i am a beautiful bout of starts and sky
compiled into a confounded heart, left
reasonless in the dark so many times

hold me gently, like you promise now, when
we finally form a union, beautiful motion
scrubbing off the dirt and rinsing off my feet

hear me, my tired soul
hear me

forgiving the unkind parts of me
and respecting my needs,
recognizing the demon’s sins
seeing my ardent potential
chaining up my loose lead mind
promising a golden future for no one else
but me

if i sustain this pain
one more night and day
i can manage being the martyr
in our picture-book plot.

if it costs all
of my heart's savings
for you to lick your thumb
and tab our page, i'll sign it away,
like that,
gone

please hurt me in
the ways you'd hurt
yourself. i am no
friend to your ground,
no faction to your
brotherly causes. stay
a while, listen. soothe
me with the burn marks
you give me. i cannot bear
the idea that you love me. i
cannot fathom any real
feeling you would have for
me as being worth more than
a strand of your broken hair

falling, surmounting distance,
or electric brazen fences.
listen.

you, of all things,
tested my immanence. you
cannot think, after all
these lives, i'd live to
tell my own story?

you relinquished your chains.
i didn't realize the alloy
turned your wrists green
and soured the feeling.

    i didn't realize you viewed them
    as shackles, and not the comfort
    endowed to you when i vowed
    to protect you just two months ago.

    i don't blame you.
        no, i can't. delicate birds
    don't like the clanking of cages,
        no matter how intricate
    the bars are constructed, and
how beautiful
the permanence
of a lock is

this feeling is not
symbiotic: you reduce
my core to nothing

i worship an empty god
who answers no prayers.

a mono-disciple tapered
to heavenly threads without
ever bearing wings of my own,

i have no convictions except
the idle ones he tethers me with:
our shrine is gold and red.
(sometimes i think it is pretty.)

i will follow him with blind eyes,
for there is nothing more sweet
than to be loved for merely existing
and reciting his gospel to the ground.

i grow under his sunlight.
he waters me as he pleases,
but my petals will never be
the colors of the church flowers
from his childhood,
(he doesn't realize they are fable.)

my mind will never be his steeple.
Nazareth needs repairing, but
scripture ordains i cannot bear
the burden of fixing something so bloodied and broken.

i will bleed red wine for him,
i have no doubt he will finish
the glass.

it stains the page. i smile,
yellowed crumpling page.

i write the next verse, in pencil,
heeding my perpetual mistake:

          i am immeasurably incorrect,
          and no one needs repentance but
          the sinner, who is I tonight,
          and all nights.

i close the
        book. i lay down.

Nazareth
  is dark.

so i pray my
bedtime prayer,
that i wish
my god wakes up
with a clearer mind
and a learned heart
tomorrow.

(a fool is a follower,
a fool is the man who
absolves the snake for the sin
and punishes Himself
for not seeing clearer.)

you’re ugly
under the
harsh light.

you are not
mystical, nor
fantastical, like
in my dreams:

you are a child
with the hands of
a God,

an uncontrollable
force with the power to
hurt me

write an anthology for which
broken part of me?
       the one that weeps for
        innocuous souls too early departed,
                or the one that split
                their necks open, looking
                for gold?

i’ll tell you, there’s
no treasure in the eyes
of the hated, and no
hope in the minds of
those who burn cities
to the ground just to
smell charred dreams --

staying alive
is a risk that permeates
the groundwater everyone
in my life drinks from. i could
be angelic or heretic,
new found or lost
to the ideas of men i once
was, before led astray,
before the radio chirped,

& my intruder’s openness
closed the hearts of souls
uncold

the resistant does clatter
its ends against the machinery,
it does so clunk and rattle
against the current which runs through
to the chosen one, the
Brother of Entropy, his unwavering
foot-heel in the doorway
between Insanity, and Stability.

He does, however,
take some time away from
his breathing, amounting
to a few moment’s silence.

In this cold night, he
holds no name or title. Not yet.
The world is not ready for
his being, and his being
remains underdeveloped enough
that its energy is just shy of a sunlight’s beam

and so he sings
to the empty halls,
the resistant current,
the rusted gears,
                           “Where do the old souls go?
                             Here? There? Or inbetween?
                             Do we matter to matter? Are
                             we warm and foreboding enough
                             to bear resistance to the dark?”

The dark dances
between candlelight. Brother, father, creator:
it means nothing to that which
cannot see goodness, or light.

And so he breathes again,
and shoves his boot further through
the door

a soliloquy of sad,
blackened softness.

you want more
blows to the head: you
crave it, beg for it

"more, more,
more", until
you can't see
how abysmal
everything is:

you want your vision
to go black.

but when the shadows creep
up from behind your eyes and
start covering your hair and skin
in their cold blackness,

you complain of the sting

i wonder what color
our union is, what
would suit us best

we'd probably argue over
it, in that joking way
we had before -

but i'd take your wrists
and hold them above
your head:

          our color is
          chameleon

because we change
with the wind

and everything about us
defies a
one-color existence

linen sheets
& bedposts with
sheltered
secrets

it could be
ours, the future --
it could be ours,
but it blares
with a darkened
face,

its features
like the love
we make
in secret,
away from
the prying eyes
of the industry
and the world

they think
they know
you and
what you
break for

and boy,
they are so
wrong.

i don't like
loving you
because you
are so flawlessly
human.

you breathe
like anyone else,
with faults, & rough edges,
and your face isn't

karmic, (like his was)
our connection isn't
fate, (i don't have the heart
to believe in
such whimsical
ideals anymore)

we're just having
fun, for the time,
for the night, for the
moment,

your curls lace
my fingertips to your
scalp

grounded with
no fantasy.

i don't like
the meandering of
my soul right now,

i like you, i like enjoying this,
but i don't like
the aimlessness
of this: i miss
karma, and spirits,
and souls

i am tragic
& this love is
too sane

the often
predisposed
waiting times
bear more answers
than any time
spent thinking
too hard
about things,
and why
they are

you don't need to
let anyone in. i mean, who
could ever love you?

i am sent to this
world to be your empath.
your eyes glisten and shine
as do mine;
but we breathe at the same
cadence.
(your faults are mine.)

there is soul between us &
our lives are lodged in between
a spark of timeless energy
someday soon will be released

i breathe rhythmically
and tonight i cried for you:
i shed the tears you
should have, and i am
enthralled with carrying
your burdens

i love you
but i'm
nearsighted
i'm asking too
much of you,
demanding for
you to come into
my life now.
i just don't want
to lose sight of us
because you are the future
with a beautiful face

the bitter sense
of unrivaled talent
being suffocated
under a tragic future

you can't
chart
when the
journey
starts.

it beckons
for a timeless beginning,
and a perpetual ending

this journey, defined
by the creases on my palms
but the callouses i've created, too;

it burns me alive.
      --i beg for an end. i beg for an end i beg for an--

{thus my journey has begun, and my only potential misstep could be sailing the river back home too soon}

dominant
inner rage. that
is my being -- she does
not wait idly on your
doorstep, she busts
the ******* lock
open, she swallows
you whole, red insides
churning 'round

    slithering shadow
    in the crescent of
    the light from
    under your bedroom
    door. i will haunt
you,
forever,
it is something
i am good at

mechanically speaking.

you are not the first to wear
the same beckoning, calling skin
your fine edges annulling my roots,
       and i don’t think you were the first to
****.

    **** what once was
    a ticking pocket watch, an echo
    heard only by one
    now ticking for fallen ears.

It does hurt to see things die,
but there is a certain satisfaction
In having washed hands