~
This forbidden city
walks on water,
keeps all the undesirables at bay,
it's always a balancing act.

Oh, blighted court
of Catherine the Great,
thy friends are having a hard time,
but horsing around, no less.

Enlightened by summer drugs,
and busting out of
their tops and castles,
thongs on thy feet,
and thongs on thy bottoms,
this zenith and this nadir
come in colorful collages,
everything else is a flash of flesh.

Sped along by
frequent bloodletting,
there's a revolution in
thy teenage mind,
a looking for the hidden
and interested motives,
but no one can live
their life on the skis.

Rulership of heart is far
from recreation,
but you raised
a smile to sin,
until all we could do was
shake our heads and laugh.
~

You are my weapon,
my avenger,
the one I unleash
on anyone, anywhere.

Anyone guilty
of my lack of effort,
my frustration,
or of not being kind.

I fire you
for the things I lose
or the ones I fail to overcome.

I keep you tied to my waist,
always loaded,
but never well secured.

I **** you,
like a revolver in my hand,
and pull the trigger
with reckless passion.

I left the door ajar,
just barely —
a silent plea beneath the noise
of “I’m fine” and
“I’m just tired.”

I wrapped my pain in quiet places,
hid the marks where no one looks —
beneath waistbands,
behind layers,
hoping someone might see past it
without me having to say it.

But every time someone got close,
I turned colder, sharper—
a defense disguised as indifference,
a fortress I hated living in
but couldn’t stop building higher.

They tried, I know they did—
friends with warm hands,
family with concerned eyes—
but I shrugged them off,
convinced I was doing them a favor
by being alone in the storm.

Now the room is quiet again,
the fabric sticks to skin,
and I still can’t say
what’s bleeding inside me.

The world just kept on spinning,
while I stayed stuck,
fading in the spaces between
genuine smiles and forced ones.
And in the end,
everyone seemed to give up
and leave me—
not out of malice,
but because they couldn’t reach
what I was too afraid to show.

But I feel it now,
the echo behind silence,
the weight of a choice unspoken—

this action will have consequences.

The core is cracked, the gauges red,
They swore it’s fine—now hope is dead.
Control rods jam, the heat runs wild,
No turning back, the fuel defiled.

Containment’s gone, the walls decay,
Fallout drifts in skies of gray.
A silent flash, a world undone,
The chain reaction has begun.

home is a cage
slide out the window
find a different way
run with the wolves
chase the child

it won't always be like this
ceramic heart
cosmic bruise
lovesick in a hotel wildfire

chemistry begins with
orbiting the moon
he calls her a river

swallowing down mistakes
she cares a little less about everything now

blood on the mattress
young blood

breaks in the sun
mean pure dark is yet to come
--nightly things

as long as she gets by
despite the crushing weight of gravity
she will take swan feathers
and wedding days to bed

but never take the blame

a sense of desertion
combined with
a sense of purpose
is a lethal combination;
false, or true.

a gust of wind sweeping through
an abandoned campfire,
in the right direction
(𝘰𝘳 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨, 𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦)
will take down the
entire forest.

Don't look in the rear view.
It's there, in front of the windshield,
That looks to the immediate future.
I sit between the two,
With the past in the mirror,
And the simultaneous future
Over my hood,
And my wheels spin,
I'm moving.
Trees and people jostle
From front to back, continuously.
Road signs are a blur
As the air pushes the world aside
Like lace curtains,
Like love,
Enduring through unintended consequences.
A simple gesture,
A mustard seed,
Growing.
Like crystals, connecting,
Dissipating into one.