I left
immaculately folded tan chino pants
cuffed and disheveled
atop the department store rack
in the Young Men’s section.

They were too big at the waist,
letting me swim laps in them,
stretching out the front with a thumb and forefinger
looking like a successful weight loss ad.

Atop the rack they sat,
cuffed and disheveled,
amongst immaculately folded
tan chino pants
its kin
and they looked human.

Something about them,
factory made, dime a dozen,
not on sale,
but with the spectral imprint
of spaces and wrinkles where legs had been
amongst all those patient, forlorn folds
gave humanity
to the anomaly.

Liar, Liar,
Pants on fire,
You are a naughty liar, man,
When did you care for a woman?
Don't say you're my friend, liar,
No wonder your pants are on fire!

I’ve got those pants which used to hug my legs very tightly, some time ago
They were warm and comfortable and they’d snuggle up to each other

But today exact these same pants refused to recognize my legs
They started to let go of them

They observe them now, from a distance, and give them a strange look
They’re scared to touch my legs

They’re scared of those cold and sharp bones
Scared of the blue skin and of my fine hair on them

Bones cold and sharp, which used to be my legs, have become crutches
But they work
Bones, cold and sharp, which might snap in half with every movement
But still they’re whole

And like ghosts, invisible, I walk with those crutches through the hallway
Cross the streets of my hometown
And go for a run every now and then
I get past windows that show no reflection
Past people who look at me in disgust

And when I’m home, the pants slip off by themselves
So that I stand here, naked and barefoot and exposed without any cloth
Only to lift those cold and sharp bones one more time
To make a step forward
Onto a scale which will measure my self-worth in kilograms and make my bony knees wobbly again
Because suddenly, the pants fit again, suffocating my legs with their tightness.

I walk into my room and kick the heater over to stop it from blowing hot air in my room. It's boiling in here. I kick off my pants and lay on my bed. *Why is life so hard?

Sister in the traveling pants
But she can travel wearing mine if she wants to
I like the blacker pants better.

I don't write because I can,
or even sometimes because I want to.

I write because words surround me
in the air; glistening, screaming and needling
into my being--
infecting my crimson and azure paths
with their ( { ( { electric cacophony} ) } ),                       (       )
vibrating sacred whispers of musical patterns        /<+>\
dripping directly into my spirit aglow with creation,
imbuing a certain serenity of past, now and future cuneiform tattoos
unto my mind--
high as a shooting star gliding in midnight moonbeams...

It's like when a fish stops moving it will die.

Every day it is a glorious struggle to keep up with myself,
these words,
so as not to drown in the insanity.

These words once inhaled by ancestors, whales and grass
hurl through space, time and the infinite creation
slamming into me;
a mercurial, rose watery doorway portal conduit transmitter
typing bebop lightning striking your match stick soul,
buzzing and manifesting rainbow jazz steps connecting us!
Dishonor would chew me from the inside out
should I not comply.

He is a tree swaying in a snowstorm in late autumn
A not-so-evergreen, with browning-red streaks all over his limbs.
Pushed around by the winds of the storm,
gasping for air and yearning for sun to give him the strength to stand,
only receiving more stress and pressure from sharp seasonal winds that seem to exist solely to shorten his year-round life.
Lack of oxygen and too many cuts leave pink, brown and yellow leaves on his limbs,
making him look out out of place among the rest.
The rest that evidently either don't care or just forget
that he once looked like them, acted like them, felt like them, but no more.
Of course there are always those that love the different ones,
sympathize, empathize, and emphasize the fact that beauty can exist in what is not conventionally beautiful.
But even the warmth from these good souls will often be diminished and become soulless when winter comes around.
A time in which one watches, with notches for eyes,
as the red and yellow and purple blotches that the select and wonderful few once loved decay and drain away.
He looks dead.
He acts dead.
He feels dead.
So he believes he is, indeed, dead.
And consequently, so does the rest of the world;
as it is a universal truth, it seems, that the way someone looks, and acts, and feels, determines what they are.
A fallacy; one that has caused the downfall and tragedy of humans and trees alike since the first man spoke and the first plant bloomed.
If a person is gone, it is best to forget and bury them, and if a tree looks dead, it is best to cut and burn it.
Of course, most trees tend to either stay green or spring back to life
after the dark days of winter, flourishing in the dog days of summer,
but every year it is a tree's biggest fear that he will be one of the black tragic few
who do not come back, due to being overshadowed by taller, fresher, better trees
that mother nature had more meticulously pruned.
No, his fear grew that he would never bloom,
he was one of the lesser ones,
outgrown and outmatched by those evergreens and ever-okays that needed less sun and love to carry on
intentionally blocking light from him, leaving only a few sadly relatable meek rays that cut through
the sharp pines like an even sharper knife.
They would shine down on him like a spotlight, or even better, a laser beam capable of lifting him up,
severing his roots to his past and bringing him up to face the public eye,
exposed and vulnerable to the judgement of his scraggly twigs for arms and thick trunk, leafless, better yet lifeless, a thing to behold in a depressingly pathetic light in the middle of the forest,
isolated and alone among a crowd of superiors, allowing any random passerby on a hike to look down on him in pity, as they learn what it is like to see something slowly, carefully, inevitably,

die.