"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Off that landspit of stony mouth-plugs,
Eyes rolled by white sticks,
Ears cupping the sea's incoherences,
You house your unnerving head -- God-ball,
Lens of mercies,
Your stooges
Plying their wild cells in my keel's shadow,
Pushing by like hearts,
Red stigmata at the very center,
Riding the rip tide to the nearest point of
departure,

Dragging their Jesus hair.
Did I escape, I wonder?
My mind winds to you
Old barnacled umbilicus, Atlantic cable,
Keeping itself, it seems, in a state of miraculous
repair.

In any case, you are always there,
Tremulous breath at the end of my line,
Curve of water upleaping
To my water rod, dazzling and grateful,
Touching and *******.
I didn't call you.
I didn't call you at all.
Nevertheless, nevertheless
You steamed to me over the sea,
Fat and red, a placenta

Paralyzing the kicking lovers.
Cobra light
Squeezing the breath from the blood bells
Of the fuchsia. I could draw no breath,
Dead and moneyless,

Overexposed, like an X-ray.
Who do you think you are?
A Communion wafer? Blubbery Mary?
I shall take no bite of your body,
Bottle in which I live,

Ghastly Vatican.
I am sick to death of hot salt.
Green as eunuchs, your wishes
Hiss at my sins.
Off, off, eely tentacle!

There is nothing between us.

(1)

The day she visited the dissecting room
They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey,
Already half unstrung. A vinegary fume
Of the death vats clung to them;
The white-smocked boys started working.
The head of his cadaver had caved in,
And she could scarcely make out anything
In that rubble of skull plates and old leather.
A sallow piece of string held it together.

In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow.
He hands her the cut-out heart like a cracked heirloom.

                (2)

In Brueghel's panorama of smoke and slaughter
Two people only are blind to the carrion army:
He, afloat in the sea of her blue satin
Skirts, sings in the direction
Of her bare shoulder, while she bends,
Finger a leaflet of music, over him,
Both of them deaf to the fiddle in the hands
Of the death's-head shadowing their song.
These Flemish lovers flourish;not for long.

Yet desolation, stalled in paint, spares the little country
Foolish, delicate, in the lower right hand corner.

even the darkest minds can drip gold;
pink roses can bloom behind ****** chain link fences,
as leaves can stay orange as they float in puddles reflecting gray.

there’s always stars in the dark.

There is freedom in isolation,
in being idle and invisible,
where one could sit in muteness,
swim widely in dusk and ask,
"Am I really here,
if no one is around to see?"
A different kind of suicide

There is pleasure in being a shadow,
in pretending you don't exist,
to avoid acting like you do

Solitude isn't a time for me
to let myself free
but rather a time to free myself
from who I am

Outside the confinement of company,
I am anyone and anything,
I am someone else, somewhere else
I am alive,
but I am no one
I am alone

a.r.

Winter sunrise on my last and longest day,

wrap me in a winding sheet of flaming orange

take the reds and pinks from midnight blue to make my shroud

let me rest in heaven fire

drown my tired soul in colour

drinking the final carnival

warmth for my bones,

a funeral of skies and wonders

At a desk, coffee sachets rest.
Long-life milk harbours
white dreams of expiry.
Shuffling in his forgetful nest
a grey man blinks
at the intruding light.

Americo, do you remember
your antique power,
that opened like a rose
on the walls of Hiroshima?

the wrong one
will find you in peace
and end up leaving you in pieces

only the right one
can find you in pieces
and guide you to peace

It's kinda cool how when life is normal
rainy days make me lethargic and unmotivated.
But when life is hard and I'm struggling
rainy days are the greatest comfort,
as if the earth is crying with me
saying that I'm allowed to feel it all

i’ve barely slept,
i’m running on adderal and self loathing,
a mix that has kept me alive for far too long.
i’ve barely slept,
i want you to kiss me until our lips are bruised and touch me hard enough that traces of your fingertips can still be seen on my skin.
i’ve barely slept,
i miss the feeling of someone’s mouth on my neck,
the feeling of gentle kisses starting at my collarbone and falling lower and lower and lower.
i’ve barely slept,
i’m running on adderal and self loathing,
when what i really need is to find my relief in you.