When his familiars’ pounced
a little too roughly on the davenport,
the mysteries of the cosmos
flailed about as his soft,
satin bag took a tumble…
Citrine and agate tap-danced
under the bed, as quartz
whizzed wildly through the air
like a shooting star. Opal spun about
like a fiery pirouette, and amethyst –
finding it’s way on the windowsill,
bloomed a kaleidoscope of larkspur
in the sun.

she

(her 2am moods
were monotone
dialogue
on the receiver)

is at her loudest
in sepia photographs;
fake smiles,
like shotgun blast;
her shrapnel days
fall silently
in-between
cheap perfume
bottles on the
night-stand.
in the drawer is
every memento
she seldom mentions

(empty, jejune...
hushed
frustrations).

with each exhale,
her pillow fills with
crumpled words

(embellishment,
a waking hour's only
comfort...
an insomniac's
internal monologue).

snuffed out;

on her breath,
a smoke as white as lilies.
i cannot stay here for long
in this charnel house…
the temple that was once her is
shifting,
buckling,
seizing,
burning….
there’s flames licking at the
roof of her mouth.
every vein
reduced to a
nasty, crackling rubber.
every fizzle, every pop!
my nostrils fill
with bile.

my bloated fingers claw
at the charring husk
in her diaphragm....
this time
i cannot escape society’s
witch trial.

but I’m just buckshot
caught in a sonnet,
and there’s just too many
shotgun shells
in my diction.

There’s gangrene
in my carrion verses;
each word, a gaping
wound of its own
shrapnel design,
****-filled and leaking

through wrinkled
notebook paper.



A putrid smell instead of
cheap perfume lingers
on sealed envelopes, —
dried blood
in lieu of a wax seal...

waiting to be opened,
and pressed to a numb chest,

where the infection
can spread again,
and again.

i didn’t want their
endless white
with their
cold rooms,
and cold coats,
and cold pen-tips

i didn't want their
sunken IV bags that
resembled
Jesus Christ, or
Mother Theresa

i didn’t want the
pale noise
hammering about
inside my head...
i didn’t want it’s sterile
sadness
humming a lobotomy

Remember the days
when our soldiers were
bloated stars,
and we collapsed under the
weight of their misdeeds?

When the eons were multitudes
of bullet holes in our backs?

Betrayal outshined
loyalty in light-years…

In anatomy class I took notes for you,
while 3am still had it’s way with your bones.
While labeling the patella on a diagram,
I remembered your skinned knees from last Friday
and the way you tricked everyone into forgetting
that you ever had a favorite pair of jeans.
As I jotted down the word ‘femur,’ I imagined
your own shadow straddled over you in
an endless edge of streetlight and crooked blinds.
The way you shuddered each time the teacher said
the word ‘coccyx’ reminded me of the night
you lost your virginity in the back of the library, and the
fact that your ***** stamp was the only thing
that your ******* ex ever loved. A car engine
from somewhere near-by muffled your moans.
Remember how the classics romanticized them
back there? Remember how they also lamented
over the fact that you bombed your midterms?