She finds that even backyard leaves contain
a blazing history inside their veins.
She reads the legends etched in crinkled skin,
her ardent, housebound blood boiling within.

At dusk, she likes to listen to the creek–
its reverent, animated tales of meek
young girls who grew into grand bronze statues–
and long for metal legs that’d let her choose

to dare, and burn, instead of fear, and waste.
But still, at night, her body likes to chase
the hours stargazing at ceilings. And
the myth-less, coarse white stucco slowly sands

away each spot of sprouting luster on
her atrophying frame. With nerve all gone
and adult blood inert as viscous tar,
she cannot even dream of ceiling stars.

The past few weeks have been mounted in hot pink and mahogany.
Hot breath; sticky and drooling,
dogs up the glass and
I resist the urge to
outline my name in a one-finger, window-fade, Arabic script-
I can’t keep my giddy heat
and roasting hands to myself.

My thoughts pirouette a coconut,
slippery-sweet meld of dazed concentration while I leprechaun-leap over cool evening sidewalks
and tip-toe in stairwells for that
last fevered kiss
as the heavy door
crashes shut and we're still alone.

The hole in my boot sole
grows with each step;
I feel the full magnitude of
each drying leaf as I go forth and pulverize.
I don’t think I can help it-
The leaves fall and the fall
falls and I might be falling.

These days have been oil paint
thick and layered inches high
on expensive canvas, on the
cardboard I've plucked from the
dumpster at work.
The smell of thin trees
and bright fields;
combing out and
rinsing off
and tucking
themselves in for winter naps,
cradle the breeze and
bellow a
proud conquest with its sweet,
smoky hum.

My own long, dark,
hair is lured up and around by grinning wind.
Earth waltzes with the bits of me I've let grow.
Hair is dead, right?
(and the longer the deader.)
In my long, soft, dead parts I am waving free-
finally free and laughing.

I’m laughing because nothing is tangled;
nothing stings yet.
I’m laughing because if--
When,
this ride crashes
I can't imagine how I'll
survive the wreck.

Because I'm caught on the details;
the tiny everythings that get me.
The little choices made
(but so sweet-muted,
they're not printed in the script.)
They are dull-pencil-scribbled in later
by an actor who’s fading fast into
a calmy, balmy, dreamless sleep.

Still, they're the bloom-blushing afterthoughts that catch me
off guard and whip my guts up
warm and oozing.
They stick in my throat horizontally,  clawing and breached.

I acknowledge them softly
and play like this easy
kindness is not
completely foreign to me.
I’m carefully absorbing.
I'm mutely, blinking back
slow-welling eyes
because this feeling of unworthy
coiled deep in my bones
is too rooted, too tangled,
too stutter seep quaking
through my marrow
to just shake off.

But I am trying.
I’m quietly,
radically,
hiking a mountain to
meet him halfway-
desperately hoping he won’t *****.

I’m dizzied and melting to the throwaway habits I’m
beginning to crave.
How his fingers pray the rosary
on each bead of
my cracking knuckles.
How he kisses my head when I'm looking at my phone and thinks I don’t notice.
How lately, the sleepy way
I let my posture disintegrate into his body,
(a place that's sun-stained and velvet.
a place that's formed and transformed endlessly across decades and continents)
feels like graceful landing after so much turbulence.

I've met moments of calm locked in limbs and new security in the shapes my fingers find tangling with his.

Even glances can anchor me. A sip of his eyes-
eyes that have shown him so much of the world;
the bright corners and ***** streets,
the graveyards and parades,
the sidewalk saints and stumbling souls,
a world he knows can be beautiful and horrific
and both and neither all at once-
those glances manage to steady the sway
of my tangled body and droop-heavy soul.

and okay, I don't see poetry in
the way I swing myself up;
arm, leg, arm, leg,
into the front seat of his truck while
he closes the door behind me-
(my own faded muscles stopped atrophying
months before I could even remember his name,
but calves and obliques still recall the sensation
of ripping, pinching and splitting
like raw cotton in the presence
of heavy metals and four wheel drive.)

Still, there is something
almost too easy to weave
into words about the
smell of soap on his chest even
late at night and how there-
right there,
is a small island
to double over in laughter
or sigh your stress aloud.
With the tiny details
and subtle quirks I’m
shorthand jotting and jacket-pocket folding
it'd be too easy
to fill a notebook.

And though I'm still treading lightly,
I think if you asked me
to describe the word ‘worth’
right now,
I’d probably tell you about the way
I can pull away, look up and smile during a kiss
and find his eyes already in mine,
smiling back.

.                        Thin as a rake
                         No food intake
                      Endless heartache
                        I won't partake,
                     More time does slip
                         Life on a drip,
                      Alone in my head
                       Confined to a bed,
                    
                      My time is passing
                    Unwaivering fasting
                       Mother is crying
                       Body atrophying,

         To my family lying,
                                 That all will be ok.

Though this body will not see the sunrise of another day.

I always somehow missed your passing silhouette
but I saw your eyes cry thunder,
saw your sweetly shivering pen-scratching-paper
in the cold streetlight

I never thought I could feel so disconnected
                                                                I was wrong.
                                                                ­For that and for other things. I

meant to share things. With you, with anyone I
           meant to do things that are worthwhile I
                         meant to find the things worth living for I
                                      meant to grasp the hands of the world tightly and never let go
I didn't want to be swayed,
and I'm swinging at the whim of drifting cobwebs


I found myself on the concrete again, tonight, throwing questions at the sky
The parts of myself worth keeping are atrophying, I thought
So I thought some more.


EVERYONE deserves love. I'm tired of scratching the snow waiting for an answer. I want the world to change. And it's not me, it's the rules that broke me. It's the rules that bent me into un
                     rec
og
niz                able
shapes.

So then Why, I asked. One word. Crumbled as the cold set in, and I cried in the moonlight.

That was when I thought of you and the things left unanswered. Mostly I use you as a way to think about myself. When I was with you, I stopped asking questions, I think.
I need to learn how to be alone. I need to learn how to be with people and not stop being. I'm raging so freely lately that I'm dreaming again of you and of the times I kissed you and the times I should have, but mostly of the time I left you...
No regrets, hon, no matter how much it hurts.


So.
Here, again. Alone, again. The apathy is back.
Sun on my back, moon on my back, cracks
in my skin. You win.

Older than a bat
I saw you in the stars
Following your heart
All the way back home
From all the bars you visited
You compare congratulations
To incongruent vacations
You sedate the understated
In anesthetic vacations
Vagitus vulgaris
Common among ****-sapiens
In silent reverie
We are speaking
To all the Goddesses at once
In silent memories
We are treasuring
Each of these precious moments
With gratitude and space
We faced our elemental being
Who never needs to chase
Or hustle to receive Her grace
Om Namah Shivaya
Om Shivaya Namaha
We are fundamental particles
Held together by invisible strings
These scalar waves of pressure
Are infinitely stronger and subtler
Than a thousand waterfalls
Gravity is our mother
And we no longer struggle
To stand up or down
We pack it in and out
As hymns of love
Grow in our frames
We straighten our spines
For it often takes more
Than ten thousand years
And millions upon millions
Of men, women and children
And perhaps a few billion
Unnecessary deaths
Or a trillion unsuccessful attempts
To complete the naming
Of all the many beings
Inhabiting the earth and stars
Which collectively comprise
The universe's heart
She sings, long live the king
For life is a marvelous thing
Still we are all a little off course
In developing mental health strategies
That actually do
What they're supposed to
For each and every single species
Is only half as radiant
And usually twice as complacent
As any shade-giving or fruit-bearing tree
These sediments are indeed sentimental
And all these fallen feathers
Speak only to living beings
Who fly on tiny wings of freedom
Your kind blue eyes
Blink twice as fast as mine
And disguise all your pretenses
Fingers often keep time
And finders keep rubies
Losers weep emeralds in glorious grieving
But can anybody tell me who the f@#!
Are all these pseudo-teachers
That sell you their minds so cheaply
If buying time is a waste of money
Then meretricious attorneys
Bleed you of your dignity
Currently it is only in dying
That we see no need to speak
While our currency is evolving
We are solely imitations
Of our inimical engines of digestion
As sedentary wives
Remain tied to triumphant spines
Shining like a pestilence
Atrophying like elephants at a circus
Their bodies and minds imprisoned
And bound by imaginary stakes in the dirt
Young prisoners in solitary confinement
Are hiding mental gems
And emotional diamonds
In lonely shipping containers
For you to polish and find
Like two lovers intertwined
I can guide myself despite your lies
I resolve to see
All corrupt lawyers go blind
While many more are voluntarily buried
Beneath their own illegal fantasies/histories
And bureaucratic guidelines
While in the depth of night
She yields to no-one
And only kind words
Can heal these enemies

Oh, my love, it seems we
...are at an impasse.
How has love been everything,
And, now,  not nearly enough?

I am worn thin
bracing the waves of your tepid ire.
I fear the hardened heart anger’s object often acquires
But I do not doubt it.

Where are we now
But blundering with half- baked intentions
And no concrete decisions?
The whole of my childhood dreams
Has mildewed and molded
And is rotting in my throat
While yours are atrophying around your arm bones.
This is the price of age.
(This is the punishment for destructive decisions.)

The wood of our bones my be distressed,
But our ship is strong.
There is always a way.

We have only to follow it.

i fall asleep in the back of ubers, to the sounds
of middle-aged drivers talking to their loved ones
giving advice, the smell of spice, my temple on the window
just playing a mental jeopardy with the meanings behind
those accented words of languages i don't understand
perhaps, once upon a time, i did, but now, no longer

i sleep like a stranger in my own home, climbing
into my bed without caution, with atrophying bones
it's a debilitating exhaustion, it's characteristic of aging
of falling and forgetting about the friendships and benefits
that broke through my bed slats, plus the flash-lit attempts
to fix the unfixable with feminist texts and crumpled cash

i dream about my mother as another, and her neck
remains untouched, perhaps only adorned with pearls
so wide, and so bright, and the garage door is always unlocked
it's comfort, it's nostalgia, it's the furthest i've been from home
and when the radio turns on, i wake to unfamiliar laughter, and
"i miss my dog, and i miss falling in love," and everything's amiss
and all i can do is sit here, tipping a stranger as i reminisce

blue lilies
now;wilted and zapped
petals of hibiscuses;
frosting and drooping
pressed between our pages
stenching and staining
them edges
bleeding


the flesh stenches
the putrid blooms
carve squealing wounds
the blood engulfs the heart
that deliquesces


the crevices are graved
then the heart deliquesces
and falls into two
down/a rotting corpse
it oozes into


the disgust of existence
creeping through shredded layers
of shroud
covering the withering bones,
mass
and
emotions


searing
it melts eventually-the shroud
until it reaches the bones
crashes them there
spilling the liquids/
all that is left bare
is already atrophying


and i guess that's the difference between dying and rotting
dying at least leaves you
the voids to hold onto
to be nostalgic for what was held
dying-paints,hues from the ashes that blew


but rotting
eats away all that existed
and snaps leaving
detritus,stinking
odor that i need  


the craft of us
all worn out
the fragments dis plumed through holocausts
the rebellion in ruination  
and the twitched cold feet
each breath i've took,now smothering
you,me,and everything



the reflections,contradictions
intoxicating,caging charcoal abstracts
punctured and ruptured
all constituents consuming and decaying now
every treble
so heavy


freezing not frozen
perishing not lighter


maybe these moments
-they never stop
cause right there in the midst
everything rots.
-/and we let it

~d

Caress the pages
Of our romance spilled on paper,
Like you never want to lose it,
Like we'll wake in the same bed
Til the day we never wake up
Please promise me, you'll never leave me to wonder,
Like it was all puppets play,
Like an insidious walk to end in blame
If you dance around me, I'll know what it means
So take my hands, I'll show you what I've seen
When we meet to a gaze
I never cease to crave
The ecstasy of your touch
And loving you beyond the limits of the grave
For death is not the limit,
It is only our human minds
Atrophying bodies
And pity covered spirits
That lead us from everlasting harmony
I can't tell if you're living,
Unless my hand is on my chest
Because you, and only you,
Have a piece of me everywhere you go,
To and fro,
I want you to know,
When you're feeling low,
I'm here forever, no need for woe

my heart is made of different muscles than yours
the walls of each chamber of my heart are atrophying

burn what's left of me to the ground
upon my death, don't go to my funeral
because there won't be one

If buying time is a waste of money
Then meretricious attorneys
Bleed you of your dignity (and alimony)
Currently it is only in dying
That we see no need to speak
While our currency is evolving
We are solely imitations
Of our inimical engines
Of dissipating digestion
As sedentary wives
Remain tied to triumphant spines
Shining like a pestilence
Atrophying like elephants at a circus
Their bodies and minds imprisoned
And bound by imaginary stakes in the dirt
Young prisoners in solitary confinement
Are hiding mental gems
And emotional diamonds
In lonely shipping containers
For you to polish and find
Like two lovers intertwined
She said, I can guide myself
Despite the immensity of your lies

the body is atrophying,
rising from the bed is an
exercise in handholds, comedy physical
wall-grabbing, flail to fall, laughing at myself, still

my super quiet whispers in the bed
of imminent death go unheard,
as somewhat desired, but not entirely,
3/4 tween unsure and surely and surly.

the blood don’t circulate fast enough,
streams slow, sad songs Pandora accumulates,
and Spotify artificial intelligence finds more,
certifying a usual unusual, feel dust mites breaking off of me

<>

mind running in rivulets, fear floes,
courage-drowned, easy stuff
impossible, hard, beyond pale, summer melt,
drowning in self-disgust, hapless hopeless harmonic wastage

every deadline passes, dying,
easygoing no screaming, the
minimal, hard, past the behind, the pale,
the poetry is untraceable, untranslatable and never-good-enough

the easy out is steps away,
illusions are illusory, delusions offer no comfort,
stories you tell for amusement, leaving whimsical
dreams are practice runs, for the longer run, will shortly come do-due

the poem words die on the vine,
scorned silence, best is past,
appropriate ignominy is red-****** iced,
so it goes, no minyan for the funeral, no ten friends

the query repeatedly reappears,
how did I mess up so bad, some part
lazy, part afraid, humans, so much effort,
the voices-in-head saying, we’re plenty good enough

shelter can become a prison, an island,
fortress or prison, a salvation pretense,
osprey overhead, preying, feeding next gen,
hear-’em discussing options when “sleeping,”
his affairs in order?, which smile provokes the provocateur

my affairs long dustbin guests,
sand and atmospheric disbursed,
your next poem probably, granules contained,
for this is how all life is transferred, I’m in a tiny minute, in you…

the health (MIND|BODY)

the body is atrophying,
rising from the bed is an
exercise in handholds,
and wall grabbing, no falling failure

my whispers in the bed
of imminent death go
unheard as somewhat
desired, but not entirely, unsure, unsure

the blood don’t circulate
fast enough, streams slow
to sad songs Pandora has
accumulated and plays on, and on, and on

<*>

mind run by rivulets, fear floes,
courage-drowned, easy stuff
impossible, hard, beyond pale,
drowning in self-disgust and, hopeless

every deadline passes, dying,
easygoing no screaming, the
minimal, hard, beyond the pale,
the poetry is untraceable, untranslatable

the easy out is steps away,
illusions are illusory, delusions,
are stories you tell for amusement,
dreams are practice runs, for the long run

the poem words die on the vine,
scorned silence, best is past,
appropriate ignominy ****** iced,
so it goes, no minyan for the funeral, no ten

you are what others think and thought.
They could be lavished with the freshest water
and still dislike the abundant taste,
make you do the same.

and if they lived in a
never ending snowing biom,
freezing their atrophying minds into the
cryoconserved likeness of eternity,
declaring this fool's action
a foolproof veritable gulp
of their besotted wisdom.
Would you do the same?

Even if you disdained the snow?
Who made you disdain the snow?
Would you have been on a fool's errand,
if you finally arrived there
or would you have been
on a palmy journey of a righteous congruence?

Who are you, the one of the others?
Are you one, or the others?

So many are
lynched on a warp
weaved by anyone except themselves
sinking into oblivion
might as well die up to it.

Ratifying nasty little ugly

Atrophying fleeing itty being.

Maintain out yourself.

Face masks, take place and set pace for fast track nastiness,
so hold fast back, and pass your soul only onto a whole heart whose focused,
and not the fast track that send my gut reeling everymorning.

mourning over my quaking oaks in an haphazard effort to weather the storm.