Running,

running away from the present moment in time
because you know the minute your feet
stop pounding the dirt below you
you have succumbed to the belief
that the moment snapping at your heels
is the last moment you will ever have.

Fear,

fear is the air you breathe, the blood
pumping through your veins, pulsating
at your temples, the only thing that
is keeping you alive. Fear that fear
is only temporary, a fleeting spark,
a false and empty hope.

Numb,

numb as your mind has disconnected itself
from your body, has shed its shield of thought
and is now an open soar of raw and exposed emotion.
but as long you keep running, keep
moving, you manage to avoid the eminent truth
that you are only prolonging the inevitable.

But until then,

you fly with the quickness of panic and denial,
because there is no escape but ultimate surrender.

Freedom, unadulterated freedom.
Freedom to dig little toes in the sand and run as naked and
as wild as the wind.

A freedom so complete and vast and uncensored
that it weighs like chains,
and chokes like an iron grip.

And so little hands meld mismatched links of their own,
rules and laws, and should's and should-not's,
tying little feet back to earth,
away from the suffocating sky of infinite possibilities.

Little hearts yearn for shackles,
feeling utterly exposed without them,
for a free body is one that tempts oppressors
unless he dons crude metal adornments of his own.

And so with the imprint of unsung lullabies
floating in the night air, little cheeks
nuzzle their iron blankies and doze off
under the familiar weight of confines and conformity.

I feel the summer
The heat
The UV
The flies

I see you in your bathing suit
and I fall in love

Mum spilled wine on the patio
*The may flies are going to be drunk tonight

I had slept for too long, I know, for my eyes crusted over,
and when I rubbed them I felt relief from sleep.
Walking into my kitchen undiscovered, like a mars rover
I stumbled towards the counter in a bumbling flesh jeep.

the fruit bowl overflowed with bananas and mangoes
and they were beyond their years, wrinkled and hot
from the heat of today, and yesterday, their death grows
towards a beginning only a fly could know, but not.

their fermenting skin was armied in fruit flies,
they had built quite a formidable force and I
wondered had I slept so long? Their fleeting red eyes
scurried in my presence without a question of why.

opening the cherry tomato container unleashed an army like Agamemnon’s,
I feared I had slept that long, in a house of Aegisthus,
a deceptive horse unleashed
flies about my cheeks and eyes-
I feared their anger, only in that moment though,
I hadn’t even thought about it before.

a cider vinegar trap was the plan,
with a plastic wrap coffin,
and in some hours a cider vinegar graveyard
full of crimson eyed drowners.

A brash plan, yes-

or maybe an overthrow of a sluggish ruler
with a small army of energetic soldiers,
my crushing hand slicing like a scythe,
only to be matched by a putrid hatred of a kitchen subjugator,
a hatred the ruler understood himself-
a fear of waking up to it left the fruit
bruising in the basket
in
the
first place.