I can taste the kiss of last night’s rain,
its touch so gentle, as if my body
were a pond rippling from drizzle.

We humans have a language
we choose not to speak,
a brimming tower of gestures meaning

nothing, at least, until we say them.
Hands that float like foreign syllables,
twitching legs that jitter in time

to the anxiety of others’ conversations.
Posture can hold an argument of its own
the way it makes us sturdy as bronze.

In this darkness, I shake my silence
like a bad dream. I want to be honest.
I want to be a silver thread sown

into this patchwork quilt world. The rain
whispers yes. It says let me kiss you
so that your lips feel like they’re dancing.

With brain bashing into head cavity,
the gelatinous mass of neurons screams out
to white blood cells swimming in eyeballs
to evacuate before drowning.
"Quit clowning around in there and
save yourselves!"
The moody mistress creates her own hells:
congratulations!
Sleeping alone in a sweat covered bed,
she spins saccharine thoughts and pollutes her head
with taffy, thick like molasses,
cooking sugar in the kitchen with
the wrong end of a spoon in her mouth.
Dried up *** stains litter her couch
as she wakes up to turn the cushions
and search for loose change
to fill up her coin pouch.
"Ouch! Ouch!"
She calls out, clean
sheets on a new day,
his fingers firing in a frenzy
and introducing the fusion of
pleasure and pain.
He smells of benzene and
she's afraid of burning,
stomach churning and
using gasoline as lubricant.
He hit her, she said, and it felt like a kiss.
She misses him at her day job
when she runs around town
robbing banks and
picking up handkerchiefs
that grandmothers drop on the ground.
He would pound
his manhood into a brick wall
if it moved like her,
but the skin-and-bones combo
woos him to coo at her
as swarms of sparrows
nest in her ***** hair.
Spit shined shoes and
riding leaves blown on the air,
she dreams of him awake,
listless eyes alive and pulsing
behind a film of glassy, viscous mucus.
She makes magic potions out of the scents
left over on one of her
mismatching pillow cases.
He tastes like roasted red peppers
and lingering mace:
her eyes water as she
chokes back ***** daintily,
like a queen.
His eyes gleam mean as
he steals her breath to
add it to his bursting bank account,
releasing her to give her back only gasps,
the 2% interest.
She crafts road maps of his back bone while he sleeps,
but he sees her as a phantom,
creeping through the floorboards,
a faceless specter with an ace up her sleeve.

Once you see
Keep moving
Go and seek whats true
Do no hesitate improving
Walking barfoot on the street
May the street be cold or warm
My outside will start a storm
Do not stop
Keep moving
Once you set motion in your thouhgts.

i love the feeling
of blood rushing out of my feet

it reminds me
that I am alive

i feel the blood
pull into my heart

and I remember
that I breathe and I'm alive

I struggle to feel happy
because the worlds so hard

and I sometimes forget
and the movement of blood

makes me feel alive

-r.y.s

New skies.
Different faces.
Unfamiliar places.

I felt like I was on a long vacation.

Growing familiarity.
Experience.
Comfort.

I could accept this as my new home.

Airports.
Highways.
Old and new friends.

This story of change will never end.

A ragged self
Detached from meaning
Confused
Unable to connect
Trying to make sense
But failing
And starting again

Replaying memories
Renaming realities
Reframing experiences
Cut-off
Not allowed an ending
But not allowed to continue either
Stuck

This choice leads backward
This choice loops back around
Caught in circles

Not
Victim or
Culprit,
Hero or
Villain

Detached self
Trying to understand
Caught in the quiet
Lost in the noise

Waiting to move
Clearing the path
A ragged self
Caught

Lord, please show me the way

our physical bodies are trapped
inside an ever-fluxing cosmos
in this dear hairline crack of time
and yet still our existence is stressed

operate quicker
get there sooner
figure life out faster

that we never stop to think
how shameful we are to rush
in a delicate presence
that is a momentary blush