Mouse claws on plastic; a scratching sound,
A small pallid face on a merry-go-round,
The wheel trundles on unstable ground
As the empire falls, a fresh king is crowned

Head spinning; hair thinning,
Revolution by minute is no beginning,
And now the man behind the lattice is sinning,
It goes around, and around
Swinging, we come around

Mornings follow familiar dreams
Afternoons clink with routine and caffeine
Evening curtains rise to the same static scenes,
And night rings out the strain of the machine
Round and around
Evergreen; never aground

Our scratches on the wheel grow loud now
Two more eyes swallowed by the shuffling crowd now
Despite strain, the steel walls unbowed somehow
By a thousand pallid faces beneath a thousand sallow shrouds
We go around, and we go around
The mice remain humble: the king has some proud vow
It comes around and back around
The world keeps turning; we all fall down

I'm dreading a red Christmas
Just like the ones that used to flow
Where my thigh-tops glisten
And tampons I christen
With the blood from my pink grotto

I'm dreading a red Christmas
With every Christmas cramp I fight
May the clots be unscary and slight
And may all the periods be light

I'm dreading a red Christmas
With each sheet I stain at night
May the flow be wary and finite
And may all the periods be light

When you opened my mind
Alongside my knees
I thought I was a book of kinds
Some volume you would read
Perhaps even thoroughly
Unhurriedly
Or intimately
But ultimately
It came to seem
That referencing is all you need
Searching for a flair or look
A certain way of speaking
Honestly, in my book
It's merely vain traits you're seeking
A written list for your esteem
Or footnotes for or your story
Because surely
You know how sorely
Paper cuts
Come from paper *****
Tight and gory

The kindness in the tides:
a lie
We drowned before we swam
Things that wash up on the sand
Now perfectly brown
and bland
While the same sand in timeglasses
Squabbles over which was last
or fastest
The earth divorces
Down main roads and golf courses
Leaving trees and tees and work forces
To decide custody and resources
Mud slides, fires, floods
Wars, bloodshed and more shed blood
We breath and undo the work of her trees
Pollute the air further and curse the disease
Build up, drill down
Stitch flags, forge crowns
Blast off, touch down
And wonder why the moon frowns
She will take all of us back
Piece by person by piece
In thise messy Natural attacks
To reclaim the beast of her autonomy back
Gravity languid but abound
We are tethered to the ground
And so too the fate She will propound
Indeed we are indebted
Regret it

Thanks to you
At dawn
there was a snippet of sky on the pillow
And half the earth spread across closed curtains
Silently,
By night
You eradicated the other half
Entirely
And, like eradicating dust
Or memory
What was left was surreal
And wavered
A horizon viewed through flames
What began shook ferociously
Determined
and unmuddied
By the dust that lies beyond closed curtains
Or the ash beneath the flames

I made the walls my best friends
I told them my secrets
I shared myself
And I always listened
Until finding myself loyal to nothing else
I invited you to share their insides
In the hope of a breathing connection
But now instead I whisper with them
Behind noise or doors or duvets
Those words never said in your breath
Silence snaps when you shut the door
Magnolia reacts mildly
And sometimes breathing is intense