May this scream turn to a melody
to force your fires outward.
May the explosions that crawl up your throat,
into your mouth, your eyes, your hands,
emerge through your fingertips to create,
not destroy.

It is how you speak. I know your language.
The power you wield can't break the skin, and your voice,
trapped under someone else's rocks.

Let yourself be color and light.
Think your thoughts, it's okay.
Scream until your soul can sing again,
then let your fingers dance through the melody,
not along the sharp edge of darkness.

We are here. You're not alone.
Speak, we will listen.

I.
What has language wrought?
Ignorance has no language;
same cultivates same.

II.
Though, love is still love,
kind is still kind, red is red,
we still barter our daughters.

III.
But, we are above.
Let's hide in our forts of things
and claim we are better.

IV.
Such care poured into
the power of paper, lies,
progress, they say. Same is same.

i will always remember this place
just as i will remember all the other lives i have lived
they are caramel
swirling, oozing through my mind
tangling the many masks of many days into
one inconsistent amber lattice of me

The city is a sea of jewels,
Her people fit into Matchbox cars,
Flow like rivers of light through a black field
And I’m happy to be in a world apart,
Allow my eyes to drink the truth from above.
Each one is a life or two, contained in a bright box
Speeding along with different intentions, to different ends.
From there
Individual Control
A fight for space;
From here
A Natural Current,
They float together in a dance to their destinations.
I’m nothing more than an atom wrapped in flashing lights,
Perhaps one of the stars,
And dismissed.
But they are more than lights in a river.
Each light is a person; each jewel is a home.
They paint a new sky on the ground,
Living stars

“There’s nothing to do but laugh,” she said.  Her voice was sterile like the room holding us.
She smirked and cried instead.

“Trust.”  She rocked her head, lamenting the word.  “I should have listened to myself.”

I agreed but wouldn’t tell her.

She felt her body, hugged where it was, then stared.  “So this is what shock feels like.”

It wasn’t until she threw up.

That night, the nothing ate through her eyes.  
She breathed. She lived. She sat. She thought.

I was afraid of breaking her trance, reminding her of what made her stop time.
I couldn’t follow her into the void.  
I can’t understand what scared her.  
I don’t know how to fix it.
So I sit with her in timelessness. I cradle her hand and focus on how she smells.

"Tomorrow," I said.  "Tomorrow, we'll wake up, and the sun will shine, and the breeze will kiss your face.  We'll spin around the sun again, just like before."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Ideas rush in rivers through my sleep,
winding, wrapping themselves around
drowning all in their wake.  The itch
to begin claws through my lack of
                        imPulse
control.

The Golden Fleece at my fingertips,
the moon just            out                  of                                 reach,
births sweet agony and fosters it to
obsession obsession obsession.

Diligent fingers, hands, feet
where mind and heart has already left,
abdicating their daily kingship to rule the
abyss and dance en pointe along the precipice
willing hoping waiting
for the wherewithal to
                                                  f
                                                   a
                                                     l
                                             knowledge

Your face is unfamiliar, you are not.
You rescued me from the explosion,
cavalier, confident in your strength;
let me win ages later,
just as triumphant.

I once saw you drink yourself lonely
under a shadow of
never had and couldn’t see.
I was there.
The breath on your neck
whispers of admiration in your dark,
that was me.
You were so old back then.

I lost you somewhere between
seventy and seventy,
hidden between so many doors;
saw you in strangers I should have
never known and believed
I’d dreamed you up
after all this time.

I may still have.