Distance, prince of deception
and fictions. Taunting the
lonely mind with
infractions, -

to swim in the depths of fascination.
There’s only faint phantoms awake as you wait.
It’s only the restless thoughts that are slated.
To think about those other places where
you could reach out your hand and relocate.

At the table of frantic feasts, your fate
decided between the savagery of plates
where you’d swallow your anxiety and eat.
This good treat tastes like apple syrup sauce.
Who’d pretend to be dying? No wonder
you’d spend hours researching conspiracies.

“I’ve contracted some kind of disease, I’m
telling you this is like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
and I am Ken Kesey”

To run into a stranger
in this faultless neighborhood;
cloaked invisible floating
like an apparition.
I hear the heavy purr
of a cat in the hedges
as he passes, masked
making gestures.

This twilight, as wood fires
where the dogs lie fixated
and the flames fight
amongst the empty spaces.

The same streets we walk each day
are resistant, distant
like an old wearisome lover.
He lifts his arms outstretched
and walks into the darkness.

Zephyrs through the unseen aisles.
Zephyrs through the thoughts of me.

In the morning, the calls of bell birds;
to awaken and
the night is trivial.

I’ve always found cliché
to be the least cliché.

When the quiet girl is interrupted
and played like a character
on a stage. It’s a strange
fruit harvest each season;
different strains, different
chemical plagues. Because
she is too aware of you,
her. To be brought to
the place you already were.

A charlatan of the shipwrecked.
Do we bore ourselves
because we are empty? To laugh
at the reflections.
You could say so much without speaking.
Bear witness to insanity.

There is a lizard
that sits closer to our door
each day. But still runs
if we're to move in anyway.

Falling
Kaleidoscopic and feathery
The seasons brief stay
Feeling faith between
my ribs
pulsating like a lightbulb
hanging from a chain
Every time it changes the
foliage and the sky
If time stopped in stillness
then I'd have no quarrel with
the possibility of going insane
For an hour out of a day
when waves crashed my name
I'd make myself a palace from
the silence and the decay
Rapid fire in and out the door
There he goes
wayward traveler
Starving body and
content spirit under moonlight
catching colds to shake off
Because I really don't see what
other people do when I look
at me
Tired sighs
Green eyes
Mesmerized by pictures
of angels
Tethered skin
Weather beaten
Holding in a vision
I've been in mansions
with swimming pools
I've been in dingy
alley backrooms
And I still couldn't recognize
what I was reading
Oscillating around street lamps
and speaking in whistles
A fleeting sensation and
I can't trust the transition
I wish life was quite and
I could have met him
after the storm
Where does this start
In my head or in my heart
When does this grow from
something soft to something
sharp?
Verses resting on the wall
Prophecy
Clentched wrist
Crosses
Do I make the right decisions
Trembling jaw
All this theory in a blooming flower
Watching cars drive by
There's a mistress on the floor
Behind the locked screen door
And there's a picture on the
shelf of you with someone else
Coveted dreams of romance
without a promise of courtship

Missing like the Sun behind clouds
you leave this Earthbound place
Separated in your mind and
In time and space
Phases of emotion
Cycles of feeling
Is this sensation waning
Waxing crescent tears and smiles
Fitted like a scarf around my
neck and
I'll be dragging it for miles
Tethered weathered potions
of foxglove, laurels
and daffodils
dripped in ink, wrapped in linen
Caught on cameras
Scratched and bitten
Amusement parks with
twirling horses
Blinking signs
Ferris wheels
Popcorn on the scratchy ground
Looking past that merry go round
And thought I saw a smokey mirror
a reflected window of blue sky
and all I could muster to say was
"high"
It sounded like a music box
It traced like constellations
It's seashells penetrated my
mind
That's why, my friend, you can't find
where it is I'm wandering
Gripples on my arm and
all along my collarbone and
down my spine like a slide
It's all angles
"Be a triangle"
And sudden like a collision
hard in the pit of my ribs
I say the words I've
screamed inside and
they escape from my lips
I've died once but
lived many times
So many places I've been in
one life and I'm a
kaleidescopic mind.

To split science
by careful measurement.
To create a subject;
abstract, computational.

I am persuaded to forget
that which while present
is dissipating,
because I am not here,
but tangential.

I am governed by the laws of particle physics,
standing motionless as eyes watch me
give a speech on the power of language.

For when you get close,
where objects touch another
in the same way you and I
touch. Cotton curling
away from fire. Oil
on water. It is identical.
Irises returning
into their dark interiors.
Intact, incessant affirmation;
properties
that intersect and
soften, striking that
which while coaxing,
eludes us.

I am a stranger to myself,
entangled.

Through the tunnel
where safety lights diffract
and our cigarettes filter the exhaust fumes

where oil forms rainbows on concrete
and lilacs grow through the cracks

these incandescent heartbeats
in passing cars, passing by

and you lightly, like
a dragonfly,
realigning
to catch the light
in your half opened eye.