Hands.
***** and brown they reach up
From the mud. Opening their hands,
Releasing butterflies of death
From their clutches. The grass,
Is still green. The trees, are still alive.
Where life is around me it is also
In the hands where it shouldn't.
They grasp ankles and drag them down.
Some, fall easy. Some not so.
They turn the beautiful skin
Into deep brown ****, muddied
Brown, thick with biomasses of
******* maggots and soil and pebbles.

The sunrise is gorgeous.
It slips into your eyes and enlightens
Your vision with dazzling colours.
The world is alive. Everything is wonderful.
But the hands are relentlessness.  
It's all so pristine,
Even as the mud
Encases your nose, and
Cakes your eyes.

We sat around waiting for the end
To come,
Watching the edges of clouds and ridges
Of the mountains burn like paper
Glowing and retreating into themselves,
And behind them the sky glowed with
Fire undiscernable from the sunset.

As it came, I sat by you, my last person and
I closed my eyes;
I was glad to end it
With you.

The two of us play the same
note with the sounds of our lives.

Our timbre, however,
makes them unlike:

the wisp of a butterfly;

a supernova.

Burn so green. Burn numbers, burn
faces, burn like Montag did so many years ago
-- mulch their ash until they are food for whiskers
between your toes. Fold the paper in origami
shapes until they are blades and bulbs and
branches; fold the paper into hats and planes
and quilt them into blankets for lovers.
Strip them of colour and print Bibles on them,
drowning them in water that will not dissolve.
Pull them tight across lips and blow on them
for reeds like thick blades of grass until
they hum like the wings of hummingbirds and
bumblebees and fill the air with audible chaff.
Send them covered in poetry in a brown paper
bag with that pretty girl you married long ago
for her lunch she didn't expect on that tired morning.
All this because you are blood and soil and earth,
and allow no less to tame you.

When the bubble foam snow
Floated down from the sky,
I could feel her next to me
With her deep brown eyes
Ready to jump and laugh and
Smother my arm
And kiss my nose with her
Lips so red and warm.
But when I turned to look
Where she stood over there
All that greeted me was
A gust of cold empty air,
And this cheap Christmas
Pageantry lost all of it's taste,
Because without her with me
Time feels like a waste.

As children, most all of us
Exclusively listen to short, soft songs,
In G major with endings that
Resolve.

They have a chorus, and
A verse, and they are pleasant to hear,
And we laugh and giggle and sing
Along.

But as we grow up, we listen
To the dissonance. We appreciate the
Disharmony and the
Unresolved.

We appreciate the disharmony
In the sounds, in each other, in around us;
We learn to love the dysfunction between
Us.

Because the world, nor anything
Of it, will ever be perfect. But we have to
Learn to appreciate it, and be ****** up by
It.

And though it wont always sound
Like magic, because sometimes we are
An E chromatic seventh, I still choose to love
You.

I love to use words and write
About her. There's so much.

How her lips curl and dance up
Into her smile, or how --
The deep brown in her curls drips
Onto her cheeks in soft freckles -- and
Her deep brown eyes pour into thick
Eyelashes and beneath them --
All her real beauty blossoms

But she can't be captured in words;
Angels were never meant for them.
But I try anyways.

Love inspires stupid things.

I'm told that this is home, where I'm
Ignored and feel locked out;
Where I'm marginalized, I don't fit
In, a new culture -
A new generation.

Yet even the me of many yesterdays
Would disapprove of me now:

The opinionated academic who still
Says all the wrong things to all
Whom he loves.

So tell me,
What is one to do

When you don't fit in

Even with yourself?

I don't sleep with a railing by my bed.
I used to, yeah, but not anymore.
After years of one to keep me
From falling, I found I like the feeling.
Down --
In love --
Off -- any of them.
It's dangerous, and irresponsible, and
Sometimes I get kinda hurt.
But the thing is, I still
Don't want my railing. It may hurt
To hit the floor.
But hey, at least I can get out
Of bed now --
Right?

When we're out on the porch
In the heat of the sun, there's so much
Wonder about you --
I can't derive the tangent lines of the
Curls of your hair, or measure the
Light absorbance of your oaken eyes --
I can't integrate the perfect curve
Of your goddess body, or
Figure the infinite sum of your
Love for me --
I can't equate the fractals that
Make up your palm,
But I can kiss them all the same --

I can take you in like I do
The flowers I plant outside my
Window, more endless math
I don't care to figure --

Because just you with me, is
All I ever need.

When I press your ***** clothes to
My face, and your aroma fills my lungs,
It's like I can feel your lips and flesh
In my mouth;
I can taste your skin on my tongue
And it's as if you're a part of me
Again.

I will kiss your skin
Like brushstrokes on a painting,
Until they are more numerous
Than all the grains of sand
On that long beach you love so dearly.

They wont leave your body
Until you see the lack
Of flaws in you that I do, and

One day their memory on you
Might be all that's left
Of me

I'm sorry, I'm not like
You all.
Not in the way that I'm special, or set apart,
Just different, for some reason
A difficult different.

I'm sorry my conversations
Are ****, and
I can't find the right things to say. I wish I
Could talk about Narnia, and give
Up space forever.

I'm sorry I haven't always
Been here,
One of your core memebers; I'm just
"More comfortable" on my own
On the benches.

I'm sorry I'm trying to steal her,
Your youngest love;
If I could give up these dreams of being
My own, our own, our own something
Great, I would.

I'm sorry I can't be banal, with a
Simple job in a simple town,
Content with what I know and doing just
Enough to get by on these broken
Parts of mine.

I'm sorry I can't love TV and video
Games the way you do,
To know them and talk about them as
Your friend is something I may
Never know.

I'm sorry I can't be a bonus son
Like the other.
But I love what I do, and though it may seem
Useless it's mine, and I'll do it for
Me, for her, for us.

I know none of you don't mean it, I know
Somehow it's in my head -- but
It's an uphill battle, and you're
Throwing boulders.

O Love,
Why do we hesitate in our fear?
What do we seek to preserve, for
What is worth more in life than the
Life itself?

While the spoils of the lives
Around us fade to nothing, the
Fruits of our union - our shared life -
Are self evident. It is the adventure
Itself that we reap.

Alas,
We search instead for a map
Of a road that has not been cleared,
When the compass heading is
As clear as the waters of Nyasa.

So come!
Let us move ever onward, and ever
Upward - for the road has yet to be tread,
But the destination is certain.

Let what is true speak into our hearts,
So that our hearts can guide us in
What is true on our voyage.

She's the sun and stars.

Close and with me, she
Lights up the day.
Brilliant and blinding;
Ever loving, ever caring.
Warming my skin,
Her arms wrap all around.

Far away she's the same
Beast, but distant and
Far by night. I can't see
But her old light.
Still brilliant and beautiful,
But gone, and yearning;
Time and space, an envelope.
She's pulled away by
The black ocean, and we sleep
A separate sleep
Till the Eastern gate
Allow her back to me again.

She's the sun and stars, and
I will miss her till the
East and West are one.

My eyes shift back
Into focus after staring
For so long

I blink as I wipe the drool
Off and look around

I sit in the comfortable recliner

As I notice the room, the chair,

The clock tells me how many years
I've been sitting here,
content to

Watch the dancing lights from
The T.V.

But all that's there is static

Spring is here, once again
Demanding of my soul
She tickles and pleases, tugs and teases
Till I finally relinquish it whole

When it launches out, the Devil comes near
Trying to inhabit my shell
Of a body. I hope he doesn't
Or I'm certainly bound for Hell.

Spring sprinkles her yellow
Demons in and around my head
While Satan unpacks his luggage in me, and
Lays down in his new bed

Just in time, when he's freshly in, everyone in
The room becomes a priest
They sit and wait so patiently
For my possession spasms to cease

I catch my breath, I take a bow
My episode is done
The saints give me their Holy
Blessings, feeling like they've won

The Devils ****-blocked, he's barely in
Then out, can't stay in me no more
Him and Spring have had their fling
His one night stand with that *****

I watch Spring walk away from me
With water in my eyes
That little ***** snakes away to
The flowers and her lies.

Let out to the day,
after years in the dark;
After seconds apart.
Soft rays of sunshine
gentle and warm; Face
pressed against mine by
the cheeks. Entangling
wind blowing in and
around my body;
Arms wrapped around
squeezing tight. Tumbling
brown winter branches
curled and brown; Hair
smooth, flowing down
over shoulders. Fruit
dripping with sugary
sweetness; Lips pressed
to mine that taste
like the sun.
Beautiful; Beautiful.

You knelt beside
The fires glow,
And blew long and deep
Through grasses low;
A gentle breeze
Of hum and whistle --
Soft and sweet through blade
And thistle.
I listened close and you
Took my voice,
And then my soul
Without a choice --
'Cause you're no mortal
When you sing;
You're and angel,
Love --
With invisible wings.

Stripes and frays
Been worn for days
It's threads know our
every love
The zippers worn
The seams are torn
It's seen more than
stars above
Though sometimes cold
Gets through the holes
It will always keep
us warm
It's knows the weight
Of our lemniscate
It's knows our
every form

The sweaters worn
The sweaters torn
But it's completely
irreplaceable
We'll keep it with us
For years
On end
It has a heart
Of it's own

His card opens and closes, singing
Happy Birthday to him in the
Other room. He's six today.

I walk over to him, as he sits
In the darkness;
The hanging air as black as his skin.
I sit next to him in a hug:
"What's up kiddo?"
He replies with, "I like the singing"
But underneath the words, all
I hear is his voice from days ago,
"I don't like my skin. It makes me --

unloveable."

"I like the singing too, how about
We go play with your new Legos?"
His face lights up with a brightness
Only his dark tone could contain.
"Let's do it big brother!"
I tell him I love him.
I tell him I think he's beautiful.

His six short years, filled with more
Pain than I'll ever know.

I'm just glad he's mine.

My mind is swaddled tightly
In wool by your look;
Your smell is the cotton ball crammed
Over my tongue.
Your laugh is what ties my laces
Together, conspiring
      to trip me.
The way your chest heaves with breath
Is the dampness in my palms,
And the elegance of your brilliance
Is the torrent to
      extinguish the fires of my
            mind. A spark; a sizzle.

Sometimes our models of the
Universe don't quite work out;

Sometimes it's just a simple cause
And effect, micro like macro.

Now that my model of us is shattered
On the ground, a glass cookie jar subject

To the tantrum of a child, the electron
Moves forward in time once again;

Our entropy increases,
And we decay.

The sun rises. . .

But not yellow this time.
A deep, wonderful brown
so beautiful it's a crime.
It's rays fill the sky and clouds
With colours I would gladly drown
In. Morning grass crowds
The ground glittering with dew
From the rays of the deep brown sun
Which is a colour to which the sky is new.
****, the sky is so cute.
All it's rays reach and run
Into long arms that squeeze my air out till I'm mute.
The sun reaches in my cuts
All the way down to the bare bone
Where not even pain obstructs
Injecting warm happiness cure.
The brown of the sun is like none ever known
To the sky, a light so pure.  

. . .and is only eight days away.

She's the sun of my life
Who melts away the lead walls,
Tickles out the smiles, and
Brightens up my overcast.

I will always love the
Scribbling scratched out scrawls
You make, whether ink on
Paper or the
Creases on your red lips,
They whisper to me both.

The walls are built
High and thick -- they
Are a border -- hardened
By age and time; I am

Ready to take them down
With my chain of two links --
The same chain that binds
Me -- keeping me from

You.

Orange juice rays that spray down from the sky
through the tight drawn curtains
lands as one smooth strip bisecting the room
softly illuminating the morning.
He grabs tufts of blankets with his toes and tucks
them down beneath his feet
to keep them from cold, or whatever else lurks
in a fresh morning room.
His ears so blue only the Axis could tell,
hear Funkadelic through the soft navy dark
of a room not quite so woken up as to
be a part of the day.
The clock radiates euphoria in soft whispers
of hours more to sleep.
He hears Hazel like on a walnut and lets it
relax every muscle.
Soon he'll decide to colour his own sound,
which stirs under the pulled-up covers
that hide him from a reality spilling in through the curtains
that don't agree with his fields of Blue.

Days with
Out you
Shouldn't even
Be counted
On the
Calendar --
Try(ing to
live the
days with
out the
sun) to
Find me
A reason
Why.

Doors will creak, and floorboards crack,
Your feet soft kisses on the wood
In this house, a terminal lies with
No one,
Going anywhere.
I see a flutter, of your ghost
Subtle memories of you,
Are what I dream of when I sleep
Not simply
A life without you.
Ruined if so
Today, though, is mine.

Ours.

Train cars clack by me on tracks,
A steady rhythm
Each one a crashing indecision.

I'd like to ride up on those cars,
With a backpack
And my one special jazzy guitar;

I want to live like the homeless do,
See the world;
Gain amazing outside experience.

But that's a little out there, eh,
Lets get back
To something better:

I want to end up with this one girl,
A Kindergarten teacher
Waking up to her every morning.

I want to be something like a writer,
Something worth life
Not just problems and equations:

I love to read and process words with
Her head resting
Softly, safely, in my lap.

But I'm tied down by deep blue veins,
Needles sticking out;
Tied down by pills taken all the time. . .

I don't want to rely on medications just
To simply live,
To have them be the death of me.

I want to live the life I want, and not worry
About just living.

Brown from African dust
My feet are weary with
Home so far behind --
Burning with wrath
Parching my lips till cracked
The sun beats down

Through clouds it now shows
With shimmers of raindrops
Littering the overcast sky --
Puddles in the parking lot
I have to skip over, a familiar
Hand in mine

Which was once smooth and lonely
Before subject to string
By the darkness lingering
Between the spaces in the stars --
The wood table centered so sweetly
By the lanterns

Which here never die
Long into the night
Burning by filament so strong --
They flow, but don't flicker
You can see, but never truly
What it really is.

Here and there,
So different but so melded.
Home is with you.
It will never else be.

A momentary glimpse
Of the cream that you bare --
The smoothly curved
Marble

Deliberately created
With breathing pores;
Hues of pink like dramatic
Shadows;

Moving with natural
Fluidity like the silent
Planets that drift in the depths of
Space;

That demands reverence
And study like none other --
Is enough to burst the
Heart.

In a Victorian train station,
Amonsgt a plowed tile floor
Of long brown benches,
I sat: a brass statue.

I stood in the waiting room
Watching the travelers scurry
About, keeping up in their own
Little rat race.

They would walk around
Through the rows of benches,
Looking at me, or the windows,
Or the clocks.

I would sit in my space amongst
The benches, in my shaft of light
That came down from the arches
In the ceiling, thinking I was content.

Minutes would turn to hours,
Hours to days, days to seasons
Time after time. And then --
You came.

You were so like me: an
Almost brass statue; a not-once
Person, gilded over in a
Seemingly perfect pose.

They sat you right next to
Me; we were like two sides
Of an old coin, spinning in
An empty space of the station.

Your silence was plenty for me.
I no longer looked at the
Scurriers and travelers, but
Instead on you, us, together.

In all the room in a vast station
I was fortunate enough to
Have you placed perfectly
Next to me. Me.

But it wasn't to last. The men
Came to haul to around: to
Kiosks and platforms and
Other waiting areas.

Then. . . I became the fidgeter.
The seasons broke down, to days
Minutes seconds moments,
Moments without you.

And when you came around
Again we both delighted in the
Sunlight through the arches and
Each others inevitable silence.

And when the station closed,
You never had to move again.
There was no where left to move you,
No more emptiness to fill.

So they set us in a park -- by black
Benches with pigeons instead of
Trains. Together we got to watch
The minutes turn to days, and in

Turn seasons.
I never waited again.

Of all the places we could be,
Getting married in six months or
Enganged in Disney Land,
Or maybe even moving North
To simply live together,
Of all the places we're here -
While you destruct and I
Balance a crumbling life with school,
Here we are back in like.

I see through the eyes of others --
Crows and bears and beasts --
Like binoculars; like Dreams.

And I saw through your eyes,
A mans eyes, and learned
Empathy, understanding you,

Living as you, being you, and
How you saw me, and the spears
I ****** through your heart dwell in mine.

But I have the heart of a Beast,
And the skin of a Wolf --
Will I ever be able to be who I was

Again?

Like the positron,

I must be an anti-version of me,
Travelling back in time,

And the me here and now didn't
Travel this path by chance;

The effect of me knowing you must
Have caused me to find you,

Because you are too phenomenal
For me to have found you by chance.

The pink flesh is
Soft like the sound of
Silk through
Fresh green grass --
Lips on lips.
Marasmus has waited
For the sweet
Covetous flesh to pour
Into my mouth
Before leaving, wishing
She could take
Some of the taste with
Her.
There are many fruits
In the world,
But this one -- the one
The spills her
Liquid tongue over mine
-- is my experience
Alone. If not then, than for
Now and forever.

You hum softly in the haze of dusk
The song of a passing ice cream truck,
A penny for a spool of thread
Toes digging in the loose dusty soil,
Tapping the long forked fire **** to either
Side as though blind, blind from smoke and
Tears and the darkness of
The canyons of silence Between us
A penny for a needle
The branch balances precariously on the
End of the fork, a tightrope walker
Plucked from the ground by a metal unfeeling god
That's the way the money goes
Until you dump it into the fire
Pop goes the weasel
And the obvious irony, the irony so
Commonly placed in horrors
I've got no time to plead and pine
Is what makes me laugh until
The tears bead up on the end of my nose
I've got no time to wheedle
Or so it feels like, because inevitably,
Always, somehow
Kiss me quick before I'm gone
You always light me up
*Pop goes the weasel

The steel folding chair, is nice and
Chill against the
Back of my calves. I see her,
Over there, doing
All that she loves. Twirling her pencils,
Pressing her keys,
Chiming her voice and gliding her feet,
Lost in the music and
Syllables she floats so gracefully in,
Not drowning but so
Lovely surrounded and submersed.
The pink butterflies
Land and take off of her like she's nothing
But flower petals arranged
Perfectly together. They whisper her words,
Ideas, heart strings, all
That they bring from and back to her.

On the lightest tip-
Toes, she sneaks over and tells me to come
Join her. She playfully
Begs and pleads and tugs with all her might.
Sometimes I'm there
With her, but sometimes, I just like to
Be in my chair. Because
What I first came here to do, was to sit and
Smile at all that she does.

One day I hope
She walks by a window
Without judging her appearance--

One day I hope
She realizes
Her love is her coherence--

One day I hope
The mirror wont
Control just how she feels--

Because I don't care,
I really don't, I for one
Know her beauty's real.

When the dust has settled and
The ashes scattered,
When the sound has all died out and
The leaves are left dry to crunch underfoot and
The doors to our homes are neither open nor
Closed but rotted to the ground where
They used to stand,
I'll still be sitting by my tent with my
Lone guitar, looking across the fire
Into your eyes focused on the
Mountains behind me, and
I don't think there's a single ******* thing
That could make me ever look back.

She goes to lay down
To try and give up
Tries to let go
But it holds on

She sees the mirror
But inside's not her
It's someone from tomorrow
Cause she's only today

She's heavy-hearted
But feeling empty
A raging furnace
Made of paper

She's got a life-vest
For the first train
Draws a quick bath
To get her first crutch

She's got her emotions
Stored in her right leg
Lets them all out
After the locks on

She's heading home now
On the sidewalk
Laying longways
In the stars above

For a bird, a girl, a friend, a love*

This new Winter has frozen deep; the
Frostbite pains to the core.
Faces so numb no smiles are shown,
Hearts chilled to black.
The wind sings a new song of nails on
Faces; A song of
Anxiety fills the air. Ice lays thick on her
Chest -- a weight she
Should not bear.

Tears stream over apple red cheeks, but
Freeze before they fall;
The boughs of trees bend down under the
Weights of winter to
Condemn her, to shed dead leaves of shame
Naught she deserves.

But there will come soft snows like
Wet kisses on brows,
And wet kisses of brows like petals
On sheets;
Love will warm like the rush of
A blush from stares,
The stares from eyes that reflect
Clear Winter skies.

Though it will still be cold -- and the
Wind a sting -- it
Will be like the season she once loved
So long ago,
And never will she be alone; never
Will her hand be empty.

Living inside a breaking
Body I'm aching with maladies
Not well at ease but I'm okay
Still making melodies;
The drugs they ease but they don't
Cure, I won't be taken hostage
In caustic flesh and cracking bones
My own body is the carnage.

But I'm not afraid of death,
No, it's -- it's something else instead.
What I dread isn't losing life
It's who I'll miss when I'm dead;
When I'm lying there she will  
Be too but neither of us morose --
I'm maybe gross but not quite gone
Her love's the only dose
   I'll need

I'll say Farewell to Arms -- but --
I can't quite say Farewell to You --
My true goodbyes were tied to stone
I've thrown deep in skies of blue

I realize as I depart
Her part's so sweetly auspicious --
But I'm the only one to know
I grow soft secrets surreptitious.
   and --
The Reaper cracks a smile
All the while his autopsy;
He sees my life through his lens,
Carrying me off into
   **Eternity