Knuckles knee-deep in bright orange dust
Her words half-crunched
In a hurricane of hurried lunch
I mix in wit to her serious plot
Her mouth flies open, filled with half-chewed corn starch
And she still looks like a matriarch

We turned the radio on
But was gradually turned down
The ridged **** twisted all the way around
So she'd mention a song and I'd ask her
"How's that goes again?"
To hear her voice slip in and out
When really I knew it all by heart

Even when there was no reason to,
We smiled
Giggled off each other's cues
She looked from me once
Her eyes widening like a telescope
Mouth gaping, absent of laughter, as she braced a hand against my chest
The liquid-like sucker punch
Of the metal colliding quick
Like jelly under a rolling pin, I stuck
Grasping onto prayers with my fingers loose as God
She didn't scream, just held my shirt
As my tumbleweed Taurus vaulted yet another foot
Into the same solid ground, the same stars of shards
Mingled with bright orange dust sifting through the air.

Wish I had something more to give
Than what is given to me
I'll provide some stale, bland
Day-old bread and some hospitality
Don't be taken at the little eyesight
Conveys when love takes hold
The peripherals that passion gathers
Is the greatest you'll ever know
Your morning breath is perfume
My bubbly laugh is wine
Our three course meal is the sizzling of
Our fingers intertwined

My will is all but cracking
As my threshold strips of pain
And even though it's familiar
It's a joy to be free of the game

The endless nights of fretting
That can now bring me no harm
When I'm encircled in a bed of hope
And my blankets, are your arms.

I love the crystals in my mane
Drenched in sunlight, glowing bone deep
Everything is smooth as butter
Rolled and tumbled from the blue

The sugar on my eyes and mouth
Interlaced in arm hairs
Filling my brown bag
Taste the savory on my fingers
It reaches deeper every time

Strolling foam, fantastic vastness
Fills my mind with emptiness
Hated breezes
Find the towel
Sink til you're beneath it

Lumps of plant life
Look like mountains
I shove my chin into the grit
Level off my point of view
Thousands of years of sediment

Locks as parched as hay
Skin as crisp as chips
I taste you, summer, in my blood
And I know you by your lips.

I cannot fathom a particle
More beautiful than stardust
It builds from core to sediment
To rocks and slabs of ocean floor
The grass that dies and breathes again
The sand beneath my arches

The rubber soles
The air we breathe
The air we share, the air we need
We care for youth until they're meant
To add more forms of sediment
They'll cry, and their babies
Will cry
Not quite out of frustration, but everybody's inclination
And urge to touch the sky

Because we can't breathe this vicious air
We belong to the world up there
Of imploding super nova sights
The nebulas crossing like interstate highways
The traffic of matter holds orbit over all

You can take pride in the life you live
In the air you breathe
In the joy you give
But as for power? Nothing.
Humbled is what you are
Even behind your material goods
You're just the remnants of a star.

Lover
Float to me unraveled
Wrap me in your arms of travel
Let your fingers prattle on

Your shirt, my skirt
I feel unearthed
Tell falling fractions of my climb

A line
Strewn from frown to frown
And as one flies up,
The other floats down
Lips are not full with atoms but with laughter

Stardust is ******
The clippings of a song
The dresses hem
A lemon rind
A dog who bit too many times

A stitch in the side
Don't play with your food,
Can't you tell when I'm in a good mood?
We're firing on cylinders
And prisms, cubes and cones
I feel liquid limelight in my eyes
I can taste it in my bones

Digging back from China
We're channels in the ground
But we can make a life well spent
The second time around.

You can't hear me talk, can barely hear me sing
My apologies fall deaf on you and what washes over, stings
I fall head first into your ocean, enveloped in waves of rough cement
But through this capture you are peaceful
My battered form makes you content

It's funny how they call the past, the past,
And not the present
You greet the currency of times with nothing but resent
You tell me you know what I see
Laugh toothily as I fall to my knees
Engulfed with pain deeper, than my own
As I watch you fall steeper

It is impossible to stamp the blame
To disrupt your flawless form
I wouldn't dare to place a mark on you, nor tell you what you've worn
I'll motivate my stiffened mind, though you tell me that I can't
Collective moments form the clog
And I have become the ant

It comes as no surprise that
Your comfort scares me so
Behind each understanding is a reckless anecdote
A fury-littered monologue
A venom worded rant
The apology won't matter
Cause I am still the ant

It's difficult to swallow, though
My pills were hours ago
I softly stroke the future that I know is doomed, but floats
It treads above the water, as buoyant as it can
I guess future doesn't matter
I will always be the ant.

I feel as though I have found peace, as the pieces have found me
Stuck to my skin, want to push within
But for now I let them be.
I'll drink with you tonight my friends, let laughter build me so elate
But at home my mind waits
Thoughts are clawing through gates
It purrs as it asks, "Why so late?"
I sink to the abyss, bobbing my head
Trying so hard to tread in these doubts and these bouts
As soon as something's clarified it finds a hole and flourishes
And the fears I've repressed, it nourishes
The animal inside that coerces me to abide
And let it have my courage.

"Let yourself feel what you feel,"
It's not hard to argue that the feeling is real
It's primal, this feeling
But still keeps me reeling every time you've upset to a point where I'm lost.
And even in these times of tough navigation
I find brutal elation in the fact that you want me
So stay, disappoint me, corrode while I watch thee
A same mistake twice is just one time to little
Because I know you take pleasure in the way you belittle.

That soft, sensitive side turns so raw, becomes blind
My words hit like seashells on diamond, and slide
The hopelessness curls in my stomach and sighs
Just a night gone awry, just a night gone awry.