you take my hand
as we stroll
together
deep, deep down
a serpentine
path to woods

amidst thick moss
and tree coverings
with fronds
caressing our hips
as we pass
drops of cool rain
cooling our cheeks
streaming rivulets
nourishing lips

where we taste
remote sensations,
a world
dislodged from
society's roots

we are more
than these bodies,
this ancient flesh
we are
interwoven in
a mystical connection,
constellations beading
eternal sky

in a telepathy beyond
eyes and fingers,
a language exceeding
words, until we
converse entirely
through our
hearts' speech.

In a place beyond heaven and hell...

Upon a pale blue face...

Dressed in a garment of green foliage...

Wearing neckpieces of wild flora and untouched fauna...

Adorned by a crown of diamond stars and ethereal clouds...

Having the mind of mountains...veins of waterfalls and rivers... And the heart of oceans...

Cells of gravels and skin of a holy soil...

Rain kissed body  releasing the divine petrichor and gemstones filled *****...

In such a place I exist...
Cradled in a Mother's lap...
What would I call it if not my eternal home!

Never had I felt like a smothered sea encased
in a blazing wave of blasted verbs, drumless diction
double spaced, misplaced, overstressed adjectives,
paralyzed personification, fever-struck similes dozing
off to sleep, inane, disdained, an oblivious masterpiece
covered in splintered storms, an earth burning boulevard.

My memories were stone-cold shattered, heavy droplets
of ****** paragraphs splattering onto inglorious fractions,
a fallen kingdom, a thousand smashed engines with no
invention, no ignition or transmission, spine-chilling addition,
insubstantial subtraction swallowed by miscellaneous derivatives
and division, running out of time, gone and overthrown.

Wish I could have understood the unearthly decimals
dwindling in perishable plantations, ****** equations
and integration, pepper sauce alleyways rearranging
my crazed nation, decapitated rhythms begging for restoration,
salvation from the damaging hellfire striking a match on history.

April showers
bring with them atomic flowers,
strewn about Elena’s hair,
her forest painted
the colors of Red Square.
Children play in the fun zone
where radiation particles
are active and windblown,
forming flakes on rosy cheeks,
floating down toxic creeks.
The smell of graphite burning in a kiln
makes the nostrils flare,
what’s this metallic taste in the air?

Clouds drift over weddings
and Ferris wheels,
rain falls black and surreal.
Mother goes about her routine
humming dirges like a godless fiend.
36 hours to figure the science,
past time to evacuate
a city in brisk silence.
Brides scream and children cry,
from the fall-out they mummify.
Pripyat’s dying metropolis
they euthanize and lay to rest
in a sarcophagus.

And atop her shallow grave,
deep within the exclusion zone,
sit the sickened stems
and decaying fragrance
of nuclear flora over bone.
Here in the jackal's sanctum,
a capsule car on the lifeless
pleasure wheel
swings like a pendulum,
over a wooded lot with not a soul in sight,
only fresh morbid blooms
that glow in the night.