the delicate blossoming
of budding flowers, secretes
poisonous ardor. tainted by
the loving thorns of death,

my veins carry nocuous nectar.
and demeter wails, her garden
polluted and infused with ichor
deadly. and weeds rampage,

absorbing my heart's nutrients.
till inseminated with a plethora
of nightshade and datura.
my body now a mere vessel

of your deathly grove of misery,
delicately blooming dark myrtle.
a lost soul in my fields of mourning.

The dance of Amphitrite
I used to see
When I lived by the sea
Which in turn saw me
With her ever azure eyes
Below clouds, camphor-white

Her tides used to rise
With the coming of the night
And descend slowly
With the advent of light

I was welcomed everyday
By her king's white horses
Who galloped by her bay
I used to watch with wonder
The seagulls by her quay

Zephyrus, the west wind
Caressed her wavy locks,
Composing mellifluous harmonies
(The songs of the sea).
He brought with himself,
Ships, salts, sand
And faraway lands'
Numerous stories

The swash and backwash
Were like the ballet of nature
Performed by the sea
Which I used to see
As the sea saw me
With her ever azure eyes
As her tides used to rise
Sometimes low, sometimes high

In the Amphitheater of Amphitrite

Is death an ancient ache
Like this one
The dull rattle in the murderous cavern
Lined with resin and dust and tar and pure guts
A reminder of the last cigar
Of our bruised and battered makeup

Is death the embrace of silence
This stillness that permeates
My rotten cavities
That trickles through arteries
Bleeds
And leaves behind internal wreckage
The likes of which you’ve never seen

Or is it sweet
Like the moan your lips release
When you take my body
And shake and make me scream
My legs weep
That cry of peace

Is it that big white hand
That envelops me
Somewhere to finally get good sleep

It might be so
It lives in me
It sees
Far beyond my periphery
Far out of reach

Death was not made for me alone
I don’t claim to know death
But I know

Death begins on a gray day
When the blue eye glazes over
Blazes into a crack in the concrete
Where a million dead filaments
Form static
A haze
That is when it is time to escape

When tenderness becomes the great facade
And one fails to recognize their own face
Death and the Fates
Assume their human form
And you put on your own black robe
In pure day, in a field of golden hay

Death and dullness
Expose your cowardice
Until decay reigns.

Eternal nothing would be a gift
Sweeter than death
Why do I spend this time fearing it,
My futile, foolish being.
It could be a welcomed feeling
I’d let it in
With its empty repose
And hollow bones,
And brush its cheek
tenderly
Let it enter me--
Bear it.

The river I ride will guide me down
To the hell
Where my heart owns real estate
Stakes in the barren ground
And I will be accompanied by
My great companion
The messenger and deliverer
The cog in the great machine
Of free will

The one that continually leads me to destruction
Who spreads all the lies and the half-truths
Who withholds no honesty in his brutal judgments
And provides no delusions when his subjects face harshness
Who has no face but sports his tricky mirror with

Its effacement
The dead stars reflect
The river
Sticks
catch on my hospital gown
As I climb out
To inspect
My new neighbors who live in it
They are sorry for a lot of things too.
They bear the truth:

Nothingness would be easier
Than knowing what hate can do.

Sometimes I think that our bodies are like caves.

We're cold and rich with fungal mirth, swimming in the same mineral soup that stars were born of.

We spend our days working our marrow raw, breaking our joints to the beat of our daily commutes, and to what end?

For hope that the next ten-thousand generations will flourish, for the dream that they'll struggle less and have the chance to breathe—

We never did.

In all of our side-swept longings, we denied ourselves freedom of the ocean, the roads, the forest and nights spent in a lover's arms without setting our alarms.

Conformed to the grasp of routine we find small comforts in hot packed lunches and children's laughter heard from behind tinted windows as we drive past.

It hurts, and you don't know why, because they tell you that it shouldn't.

"You've got it all."

They say it with a smile that never meets the corners of their grey eyes.

"But it doesn't feel like it."

You want to scream back and let your lungs erupt into sun-gilt sky, your eyes scorched and searching for release.

You understand why Icarus licked his parched lips as he drowned into a welcoming sea:

You wonder how sweet it must have tasted.