She left me with nothing but math.

Bedroom walls miscalculated
to the color of a bruised plum.

Moonwhite sheets tangled
into isolated geometries.

Her pillow, the sum
of broken equations.

Moonlight proves
distance by degrees:

light slanting
in the hallway,

the acute angles
of an open door.

the most frustrating thing
when it comes to a writer
is when everything
every word, every letter,
isn't enough to give justice to
the captivating picture of you
in the afternoon:

soaked in sweat,
grinning foolishly,
striking up a conversation
about coffee,
and how unhealthy it is
for me to drink
three cups straight,
to stay awake,

yet the bittersweet taste
stains my lips.

it spills down my throat,
covers my lungs,
and drowns them
with the addicting aroma
of coffee beans
and lazy dreams,
until i cannot seem
to breathe,

and the only thing
i can ever do
is to spill ink
for you.

i am a renegade rooster
confused by their programming
so many offspring how are we to tell
which is our own and which belongs to another
was it our forefather's fermentation
or the density of transubstantiation
entities dance on liberal paint cans
sandblasted fragments of remaining still
the handstands advanced their own itineraries
and i wonder what literary blunders did you muster today
existential snails dive as deep as whales
and move as swift as Haley’s twin sister Taylor

We are watching the clouds
bandage an incarnadine sky,

we are practicing our best knots,
weaving an army of tourniquets,

we are slow-dancing
barefoot on the edge
of a razor.

We are watching
a demolition derby
in the driving rain,

the smell of motor oil
mixing with gasoline,

the hard melancholy
of dying machines.

We are waltzing from room to room,
smearing our names on the floor,

we are keeping time to slow music,
bleeding out behind closed doors.

Left with no last goodbye
tossed by the wayside,
a finished cigarette flicked
out the car window,
sparks bursting apart
like the light of our love
all to pieces by the side
of a dark country road

The burnt flavor of her
still inside my lungs,
riding on my tongue,
in the breathless hesitant
last long goodnight kiss

Loss is what I see
when I look into the sky
tonight, no trees reaching
its leaves up for me

The burn of her words
is in the way that I say
but I loved you,
the way I wait, the way
I hold my breath to listen
for her footsteps in the kitchen.