She lost perspective before she met the glass,
Braces on lips like wine, a fleeting stain.
Golden hair pulled too tight, youth locked in place,
Slipped like coins into the senex’ fragile purse.

Concealed in lockets, veiled from prying eyes,
Alluring hunters sought her tortured grace.
Through dusty rafters, golden strands would rise,
Brushing his scars beneath the public’s gaze.

No one regarded the banker’s loss or coin;
Old men still scattered mints upon the floor.
Some whispered fate had favored her to join,
Others claimed the devil had opened the door.

The wise, unmoved, declared with measured breath:
All that has come is better—even death.

my mom slipper
splintered floor mat

hand rusted, hovering
breaths rake the air

lean, bend, chase
shifted rooms, his question:
“who you think you are”

foot sinks
in lakes of red ashes

fog thickens
ashes remain

pillow strikes
blue soles pressed
decades deep

his shadow clings
a silent fling of ash

time drips
floorboards groan

hands tremble
bodies stagger

ashes whisper
fog swallows

each day i reach your door
like a wet rag with a pulse.
heartbeat ticking,
hand hammering.

here’s your pills—
stabby, pretty, blue.
my fingerprints turn into bruises;
i forget my name.

shattered feet.
socks from last week.
air tastes like floor tiles.

i think the pill looked at me first.

you never ask what’s in it,
only if i still want you to take it.
your eyes orbit my pearl earring
like satellites.

bourgeois flaws taste better imported.
“jolie laide,”
tattooed where your heart should be.

you once told me:
i love ugly things, they last longer.
i mailed my neck to your ancestors.
no return address,
no name, no guilt.

pupil to pupil—
will you know
you never knew.

hope dies once
in a bag of dollars,
hollow with pennies.

you swallow orders like gospel.
who gave you empty vessels?

i bit the pill of idiots in half,
wore it as lipstick,
kissed your ego
until it foamed.

i leave the door ajar for ghosts;
they smelled like your cologne.

once,
you called me
your softest affair.

pill quartered.
earring taken.
no knocking.

goliath shadows hover,
even in the walls.
this one licked the floor
where your heart used to be.

coiling the summit
of your heart,
gisting my heels
engraved on the floor i missed.

your name clogs my throat
like i deepthroated grief.

i stitched my eye shut
to stop seeing you.

still,
visions came
through my teeth.

i licked
daily,
tender storms
into silent lakes.

my white crayon
wrote you a letter
in the middle of rain:

be peace,
and if not peace,
a a pale spill
that remembers me.

boy who craves a darker shadow
not just shade, but hunger wrapped in smoke and bone,
under headlines wife’s sister’s affairs rot at the root.

hemlocked, nameless, hair knotted with cuscuta string;
ghost-vines rope his wrists like hungry knuckles.
the hollow-eyed boy carves a bar and calls it scripture,
trades green for powder, profit for blood;
he’d slit a throat before he spares a leaf.

how does that nameless leaf keep grieving?
how does it stay alive?
it roots in rot
it drinks their blood and keeps on green.
.

civilisation ruined  yellow grass
even weeds choke  on concrete air
december light
  29 days  too bright
for a cage  in the zoo of pay gaps

i ate tradition
blind  honey-drenched
we called it sweet
we called it choice
but it was  silence
silence  we’ll torch

it was only 27 minutes
after i saw you
you said
kitchen’s your place

power for you
was a kink  dressed as culture
prejudiced not me
just fluent in the syllabus
of being dismissed

je viens d’un milieu instruit
say it again
it tastes better  than your name

whatever was fertile
you called us  hole
the rest of us
just holes for power
****-coded
nescient
background noise

you left-clicked
then ran

priest  priest
i saw you in the mirror
when i lip-serviced truth
truth-teller  from bone
no father  in my tongue

your patri-architect face
brief in my heel’s reflection
divine glitch

hey sir  mansplains-a-lot
aphrodite wept

you fear
kittens  museums
and anything that stays
from your father’s echo

god became a sermon
about control

you keep licking the wrapping
never opening the gift
you call independence
a flu

but even yellow grass
cracks cages
when wild enough
to breathe

kids march to school
merry, hands linked,
socks strangling calves,
backpacks swelling with milk teeth,
dangerous smiles.
in the centre they stand
frondesce shivering overhead,
buttress roots clutching earth
like they know what’s coming.
bags dropped in a ring,
offerings to something older
than the walls they study in.
light fractures komorebi
and in its faded gold
i see pareidolia grinning
from the leaves.
i keep the temple.
the trunks sway in a rhythm
older than speech.
a faraway tree warns
don’t take pride in the faces
power is the thing they can’t hold.
if, my friend, you see the tree throw
know they are across the ocean.
owls, fat with promises,
every five years
stuff a new child’s face
into the stump’s rot
and call it a future.
the old tree votes unanimously
to shed its skin once more
they call it progress,
call the rot reform.
loosen your roots
the wind doesn’t care
which children
it strips for kindling.

walking a rowdy street
tight grip on the leash
streetlight lays it bare
light pooling on my reach

panorama:
 the leash, in pieces

Anna in daylight,
 hands steady, calm and bright
 embracing cracked margins —
 called it love, her rite

but her fawn,
 beneath thorny shadows drawn
 the same leash condemned
 its trembling spirit wan

broken—
 yet a gift unspoken

street cries, in sight
echo through the night