Sleeping dreams:
Your dreams that you see
while you are sleeping is your
summary about your fears,
it is what you've seen just
before you've went to sleep,
it is what you've watched
this whole week,
it is what you've seen that
made you freaked,
It is what you've heard about
yourself that how much you are a creep,
It is what your mind told you
about you or about other.
That's how it becomes deep,
the more you think, the more you sleep,
It is everything that's planted within
you and how you are perceiving it,
mixed with no laces but  with so
many different faces.

- Cadence Aurora / Vampire Cadence

The pen
is not your friend
But you don't know that yet

You sit
clenched fist
looking nowhere
mind
going everywhere
or drawing
a blank

You've clenched
your fist
too tight

Blood is never blue
but if it were
it might look like this

Rivers cascading
down to your wrist
the ink
finding a home
in the crevices
of your hand

Your pen is not flying
the page is not splattered
with overeager writing

Instead
you're left with
a sticky hand
and a mess
to clean up

There she is:
naked and fickle on
the floor, *******
marrow out of
soup bones; her
*******
busy with
living things.

The muse plays
hide
and seek
like a spoiled
little child, as I
sit with
sterile white
paper.
I think I see
her from the
corner
of my
eye, but when
I look,
she is gone, like
the last Dodo bird.
I yell, "Are you dead? "
NOTHING.
And then she
appears
dimly through
the glass and
gives
me a hard one,
fierce, right behind
the eyes,
in that still small
place where sullen
shadows
dance to Wagner, while
sparrows burn and there's
a smell of
Spider Mums, and
funerals.

Then, she's gone like
the Cheshire cat.
(the grin remains.)
I get another
drink, hoping to
swallow and consume
her- to become one.
It doesn't work.
I get
frustrated, pace the
worn out
carpet, like a
caged tiger

Writer's block is
hell.
It's worse than
celibacy and
bologna.
Far worse than
constipation, or not
being able to ***.
It's like missing
the vein, or
dying of thirst in the desert.
It's like being
dead, but alive.

And
finally at
last
it's over (she consummates the deal)
and the words and
lines flow like
rain in Seattle in
the springtime.
I can
see the ***** in
the rose.
Taste
the sweet potato sky,
plant flowers in concrete, and
beat Mr. Death in
a game of go fish.
And
strangely,
it all smells like
home,
eternity,
and two-week old
puppies dreaming of
Mother's milk.

There she is:
naked and fickle on
the floor, *******
marrow out of
soup bones; her
*******
busy with
living things.

The muse plays
hide
and seek
like a spoiled
little child, as I s
sit with
sterile white
paper.
I think I see
her from the
corner
of my
eye, but when
I look,
she is gone, like
the last Dodo bird.
I yell, "Are you dead? "
NOTHING.
And then she
appears
dimly through
the glass and
gives
me a hard one,
fierce, right behind
the eyes,
in that still small
place where sullen
shadows
dance to Wagner, while
sparrows burn and
smell of
Spider Mums, and
funerals.

Then, she's gone like
the Cheshire cat.
(the grin remains.)
I get another
drink, hoping to
swallow and consume
her- to become one.
It doesn't work.
I get
frustrated, pace the
worn out
carpet, like a
caged tiger

Writer's block is
hell.
It's worse than
celibacy and
bologna.
Far worse than
constipation, or not
being able to ***.
It's like missing
the vein, or
dying of thirst in the desert.
It's like being
dead, but alive.

And
finally at
last
it's over (she consummates the deal)
and the words and
lines flow like
rain in Seattle in
the springtime.
I can
see the ***** in
the rose.
Taste
the sweet potato sky,
plant flowers in concrete, and
beat Mr. Death in
a game of go fish.
And
strangely,
it all smells like
home,
eternity,
and two-week old
puppies dreaming of
Mother's milk.

Two and a half weeks into this quarantine
Rainy days and
no poems
No words forthcoming
All quiet
I decide that perhaps
if I just put one
Word
In front of another
And keep on for a time
Words upon words
something will come?

At 8:30 every morning
A man passes
walking a Pomeranian mix
A joyful little dog
(I’d steal him in a heartbeat)
They walk
He twirling the leash round and round
The dog leaping higher and higher still.
They dance together eyes meeting
and smile as I know a dog can
and I remember
how I would dance with my last greyhound.
We would tango and box-step.
I always led.

These days the little
Pomeranian can’t get his attention
anymore
The leash doesn’t twirl above its head
He’s pulled along impatiently
There are no more smiles
Their eyes won’t meet
He’s slow to realize that he’s become a drudgery
I want to yell out the window
I see you
EVERY MORNING AROUND 8:30!
Where’s your joy gone buddy?
Don’t you know that’s all you’ve got?
You’re bumming me out for real
and your dog loves you!
Wake up! You fool wake up!

I think that now I’ll walk to Ralph’s
I have various thoughts while doing so
Children race their bikes passed me
as if they’re in an entirely other reality
altogether
and
maybe they are.
The wind blows through their hair
effortlessly
As if it couldn’t mine.

Front lawns offer up fields of dandelions
as if their orbs the most prized bounty
Freshly mown grass smells new and clean instead of putrid, rotting in the sunshine
The fulsome wafts of springtime’s
jasmine and osmanthus heaving with citrus and pepper evade me as I pass their blossoms
Yet on the rare occasion a fragrant rose pierces through the weft and hits a nostril
but I can’t tell which bloom.

The smooth talking
homeless girl
has finally covered up that
diabetic open sore on her left ankle
the size of a flattened crimson football
which is something,
although I can see that
she’s being told to move along as
she just can’t sit anywhere she pleases.

I’m counting every time I see the word “dead” along my way.

In the store the ladies that buy
their bottles of white wine in the afternoon
are starting earlier now
with supplies and deliveries
unsure
It’s one thirty and I see
Two bottles of Clos du Bois
And four Domaine St. Michelles
in the cart to my right
and nothing else
as they do.
I’m not going to ask her
about her dinner party.

While I stare at packages of coffee
A man pulls off his mask to sneeze into the air before him
And I say to the older man approaching
I don’t think that you’ll be going any farther
in that direction.
It was under my breath.
He didn’t hear me.
I have a mask on.
He turned his cart around and walked back
the way he came.

I have this urge to talk to everyone.
I have this relentless desire for ice cream.
I miss everything.
Nothing here
will satisfy anything
to do with me.
Can one survive a global catastrophe
with candy and magical thinking?

Older people
And by that
I mean really old people
Eye me suspiciously
Almost fearful
As if I myself alone
embody
the menacing contagion
and I guess I could.
Perhaps I do.
It’s hard to read emotions with these masks
But their eyes seem terribly unkind and
brows, furrowed
One stares at me hard
with beady anger and a ready insult
another will jump me in the checkout line
and with great solicitude
unwrap her money from
the white notebook paper
pulled from the manila envelope
Now re-folded with
rubber bands and string
And placed back
into her chest
She is so sweet to the cashier
with her black acrylic wig askew
that he seems quite shocked to hear
she cut in front of
fifteen people
without so much as a word.
Who cares really?

My first mask made me sneeze for four hours straight and made my nose burn like a hit of **** *******.
I’ve been handed a free mask by
a representative
from my local assemblyman
made of a softer material
I find that
it won’t stay up and fogs the base of my glasses.
I don’t think it’s working.
It reads
We’re All In This Together.

I still can’t breathe.

The doomed asthmatic
selling his single ciggies on the sidewalk
dies on Staten Island
from a policeman’s chokehold.
Eric Garner
In those desperate last moments
of
his
2014
despite his pleas and confusion
surely there before him appeared
although not quite the end that he’d envisioned or feared
what with steroid inhalers from the pharmacy
a crystalline moment
when he knew without a doubt that
he’d never take another gasp of air
like a bloated goldfish on its side
expressionless and saucer eyed
outside its bowl
What happened to his mind then?
What will happen to mine?

It has been said that
certain tribal kings
have brought before them
after battle
their most worthy enemy
in the process of imminent death
while they sit in numinous splendor
and wait for that perfect moment
to lean in close to the mouth
and inspire greedily
the purest
most sublime
expiration of their life force,
now a pristine delicacy of the infinite,
for themselves alone.

by now, the moon knows that my chest is just a burial ground for this thousandfold of sighs — in their hands, all different ways of my undoing, and i am a breath away from one. you see, some nights are for the softest, gentlest moments of lunacy. some nights, for waging wars and succumbing into these sighs, barely held by the petals tightening around my throat. by now, the moon knows that i had once been a battlefield and it's a pity — growing poems on such an unholy ground, only to fall apart like aster leaves and ancient city walls.

darling, it's getting dark, and this is starting to look less like poetry — and more like spoils of war from inside my head.