******* of suckling cheeks
taste of wine gone vinegar
left out too long exposed
to sunlight

twice ways between nowhere
we drank a bottle or four
before resigning ourselves
to defeat

we woke so many mornings
in drawn shade sunlight
with our heads split twain
by buzzing

we'd never known what it
was to taste hurt or defeat
until we likened our arguments
to chemistry

i lived in a time
where the moonlight
was my only sunlight

I followed a boy on his impromptu journey to the forest (or at least what I once thought it was).

he walked with a nonchalant disposition without saying any word. his gestures demonstrated it all.

it’s ludicrous that I reluctantly stepped forward to the vast and dense forest in front of me. I was not scared at all. I discovered amity within the zigzagging branches and peace in this endless labyrinth.

and after a long and intense journey, the dazzling sunlight captures his figure: his tanned skin was wrapped by falling leaves, laying down at the top of the rock (in which I always wonder to see what he’s dreaming).

for once in my life, never have I thought silence could be so much pleasing as that.

bathed in light
I can almost touch
it feels alive around me
enveloping
I feel my ancestors fear
and respect
as I capture it
on digital SD card

lead me down the hall to dance in the secret of the dark
your blackened past and your hot hot hands
pressing my temples, turning my body into rumble
trembling for your delicate deliciousness
the world is morphing with my pipe dream visions
my face chisels, my heart whistles
my life is lived in intervals
between sunlight and dawn
between the long night walks
chasing the moon, interwoven in the oasis of your room

rose and sunny blossoms
beckon the beauty of spring.
baby blue skies whisper
winds experiencing what it brings.

growing grasses wander
into the roots of the lime green land.
fields and fields of flying flowers
picture this beauty so far and so grand.

hills of living loveliness
lavish a splendid surprise.
exquisite adventures
marvel and awaken your eyes.

I REACH OUT TO THE GREAT UNKOWN
with the natural hesitance of a child
nursed on plastic american protestantism,
always prosperity gospel or pariah,
answers just hidden behind a preacher's palm;
in retrospect i wonder what questions those
republican suburbanites crippled in their hatred
came to submit at the foot of the cross.
saccharine and soulless every sunday,
the rot reliably festering under the church stage,
brimstone traded for the wasteland of undecaying concrete.
i was baptized by a stranger in stagnant water,
now swaddled in the arms of a man who is not my Father.
i'm always the cold one. bad circulation when i'm turning away.
that abattoir left a pulsating wound at the
center of my chest— starved weeping
sickly and red.
every sunday, the worst thing i could do was be honest.
i worship with my hands,
i falter for words;
i never got to know the Lord in my youth
because He never called me back.
i find fragments of Him in lovers' eyes—
fingertips glancing over flesh as if
forbidden fruit, sweet real and warmed by sunlight.
i think God was always this;
physicality, connection,
the simple intimacy of making someone else laugh.
the only time i ever felt devout
was when i was walking to get an arizona tea
at the gas station next to the church with my friends.
stumbling over asphalt still sincere in my vulnerability.