Many years ago
When I was bored
I would set afire
A glob of hand soap
On the counter
And above it
I would suspend
A penny
And wait

Nothing at first
Patience was key
But then
A ripple
Then nothing
Then a violent tear
And from it
True color
Would escape
That copper facade
Like a tiny T-1000
And fall

Through the air

Shining
Morphing
Adapting
Impacting
Freezing
Frozen
Still

Sitting idly at my piano in the
Corner of this dimly lit room

Such a saturated space

Filled with the exhausted breaths
Of a thousand wasted moments

A sliver of the setting sun

Dives headlong through the open
Window and off a bed rarely made

It lands in gentle, brilliant resolve
Wearily along the yellowed wall beside me

Fingers on faux ivory, cold and comforting

Keys that sing the subtle soundtrack of an unrefined feature
The culmination of my disconcerted reminiscence

Tension, release, tension, release

Imaginary hammers go up and down
They push and pull on digital strings

And exhale through the atmosphere
A kaleidoscope of blue and yellow

Flooding my consciousness, blending seamlessly
With the gleeful screaming of children in the distance

Fight to escape
A vapid pull
Settle for orbit
Scream along
Twenty times
The speed of life
Seemingly still
Still we fall
Down

It's a thinly-veiled secret
A laundered affair
You and that walk and
Always
Making a scene and
Me and my lack of
Tongue
Arms
Legs

And dear god
I love it
The way you stop me
In my tracks
Not that it's the first time

You've caught me
On the flat of my back
So embarrassingly often

And I think I love that too

Are you even here?
I can rarely tell
And so often
It really is just me
Left to my own devices
Left to wonder
If it's all some cruel joke

But I'm clear now and you should go
There's nothing left to say and
I really just need a day or two
To rest and think and wait

Or ******* move...

I see
Your potential

And in it
The infinite stretch
Of ageless matter
Rising and falling
Through time
Like the deepening breaths
Of a priming supernova---

Is your bubbling canvas

The impending chaos, your molecular medium

Meanwhile...

Doppelgängers reside
In the wrinkles of your free will
Just outside the horizon

Inconceivable

They flourish there and
Attempt to overshadow
Your creation with their failure

They dip into your insecurities
And fling them out beyond their worlds

Desperate

To drench yours
To bridge the gap
To drown your will

They stand above you
Waiting
For you to believe
In them
To make them
Real

But I've seen
Your potential

And in it
You are beautiful
Or nonexistent

Either way
It's your move

Its fire is a beacon
An alarmingly bright disruption

I'd grown numb to the constants

Burned by discovery
I'd retreated into comfort

But even as I adhered to these tired laws
She was examining them

Splitting them apart and transforming them
Every action with hot determination

I feared for her demise
As if it had already taken place

But she is not the spacial divide
Her wounds will cool with time

She is never fully discovered

And space is not the same as distance
The end is never the end

There is no such change as death
Only the subtlest shift in time

And a choice to see her through it

Words blooming
Bright petals of sun
Burning on entry
Scorching pavements

On the eve of her rebirth and
For the first time in months
I looked up to the stars
And caught her final
Senescent smile
A culmination
Of hysteria
And hope

I'm the fusion in my chest

I'm sweating out your silence
On cracked April asphalt

I'm six years younger and screaming

These lungs are pulleys, sound waves
Flooding a vacuous shaft, and I fall
Through a bottomless space

Still...just miles away

And I can't quite place
How it got this way and dear god
My voice is cracking, my lungs...

Failing

I'm a sucker for quirky meditations
But I can't finish this one, not today
I just don't have the strength
I don't know what it takes

But I know something's changed

I know what I have
I know what I feel
I know what I can see and think
And love and break
But I don't know what I had
Or if I have what it takes

I just know what's left

So much space, so much
White, dead, empty space
But surrounding it, embracing it
Is something like wisdom
Something tangible
Almost real

Maybe it isn't
It's all the same space
But at least it feels
Like something

In this ghost town galaxy
We are an overlapping stellar system
Oddly paired and blissfully unaware
Of imminent full collapse

My skin is electric
I can no longer feel my arms or legs
But I know now what it's like to swim
Through a blackened space

You move with ninety proof courage
And it permeates the stale air in
Rainforest waves that linger
And settle in your wake

Our discordant dance
Quells this hyperbolic world
In which existence persists
With such spectacular earnest

The hydrogen fog will consume us, and
We'll reluctantly accept our mortality
But right now? In this moment?
I've never felt more alive

Morality thrives
In choices derived; beware
False dichotomy

(water)
Pointless defiance
Your arrant benightedness
Permeates my skin

(fire)
Full disclosure: the
Dull roar of your blindness is
Excruciating

(earth)
Your existential
Stench is palpable, and so
I stand upon it

(wind)
I transcend your fear
And embrace your battered soul
To bridge the distance

Night is not so black
See the shadows glimmer
In stark defiance

Beauty does not live
Within the discordance of
Augmented or diminished or the
Harmonic perfection of
Major or minor

It flourishes instead in the
Infinite space between
Dissonance and
Resolve

Her castle was her home
Until it burned to the ground

Could be arson, they said
But there were no leads

An unbearable loss, she said
But there were no tears

What choice did she have but to move on?

No point in crying
No point in stalling
No point in mourning
Over what remained of her former home

Nothing but ashes

No dusty shelves
No worn out furniture
No cracked panes over forced smiles

No tattered clothes or
Shattered plates or
Dented plaster on every wall

No scattered matches atop the nightstand

No blood-soaked body on the bathroom floor

Nothing left
But ashes

When your only friend is the burn you begged for
And the world slams still from seventy
And silence crashes through your endless bedlam routine

When the brightest star is the one that burns your cheek
And the warmth it brings is overshadowed by the red

When you fall asleep to the patterns in the rain
And only one thought remains
As all others trickle
Off your body and
Through the sheets

Will tomorrow be the same?

And so it goes
These dreams you fear
They waste your time

Your life
Full swing
Back and forth
Dark to light

You're clinging so desperately for your life
That you've nearly forgotten how to see
The greenest forest from the blackest tree
And that your feet never left the ground

And so you could never fall
Even if you wanted to

So just focus on that
And breathe

Up and out
Through tinted pane
Exhausted and drawn
To the crimson moon
Raw and impassioned
***** and enflamed
Like good conversation
From the night before

I am a simply stated
Lullaby of quiet prosody
Slipping through the air
In steady, predictable verse
Down halls running tangent to
Desires vastly more complicated than my own

And while I may sometimes linger and lunge
And parry with time
(All in an effort to prove my depth)
In the end I know
If you wanted to
You could deconstruct these rhythms with ease
And you could transcribe this tune in your sleep
And when you awoke
You'd deliver your own variations
With a brilliant, effortless intricacy
That I could only dream of emulating

Dawn wakes, breaks, explodes
Extinguishing flames within
Gravity? Defied

I've always liked green
Always liked the look of it
It used to be my favorite color
That seems so childish to say aloud
Blue is my favorite color now
I like its depth
Its nuance
And now that seems rather childish too

So back to green

Summer always liked green
--Likes it
Summer is still summer, I suppose
Even when it moves on to Australia
Or South Africa
Or Peru

Whatever, not important

Back to green

Splashes of green would play in her eyes
Her tears were always green
And in her skin
Vines of green
Scouring, searching
Always for something green
Green in her paintings
And in her love for all things green
Hypnotic, sporadic, drunk on green
Her progeny, the purest green
Green laughter
Green anger
Green intent
Every word, a brilliant green

Funny thing, that color
How it shifts and fades
Like the human condition
The Northern Lights
My humility
And wit
All in all, a dynamic mess
Shifting and fading
From green
To red
Then red to black
But always
Eventually
Back to green

Clouds collide, falling
From scorched skies, calling my name
Scream, shriek, shout - in vain

In this familiar place, these dreams, we quarrel over petty things. You've never been here, not physically, but you seem at home, familiar, and I guess that makes sense. What doesn't is the fall, the falling; I've adapted to it, adopted it, really, somehow, though it is yours, though you shouldn't be here; you belong out there, away from it, beyond my reach, in the natural world. But here it is, and here we are, disjointed and juxtaposed, my poetry and your prose, fluttering about these neon lights, and he is the punctuation and she is the space between each empathetic syllable.

(pragmatic)
Morality thrives
In choices derived; beware
False dichotomy

(irony)
Destiny denied
Bright, painted constellations
Burn with wounded pride

(solipsism)
Clouds collide, falling
From scorched skies, calling my name
Scream, shriek, shout -- in vain

(phoenix)
Dawn wakes, breaks, explodes
Extinguishing flames within
Gravity? Defied

(volition)
I've never believed
In stars, the fire burns within
Defiance, freedom

(shower)
Ad hoc clarity
Moments of serenity
So existential

It was Tuesday night, and that meant
Something different for each of them
Despite the scenic overlap he
Hoped she still desired

She did, and so off they went

And sat and drank, idle talk
She drank to feel nothing and
He drank to feel her and some nights
They both got what they wanted

He hoped this would be one of those nights

It was looking that way, and so
Despite his better, sober judgment
Yet another pitcher was ordered and
They continued their dance from
Topic to topic with an ease
Unobtainable only an hour before and
Things were really looking up
For the both of them

But she'd had more practice and
He saw black and she saw red
And just like that their illusion
Crumbled and there was
No longer any reason
To keep it going

So they left

And drove home in silence

The awkward kind where caustic
Thoughts battle in midair like the
Cloaked quadcopter drones of
Klingon children

And once again
Neither got what they wanted
But especially that night, and neither
Had the slightest clue why

But there was always next Tuesday night

I've never believed
In stars, the fire burns within
Defiance, freedom

She affects me and
Sticks with me and
Grows with me
In various ways
Throughout my life
Diligently collecting
Along the way
All those memories
Unforgettable experiences
Reflecting
With no apologies
Exactly the person
I've become and
Forcing me
To love her
All the more
Despite the past
She refuses to
Let me forget

Rejects flood the cabin and spaces between my lungs
These cotton candy cookouts have taken to the skies and
Tattered treads simmer in the summer streets ahead

Arbitrary animals fall in endless waves
One after another
Clouding distinctions between land and water

Rubber loses grip
Foundations slip

I hold on tight
And wait for change

Admittedly
I am a synesthete imposter
But tonight I can taste the city lights and
Their salty crunch is as real to me as the chlorine sting
Of the moment I first realized
I've always known how to swim

Ad hoc clarity
Moments of serenity
So existential

Perhaps I was too anxious
Or too overly ambitious
To become the amber bedrock
Of her vert ontogeny

And for that---
Well, I'm not sorry

But I do empathize

And I did reluctantly accept
This recurring role of
Achromatized apparition

A character deftly commingled
With the unfocused backdrop of
Her callow vista and your
Chimeric vision

Distanced
Marginalized

Even forgotten

And yet
Still present

A mutation in the code

A defiantly epigenetic zero
In each infinite strain
Of blinking ones

Sent away
Again
This time was different

They were kind
Odd but kind
There were chores
And there was checkers
I never won but that was fine
I wondered why I was there

Next day
Sun was high
And I wasn't alone
And she was different
And pretty
And kind
And when she smiled I knew
She was the one

We walked for miles
And talked
I told her how pretty she was
And how we were alike
Ad nauseam
Still the smile
Her hand in mine
I knew we weren't alike

Back home
All alone
Again
I told them we kissed
And she agreed
With a smile

Most of my childhood was a blur and
Not because the memories have now faded and blended
But literally
My vision has always been awful
And when Helper is considered a fancy meal
Glasses aren't exactly affordable
So I learned to adapt

It took some time
But I eventually figured out how to read
Body language and undertones and even
Shifts in scents and what they meant about people
I was like a half-blind Daredevil
Sans the costume and anything cool about Daredevil
But I had a system and you could say I was proud of it

Grandma bought my first pair and everything changed
For the first time in my life I could truly see and
Everything was new and brilliant and a little scary

But by Monday morning I had mastered this newfound ability
I met my friend in the hallway and
As we walked to class I went on and on about
Airplanes and signs
Expressions and fingerprints
Faces in the crowd
Flies on the wall
And how I could see everything now
Except the closed door in front of me

He thought for a moment that he might be drowning
But he loved the feeling (I am ever changing)
And she knew he would live for the progression

A common series of notes dragged him under, his vision
Flooded by dark blue spirals, words
Like strands of dripping yarn (I am ever changing)
And he knew she could see them too

They built a home just inside and forged
A memory, a shared vision (I am ever changing)
That formed a tight-knit cloak of protection
From the world

Years passed and they each grew
Closer to the words (I am ever changing)
Yet further from the meaning, unraveling

He wanted to say (I am ever changing)
That he could relate and empathize
And that he knew what it meant to be ever changing
To feel within the oxygen flush of every pulse
That nothing in this world was immune to change
And that it didn't matter, the words--
They never mattered

And how could she not see (I am ever changing)
That the color of this clover was never
The dampened celadon hue of once new love
But rather the soft saffron whisper (I am ever changing)
Of the morning sun? But he knew
She wouldn't understand the question

It took some time to realize
That time has a tendency (I am ever changing)
To spread out like a mushroom cloud and fall
On a quiet Tuesday afternoon like any other
As he barely recalls which notes to play
And the forgotten words trail off
(I am...)