Some scrawl the names of people present and past
Some drench theirs in pearlescent candied nacre
Shapes and hues exact, stencilled down to the last
Pretty copies of individuality

There are those who have it forced upon the face
Growing into it, it feels more natural
To don that dress, to hit the gym and say grace
Becoming the things they are needed to be

The flawless surface ever in flux stirs and returns to slumber.

Still others, indecisive, searchful, hover
From pile to pile, over fractalised discards
Picking out their newest favourite cover
For their brittle blandness blushed by exposure

Mine has grown inwards, claws entrenched beneath skin
Reverse quicksand; raking scars old and fresh
Valour marks in the battle I cannot win
My silence percolates. Outside it accretes

It glows in flickers of luciferous fluoroscence, firefly flashes.

Hope is but another addiction to break
Yet this air hangs heavy, toxic to inhale
A frigid gut burn with every breath I take
Soulful tremor smothered in despair's cocoon.

Fingers roam my jaw. Phantom edges they seek
Futility dawns. It has long disappeared
As have the haunting echoes of devil-speak
I have swallowed it all as it consumed me

It changes, chameleon-like, dissolving pixels on a screen.

Is it me, or am I it? It matters not
Its pulse fills my veins with something close to life
Yet I musn't bleed - the fluid does not clot
It leaks slowly like a punctured memory

Inside nestles the tangle of cobwebbed dreams
Silken sojourns unwittingly petrified
Quavering mutedly to my stifled screams:
You cannot, you shall not, you must not come in!

she accretes ghosts of
uncountable tears

into angry fog
that hovers all too

near with pain and pent
up regret that would

rather bask on a
warm beach in southern

California
or Cozomel.

she waltzes
naked before the fire
dressed only in music

tennis court at night
the moon a ball in flight
LOVE-ALL

her shadow slides up steps
as if it were her serpent self
a peacock shrieks

her mirrored self
kisses her on the lips
incense walks about on the air

the legend of her
accretes about the real self
even she no longer knows

the cuckoo clock aghast
at her death
her pearls scattered across the floor

a morning
made of silence and stillness
the hawk's talons outstretched

6 0’ clock
and the string of doors on the block
creak open in unison,
The briny smell of sizzling, leathery bacon accretes,
Seeping forth from pale shutters,
Peeling past the cars, stripping beige paint off the sides of houses.
The morning drizzle, forming tiny rainbows,
You would think it was acid rain,
melting away the plastic people.

Midday, after only an hour passes
and white wine splashes
like crashing waves in the crystalline stemware,
Where orderlies dazedly rescue their children from the montessories
Where power lines crack like whips,
So generously oozing sustenance to babes.
The civiliter mortuus, roam their undead domain,
Like a swarm of cockroach wasps
speed walking in parasitic pairs
darting through Safeway aisles,
Demolishing houses of white chocolate, and roasting sweet nothings
On the new George Foreman Grill ™ .

Every house on loan to apathetic debtors
They come to yours with their holy letters
PTA, … IRA … NSA … HOA
They proselytize, prioritize
Themselves over forest bears and wolves,
But where only hedge trimmers growl
The only Tuesday sounds are the behemoth
Devouring your trash,
And where leaf blowers asthmatically howl.