we were the bomb squad
a tribe of children in
plastic crash  helmets
pillows tied on
to protect our insides
holding hands to keep
from feeling lost and alone

we were the bomb squad
living like thieves in cardboard caves
beside the mine fields
hidden beneath beds of poppies
decoy explosions
in cadmium red *****
tender tongues
like kittens licking
the insides
of trembling thighs

we were the bomb squad
mucous membranes and bones
tick tock throats and veins
popped in the pyre
stomach bile and marrow
all up in the same smoke
as something that was
once smooth and sentient

we were the bomb squad
we found no time for any flag
nothing to do with kings
or foreign countries
just the knowledge
of not having known anything before

She, living in Baltimore,
had not spoken to her Mississippi
sun-burnt father in seven years.

He was a farmer,
she wanted a boutique.

There were the phone-calls,
at least in the beginning,
but then they too dried up
like clay pots cracking under a solar flare.

Her scars were still there at least,
she reckoned,
and those were enough to
disconnect any phone line.

But there is still a gnawing
at her insides, an impregnation
of her nose hairs,
a waltzing of her taste buds.

She picks up the pay-phone,
breathing heavier now,
sobbing as if the dial tone could touch her.

She knows that some fields
just can't stay fallow
forever.

Of all things unknown,
easily a non-denumerable infinity, very little will drive a person to the precipice of madness like the insignificance of a statistic - say one in seven billion,
a statistic that unhinges the mind, dragging out primitive insanity, catalyzed by spurned desire,
an insanity that is raw-
raw and sick and hungry-
feeding upon itself like an epidemic, an acid that reduces one's existence to a longing for a hypnopompic eternity, some twisted fascination that becomes an elegy for the ******, one where the past with holds the future, laughing at the heart's bipolar fluctuation between absolute paralysis and pure agony, a grey stillness to a light switch flipped off and on and off and on and off and on and off and on and aren't you tired yet? Are you not chilled by truth's cold whisper, shaken awake by logic's steel grip?  
It is a rare prison we build for ourselves-
trapped between what we know and what we wish,
these non-existent walls of unrequited everything,
where melancholia acts as our shackles and we sit in complete silence,
content in our discontent,
because we know,
we know that escape is intangible
when you are both jailer and
captive.

Your fingers formed the words I sought,
Yet it seemed as though the tongue forgot
A coward's shield, of silver and glass
Protecting long after battle's pass
How may glory relinquish pain-
If victory's honor should wax and wane?

Like winter's sun, your affection is fleeting
And stretched by time, hearts slow their beating
This tale told - more often by some
The ones who call for love to come,
But just as threshold meets its cross
Their cries fall silent, for feared loss