We wait outside long closed electric doors

    
        At last, you take my hand, you cloud-float up
        
            Hospital gown draped over a balloon

                Oxygen mask string dangles, now relaxed

                    Its work is over, I still hold your hand

                        My heels lift slightly, I still hold your hand

                            I can’t come with you; time for letting go,

                                We smile, you float -- drip, tape, and bandage free


My toes have never left their asphalt base

My dearest dream,
    and
        I still feel your hand

A person persuaded me.
Pursing, they persued a path of persuasion, hyperbolically.

Personally, I was persuaded.
Perhaps no persuasion is performed perfectly,
But perfection is not prerogative.

Being or seeming?
At first I was scared.
I was timid.
I tried to please,
but got in trouble anyway.
But when the changes came,
I was empty.
What you see is the real me.
I was worried.
I hated my image, but I ruminated.
I did things that should have been unspeakable.
I felt guilty. I felt free.
But I was still looking for the real me.

There's a certain wraith
in the cleaning of kitchens
scrubbing of floors
ringing of towels til
the fingers puff up
and bleach seeps
beneath your fingernails.

There's a certain wraith
to all these quiet burdens.

I take off my summer skin,
peel back bronzed afternoons
and cleave through
those muggy mornings
you were still here

but not for long.

I've been collecting words
for years- cataloguing

feral and oblivion, catharsis and
iridescence. I keep gusto

in the drawer beside my bed.
I put visceral next to the broken

mirror you left. I've hidden marrow
next to vastness as if they are mine

alone. See how they slip out of me
like a ****** nose at just the wrong time.

The word of God
Is neon now-
It screams odious
Love to the silent
Collection of limbs
Beneath it.

Iridescence
Falls in irradiated
Waves, reaches the
Sedate, the wanderers
Of Asphalt Nightmares,
At last.

They can hardly hear it
Over the mumble of voices.
They shift, leave by way
Of saturated, naked streets
Steeped
In weariness.

The new God is
Neon- but all the same
Unheard; It's violent lights
Looking to the morally
Righteous; finds
No one.

The mechanism of my body is ticking away the moments:
clinical seconds, dehydrated hours, years washed too clean.

The orbit of my ribs makes its rounds with momentous clicking
felt as a ripple- a forte into seizure.

There's something industrial in the alignment of these organs:
A factory of ventricles straining against the assembly line.

I'm a blood clock, tragic motor; I'm an organism
too mechanical to hold.

With a liver like a coal burner and lungs to expel the smoke,
how can I find a way back to being human.