feels like dark chocolate on my tongue
        smooth nibs butter fruits solid   wine,   mine,
            slowing me down with a crash.
Like,
    the time loop with each instance equally delicious
in
    cream clamor of daylight, hid from yesterday’s enticements
        pinned feathers mark me
           an approved rebel. I hope
zest
    not too bitter, a pairing
       fresh taken in sharper soothing
         trappings of a recipe too small
            all I can do is say it sincerely.

I have an artist’s heart and I regret it
I know I’m better off than those who shred it
when all they seek to worship’s lucrativity
yet trapped in cages of their own passivity.

All I want is deep dives to the hearts
of mine and others. Chugging in the back
in sickness and health, those relentless parts
will carry on, always craving attack.

Why couldn’t you have given me more skill?
A teaspoon’s all I think I’d have required.
I’m told I have more than wholly desired
in other fields, still left unfulfilled.

I know I’m better off than those who shred it.
Why does it feel so difficult to get it?

Oh god, I hate the silence
I have much more to show you
I haven’t been this dull since
I spoke to those who know you.

When we met, I couldn’t eat
and when we’ve met again, I’d hide
my skinnied body under coats
hoping you’d overlook my dearth

The emptier I got, the more I said
to others, the more my fingers whispered
psalms or songs of trust while lain in bed
my brain scrambled like eggs which I ignored.

Now with you gone, I fill my own mind
with ping-pong conversations, fill the lack
with fluffy pancakes, syrup, morning biscuits
fill the eve with Thai food and my friends,
all while my form rejects this strange nutrition;
to not be empty drives it to sedition.

Existing can bring pain, I must confess;
from diseased innards, torn by obstacles,
to hands that crack and bleed from nothingness,
or senses hurt by minute particles.

And yet there’s power strewn within these limbs;
looks which inspire artworks quite sublime,
spirits almost immune to mortal whims,
tongues that can sell souls or others’ time.

This is the catalogue of human parts.
The price of purchase: absolutely free
and whether you’re dealt threes or kings of hearts
is not determined by you or by me.

For each feature assessed by this self-measure
may be one person’s curse; another’s treasure.

A human goddess on the sand
Stood barely in my sight.
Her gown was made of drumbeats and
Her voice was made of light.

Each ear was a translucent shell
Each eyelid mother-of-pearl;
Her voice a steady tolling bell
By which time’s hands would twirl.

O Goddess with my shape and mind
Your worth unknown to man
How can someone worship your kind
Sans structure or a plan?

As such, the price to build a temple here
Would be to watch the whole world disappear.

Lately I’ve learned to tolerate the rush
Which once flowed with each instance of your name
Reminders of you, now, less often brush
Against my soul or set my nerves aflame.

At times, it can still be unearthed in me
Borne from soft fingers on my wrist; a sigh
Those gestures of yours, light and feathery
With power to stop hearts or clear the sky.

What once was constant will evaporate
From scarlet oceans to soft meadow greens.
Schrödinger’s cat will choose a final state,
And branches brought down by time’s thoughtless streams.

When none is left except my thoughts of you,
Will this be worth what you’ve witnessed me do?

Terror evolves in the pure open space
where sparked by the doubt of one who resents
the consequence of living and knowing
nothing of the terrible, terrible
confrontation, it propounds incessant
problems of being and ceasing until
entangled Reason entangles itself
in implications of implications,

confounding the space, conceiving a place
of refuge bounding Nowhere’s edge,
where ponderous dreams of life without care
augment the power and anger and dread
of Terror itself, thickening like air,
glutting the infinite heart of the head.