plant a bullet like a seed
within the contours of my head
and witness all the carnage
that will flower in its stead.
i swear i’m fit to rupture
from all the sorrow in my skull.
hairline fractures spiderweb
across these brittle bones. rip apart
my rib cage and sow a garden
in my chest, let the buds blossom
as i’m finally laid to rest.
turn my flesh to compost
so something radiant
might grow, i’m sick to death
of soaking up the sun’s incessant glow.
forget me like wilted petals yearning
for a drink. don’t pretend to miss me
when i finally sink beneath.

breaststrokes
power me
through nebulous
clouds of stardust.
push through the pain,
echoing in the chasms
of a brain deadened.
bypass the past
that clings like detritus,
beyond the black holes
gobbling galaxies
whole. onwards.
eyes set on the horizon
nothing lies beyond:
dancing along
the razor's straightedge,
an eternally
expanding cosmos.

we spin concentric,
like a record on wax
and i feel the heat of analog.

you are the quiet harmony
hiding in the background
of my favorite song—

a melody
i couldn’t quite catch
until i turned the volume ****.

watch us turn
like twin suns
sustained in infinite orbit.

hydrogen-fusion
synthesis. combusting
like burgeoning nebulae—

a great osmosis
in our corner of the cosmos,
an ouroboros in lemniscate.

Dad drove down
to the liquor store
that morning
the same routine

bought two bottles of
the cheapest red wine
money could buy
to drink from cheap
plastic solo cups

he never drank
from blue cups
just the red ones
not sure if that even
matters

when Dad drinks
he goes to one of
two extremes 


either he’s grinning ear-to-ear over
something utterly 
mundane
or else 
he’s
spewing equal measures of
spittle and venom

but no matter what
his breath always
smells like death

when i was a kid
i didn’t really get it
why a man would drink
and do such stupid ****

of course
that was before
the world taught me
what it meant to suffer

you never really realize what
tragedy looks like
until you get home from school
on a Wednesday afternoon

to find your old man
wasted
crying
begging
you to tell him it’s
gonna be okay
that he’s gonna make
it another day

like watching
god become human

so i promised him

i swore that it’d 
be
okay 

but i had no idea

if it would ever 
be
okay 
again

my Dad lost his Dad 

that was why 
he drank so much

at least 

as far as i can tell 

that was the reason


why

i’ve never really asked
and besides

i doubt he’d ever 
admit it

least of all
to me

but as i get older and 

reflect 

i’m not sure there 
was
ever really a reason 


why

he got sober 

did the 12 step program 

hallelujah

thank you 

Jesus 

something like 
that 

and he hasn’t had 
a single sip 

since he sobbed 
in my arms 

that Wednesday afternoon

at least

as far as i know

depression is waking
with one foot
already in the grave.
a tombstone
with my name etched
into its stony face
is perched
atop my chest.
unable to breathe,
i lay paralyzed
and think,
well, if this is death,
then we'd best
get on with it.

•••

depression is drowning
while the sun peers down,
ambivalent. my fingernails
are splintered fragments.
i've worn weary digits
down to calcium bone
scratching at the icy
underbelly of the surface.
in vain i draw scant bits of oxygen
through the slivered cracks
spider-webbed above me.
the molecules cut like rusty shivs
through my battered lungs,
sustaining my suffering
for just a while longer.

•••

depression is gathering dust
on the top shelf of an oddities shop,
surrounded by the macabre.
while taxidermy goats stare out
with lidless eyes like opals,
i am the thirteenth tarot card,
misplaced and unlucky.
someone forgot to take me home.
tattooed in my parchment flesh
is a skeleton key hanging
like a noose from the neck of Death,
who reads an arcane text and grins
ominously beneath the hood
of a shadowed cowl, beckoning.

i can’t spin
any of the records
we listened to
anymore—
you’re constantly
in the background,
singing along.
i feel your hand
brush mine
when the needle drops
on ****.
and 808’s pop off.
you infuse the tunes
that croon
like lullabies,
reminding me
that you’ll remain
forever in my
Peripheral Vision.

pull me up
by the roots
of blue veins splayed
across pale flesh

i'm a puppet
dancing
on strings
twirled around
your finger

if i ever muster
the courage to
sever the ties
i'll pour my
life's blood
down my arms
in scarlet
rivulets and
swallow the
razor blades that
led me to
eternal rest

i'll die
smiling
alleluia
free
at last

there are scars
that cut too deep
to stitch
back together,

hurts that dull,
but never
truly
lose the ache.

some wounds
never heal
and can only
be mourned

alone.

there's a shade of you
in everyone i meet.
a faint flicker,
like sunbeams refracting
on the ocean's surface,
forcing me to squint
at a hazy horizon.

you keep time
with my shadow,
always hiding
from the light.
your absence
weighs like a void,
a gravity-gobbling
vacuum siphoning
energy, leading me
inexorably toward entropy.

you are a dæmon, ancient
as the cosmos,
sturdy as oak.
a familiar, lingering
like a musk upon
my garments.
a spirit, resplendent
if, albeit, a bit
impatient.
a ghost, haunting
me close as i slowly trudge
through the sludge of psychosis.

so, errant i remain
until you deign once more
to speak my name
into the ether.
on that day,
i assure you,
i will be true—
come what may—
forever and always.

my heart is heavy
as a corpse
hanging from the State's gallows.
my head is light
as a child
eaten away by her own hunger.

there is a marriage between mental instability
and the fragility of this postmodern world.
anxiety exacerbated like rising sea-levels,
stress fractures greater than tectonic shifts,
insomnia that shakes you from sleep,
an internal alarm powered by the doomsday clock.

fury waits for me, lurking like cluster munitions
on Syrian soil, primed and ready
to rip the innocent limb-from-limb.
bombs bought and paid for
with the cold, hard cash  
pilfered by overlords,
pick-pocketed by white,
heteronormative men
with invisible hands.

caught in a web of poetry
amidst threads i've spun like a spider,
a noose fashioned
from so many strands of rope.
constantly oscillating
between interconnected themes:
tragedy and suffering,
the hallmarks of existence.

showing solidarity
with the least of these
virtually guarantees
an early grave.
to possess
even a modicum
of empathy
in times like these
is to court
interminable
melancholy.

illusion festers at the
altar of apathy we
sacrifice our intellect
for luxury items
woe-filled slaves chained
to hypocrisy

if this is what grows in the
absence of thought—weeds
spread out to choke all semblance
of hope—sew my eyelids to my scalp
i'll sleep no more no nightmare
is more terrible than this
reality we must endure

stretched out across this wasteland
we built temples to worship
finance bathed in our own arrogance
we fancied ourselves gods through
deicide and accepted the
inheritance that gave us such a throne

measure out the violence in Biblical
proportions spread like fire
to every corner of the globe
cover the map in a sea of
ash and smoke white phosphorous
raining from the sky like manna
on all the forgotten children
anguishing in third-world exile

we are the arbiters of our own demise
drunken bloated ignorant harbingers
reviled for our revelry of orgastic negativity
plunging the Earth into the sixth
extinction that surely spells
the end of our finite kind

some sentient race may yet witness
our only home caught in the
death-grip of its sole intellectual organism
as life ebbs from her lonely pale blue eyes
winking in and out of existence
from hundreds of lightyears far far away

no telling whether such a recollection
viewed through the chasm of space-time
might offer a mirror to some species
possessed of less self-destructive
tendencies devoid of suicidal mentalities
a warning sign to all the legions spread
across the galaxy:

do not follow in our footsteps

there is no imaginary adversary
prowling like a lion, shooting arrows.
my only enemy is me. there may be a war
but it’s raging in my psyche—
it’s chemical, not spiritual.
you’re terrified i’ll rot in hell,
why can’t you see
that we’re already here?

dreams of eternal bliss
might bring you peace,
but i won’t swallow
another ******* lie
just so i can sleep at night.
i see no proof for your deity.
where was your Christ
when my best friend died
before his time?  

“if there was a god,
i would spit in his face
for subjecting me to this.”
i have no hope and i am free
to make this life whatever
i want it to be. my integrity
is the only thing that i have left.
i will anxiously wander this wasteland
and not spend another moment
trapped within your fiction religion.

happiness habitually tends toward apathy
permitting brainlessness to fester in the
throes of misanthropy while indefatigable
entropy saps the mind and heart
robbing the joyful of their shared humanity

emotion's heady debris linger in hapless
inanity while infatuation produces a stupor
unmatched by the strongest of spirits
reducing the compassionate to one-sided
and ambivalent caricatures of divinity

have we been deceived
force-fed untruth from birth
on celluloid silver screens
did we barter literature for
delusions of grandeur
in frivolous narratives manufactured
to distract from reality or detract
from the movement to abolish hateful
programs perpetuating poverty

or has cynicism left me jaded hating
that which is most precious in the human
experience because past horrors and
present woes cannot permit the possibility
of future redemption to overcome these
walls i've built around my dismembered soul

as is often the case i see the answer's far
from crystal clear it's amorphous and contorted
caught somewhere between two distant antitheses
which create a spectrum of relative ambiguity
amidst a reality neither certain nor secure

nevertheless i'll try to unearth the truth
whatever it may be and wherever it lies buried
harboring the knowledge in the back of my skull
that there may not even be such a thing
i'll salvage courage from
the wreckage of wistfulness
a wanderer waylaid in the chasm of gray matters

there’s a certain serenity to be found
standing on the precipice of a continent,
lost in the expanse of an ocean
unfurled like a map, extending out
to caress the earth’s curvature. the seas
sift as i stand on hourglass sand
and forget the seconds slipping
past, stuck in the liminal space
between the hour and minute hands
on the clock—if only for a moment. here,
i feel smaller than the grains that cling
like salt-and-pepper to my feet. peace
drifts in the ebb and flow, eroding
this old soil. wash away my cares
and let my soles sink deep.

yesterday, my mind was a landslide,
an earthquake instigated
by platonic fates.
i nursed a headache, reeling
from the repercussions
of unrequited affection
and a planet spiraling
towards complete annihilation.

today, my heart is leaking uranium,
a radioactive time-bomb,
primed to explode.
the nuclear codes
have been plugged in,
the key has been turned
in the ignition.
Houston, we have lift off.

tomorrow is far too late. the warheads
are already en route to their destination.
now nothing can stop our obsessive compulsive
disorder, our pining for the sixth extinction.
from the horizon, i watch the nukes eclipse the sun
and i rage, furious on the precipice of the abyss,
desperate for death's sweet kiss
and the utter bliss of oblivion.

i yearn to change
the world
but i can't seem
to change myself

i fear the gears have ground to a halt
and i've been left to gather rust
between the teeth of tired cogs
in the jaws of this dysfunctional mess

am i nothing more
than a bent tool
a broken fool trapped
in self-detesting testament

piece
me together
with anger anguish
and mistrustful lust

the aspects of a psyche
peeled back
like flayed fingernails
exposing fresh flesh

i've resolved
to be a nightly victim
of my own failing
mental health

i may be pointing fingers
and smashing mirrors
but i haven't been avoiding
the abject reality

a reflection
i know reflexively is inexorably
responsible for this current
catastrophe

i
am my own
sworn
enemy

a contagion
jealously infecting
everyone and everything
i've tried to love

though i dream of death
every evening
i continually awaken
disappointed

you set my neurons firing
like an arsonist in the foyer
of the old abandoned church
built within the synaptic gaps
of my brain matter.

burning bridges was the only way
to keep from sinking with the anchors
chained to my feet.
i find myself, instead, adrift
inside your bloodstream.

so scrape the match and watch phosphate
sputter like the final gasp of a dying sun.
let the shaft of wood tumble end-over-
end into the kerosene amassed at my feet.
raze what's left of me. set me free.

wake up every morning with a jackhammer in my head.
think about you.
read the news.
whose kids did we bomb today?
what terror occurred half-a-world away?
or did another racist bigot stab someone in Portland?
gun shows at concert halls, schools.
protesters jailed, surveilled, beaten ******
on concrete streets we laid
after generations of genocide.
i struggle to find the poetry
in a world that's gone to ****.
wake up mourning, hoping today the world will do me in.

a flock congregate
at 1600
Pennsylvania Ave.

carrion
masquerading
as doves.

a group of vultures
waiting
for the storm.

a failed state propagated
by a real estate mogul
turned reality TV star.

an orange fascist
adorned
with a golden toupée.

the White House's
black market profiteers
have emerged from the dark.

let's have a round of applause
for this parlor trick,
globalization's final act:

the curtain parts.
oligarchic puppet-masters
take a bow

as the laugh-track kicks on,
their fingers overlap
behind their backs.

corporate coup d'état.
hostile takeover.
d(evolution).

you still show up
every time i put
pen to paper
looking down
over my shoulder
watching inspiring
you inhabit every molecule of ink

each time i sit down at my desk
you peel apart my brain cells
as if you were pulling
back your veil on
your wedding day and
surveil tangential passages
bridging my synaptic gaps

i am a bee caught within your web
and i feel your thousand eyes
probing and poring over me
i couldn't escape
even if i wanted to

each black drop or generous dollop
has a hundred thousand
splintered fragments of you
fractions refracting strife and
intermittent anguish that
comes and goes without
so much as a
moment's warning
or a fond farewell

i have grown accustomed
to a lack of sleep

all my friends
wish they were dead.
how could we hope
to change the world
when we’re trapped
inside the labyrinths
that cage the brains
inside our heads?

i can’t seem to ****
the void that lives
in my chest—
leeching every instance
of happiness.

maggots feast
on the detritus,
feed the abyss
an avalanche
of all the drugs
suffocating us.

i miss the days
where my hatred
could swallow
my sorrow.

maybe it's just the fact
that your eyes remind
me of nebulae but
i guess i just thought
we'd burn out like the sun

5 billion years on
before bursting
shattering supernova
undulating amidst
the Milky Way

but lately
we're nothing more than a solitary match
sputtering in the eye of a hurricane
flickering with hardly any fuel left
'cause this crisis has blackened our blood
and i couldn't seem to find
the gasoline to pour over this fading flame

so i'll scuttle this life-boat and set myself adrift
silently waiting to capsize
the old adage is true
the captain must go down with the ship
but our hands were interlocked
on that steering wheel
so i suppose it's only fitting
that i named this vessel after you
i'll sing your favorite tunes
as i keep sinking into this bottomless
trench of sleeplessness

we were both willing to
ram our Titanic into the glacier
if only to kiss the contours
of ice beneath the surface
the secret we hid from one another
pulling us with the magnetism of the planet's poles
a knowledge subliminally submerged

"i said i'd never let you go and i never did"
but Houston
we have a problem

and while all things end
i thought we'd go down
like the Challenger
erupting and scattering
bits of fiery debris across
these broken homes
sprinkled like memories
of Florida theme parks
and forbidden rooftops
and the corpse-blue cornfields of Iowa
illuminated at midnight by the halo
of all your Marlboro cigarettes

i didn't think
we'd spend
all these years
pretending
to still be friends

every white wedding is exactly the same.
kitschy mason-jar centerpiece displays,
thirsty flowers in ornate vases,
lace-trimmed tablecloths and country-pop
songs blaring from the stereo.

welcome to cookie-cutter suburbia,
copy-and-pasted from half-a-hundred
Pinterest boards depicting
indistinguishable scenes
of smiles stretched paper-thin
on spray-tan painted faces.

my tongue is a skipping record,
regurgitating the same vapid
conversation ad nauseam,
stutter-stepping through
an indistinct refrain:
“how’s school going for you?”
“oh, really? an English degree?”
“and just what do you plan
to do with that, exactly?”

bourgeois blather follows flagrant patterns.
drunk uncles splutter racist rants
at this posh reception, but i’ve been told—
no matter what—don’t stir the ***.
avoid any and all discussion
of the current president’s
child concentration camps,
the war on immigrants,
or the escalating tensions
with Venezuela and Iran.

i am sick
to my stomach
of self-indulgence:
watered-down punch bowls, patriarchal
vows to god and government. “i do,”
an endless ******* feedback loop
droning tediously until my ears bleed.
sing the same hymns over acoustic guitars
while vocals peak in microphones.
reread 1 Corinthians 13:13, beg your deity
to bless the BBQ pork and beans.

dance along to the Cupid Shuffle
and be sure
to always follow the rules:
birth, youth,
college, marriage,
work, death.
consume.

well before dawn
bats her eyelashes
at a yawning horizon
i claw my way free
emerging from six feet under

burgeoning with fingernails
still caked in dirt from ceaseless digging
unable to slumber with a tombstone as a pillow

a corpse interned
amidst the earth's embrace
deadening this landscape
souring the soil
infecting every body
within proximity

i've been pushing my luck
in place of daisies
locked within the confines
of a mass grave
sunken past the rifts
into tremor-torn trenches  
adrift with all the cadavers
lost and scattered across the deep

searching for some clarity
amidst misremembered memories
so i might finally rest in peace
not pieces

the memories play on shuffle in
the back of my cerebral cortex
drifting like a drug up
and down my spine
intoxicating
stop-and-go
out of touch
intermittent illusions and
misrememberances

pomegranate lingers
on my tongue
sandpaper tiles rest
beneath knobby knees
soft flesh against my palms
glasses askew in passion
the stickiness of sweat
fingers still soaked from
forays into your wet warmth

inhabiting a cluster of moments from a
dozen different angles to dizzying
effect until i lose track of reality and
spiral into some intermediate realm of
consciousness where fact and fiction
are permanently merged into
one irreversible entity

don't dig up
old bones
leave the past
buried

with the wreckage
of desecrated memories
drowning in the swells of
the tempest

let them rest
in Mariana's Trench
deep in inky shadows
on the ocean floor

scattered across the galaxy
in the wreckage of a helium bomb
flung far into uncharted space
forever and ever
ad infinitum

i'd say
i'll see you in hell
but we both know all
too well that
hell is other
people

and all the devils are already here

flattery can't assuage catastrophe
this was doomed right from the start
only the good die young
a maxim ringing with deathless promise

i want to rescue
someone else
'cause i can't seem
to save myself.

occasionally, i wander aimlessly
into the forests of your irises,
a cartographer
mapping every detail.
here, time flows differently.
somehow milliseconds stretch
to eternities, but it's still
never enough.

rapt, i dwell beneath the trees
and picnic as the leaves dance
and shift in the breeze.
i read Nietzsche, listening  
to the pleas of mahogany branches
stretching out overhead,
desperate to catch hold
of each other's hands
just a moment longer.
coffee streams sing
next to me. i am lost
in your eyes and don't want
to be found.

then you speak,
"what're you looking at?"
the epiphany springs:
i've known more houses
than i can count, but
you feel like home.

the pastor prattles on
and i nod off as my
phone shudders in the
pocket of my jeans

i fish it out
during the brief
interim where
everyone obediently
closes their eyes and
bows their heads
victims for a hungry
guillotine

the screen alights with
her name just as i
suspected and i voraciously
read the rough draft of the
poem she's just sent me  

the clock stops in the middle
of two separate seconds
i ruminate over the illuminated text
on screen digesting feminine
intentions between intermittent
glances to see if anyone's noticed
how even Father Time
paused to read her lyrics

i'd read dozens of excerpts
penned by her generous hands
sonnets wreathed in somber cadences
spoken word blistering with brazen passion
and compassionate pleas beseeching
all who'd listen to thaw cold hearts
and take heed of the lost
and lonely masses but
i never read something where
she referenced me

alas
the piece was
brief
and i can't help
but think i am
one of her many
footnotes

and the sick and subtle
tragedy is that she
instigates my exposition
rises in each action
and catalyzes every
climactic conclusion

i am a pendulum
oscillating between
ostensible antitheses,
elapsing like a ticking
time-bomb.

most days
i want to save the world.
but sometimes
i want to destroy
the entire cosmos.

ball up my fists and break
up the regimes
of bigots, rapists, and racists.
smash the militarists, misogynist
pigs, and Islamaphobes.

but that's the problem, isn't it?
in our self-indulgent belligerence
and fatuous ignorance, we utilize violence
deposing one tyrant just to install another,
eternally entombed in shackles.

i am too weak
to cure this suicidal impulse
and, in my obeisance,
i've stained my hands
red with crimson.

this death-drive sends us
spiraling into an abyss
we wrought for ourselves.
maybe we just want to watch
the world burn.

the ruptures we've torn
in mother earth
are eerily reminiscent
of our own fractured
mental health

and this sickness leaves me bipolar,
vacillating between two extremes:
fantasizing about the end of the world
and simply wanting to **** myself
to be done with this wretched hell.

i built god in your image.
an entity guised in black, clutching
half-a-pack of cigarettes, erudite
and attractive, smoldering
as dark matter, spinning incessantly
like a compass distracted by a magnet.

heaven was hanging from your lips,
momentarily adrift, caught like a meteor
en route between two planets,
tethered by tendrils of gravity.

agony
is continually waking
to your absence.
life wouldn't be hell
without hope.

i woke to a ceiling fan
humming above my head
a disjointed cadence obfuscated
by a couple loose screws that caused it to
shake and to shudder and
splutter its song

i couldn't fall back asleep

i went for a walk instead
watched a boy in oversized overalls
cuffed about his ankles
cuss and shake his head in
lament as he kicked a crumpled
aluminum can across sun-baked cement

a scrawny teenage girl smoked a roach
on her front porch step
she wore a scowl as i admired
the cigarette butts scattered across her lawn
she acknowledged me with bloodshot eyes
that seemed as though they'd seen too much

the St. John's River brushed the shoreline
furtive as a lover's butterfly kisses
and whispered sweet nothings
as a garbage barge drifted past
i could smell the rotten filth
rich folks had discarded and i
imagine i regarded that same
vessel with a different expression
than the homeless man who sat
on a park bench nearby feeding
the crusts of his sandwich to a
cluster of pigeons

on my way back the
skinny girl called out to me
she walked down from her balcony and
asked me if i wanted some ***
but the words
no, thank you  
caught in my throat
i couldn't miss the fresh scars on her wrists
or the pain in her eyes masked by
youthful defiance and
i turned from her wordless remembering
ignorance is bliss

i wish i could remember how to forget

six weeks later
i can still taste the
faint scent of liquor on
your breath the remnant
of our most recent tryst

the way you bit your
lip and grinned at me
your eyes flashed with
forbidden mischief
when i asked
if i could kiss you

we entangled
ourselves for a moment
extricated from the miasma
of complications our
bodies speaking words
in an ancient language
too sincere to
be misunderstood

six days ago
you asked me not
to write anymore
poems about you

i'd made you shake
your eyes rolled back
with ecstatic envy
in rhythm with  
an ode in the vein
of e.e. cummings that left
you quaking on the
brink of bliss
waging an internal war
fighting the impulse
to release the avalanche
of affection latent in
our day-to-day conversations

why stop the flow of words
tell me true my friend
my love
my muse

riddle me this
what would you have me do
when every line i pen starts
and ends with you

if a film fails to
pass the Bechdel Test
will you have the gaul to point it out

when your job forces you
to choose between paying rent
and lying to sell an ethically bankrupt
overly-priced yearly membership to your
not-so-friendly-neighborhood-bookstore
will you stand by conviction and walk alone

when your students ask
why you detest authority
will you tell it to them straight
explain that you estimate people
are at their best when they question
everyone and everything standing in their way

at any rate
no matter what
regardless of the cost
will you speak the truth
even when your voice shakes

you seized on the opportunity
to tell me what i ought to believe
while my best friend
lay dead on a hospital bed.
pulled me aside, lead me into
a sterilized room,
asked if you could pray
for the both of us.

you told me you feared
for my immortal soul
while his body
was still growing cold.

later that week, at the funeral
you twisted his memory,
trying in vain
to manipulate me.
you said he prayed for me daily
but the god you share,
in his “perfect timing,”
took him far too ******* early.

you told me he feared
for my immortal soul
while the mortician
incinerated him whole.

no respite
from the fictions you spin.
no solace
in the arms of religion.
doomed to wander
a hollow shell,
you make this earth
an existential hell.

i have no fear
for my imaginary soul.
everything ends,
absorbed into a black-hole.

so many snake-oil peddlers—
bite back down
on your forked tongues,
shear them off
with vampiric teeth.
keep the name of my best friend
out of your poisoned mouths
so i can find some peace.

i buried god
in a shallow grave
just in case

i always put stock
in the old stories
maybe he’d claw and
scrape his way back
to the surface
and save the day or
else say it’s
too late for me
i’ve gone so
far astray

i once saw god everywhere
in hip-hop records and
Saturday morning cartoons in
coffee bars and concert halls
but i can’t seem to find him
anywhere anymore

i think it’s for the best

i thought this feeling would prove fleeting, dissipating with the rain.
but nothing's changed. there's still a void
where you used to be.
anxiety's vise-grip didn't ease one bit
when i found a new home
on the bay, so far away from the memories
that infect the streets we used to roam.
every love story eventually ends in tragedy.
entropy is our fate. but wherever i go,
i seem to be doomed to stumble
perpetually in and out
of your shadow. the rot that clings
like leprosy. inexorably, i decay.
drawn like rust right back to you.

the mid-morning fog
cloaks the traveler
in a thick mist
a musk of weather-beaten
leather cloaks soft skin
a fragrant vagrant
wandering in the warmth
of a dawning star

she stops and
stares now and
again
a lingering smile on
her face, her eyes
twinkling with equal parts
mischief and grace

an exuberant jubilee of
far-flung soliloquies
enhance her reddened hair
and her rosy cheeks
as she slips quietly
through the cobbled streets

until a flower
small but fair
pokes its way through a
crack
she stoops and ponders
for a moment
whether she might take it

then climbs once more
to hardened feet as
a smile tugs at her cheeks
she leaves the flower
in peace not
in pieces
who knows
who might need it

still she sojourns on
a wayward adventurer
with no destination
save the secret joy of
knowing and being known
by a world she adores

hell,
i maintain,
is watching those
you love languish
in agony, powerless
to alleviate their
tragedy.
i would suffer
forever
if i could just
absolve
your woe.

i always heard,
"write what you know.
forget the rest."
but i'm tired of
poems where you
and i never fit
on the same line.

just once,
i'd like to breach
your universe—
an alternate reality
where you opened
your heart,
not just your body.
i dream of a galaxy
where your affection
floods my psyche.

then i might pen
a verse or two
in quiet
reminiscence,
commemorating
an experience
where love
was finally requited.

i thought that you were
medicine when all this time
you were ******.

anxiety saps
my psyche. i'm trembling
uncontrollably.

i'll carry the scars
you gave me, wounds no one sees,
for eternity.

there was an empty seat
at the table tonight.
while the candles flickered
in the streetlights,
i shut my eyes
and wished you'd appear
right by my side.
i blew and the flame sputtered,
then guttered out.
but, when i looked up,
you were still
nowhere to be found.
i looked up to the stars
to try again, but spotted
your irises instead—
a vision hanging
in the heavens.
there was an empty seat
at the table tonight.

i have a death-grip on strife. i count my vices every night like sheep before sleep. walk alone along the razor's edge, plunging straight ahead. i admit, i'm misery embodied. but i'll be ****** before you steal my liberty.
no gods. no flags. no masters.
there is nothing and no one higher.
i open my lungs to the summer air. breathe deep. the sun is beating down. my clothes are black. i feel the beads of sweat gathering. the crickets' lyrics slip through the reeds. the pond ripples, a dragonfly alighting upon a lily. i feel the earth beneath me, spinning on its axis. i cannot see the tilt, but i can measure the skies, chart the constellations. we are spinning around a star, one of many. trillions of suns. this is real. this is true. i can prove it.
no gods. no flags. no masters.
there is nothing and no one higher.
defy. deny. concede nothing. solitary in conviction. stand strong. stay sober. die free.

there's a residue of wheat-paste
stuck to our fingers. each time we part
to adorn the concrete walls
with antifa posters, the molecules grasp
for one another, suctioned together, desperate
to hold each other
just a moment longer.

absently, i remember
the last time my fingers were glued
to your contours. you grasped my hand
then, as well. only tighter. held me firm
by the wrist as we eclipsed and i slipped inside
you, both body and mind. between clenched teeth,
a gasp of bliss traipsed
like a brushstroke across your tongue.
you ripened, sticky as a pomegranate
split wide open, slick and sweet and pink.

i will never again be your lover—at least,
not in this lifetime. but tonight
you were my partner in crime
and i like to think that maybe
that counts for something.

i am a wayward brushstroke,
more water than paint, fading
in color like the skyline
just beyond the reach of the sun.
a peripheral image reflected
implicitly in sepia- tone photographs.
a mirage at the desert's horizon,
illusory and fanciful. i've grown
hoarse from shouting at the heavens,
calling out to a god of my imagination.
i'll dig a mass grave with every word
that makes its way past my parched throat,
iron lungs for tombstones. suffering
eternally, sorrow overcomes.

i. spring
do you remember
the first time
you asked me to write you a poem?
you were nervous
and you blushed
when you finally
found the words.
little did you know,
i’d already penned several—
though, none i was happy with.
i started the first not long after we met.
it grew like a sapling,
burgeoning in dayspring.
there were so many times
i should’ve figured out
i was in over my head.
but i knew with some certainty
that i was doomed
when you graffitied anarchy
in the concrete
of D.C.
right then and there
i should’ve realized
i’d fall for you.

ii. summer
can you recall
the first time
we made love?
the window was open,
the curtains weren’t drawn.
but August air kissed our skin
and you had no patience.
you guided my head down  
and you bit your tongue
to keep from screaming out.
after you came thrice,
we collapsed in a heap
of sheets knotted  
from sweat and ***.
i read you Camus
while you lay your head
on my chest to tune-in
to the rhythm and blues
of a heart that beat
a melody for you.

iii. autumn
will you recollect
the first time
i broke down?
lost it on the drive home
from Goodwill
where we tried to find
Halloween costumes.
we were stuck in rush-hour traffic.
anxiety got the best of me—
had my skeleton rattling
beneath my skin,
hands trembling
on the steering wheel,
teeth chewing
off my tongue.
panic.
the sun was setting
and there wasn’t a ******* thing
i could do
to keep it floating
in the heavens.

iv. winter*
i can’t forget
the first time
you came to me with scars on your wrists.
i held you while you shook with sobs,
vomited in the toilet,
and cursed a non-existent god.
i danced with you in the living room,
sang to you on the way home from St. Pete,
and held your hand in the Dali exhibit.
i gave you every bit
of love i had left
but i was never enough.
November’s fraught with cold.
seasons slip and i am eclipsed
by your new fling.
i wish you nothing
but happiness,
Beloved. i still adore you
endlessly.

prisms breathe rainbows  
but i can only see in monochrome.
colorblind, i can’t grasp
much beyond shades of gray photographs,
chewing shards of broken glass
while i confine knife-sharp memories
in the fragile corners of my mind.

buried every evening in the sludge
of tedium, i trudge to the beat
of a broken drum, struck dumb
by the knowledge that all of this
is completely ******* meaningless.
too weak to pretend i possess
any semblance of control.

rise like the walking dead
from the open tomb
of a cold and empty bed.
yearning for the bliss of oblivion,
embrace the infinite abyss
of nothingness that awaits us all
just around the bend.

languid waves
lap at the shoreline
as the wind
scoops up handfuls
of sea foam
to scatter
across sun-baked sand,
rolling lazily along
before disintegrating
into open air.
the faint hum
of the breeze
is whipping
past our ears
and the yawning
breathing of the ocean’s
gentle sheen
refracts sunlight
across white-crested
saltwater.

i can feel callouses
forming on the soles
of my feet
as i make my way
barefoot across the boardwalk.
little reeds sway
in the sand
and salt-eroded shells
are tiny lumps,
half-buried treasure chests.
a storm is brewing
on the horizon,
but the dark clouds
can’t quite cut down
the sun
from the heavens.

i am wandering
back and forth,
tugged along
by the ebb and flow
of the ocean.
oscillating
between the highs
and lows.
look
and see
the old watchtower,
the lighthouse
fallen into disrepair,
standing silent,
a sentinel
securing the shore.
witness the erosion of water.
know that
for a time
the tower stood tall and proud
an insulting finger
stretching towards
an apathetic sky—
defiant, to the end.

a corpse flower
blooms beneath
a blue moon.
stench of death
held aloft
right underneath
our noses.
once in a decade,
hang suspended—
stuck in the liminal space
between two moments.
for a hairsbreadth
we wait
on bated breath.
amorphophallus
titan arum.
a reminder that joy
is fleeting, a rarity
eclipsed by twilight.

Tolstoy purported,
"the purpose of life
is to serve humanity."
but an empty cup
cannot fill another
and i've long since
been drained
to the last drop
dry as drought.

cottonmouth, hoarse,
blue-in-the-face
from screaming
my lungs out.
a mime beating
bulletproof glass
until my knuckles bleed
and streak.

three words
bloom like heliotrope
petals on my tongue:
"i love you,"
a refrain on endless repeat—
a broken record
covered in motes of dust,
skipping on the turntable
stuck in the same rut.