stars spilled out from the night sky
into morning, mourning,
and
so did your skin.

please know, your
voice is
louder than any gunshot now
even as new bullets echo against
your gravestone.

I was doing
something
when a flash
smashed out
to every corner
of the room.

It came like
ominous bolts
of lightning
had leapt from
the light bulb
bursting inside,

as though
storms had been
brewing slowly
under a muzzle
of glass frame.
I regarded how

strange it was
to be fed up
to a thrum of
75 watts
in its lifetime,
to finally break

its broadcast.
I look to a
tungsten tongue,
see the ember
flick into the dark
and say,

*I lost my religion.

1.
Before I knew he had.
His flight trailed off into a Utah
Sunrise. He left behind a little strand
Of thought, and, in a cramped, amber room that saw
Long talks of topics that soon thinned grey,
A set of dog-eared books has been put down.
Books that brought nearer to my thought his own,
While Interstate-5 grated the ground.

2.
He must have, as the plane touched the runway,
Felt the dawn’s shudder fracture his young bones,
His thoughts turning to those dog-eared days;
The seemingly endless months full of groans,
As they should have been, being spent alone;
And that set of books, at least it would seem,
Ignited the wick on which our passions gleam.

3.
These six years past since they took him away
Held minutes like a needle in plied dust.
There’s something in the spring that brings decay:
The outward beauty of the world just
Clouds the mind’s loss within the spinning gust
That all the blooming flowers usher in.
Then the rain comes...

4.
As the 5’s scratch cracks up the drying earth,
I recall Nietzsche, Guevara, Burgess:
Men who’d not anticipated births
Inside my brother and I like cypress
Trees, evergreen and coniferous, we
Drop seeds year-round. The setting Utah sun,
Barely audible, gasps in the copse.
He’s with me now. What’s done is done.

I'll have roses,
daffodils, ivy
and snowdrops
in a bouquet
on my palette.

Slipping a taste
of one another,
a puddle is made.
It is murky like
hungover clouds

though now
with new regret
I understand
the mixing of
beautiful ideas

brings me pity
for my creation
formed through
pursuit of a dream
to a wretched being.

two statements,
whose correlations become useless as I sit in my fox den of rainbow fabric and cat shirts and fuzzy blankets and exotic plants

my lava lamp blobs around like my stomach and I crave your mouth more than peanut butter

If concrete you may be, I'd decorate your stone visage with prismatic sidewalk chalk art and many cracks, fauna between

muted may you be, i hum you in my head like a favourite tune I can't deny echoing through my empty skull
I'll keep you, I think. Always in the corner of my brain (same corner i hold the memory of lights on the river, the taste of turkish delight, and my first moment of blinding love.)

There's  a world outside my little square window
that overlooks fields and woodlands and sunsets
and that world overlooks a bustling avenue with
shutters on windows and constant, humming traffic.
There's a world outside my little square window
that keeps wakes me with the same sun every morning
and the same old singing birds,
and that world rouses me with a different kind of music;
of people and chatter and busking and life.
There's a world outside my little square window,
a world I would never have been tired of exploring,
and that world is named Paris.