moonshine on the lawn
amish rocking chair, creaking listlessly in the white wind snapping
howls
murdering crows with a swallow
fists to barking dogs and the dead bark, we are the 99%
of deadness on trees
only you are the leaves and root tips and phloem that thrives under the weight of dead things
and death

it's not that i didn't tell you to stay
it's that my face had been flattened
to a degree unrecognizable, unable to express emotion
eroded by too many acid raindrop-tears
and too many vicarious hits
of that ........ you covet more
than the newborn child ... years away in my stomach
we will not see light
you cannot make it fill the cavity between your selfish molars
and my cavernous ribcage
you can slash the curtains all you want, but the sun don't like you no more
and i barely love you
(even though it cannot dissipate more than it has)
and you won't admire me as a stolen sabertooth
all the crest whitening strips you fed to me
to protect me from the plaque building up
in my voice box
in my lexicon
are in the trash now, honey
i don't give a **** how yellow i'm getting
and if you really loved me
you'd not care either

but you have this need to place all theoretical constructs
on a ******* pedestal above you
like heaven
and happiness
and love
like they are unreachable for you because
you have short arms
and short legs
short ambition
short breath
and so you keep pushing various cleaning utensils toward me
brushes
mops
loufas
and i eat them
i swallow the bleach and plastic and mesh whole
like i've swallowed your feigned empathy
your lack of morality

and i'll regurgitate them for our (never to be) child
when .... is born
and i'll say "here, ............, look...look at all your father left you"
and i'll eat the placenta
and i'll purge it
and maybe by then
i'll have learned how to teach
our never to be had child
how to leave an addict

if she had asked me, then
"Do we all die?"
i would have answered in a solemn sigh:
"Of course we do."
the realism impenetrable, the grounded logistics.

she asks me now
"Can we exist in other dimensions?"
and i reply, with a taxed, drudging honesty:
"I have."

we do not touch, but i still know
we're phoenixes
next time, we'll get it right
next time, i'll write your name and scream your name and love you until the farthest star's light finally makes it to earth and dies out quietly
like the milky way is in your ribs
and your breath, your carcinogens
is existence, is the only galaxy i'll ever begin to fathom
only beginning, for there are not enough light years to
uncover the breadth and depth of your immutable soul
we will be beacons
everlasting flecks of consequence
reflecting in pools of young lovers
when the earth as we know it
is no longer in service

i would say we are over
but we never began

and that was it
you said your piece, however shallow it may be
(although the depths of you could fill the most desolate valley)
and you didn't even say goodbye

you didn't even say goodbye
which shouldn't confuse or surprise me
for your goodbyes now are fleeting, thoughtless, and cold

i thought about you for a minute, or an hour...a while
and i stopped looking for the right words
because i knew they'd never come
(as i'll never come, and you'll never leave my blood thirsty, orange heart)

i'd waited for you, for touches that never were
for solace, elopement, truth
but you're fading as the color from my cheeks
the little that lingered
from the first time you said "i love you"

i had no need to write it down then, because your words had been
my face
one with the underwater world
the infinite life residing in me

now your words float on my surface,
not etched or engrained or all encompassing
but poorly tossed aside
to land, wherever the wind might blow them

and i knew then, with the lack of resonating
that your resignation had been sent
over the airways
and that my heart was leaps behind
my brain
had already suppressed your name