look at the men with blood on their hands,
appearing on national television. let us
restart the month, the year, the decade,
the century of failures. open the doors
leading outside, open the floodgates
our modern bodies ill-suited for this flight
let's make flower garlands out of chicken wire
crippled souls nibbled away in isolation, tasting
of insanity or like a horrible joke
reinvent the wheel along the ambulance sirens
this time, the air kills with immediacy

Try finding the right words, do not worry over
Inaccuracy, as long as they are not insincere.
If you do not feel like speaking out, we can always take cover
and whisper, with open eyes. Brush out its contours/
With chapped hands.

.
Speak:
A beat, a rhythm, ba-dumm, a heartbeat or a pulse
Heart shaped like a potato. Tendons and veins,
Flesh and blood.            A secret.
Air in circulation. Breathing habitual. Inertial.
Where do weeds grow.
.

Air tight room with oxygen running low or
The lowering steel gate, spikes eating into shoulder blades
Spin the roulette of words made to disappear
Words unconscious, dragged away into the shadows
Hitting the wall, hit,
the momentum will only break
not it but me, nothing catches fire aside for young bodies
Mere speculation is not plotting schemes
They have planted me here. I tame my hand
to be my ventriloquist
The songbird with firecracker enthusiasm
Is it unforgivable to deny the drums?
They have my fingerprints

I have offered them. My flesh for their foundation
The community card etched
Onto where my heart was, now a cave of blood

words, written, spoken, unspoken, thought out
in silence, dug out from stitched wounds, unearthed,
                           red, wet, and palpitating
we push back only to be consumed by
the silence

we whisper   under the shallow sunlight
our feet nowhere near the door

in spring i buried my body

it was a most useless corpse,
it can't even sprout

love, of the real kind
is --
bitter, is dignified
as the ground, burning

like you, you and me

are we allowed to flee? through
the barricade, streets
covered in bits of brick & glass
shards, sight of the rifle fixed to aim

at the rising hind of a hare. but my eyes:
stuck
blind under the flashing lights
burn
in the stinging dust

the sun has set/ in this city
in my ears i hear the marching thump of blood
running to the ends
of my limbs

and it always was and is, me
me and you
me, my, i, and mine,
the power games we play

(i don't want to cling apart from you, not a single day)

(like magnets we are drawn tightly before pushed apart)

the phrases you thought
were representations of love, are
in actuality, stalker speech

maintain the madness
scrape away reason

do as you like it

(it is love which dissects your mind
love that holds on to the hand of the blind
love that flows out from the speakers and asks
us to gather, in communion
love that courses through the veins, its color

isn't it beautiful

and charged, dizzy, spellbound with it, of it,
we marched upon clouds)

isn't it terrible

oh come no closer for you will not understand why i dance
with my eyes closed & my body responding to the rhythm
of summer rain. You do not understand because you have a secured
roof over your head. All of your advances are aimed at surfaces,
you lost before you even begin, forever banned / from my solitude.
We do not speak. Our mouths are pried open
with hollow words sputtered out in desperation, while the
chilled room laughs at us, even the cobwebs. I am
also at fault. I can't string my thoughts with links secure,
and you are lovely for thinking my gibberish rhymes like a song.

I sprint, I run, I fall, and run again. my dusty&bruised knees
supporting dusty&bloodied hands in full swing propelled
by the motion, forward. If I don't hurry I'll forget
the confusion, the chaos, the mess I made / in my head
But it's getting so hard to remember.
& it hurts to take a breath.

I am the absence and you are just beginning
don't lose sight or sidetrack. Keep to your path.

moonlight, concrete, 1997
polaroid, grayscale, sandstorm
pearl, contrast, air

etc.

The digital taste far surpasses/ the human eye
blink. The snap of the shutter, muted (on mute mode)
adjust the parameters with an index finger
                                          (the delicate task)

my heart was never ashen
i keep my internal organs red