choppy music consistent in my ears
water boiling in my chest
the steam makes my eyes water
the bubbles pop to the rhythm of a song
scalding
a reminder of how much the skin around my neck hurts when i think of you

I live in a world of vapors,
Nothing is tangible,
No thing can be grasped.
I grabbed you and you me,
Hand in hand we went together through the steam,
The air,
The gas that is this world.
We let go and couldn't find each other again,
Our bodies could,
But in the world of vapors that wasn't enough,
I was your liebe,
Someone else is now.
You refused to live in this intangible world,
I couldn't follow you to the world of money,
Credit cards,
Trips in my car,
I don't have a car.
I remain alone in this unclear world,
Trying to kidnap someone,
Destined to always be
Nothing more than a ghost.

I think I might be losing my steam.
It wasn't obvious to begin with
but over time, I began to see things,
hear things, that weren't there.
Patterns in the movements of eyes,
whispered insults from strangers
in dark streets, drifting
in front of my eyes like that steam.
It became all I could see
until I was blinded by white,
it was so dense that even the grey fog
couldn't compete. It should be easy
but I can't tell you how it feels
to have dry eyes and a sobbing heart,
how it feels to have such acute pain within
but to be unable to get it out.
It feels the same as nausea does,
a sickness that will go nowhere,
a pain that cannot be dislodged,
a bullet in the spinal cord.
When I think about love and me,
I am the sickness, I am the pain,
I am the bullet. I am the blindness
crawling into your peripheral vision
and turning everything white.
I am the death you fear and the bitterness
you see when you look in the mirror.
I am the steam, burning and burning
until your eyes are gone
and I'm no longer the only one
who lost their mind.

How I precipitate within and around
trash to steam factory's super chimneys
Ideas *******
amongst rising glow of cantaloupe colored sky
And why am I?

Beholden to a notion
of fanciful or foolish, concept of nuptials
puffing pother  
or why bother to effuse such ******* encumbrance
Trouble sweats unease

Cold feet, that can't afford proper socks
know the sludging embankments
of Camden Crick (colloquialism of creek)
As it were, a driving force of elopement
An eschewal of plastic bottle heap

Knowing fictile landscapes
with condensations murky in skies,
chance entices
Grasping for refuge
from refuse

Well this machine just wasn't built right.
the receptor only processes certain sounds that it's familiar with
or images that seem to
not really exist,
motors seem to be weak
only get enough juice to function
above low power
when the system is running on the backup generator.
even then it only can move for about
an hour
it needs to be shut down for eight hours
every night
and take a fifteen minute break
every two hours
so it's really only useful 14 hours a day
at best
and if you ever forget to shut it off
or try to leave it on more then that
you'll need to send it back
to the shop
for thirty days
we recommend washing it every morning
and putting these capsules in the top
when you boot it up
it may make mistakes less often
or it could self destruct
chances are if you remember to shut it off
it will not destroy itself
there are better models but they are for display
to make you see how much more you
need to tend to this model
we really need you to know
how much care this machine takes
it doesn't do everything it's capable of but it can do
pretty much everything.

I woke up flustered,
as I remembered
In my dream,
We were dancing in sheets
High on each other,
we created steam.