They’ve woven veils out of my halo again!”
the moon bellowed though its own smoke.
For a long time, there it sat with a grimace...
Another nightfall wasted.

There was a sort of wheezing…
you know?
A toothy whistle, even.
Sardonicism of an angry crescent, it seemed.

And the trees outside were clearly snickering.

******* about something,
I lazily recalled as I slept;
another nightly poem; another silly cosmic backdrop
for someone’s soul.

“Brilliance in passing!” the moon
once said to itself, or rather of itself, I suppose.

No remedy for the stars tonight…
so I decided to write about it all over again.

You!
Ringing bells.
Flutter.
It yells!
And
it never stops
singing;
voice reached
the top.
Half cracking;
fading.
I
can tell
the angel
fell.

each time i
traced over a vein
a blush-pink stain
blooming

like every blemish
kissed in a dull light

it’s as if
everything you’ve ever
touched now had a line
going right
through it

lines
that only i could
see

it’s as if everything
we were became
meaningless

like crinkled petals
on a windowsill

like
every vein
i’ve longed to kiss
goodbye

drying up inside

dying of thirst
in a cracked vase

and
before the incision is
made there

between dizzy spells
and tears

i only hope
red roses grow

and run

far
far away

from here

i will siphon you desolate
and leave a desert
inside your veins

and the oasis that was
once your heart
will become a tomb
sand-flailed
eroded
buried

the same you
did to me

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).

Cold sunlight fills my
room today. Coffee
from the night before
stains the corners of
my mouth and I
remember to fold the
laundry. I am not
missed when I touch
the same stained
white linen shirt
for an hour. But
someone said they
thought they heard
me crying from the
upstairs window.
Its lunchtime, and all I
have to eat are
complaints about what
someone else did.
I feel as though I
should pass the sugar,
but that may cause alarm.
I only touch what
I am told. I only touch
what I can control. I
think about eating the
dish soap as I show
you the contents
of my stomach
and see the surprise
on your face.
I think its
evening now.
I lose track of
everything now and then.
So forgive me when I say
I don't remember
your name, and which
room of the house
you stay in.
Quit yelling at me
when I'm face down
in the baby's bath
water.
Please quit assaulting
me with IVs
every time we
take unexpected trips
to the ER.
I hate how cold hospitals
feel. They make my
nose runny.
And that doctor needs
to stop telling me
that I should go
away for awhile.
What does he mean anyway?
I'm watched for
several days after.
I think they like
the way I do
the laundry now.
I cleaned out my
drawer and I
fell in love
again with my
station in life.
Its evening again,
and I can't remember
why I was crying
at all.

The art of embellishing our skeletal
wraiths has matured so much from
merely just locking them away
in the closet.

The true beauty of deception
is to painfully merge them with
your soul, because there's a certain
grace in using the truth to tell a lie

all while embracing our demons.

Antidepressants and gin
Made me feel like a fairy again;

Fragmented bottles protrude
Through my wings, off-color and crude!

My life to lose;
Ode to *****!

Of drifting stardust and waning moon,
A distant voice sings an ethereal tune;
A spell of nocturne this voice recites
From the knowledge of an archaic rune:

"Hath wandered about vast nebulas aglow,
In auroras of energy only she couldst bestow.
This omnipotent child born of thine dark;
A galaxy of radiance deep within thy soul!

Awaken! For the moon, who departs into flight
Commands the Cosmos before thine veil of night!
Gathered her gems in the heavens and strikes
This Goddesses’ wand with a pale, silver light!"

Fat and swollen like a pearl;
translucent, and engorged on
blood, you hung there in
my curtains until I pulled them
down. You hit with such force,
like a rock tumbling down a
black mountain, or a comet
falling out of a web of stars!
You looked like varicose veins
throbbing on the surface of an
egg loosely wrapped in molded
tissue paper, or cloth-hairs stuck
to a family heirloom. So I
left you there until you
collapsed in yourself like a
dying star, or the soft spot of
a newborn’s head frosted over
by gossamer silk that dug
its pale-white hands
in the wood-rot.

at the desk,
a Cytherean lover,
with tobacco stains on his
fingertips —

his affinity for
parchment paper
soaked in bergamot
and sandalwood
left me alone
with the cosmos.

on an eclipse,
a cigar graced his lips…
my favorite trick was
the halos he blew around
the moon.

the constellations were
yellowing notes
by antique tapers
(“years and years,” the
telescope hums),
and the Scientist paints me
another Jovian lullaby.
coffee lives in Starry Night
because of him...

That familiar redolence
as I browse the bookshelf.

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.

In marble, like moon; encased and cold,
I linger where you sleep. Long shed of decadent
purulence, your pale caress holds me still,
and I dream of your bones atop my
bones; our veins dying of thirst; the
worms making love to our oblivious corpses.

In amour, like rose; blackened in rust,
I shiver where we kiss.

Our lust becomes the dirt; our soiled souls moan.
We’ve become immortal inside the wood-rot.

Leafy loss born of the sunset;
The clinquant remains before the frosted evening
Encircled her form of jeweled pirouette,
As summer sighed with peaceful dreaming.

The fading firelight shimmers out again,
As she wades through the diaphanous aether.
She wanders slowly through the darkling glen,
As her feet pressed upon the crinkled embers.

The skeletal limbs of the trees welcome her.
Divine, yet earthly in grand rufescence.
She delights in their desire as harvest moon stirs,
Awakened and humbled by her elegance.

Prophetic as a
lake-effect tempest,
an unnerving
November howls like
a dying animal.
The sound rattles
the houses,
and shake
the skeletal trees;
they hunger for
warmth
through emaciated
limbs as they
brush against my
rufescent face.

I survey the
frost of the broken
valley.
In death
the surroundings
seethe in
white as my
blood pools and
congeals with the
waste of the rivers.

The Bell-tower taunts me when I look out my bedroom window.

Saints who sin are loved more than me.
Their audience comes in droves to the sounds of bells!

I hear them ringing.
I go numb with fear.

Then I remember that there's two dead trees in
the backyard. I look at them instead.

I still hear the ringing,

the sharp screams in my head that let me know
God hated me from an early age.

Angels are scavengers; a ****** of crows
staring into my window at night and
I hear silent children crying again.
They began to scream angrily at me,
forcing me outward, feeding me to darkness.
Handing me over to the birds!

I fall asleep on the roof as cries circle me from above.
The dead overtake my room and stare at me from my cold bed.
Little decaying hands banging on the window telling me they
want back inside the womb.

I hang myself Sunday morning. The crows pick
at my unclean body.
I am not missed.
Everything goes on as it did before in heaven.

i’ve tried so many
times to throw away the key,  
but my heart pulled a Dillinger,
and it now hides out
in every single *******
thing you’ve ever wrote to me.

Baby-dolled eyes,
and glamor velvet
encircles
with a cruel femininity;

the darkest pin-up
of your
diamond-dazzled
dreams always takes
it up a notch!

It’s all burlesque
and whispers
when you come into her
world of mirrored
desire that
plays just behind
her lips;

that dances just behind
her rhinestone mask.

The vampiress of
merlot, cigarettes,
and lace
always remembers
her prey;
a black-widow’s
striptease, cold
and calculated.

Again, she delights
in the fact
that she has broken
another man
she invited
in to her ruthless
masquerade.

you were the veins
at my throat;

roots
protruding through
diaphonized
lungs;

pain on display
pickled, prodded,
left…

a hanger for dust
galvanized no more.

"Listen for the stream
that tells you one thing."
— Rumi.


How long can the perched Nightingale sing with a slit throat?
An iron taste in each bitter note; hard to swallow, —
Harder to quote!

And it rose because you entertained those thoughts too.

The honeydew rots beside that spill;
Need not these feathers remember the thrill?
Bitter with each taste, the beginnings! This deafening shrill
In false embrace, touching rapture's fiery red with a burning haste!

And it rose because solitude remembers everything I wrote.

The white faded under the scarlet smear of inky Sanskrit; I write about
You as if I'm a Dervish writing about their love walking along the sky; the brink
Of sunrise,— sunset!
And I'm never too far behind without wine.
Its the same I write of you every time!

And it rose because I can't touch a god the same as I can't touch you.

Upon seeing you with your own sweet Halvah,
I no longer prayed for Qais and Laila,
For they shared love, but never touched. Just like the Sufi poet and Allah,
Where one can only see, and one can only dream,
While floating along the stream.

And now I know I'm the fool for letting the feathers touch the wine,
Because it rose; those feathers rose too with time.

Because it rose, —
And rose,
And rose.

the house was painted
a soft hue. an old tobacco trap;
discolored white where
pictures once hung.
in the kitchen, grease stains,
faded bluebird wallpaper —
long since ceased it's song,
and one cast-iron skillet off to the side.
pale and forgotten,
the fine china shrieks!
my barefoot innocence
is lost as the cold-colored
porcelain eats at the floor.
sometimes when I lay there covered in
turpentine, stars usually topple
out of the cabinet,
and my gas stove aspirations are botched.
the sink drain moans with the silent
invectives of an impure saint…
her rosary still atop the mantle.

just outside, a stone angel
that smells of lilies, —
savagely eats rosebuds over
an autumn bonfire.
from time to time
her face is one of lament…
it follows me from room to room,
and my hands shake for hours
while holding little antique figurines
in a basket full of milkweed…
they’d tuck at the curtain,
their little music box voices
complain about her eyes...
they'd scurry up the ivy on the side of
the house to avoid her
disappointed glance…
there was a sad wingbeat as
I stepped out on the balcony to collect
them one last time.

what didn't ****
only gave the thrill
of dying

and when i couldn't
die in his arms, i let the
smoke, the *****, and
the night ******
the cancer inside

I.
Back to remembering how his
voice might have sounded in the wind, —
catching the wind on her tongue.

II.
And she said nothing but air!
His chest heaved in and out
of the words they might have said.

III.
He stirred awake in her mind
when nothing seemed to wait
on her as she fought to catch her breath.

Claret-stained kiss from maiden impure,
Cruel, burning pain, she craved more!
Hath taken my life from heaven’s eye,
Thy cankered night, in which I’ve died!

in sticky drops
ink runs down my
paper skin
blood-flowers grew
as I wrote by the
windowsill

a gloomy Sunday
more tainted verse
up and down
there was a stinging
as I wrote
and a drenched earth
peered through
the foggy windowsill

wind caught the
curtain
petrichor rests on my
tongue
as rusted pain
sat atop the windowsill

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?

Guide me;

in every breath you take,
there’s a nightfall waiting
for me on the inside.

Engulf me;

in every moonlit corner
of your soul, promise
me the stars you hide.

Lead me away;

I feel your pulse in the
darkness; my lips move
with the beat of your heart.

She, —
lace papillon
who sits motionless
behind the
glass.
Perched atop
lacuna wire,
ran through wings
handled by
gears.
I lift her glass
confinement
and
I touch her while
she's still. Clock-
work ballerina;
lifeless
until I wind
her up...
I let her
go on. "La danse!"
Create
steam halos
as you
twirl into
the night where
envious moths
tap the window
above
my bed.
------------------------
Papillon — French. Meaning "butterfly."
La danse — French. Meaning "The dance."

There in the vines
running down my spine,
are overgrown vistas,
and rooted enigmas
of the mind.

At my wrist —
the burning kissed;
pools in my palms;
red water of painful psalms
shrouded in mist.

Heme-less, desired;
nature, devoured;
draining forget-me-nots
won’t clot.
My nymph has retired.

A good friend of mine once said:
“I hope you get revenge someday.”

And even as I smiled,
I still found pain in wishing
things turned out differently.

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…

Shadows scream
abandonment,
menace,
neglect,
deceit…

I miss their mouths,
hitting walls instead.

Alleyways became my inspiration,
and I found my audience in bars!

Ocean views became somber,
and my meds made me think I was
drowning.

Someone said that I would
fall in love with typewriters,

and monochrome photography,

and drinks twice my age!

But someone also told me
that nostalgia would break me,
and that I’d babble about
being the greatest thing

while shoving napkins covered in
faded ink and ***** in my pockets.

And while you were haunting me,
I was doing my day-job.

So I saved up for a shotgun,
and like buckshot through a sonnet,
I finally got you out of my brain.

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