museum
And only I critique my art
So at least my abstract portrait of craft
Won’t have a missing ear in it

Different
lines on the thermometer,
when it happens,
it moves all by itself.

Deliberately
random restless waters,
terrestrials standing on their banks,
recidivists having deposits
and withdrawals
at an inflated rate.

Dungeoneering
--the amplified gesture
means a convenience charge,
elevate me later.

Defibrillation,
I'm on the existential end
of viral paradise,
"the files you have on me"
are a trail of stolen pebbles,
sure to inoculate my final
walk into the sea.

Make us fragile
like a flower
Unoriginal, textbook
Crooning love songs behind a hat on the street
I’ve seen mice with more calluses and sinew
Tough on the teeth
Grainy and cheap
If I die, I’m tender and sweet

Make us soft
like the morning’s first snow
Harbour us, carve us
Show us off on your front porch
beady eyed and smug grinned
Then rain falls and I’m run-offs
Footprints and mud
Snowman head smeared on the driveway

Make us sensitive
like your childhood TV dial
We’ll dance, we’ll bow
Until our minds get lost in a fog of
wrong signals and wrong sounds
It’s all static and I’m all electric
My breath my skin and my sight
Then you’ll hit and swear at your box until it learns not to fight

Make us young
Like we once knew
Skinned knees, knuckleheads
Holding out our hand and taking our then incomprehensible
comfort and safety
Time will have its pound
The world will have its way
But now I’ll savour this grain that was weighed
From old hands to blemish-less mine