The underside of a tongue and the bruised
Protruding veins from around the beaten eye.
The hissing, sissing, kissing radiator releasing
Steam heat like screaming tea kettle ready
For release and cream or sugar.
The trickle of water in a bowl and claws
landing right into the small of the back.

I live in these places between light and flowers, dust and staples,
flight and hours, rust and maple. I am amber, but not solid,
Flaming, but not hot,  Sunrise never Sundays.
Feet always cold. Ex-smoker over sleeper, always wishing for the reimbursements.
Now weaper, but never weaker, just a weeker trying
To see deeper, but never the keeper, just the reaper.
it's okay to get used to it. like

Starting the bath cold and pouring boiling
water from stove top kettles and pots until
You notice the warmth, but the heat never
Hurts. or

Maybe jumping in all at once, and skipping
The ladder all together is the best approach.

What's an amygdala and its relationship to the olfactory?
Probably the part of myself that makes my heart flutter
and the air move differently through my lungs when I smell
the warmth of chlorine in the air from the indoor swimming pool.

Or the truth of the man made time machine when I smell
gold dial soap and I'm suddenly in Michigan.
The combination of fear and cleanliness, with a dusting
of hymnal music and the fragility of its pages.

A psychologist at the University of Oxford labeled an
ambiguous Brie-like scent as either "cheddar cheese"
or "body odor". Even better, walking through the apartment
complex in the dead of winter, following the trails of drier sheets
being spit from vent burrowed within the bricks.

The winter evening settles down
with smell of steaks in passageways
that seeps into the wallpaper and stinks
up the breakfast room until Easter.

What an amazing thing, the fragility of time
as it averts itself in the face of smell.

A drop of water hits the corner of
My face, shockingly
A reminder of all things good
and how to breath.

I'm in love with the feeling of
Sharing

A light through the trees
It shines
Of the constant reminder
Of who you are
And what
You want

I knew you were in love with her from
the sounds of your feet, chasing her

down the stairs at 11:15pm on a Tuesday
night. No one who has hate in their heart

chases anyone down the stairs anymore.
Not since they were kids, at least. When

the risk of falling face first, chin hitting each
step on the way down, wasn't enough to keep

you from sliding down them, your vessel,
an old plastic laundry basket packed with

couch cushions. Diving for loose change to
shell out like lint from the laundromat

to buy another pack of cigarettes from the
circle K that never asked for your ID.

Play it again: the circle shall not be broken
or will remain unbroken, or how many times

have you listened to it by now. it is 7am.
Your favorite record, you found in your late

fathers storage unit, in a place where you
were hoping to find a friend.

the spider web, broken to solitary strings,
clings fast to the antennae of my suv
withstanding winds, and tunnels, and turns,
and dives all the way home.

4 dead bats, huddled in the corner built into
the trap between the new and old roof. not
meticulously placed. proof that even the
smallest of creature understands death, and
the fear of leaving earth alone.

you tell me i need to be alone to grow,
to be independent. but how do I accumulate
all the years ive spent alone in the company
of others to prove that i already have?

i will never stop loving you,
but your caution has petrified me into
a state of uncertainty: too fearful to make
my own mistakes because you say you've
made them before.

i want to be fragmented light.
trailing downward on a wooden stair case,
separating each step with absence and shadow. always to return technicolor atop
the next.

you fear the darkness more than i.
i will step into it, arms stretched forward,
probing the air for familiarity,
if you'd only let me try.

I am screaming
I haven't stopped screaming
I don't know how to express the fact
That I can't stop screaming.

Screaming in ways like sweating armpits
Chafing thighs, itchy under-****.
In ways like waiting in lines and for
Conversations to end.
For feelings you can't source, that
You just can't shake.

Screaming in ways like an ache in the
Lung or chest or heart and dry eyes for
How much I love you. In ways like the strain
Of muscles for words just beyond the tip
of the tongue. The strain of laughs when
Nothing runs through your mind.

This will never be a love poem because I am
Not in love. And never have been.

This is a proclamation of the indescribable
Feeling of feeling. Like trying to look at your entire life from one point.
Impossible to do.
Just like the universe, absent of a birds eye, focal point.
The only way to see its entirety.
It's complexity, is through the patch work
Picture stitch of the infinity of stars.

Would it be to cheesy to say that you are the infinity of stars?
No, You are the finity of stars in the infinity of light.

A wind mill sliced through the air in complete silence.
Energy travels near, but won't travel far, land locking itself to what it already knows.
Screaming. Bright. Rigid. Slime. With a hint of basil.
Just reach out and taste it, as the warmth of it's rotations engulfs you.
Maxwell Edison is stuck in the Pentagon and no one is going to save him.
I can't hear you over the sound of the wind mills.
But I don't need to hear your voice to listen to you anymore.
"It's been a minute." You said, to me with the breeze messing up your tawny hair.
You dip but I never would dive, because I'm afraid of breaking my neck.
My questions remain unanswered. Must we know our names today?

The reigning king of time and space
showed me that I can make the clock tick faster and the days move slower.
So I'd spend my nights flying through the mesosphere looking for lost breaths.
Oh, joy joy, he would say when watching trails of smoke and cloud accumulate in the sky.
I will never stop this ride. It will never end and I will never come back down to earth.

My ever spinning song for you is stuck on repeat. I will end the night and the day to create the space of nothing where we have been all along.
"Laissez les bons temps roulez"
exclaimed the taxi cab meter, hiking up prices that made our wallets weep.

No one is going to save you.