I'm sitting here
drinking red wine
and feeling sorry for myself

I got a parking ticket.
(for the fourth time)

I'm feeling sorry for myself

when there are people that
are in utter dispair and alone
that do not have food
or shelter, or love.
They are utterly alone.

And I
am feeling sorry for myself
over a parking ticket.

pensively tipping, pentameter heart beats shimmer in my chest
inches from that corner of silence and
seconds from that blissful convergence  
bobbing on this current of
meteoric, delicious waves
of sterling lucidity.
I am falling
and,

blatantly,
I love it.

cobwebbed coffee mind, my cacophonous current,
oh, rusty heart you have played too long,
again to fall down the rabbit hole
in search of that brassy circumference
that governs your life and every breath that escapes your lips
propelled into the deep, dilation of your synaptic being.

tickled pink or tickled red,
lay me on the desk and read me like a novel
spike my coffee with your lips
and the tips
of your fingers on
the small of my back
where you can trace the words that no one can hear
but only I can feel
sinking into my skin
like raven words fluttering onto paper.

swelling mahogany love
no longer tinged red,
from this gaping solitude. 

take grasp of my soul in your hands and lift it,
oh lift it please,
because this grave it has sunk into is dark indeed.

hold me to your chest, emanate and pure,
foreign to ravenous hands that claw at me
and pull me apart, tearing bits and pieces,
pieces and bits
of everything I am.
 
spinning, swirling
break the glass and pluck the hands from their bed of time
maybe then they will cease to tick.

rather to hear the persistent ticking of metallic hands
than abounding silence.

***** windows open to frigid air,
hard wooden floors, cold black coffee,
mud caked on sneakers, filmy cobwebs lacing corners,
senescent Anne Beattie novels with yellowing pages,
stacks of mail, maybe if unopened will disappear,
dishes upon dishes, a pyramid toward the sky,
a dead Christmas tree,
no longer effervescent,
tinged grey,
incongruously picturesque.

1
the books are stacked one upon the other.
they look as though even a whisper of a breeze
could send them tumbling to the ground,
like birds being shot from the sky.

2
you say that when you look at me
you see blank pages you wish to let your ink sink into.
each flimsy page soaking up pigment.
ink so deep and dark,
like the sky before a storm.

3
does fragility amuse you?
life, a series of tumultuous waves,
attempting to open the darkest of eyes,
even yours
to view the sapphire ocean
that will put flickers of light
back into the tips of your fingers.

4
wake up!
when you touch, really touch.
when you breathe, really breathe.
I know this existence is melancholy,
but just open your eyes.
If you look,
just outside your window,
you can see a hawk floating on the wind.