The empty air has a bitter tone
When it bites at my fingers
And yells profanities in an unrecognizable tongue.

It stings when it sings.

It has an aberrant gait
And a detached mien,
This lack-of being.

The tempest’s strides jounce its overly-wide shoulders;
Its prominent brow sends an antagonistic shadow
Cascading down its lip and jaw.

This active silence whispers age-old secrets
Its fingers tousling the amber leaves
Of my autumn’s long-dead trees.

The sound resonates,

And this taunting, all-knowing,
Omnipresent, nonexistent-but-still-there wind
Smiles at my naïveté.

Weary under the weight of the world
And the smog of self-importance.
Its eyes are clouded with grey rain,
Its teeth sharp with a bitter resentment;

“I’ve disliked you since the 1700s,” it breathes,
Throwing an airy, acrid gaze at humanity.
(“I’m sorry, but it is you who made me this way,
With your scornful industrialization.”)

Its eyes are frigid, piercing,
Wicked, yet reserved.
Cruel in their taunting assumptions,

Yet,

In those forget-me-not eyes

I found the sky.

you’ve swept me away
in your rivers,
completely.

do you know you steal my breath?
I can’t help it, I surrender
to you, so
surround me, encompass me,
cover me with your skin,
your flesh and kisses;

love me, I know you can.
love me,

for just a while, and
I’ll lead you,
follow you,

until you find
what you are looking for.

I am yours to break.

and if you ever want
to forget me for a while,
to love me no longer -
that is okay,

for you've loved me once,

and that is enough.

His hands were fluttering birds; paper-thin skin stitched together with cerulean veins clung to bones, accentuating the already unnatural length of his fingers.  They hung at his sides, writhing in a nervous agony - sweat glistened on their blushed palms.  Those hands held the moons of Neptune.  "Where are you going?" I asked, a soft echo.  

The young man's head turned and he pulled a sad smile, "Oh, nowhere, really."

Draw your foul tongue
out of the depths of your sleep.
The day has fermented
on your breath.
Draw your torpid mind
to the surface of your skin
and feel my
electricity.
It’s late, and you *****
your words.
So you close your eyes and
heave out the day.
But in the morning,
when your tongue is light,
when your breath is easy,
you will touch your lips to my ear
and whisper something warm
and weary.

There was an asphalt road along which I walked my childhood
In the warmth of the summers, in the warmth of careless feet
And strawberries strung on wild grass.
The juice of the sun on our cheeks dripped and
We were golden, rugged tar beneath our soles.
My feet were black in the summer.
A child, the sky over my head was too large,
A blue in which I lost myself should I look up.
So I watched the road.

The sun never set on us, but bathed us in the unearthly gold of night.
It washed away tomorrow, it washed away the day past.
It washed away sound but for the far-away buzz of birds and traffic.
The asphalt was always warm after the glow of the day,
And beneath my feet I could feel the tires of cars long gone.
Someday I’d be the driver, too busy to meet the road,
Too busy to walk down my old friend in the evening sun,
But that was far away and my feet were young.

Taken, this only route to the back of something blacker.
I left my fingernails to protest in the floorboard,
stuck, sticking still
white headstones for things I cannot remember.
Pale ghosts of my
tenacity
before it strode cross the threshold into a gentle night.

I piled like garbage in the corner,
an anthill
phenomenally empty.
This, my house of skin,
ice dispensers and salt,
brewing something foul,
I inflate, churning charcoal

in the corner,
out the door,
heaving hell.

My shoulders have grown weary under your enormous
gravity.
Like the sick summer nights in your breath,
I have congealed on the foyer,
unable, unwilling to draw myself up.

Night falls and all the things that have been hiding in me come out,
and I feel your curving absence
and I am alone,
some place far away where the memory of your voice still echoes,
a moth against a lantern in my throat.

I feel you moving in the stillness of sleep,
in that place between dream and death
where your breath still lingers
like spiders under my skin.

the moon was just over
half full, and he watched it
as it floated above,
suspended in place while the earth
moved with each of his steps.
The trees surged and fell
with his feet, but the moon
was unmoving.
Yellow and unmoving.
He stared at it until he was sure
the image had etched itself
into his pupils, a yellow fleck -
not quite a circle;
a curious fleck of light
at which people would stare
and ask about,
and he’d reply,
It is the moon! It is the moon!
He wanted to be yellow
and unmoving.
Yellow and unmoving;
It is the moon!
He’d stolen the moon.

My mind is clear, early winter
Bathes the landscape in its abandon.
There is no room for you here.

The dewy chill has numbed me,
the storms of our summers
are memory in the fog of my breath.

Here I loved you in my summer.
Here the grass is brown, as your eyes.
But my mind is clear

You are ice, forgotten
With only the ghost of my touch.
A breath.

There is no room for me here -
There will be no summer for me.

ancient man, ancient man
what do you hold
in your sleeves?

in your sleeves
you are young,

you are youthful,
not a bird in search
of a final rest-,
nest-ing place.

your place is not
in the sun
in the sky
in the sidewalk.

in the warm embrace.

my bird, my bird,
ancient man,
you are my bird;
tell me,
what do you hold
in your feathered sleeves?

He - cheeks like apples flushed,
chilled with a cold of which nobody knew,

He - bent under an ancient sea;
eyes grey, mind grey, both slightly askew.

He knew.

A pause, his reality hovering with his step.
He leapt.

And even though he only fell,

I truly believed he flew.

The men smile - who knew?
They cannot taste the summer,
They paint their nails blue.

the sun had been so wonderfully
warm against his bare back.  
It flooded him with a peculiar light and he’s sighed
out all the weight of living
in one great breath  
he had tasted the sweet scent
of overripe apples and had licked the juices and the flesh of the peach
from his fingers
walking at her side he had eaten the summer day
it was in him
swelling with his chest
falling with his breath
churning
it filled him
and his blood was gold and his thoughts were gold  
while walking next to her
he had eaten the day
and he had listened to her voice
and confused it with the sun on his cheeks.