oh, marionette man,
there’s a hand in your spine, purring in your ear
directions and visions
- love, life, and loss -
loosely slipped from
your lips like a fear.
pulling off of your fingertips,
squeezing your throat to juice out those words on my plate.

oh, marionette man
there isn’t a home for you here.
matchsticks and driftwood,
thin strings and yarn for a heart.
you’ve been flinging your love into space.

later, farmed fetuses spoke worthy of creation,
bucket list spiders,
they cluttered an inky page.
thunder it rolled down the mountainous cliffs
and it struck and it stroked you,
all in your lotus leaf.
storm clouds reached fingers over the ***** field,
seeping in holes bored deep in your cedar legs,
yawning and mewing and shouting and firing:
we now know where love lies alone.

oh, marionette man,
if earthen materials constructed your insides,
then what am i?
stretched over a surface,
veins pumping this burden,
a hollow space in your chest,
i feel it too my dearest.
aching of rivers and
******* in forests,
the movements are a ballet
but we haven’t an audience.
splinters cut deeply,
they stick in my flesh
but i’ll take them, i’ll take them,
for your empty heart space.

we don’t know who we are.
we don’t know what madness is.

but we breathe in the air,
let it soak into lungs,
and then won’t it please drown us:

Whole and then Undone.