I commit to poems the second that I begin writing them,
And here I am committing to this one,
My cursor on the screen
Tap tap tapping like tap-roots across it’s blue-glowing surface.
With every push of every button,
I begin seeing the blue light
As more than it is. I begin seeing it as a poem.
The blue light that illuminated the Never Sink sinkhole
Was not from a screen.
Nor was it from glowworms.
As I write on this screen though, there is that same blue light
With me still. It is
Streaming from the walls of the cavern,
Still massaging the bags of tiredness
That hang beneath my eyelids to remind me
Of where I just was, having *** with my ex-girlfriend,
And of all the places that I was before that: to remind me
Of the blue lights in Never Sink,
The sinkhole that is 120 feet wide and 170 feet deep that I
Climbed out of on a rope and in the dark,
Which was anything but dark—an unlocked lock
Sat in my driveway after I got home

From having *** with my ex-girlfriend tonight,
And there, in that lock, was a comparison to or an analogy for or a metaphor of
My climb out of Never Sink: gradual ascension
And then a moment
Of absolute awe and profundity so unlike any other profundity
That the clarity I felt absolutely throughout my body tonight
Can only really be brought into my mind with full force
Through a comparison and analogy and metaphor
To, for, and of the blue lights
That that temple provided us. Looking into that lock’s
Reflective gleam, I discovered that I felt
The way I’d felt ever since climbing out of Never Sink, which was exactly
How I’d spent the past year or so wanting to feel.

“Bring me,” I said to Duane, who went with me to Never Sink,
“To the hole in the ground
Where the blue light glows; where the glow-worms lightly blaze” and Duane
Said “okay” and he brought me there without
My ever having to say those words. And then,
In the moments after the sun went down we discovered
That the glowworms were not glowworms but
Armillaria mellea, a bioluminescent fungus.
Not glowworms but Armillaria mellea,
Which rose through and across the cave walls, coating the rock
With its skin. The whole pit was covered in that skin—the skin
Of that single individual.
As I methodically climbed out of the sinkhole on my rope, I felt that
Fungus (that individual) extending
Its black shoelace looking taproots into my lungs too,
And into my skin,
Where I was but where
I wasn’t quite yet. Where I was but
Where I couldn’t yet describe to myself without the use of glowworms—
Without the use of made-up and childish sounding words
Like Depropheria, which I wrote a book about but which
I never really understood, and I, the whole concept of which is flawed,
Feel like I could be the plant on Joe’s counter,
Which he said I already am.
Because if my “I” was in all of its molecules and its “I” was in all of my molecules
Then we would both just be exactly what we already were, Joe said, and so
By the very logic I extended in posing the question
I was and am the plant.

I could be Armillaria mellea too
But what am I if I think that I am glowworms? but really
The glowworms are fungus, and while I ****** my ex-girlfriend tonight, falling
Further into the space away from her, I was also
Scraping away at the walls of Never Sink
To see the tiny little hairs that revealed to Duane and I what really was there,
The Armillaria mellea, of course, but how could something so different
(“**** me, Daniel,” she said, “I feel you inside of me, I want you.”
“**** me,” I said
“”
“I feel myself inside of you, I”)
Be the thing that I am? I would never

Stop the car because I saw something shining on my driveway.
And I would never
Open the car door
And step out into the night with the engine running.
Step out into the night to find an
Unlocked lock
Lying there on the pavement while the song that I tried to live all year
Called In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel blasts loudly
From my Buick’s speakers. Step out into the night
With that song blaring through my open car door, surely waking
My soon to be empty-nested mother from her sleep behind
That second story window
Right up ahead.

I did those things though—I
Stopped the car because I saw something shining on my driveway, and I
Did those things.
I am glow-worms.
I am, and so
I am the plant on Joe’s counter, and so
I can be a glow-worm.
I can be what I already am without knowing or comprehending that I am it.
I can be the whole universe.
I am the whole universe.
I saw over one hundred salamanders at the bottom of Never Sink.
And I saw four different species of salamanders at the bottom of Never Sink.
And I saw six different species of frogs, and I saw
Three brown rat snakes, which thankfully were not copperheads, but which
Could have been glowworms that were copperheads,
I guess. If you ask Joe, anyway. I’m not sure
I believe it fully
Even though when you strip away sentimental definitions of “I”
It’s pretty **** convincing. He was convincing.

I danced around Joe’s counter (where the plant sat, even then)
In September. At the time,
The counter was quickly becoming Alex’s counter,
Because I was becoming close friends with Alex,
And because Alex was Joe’s little sister, and because
Joe had left for the college he’d drop out of,
And during his hiatus from what he’d wanted to run from
It was just
Alex’s counter. It is Joe’s counter again now,
Because Alex has a dumb boyfriend who she likes to kiss
And doesn’t really like to ****
But who she does **** anyway and as a result
Doesn’t really like spending much time not ******* me anymore.
Anyway, I danced

Around Joe’s counter in September, when it was becoming Alex’s counter,
And I sank songs like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
With all my new friends. I thought that I
Was living those songs
Because, if my “I” was in the molecules that vibrated when the song played,
And the “I” of those molecules was in me
Then I would be those songs and those songs would be me.
Being the songs wasn’t the same as living the songs, though.
Rising out of Never Sink I saw myself
Reflected in the blue dots of light that Armillaria mellea created.
I saw that I hadn’t been living everything
That I was; I saw that I was the blue dots then, but I also saw
That I didn’t know that the blue dots weren’t glowworms.

When I was dancing
Around Joe’s counter, I didn’t yet know the words
To In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel.
But all my new friends were singing those words, and so I
Screamed out barely-syllabic nonsense
With a smile on my face,
Speaking like a baby who recognizes the existence of language
But can’t yet put it into use.

Rising out of Never Sink
The whole cave opened up, as more and more levels of the sinkhole
Were revealed to be stars and galaxies
Of blue fungus to climb through.
Rising out of Never Sink, I held in my hand
The unlocked lock which I would use later
To weight my pocket as I would sit with these bags of tiredness hanging
Writing this poem late at night on the screen illuminated
By the blue lights of Never Sink. To weight my pocket
As I would sit writing this poem, with
***** excreted thirty minutes prior still resting on my ****
Like the name I haven’t yet learned to call her—
Caterina, Caterina, why did she change it? Maria
Was so pretty, why did she change her name, it was
To get away from me, it was to get away from me like
I wanted to get away from her, it was to get away from me it was
Because she always hated the name Maria. And
To grow more confident in herself
She needed to become
Caterina. She needed to rebrand herself like she worked on rebranding
That company’s logo for her senior thesis project in high school
When I first fell in love with her because
Glowworms lit up Never Sink at night.

They were glowworms in Never Sink
Because the glowworms are fungus
And I am the glowworms.

If you ask Joe.

I want to take some time now to describe
Rising out of Never Sink
Without giving any time
To the lock I found in my drive-way this evening, or
To Joe’s counter-top and how I danced around it knowing
That it wasn’t his but that it was him,
Or to the remnants of Maria, Caterina, and I which are all I, and which
Stick to my ***** still. Never Sink is a sinkhole
That is 170 feet deep
And 120 feet wide at its top.

I went spelunking in Alamaba, Georgia, and/or Tennesse last week
Where I never knew which state or time zone I was in,
And where an annoying but charming guy named Glenn
Led me and my best friend through epic places of infinite beauty.
One of those places was Never Sink,
Which is a sinkhole that is
170 feet deep and
120 feet wide at its top. We repelled into Never Sink
Because Glenn wanted to show us the glowworms
(Which were fungus that were glowworms that were
**** it) and because my friend Duane, who is my best friend, who is
A 39 year-old factory worker who worries that he is much older than he is,
Wanted to see the glowworms too.
We found over a hundred salamanders in Never Sink
And Duane and I discovered that it wasn’t glowworms
That illuminated the pit, but Armillaria mellea, which is a fungus, and
It was very cool.
But ascending through Never Sink was more than very cool,
And it was much more than fungus,
Just as the fungus which I took into my body in August (which it
Almost is again now) after the summer music festival was more
Than just fungus. That fungus was more than just fungus because
I took it into my body right after breaking up with Maria-Caterina (who
I can’t not talk about) For Good (which was
The name of a song they sang
At Maria-Caterina’s high school graduation a year ago, after which
We made love (which was what we called it
Because we were cliché and in love
(Which is what we made.)))

It was a spiritual journey through the cosmos,
In Never Sink,
Or at least that’s how it felt,
And when I climbed out of Never Sink’s mouth, I hugged Duane
And he hugged me and we
Thought that it was beautiful.

I am the plant in Joe’s kitchen.
I am glowworms.

I. Neptune’s Theater


A rock spins through the universal tumbler

and its warm blue pools calcify

as turquoise Neptune in his cloudy blue bath bath

builds a lace castle with his fingertips


Sculpts a submerged eden of crimson and emerald

where painted parrots chat up cardinals

butterfly and angel fry sway with wave pulse

and foliated coral fingers beckon from arched windows.


Neptune’s children are flat and bright, spined and notched

free yet entangled in lace mesh ecosystem

beneath an array of bioluminescent stars

as a gangly pretender watches and blows bubbles.




II. Sapien Siege


The hot acidic hand of death grasps

the mesh rends and tangles

the ecosystem shattered

reef’s loosed children scream beneath planet’s stars.


Butterflies impaled

cyanide-swooning damsels

mesh-tangled angels hauled heavenward

coral to potash, corpses to coal.


The pretender to the throne blinks

rubs blurry lenses,

kicks plastic fins

and moves on to the next show


Unseeing and unaware

of the luminous filament in his wake.

Self-appointed divinity,

deus ex machina.

*****************­************

Ann says: All of the animal and human characters in this poem (except Neptune and The Pretender) are named after coral reef fish. Coral reefs, one of the most diverse ecosystems, are expected to be largely extinct within one human generation. Deus ex machina is Latin for “God from the machine.”

Copyright 2013 by Ann Marcaida.

a red aura: grounded, realistic active, the densest colour

you are the densest colour
it is all around you, means so many things
synonym with love, synonym with indulgence, synonym with satisfaction
a core constantly radiating carmine all around you
you are the lightest hug
the sweet oatmeal served by your mom when you get sick
a witch’s tears that create a rainbow
magnifying glass burning patches of grass in the summer
you are true or false questions
the glitter in puddles
roots of daisies

under the dim light
standing right in front of the shore, big big sun slowly sinking into the ocean
“kinda looks like the lion king scene but backwards”
54, 55, 56, 57, 58, it’s all dark
little lanterns are suddenly the only source of light near us, buildings start opening one eye after the other, how many eyes do buildings have at night?
how transparent are your windows?
“smells like salt, i have sand in my mouth”
fireflies are not common here but luckily they have come tonight to say hello to us while we are together for once. i mean, fireflies are a sign that this is just more than what it looks like? can this be more than just a nighttime thing, i wanna see you more often
“when was the first time you saw a firefly”
the first time i saw a firefly i was waiting for my mom to pick me up from my dance class. i was maybe eleven at the time and it was around 8 pm and girls were coming in and out of the place for about 5 minutes- then it was all calm once again and while the music was blasting and going thru the walls i saw a little light from the other side of the street - it was very blue at the moment- and it was like a little flickering on and on - i thought someone was trying to morse-code me but the building in front of us was empty - no lights on. i stared  long enough to realise it was a little firefly that had just come from the mountains surrounding the area - i thought it was a fairy. i read a book that said that fireflies tell fairies where there’s danger and when it’s safe to be out, so i think seeing a firefly for the first time was very magical, but i never saw any until 4 years later by the beach in a completely different country, different surrounding, and there were multiple
we were walking thru some bushes to get to the beach and halfway thru the walk the fireflies lit the way to a little beach opening, but it was different this time: i was 15, not alone, not thinking about fairies, just amazed at how many fireflies were around me: i think fireflies are magical. you are magical
this story i s so slightly personal
i want to lay next to you on the beach and get sand on my hair and just point out how beautiful you are because thinking about you brings me to absolute tears just because you’re so overwhelmingly and absolutely gorgeous and flawless and the fireflies light up your face better than a candle - you’re bioluminescent
i’m telling you this because tonight feels like that night where i first saw that firefly but it smells like the ocean right now and the sky looks like it wants us to be underwater - i think it’s beautiful when the sky mimics the exact shade of the ocean, kind of like a sapphire blue colour- the densest colour.
you’re beautiful. thinking of you brought back this story of fireflies out of me and i think that is a sign - are you another firefly in my life? fairy dust
i think the charms fairies put in us are not always the best ones - my mistake, we don’t know how to handle magic when it’s performed
magic: i think you’re magical
i think you’re lovely
i think you’re more than the sun setting and the wake up of the buildings and the fireflies and fairy dust and sand
i think you’re the warmth of the sun right after you get out of the ocean, i think you’re bioluminescent, i think you’re the wind when it’s 11C outside and you get to wear your favourite hoodie outside, i think you’re butter melting on toast i think you’re the deepest colour, i think you’re the deepest colour, i think you’re holding the deepest aura, i think you’re a child’s night lamp, i think you’re the deepest colour: red is the deepest colour, love is the deepest feeling
i think i love you
i think i’m thinking too much but i’m thinking about you and i think we should think about thinking about the first time we had sand in our mouths
the beach is beautiful at night and it’s chilly and the wind is always spilling a little more sand every time it sneezes. sand or fairy dust? i love you
anything i write won’t even compare to how much love i have right now for you, i can’t keep writing but i wish i could show you how much you mean to me
it’s so hard when i can’y hug you but i want to be surrounded by fireflies when we go out

R.J Calzonetti


Screaming cross the skyscraper’s windbreaker tapering

Aether vapour- trailblazing ****-sapien wafers

Of machinations psychotropic doppelgängers

Aristotle throttling menagerie’s philosophically hypnotic obelisks

Mind-boggling astronomical chronological esophagus

Antioxidants phosphorus catastrophic mitochondria

Beyond anaconda onomatopoeia

Of hallucinogenic Armageddon biblical umbilical cords

Swarming northern lights of aurora borealis

The chalice a battleground of Evangelion belladonna

Metalica candelabra swallowing the monochrome Hanukkah

Of a cold winter’s eldritch disintegration photosynthesis

Of innocent infinity stretching wretched beckoning requiem

The words that fall upon my page, are really just a shallow grave

Of the dawn of nighttime in my eyes, calm upon the twilight sun

Wrong is done draped on the blood moon wraiths

Skyscraped fields dusk a hollow thud below the dunes

That thumps the consumption of our fate, fumes to glow in darkness loom

Left blind in light of day you cannot see, the little pieces silver sheen

For blinding light may fade to grey, and I will never have my way

Nightfalls on another daybreak, dawning darkness, sundown on another day

Twilight plays with sparkling haze, the sky a wildfire made ablaze in patchwork scarecrows

Who etch rainbows black as a heart of coal, sold flatlining railroads

Gold wraithlike halos of stained-glass cathedrals unreal in the fever-dream of human beings

Bleeding Elysium from the seabed of dead worlds, gourds of incorporeal cornucopias

Born orchestra morsels of sorrowful oracles predicting crucifixion of ellipsis’ antithesis


(MC) Aurora


Absonant  as my pen writes the twilight, the red swallowed on horizon and bright

As through a sea of blood under my feet and shrinking mast of my mighty ship

A shadow I make on that red snow and peep into my heart’s hollow

It’s deep as much as my pen spake of grief.

I blinded in that last light and hurled like a beast dreading the songs of holy lies

That have just pained in bright and made me grieve.

They dragged me on my wings and deplumate  me as so fallen humans

They wrenched my limbs and rive my heart out and flinger me in air and I laid forever

On the stones that dank my blood.

I wait for the troth  of  demise but betrayed as it didn’t come to detract,

I laid when the horizon grinned red on my face and poured the last ale

And brutally drank the last sip of me.



R.J Calzonetti


People are sleeping under the blankets of a tranquil streetlamp

A sunflower in the damp bed of concrete

Soon they’ll be pushing up daisies

Underneath the foundation of what I stand for

Nip the bud of the flower pedalling the root of all evil like fallen leaves

Breeding paraplegic freedom from the pollen melancholic

Anarchistic polycrystalline shapeshifters drifting vilified

Buried alive like asphalt constellations crowning metallic gallows alcoholic in my solitude

See the clouds bury the ground in half a heaven’s heartbeat

Limbo’s limitless abyss the photosynthesis of the sepulchral diablo

Revenants of redemption dancing with death

Evanescent in its bioluminescent crescent moon spooning illuminated illustrations

Of Himalayan mayhem cremated avarice of ethereal onomatopoeia unravelling catacombs in God’s palindromes

Homeopathic saplings decapitated in the dismembered September wastelands defibrillator

Invigorating the nightshade white wraiths plane-walkers of Apocrypha documenting entropy

Pent up sentience avenging the endless demigods of discombobulated proclamations nocturne graceless, octaves eldritch, evangelic

Elegant elevators to flights of staircases where the air is fragrant with the fragments of stagnant stained glass asterisks

Written gospels to masquerade hostage to the faith the man misplaced the sacred hate, the passageways of apathy apostrophe

Apartheid of serpentine survivors carving smiles on the sidewalks

Farming diamonds and their detox

Arming giants like a phoenix

Carnal nihilists with their secrets

Stardust quiet as the bleachers

Start defiant still a reject

Art discipled to our freedom

Shattered hearts pick up the pieces

Jigsaw puzzles, smothered treasons

Sow the seeds and **** the reaper

Even legions rhyme and reason

Tattered flags without a penance

Good men do not go to heaven

Buy your burden at 7-11

Your exit is the only the next entrance

Resurrection prepubescent

Asymmetric biomechanics

Anguish to be reprimanded

Megalomaniac in our sabbath

Living life is just a sentence

Psalms of seance death’s senescence

Baptize vengeance lest it ventures into heaven

Ventriloquist omniscience of rhythmic equilibrium

Earthly hurricanes reemerging insurgent as the sugarcane purgatory

Primordials metamorphosis contorting rigour Mortis oracles horoscope cloaked in cloaca hallucinations

Induced irradiated amalgamated retaliatory incorporeal chlorophyll

Born from the sorcerers' spell, the cathedral of doubt

The only darkness is within oneself, light shed within a holy shell

Isolation is a lonely hell, scythes of moonlight blight of bells

Nightingales fail to halo word of mouth

Enveloped in the clouds cast shadows hex

But resurrection cannot hide from the eyes of death

Fresh as babies breath

Rank as the body festers effigies

Bless the Nephilim the questions beck

And call for some god to collect the rest

Is there any answer?

Even growth can be a cancer

Lifeless corpses once were dancers

Devils waltz on top of canopies

Heaven’s hands have touched serenity

****** brands that crushed His enemies

Stained glass sanguine dismantled entropy

Calamity ran dry insanity dabbling in humanity

Unravelling the candy wrapper saplings of happiness

Pitch black irradiant dull edges sharpening archangels, darkness reincarnating

Blinding bioluminescent glistening abyssal rakshasa sarcophagus parting monarchies

Metamorphosis coruscating fornication immortalization Tartarean

Reverberating ****-sapien scintillating hurricanes palpitation circulating ricocheting oblivion

Shining crepuscular homunculus dully illustrious

Sunless avatars, mannequins of Abaddon stygian as fallen leaves on the breeze of Avalon Evangelion

Incarceration breeding Elysium’s jailors in the cathedral of double helixes

Bethlehem's’ new genesis of Lucifer’s crucifixion

Brighter than a fallen star

Mourning in the dark

Doppelganger apostles night stalkers of phosphorous

Pockmarked arcanum bloodstained in gravestone Salem

Where the braves’ halos dined on maelstroms alone

Heirs succeeding failures of the empty throne

Filled with nothings’ own

Brimming bound by Babylonian poems

Deus ex Machina's apocalypse coughing prophets of Samsara blossoming diabolic

Life is but a Holocaust

Death the moment God forgot

Breath the only psalm we sought

Kept within a hollow box

Shedding devils, angelic, lost

Finding metamorphosis


(MC) Aurora


A world often synonymous with beauty on the horizon,

Meet my eyes you mourned demon load the strength on thee.

Crestfallen light on your wrist burns down your girth

And you can plead, just plead your twilight sun.

Watch the dead sea swallow you in the salts of agony

And drown in the anguish, hundreds of angelic bloodsheds,

Press hold of the thumbprints on your throat, you can't roar.

Sore lugubrious melancholy aired atmosphere,

And downhearted souls dispirited dragons dragged along.

The sob grim hiding in a blue funk rusty smog choking wind,

The nyctophilliac animals howl long the cold-blooded love song

In your lungs and burn.

It's the twilight sun,

Just that twilight sun.

there's this jellyfish
stuck in my head
he swims there day and night
and lights up the dark
inside of my skull
a bioluminescent, fluorescent jellyfish
swollen and pink
he likes to shock me
lighting up the dark
inside of my skull
he has long, coral tentacles
they squeeze around my brain
and he hugs it
and pretends to be a part of it
I think he gets a little lonely up there
if you ask me
no one to talk to
in the dark inside my skull
there's this poor,
poor jellyfish
stuck in my head
who swims laps around my brain
as though the space in someone's head
could ever be as good as an ocean
perhaps someday I will set him free
perhaps I will crack open my skull
and it will no longer be dark inside of there
pink will spew out
a large mushy brain
with a jellyfish attached
his long, coral tentacles
will claw at the air
like tendrils of bubblegum
until someone brings him to the ocean
where he belongs
there's this jellyfish
stuck in my head
and he's very confused
because my head looks nothing like an ocean

below the eyelid-waves,
another iridescence grows.
currents blur the view in pentacles of light
to rhythms of the waning breath
--warping what an artist's vision yields,
the canvas of the mind stretched taut
in hues to coalesce the old and new,
absorb the intertidal volumes
with keener intake,
firmest diaphram to lift the pressure out
and sink into pelagic origins finally,
imbue myself poseidonal,
renew the birth of "love"

i am soaking with it,
open mouthed my cry is swallowed by the sea
i am a kracken echinoidea
******* up the floor
of life exchanging me with joy--
of jellyfish and snail,
burrowed shrimp, eyeful gobies,
clowns in their anemones--
my spires swirling clouds of green
to carpet spotted sky with verdant wake
and springing there,
from crest to crest,
a body undulating foam, it rolls voluptuous to swell
the bioluminescent instant... taken in the vast, full span of time...
to see her born here,
'mid dolphin song and symbol crash of tide
protuberance of shore awash in seeming pleasure of the rhythmic act--
alive the goddess comes, into her flesh--
to widen eyes,
re-establish channels to the heart
as if an aperture of cloud
were opening again,
to end an ancient overcast
and usher down to earth
the lance of starlight that would reach beyond the wrecks of ocean depth...

so too her visage strikes the darker corners of the heart
illumes all buried hopes
of bottom dwelling wretchedness,
and draws the tide above the line,
littoral tresses falling,
steep in pools calcareous and algal
worlds remaking worlds within the contours sexing there
imagined limestone in your many perfect forms,
marble softness swimming in my eyes
awaken appetites of newfound youth again.
the ochre lines that stripe along your curves
let hidden ripeness waft across my passion-eye
and with the grassy dunes i lie, doze in wrack at once--
as arches of my sight are pierced with rays of inner sun
my seabreath muse purveys, inhaled;
i would see you as you are entirely,
disperse myself into aesthetic mist,
become the spray on coastal loam
a sundog floating in and out of forms
become your mullusk lust;
sipuncula embrace of benthic dust
and slip along the textures
of your progenation's flood--
emerge as one and many lives
becoming me, this vision
in your suds, your divination's scree
--the salty rooting of the coastal trees,
the sand, the wave and moon
upon the dancing kelp forestal out at sea...
shining in the winking foam and symbiota sand.
crevice and the length of dyads simulating one,
phallus, *****, and none--
egg and **** bed..
diatoms  flourishing  again...
in you i am the ****** my own gestation obviates
i am effluxion of all lives in balance
on an ever-swaying crestline of irruptive suds--
diaphanous array upon your porous *****'s heave
weaving in and out, continuing to blur
in riven sight and empty heart to fill
the blood containing rapid urgency
to feed, to taste and seek its nourish-all
when after having given up the possibilities of love
and having worn the incompleteness raw,
the obverse affirmation cracks the sky...
at last they burst surreal into the now
and lacking practice courting glory
stumble over habits long attuned to falsities unveiled
and drawn into your undertow,
all cravings wrung into the novelty of merging without end--
arrive, horizonal, and echo from the dawn of being more than one




.

A sunshine person,
Like joy in a bottle,
Or a summer star shower,
Is a stand-alone marvel,

They make light of the storms
No monsoon is ever frightening
They laugh like the thunder
When they crack jokes like lightning

They take every green fast
So they can feel the wind race
But happily stop for the roses
When reds make for a slow pace

You can blow out every candle
Or even pull the stars from the sky
But you can't take their shine
Because it comes from inside

My bed is a mass grave
My toilet is a mass grave
My kitchen sink is a mass grave
Stretched out in lines of chrysalis coke, choking the evanescent life that could have been. Straight into the empty Coca Cola can you go. A litany of atrocity in every bed, futon, desks, truck stop bathroom, camera lens, attempting to capture the genocide on film.
Alas, the lens is Covered with white, bioluminescent death.
Choking the unborn in the ****** drain.
Coffee mug refill, for but a single dime,
sweaty palms connected to strained veins on wrists,
connected to thrusting elbows.
Firing wrist rocket, V2, V1, buzz bomb.
Unsuspecting future citizens, blocks of thousands at a time.
Tadpoles, rotting in murky basement suits the world over.
The war is on.
Auschwitz, Dachau, Sachsenhausen.
Arbeit Macht Frei.
Swim for dear life

[NEW]
Scientists know more about the
                 moon
           than the ocean.

[WAXING CRESCENT]
Light can only dive 200 meters
            down into the ocean.  Below it,
the “Midnight Zone” glows in the dark.  
(By standing in your shadow,
I am hoping to become
                                         bioluminescent.)

[FIRST QUARTER]
Life has a tendency to thrive in hostile environments.  
                                                 ­                        For this reason, Jupiter’s moon,
                                                           ­              Europa, may be able to support
                                                                ­         life within the global ocean of
                                                              ­           liquid water that is hidden
                                                          ­               beneath the ice at its surface.
(This is why I am able to bloom in the dark.)

[WAXING GIBBOUS]
The ocean bows to no one but the moon.  Turn
off the lights.  Turn up the stars.  Low tide wants to
fold back inside itself and lap against the
                             shores of the Sea of Tranquility.  
High tide just wants to be noticed.

[FULL]
But a heated black body sunspot,
                (isolated from the rest
                of the photosphere),
still shines brighter than the moon.  Wolves should
be howling at the sun instead.

Humidity in theory
harbors images
of nights lit up
by bioluminescent flying jewels
that you catch in between your fingers
like a cage too large
and they fly away
into the sky.
The evenings are thick
with sweltering droplets
that hang beneath
the orange street lights
that cast a muted glow
onto your salty lips
and hazy eyes.
The day's steam.
And as the water fills your lungs
And as your clammy hands run through sweaty hair,
summer is alive.

Humidity in practice
invents beads running down your back
that pool in your shirt
and matted hair that sticks
to the nape of your tender neck
while you claw at your throat,
suffocated breathing
in between the condensation.
The days are layered with
mirages on the bubbling asphalt
like a sea that only burns you
and the yellow lines are
the only safe haven
when crossing the street
with just your soles.
The summer's plastic bag.
And as the sun blisters your skin
And as your hands only long for arctic rain from a calcium faucet,
summer is alive.

Still night;
eyes keen,
sheets unfurled—
sails.

The night, sometimes,
swims with sad fish.

The night, sometimes,
is a ritual drowning.

Lonely, I consider waking you
to say

*Look—
the stars are bioluminescent, baby.

I'm as faded
As that time you left the window open

And all my ladybugs & fireflies got out
            People started glowing
like my bioluminescent bonsai trees

And the spots from my ladybugs
         Fell off leaving black holes
Like the sewers
Where you hide your secrets from me

I will tell you not of our
Secret mangrove tenement,
Tunneled through the space
behind both of our eyes.
A place meant for whimsy
and bioluminescent fauna,
fawning faux sun light
out into obsidian night.

Nor will I tell of our
soul’s soft meridian,
served on the half shell
to both kind and prying
eyes, distant though
unarguably tied— ribbons
spun, fastened, dyed

For what end should I tell?
When your very presence is
Heaven.
And your very absence
Hell.

.               her **** sprinkled spine.
                her blackened fingertips from a day cleaning and smoking in
                the pre-spring heat.
                her knife atop the stump.

memory is the root of mankind’s trouble.

                  lullabies  
                  her mother used to sang,
                  as the fish gasped and to the bone.
                  
wilderness, a strange enchanted girl.
              
            her bioluminescent tent.
            her blackened beans and tortilla-leaves and peelings of cheese.
            her knife to whittle a twig.

her moments grow like gardens left alone to ghost-over.
to sample the city wilderness
& then slip further away into a rearview idea.
new republic.

                  paradise. she’s up that trail there.

Sometimes I feel her creep the edge of sleep

Where the city is burning,
I dream her mouthful of ashes.
I taste her starfish nova against the tide.

Her body is a book of matches;
Mine, a text, highlighted and underlined.

She weeps the sea-scuttle into an undertow.
Her fulsome wing, span of nightshade,
Weight-casts the lure to take flight,
Carrying her two shadows into the valley.

He says: *Yes, I live in paradise.
The red tide is mine.
The bioluminescent.  The drowned,
The ungainly specie God has set aside.

endlessness terrifies me
my chest swells and my heart flutters to think of it
a cold cold ocean blue like night filled to the brim with nothing
a long dark void both hot and cold. dead stars and dizzying dances full of forever


but you and your smile and your mind are endless
and I am not afraid at all
you are bioluminescent and there are stars trapped under your skin
(you have no antidote)

We strolled through converging pathways spilling with synchronized chaos, finding our own space amidst the rumpus of the crowds on a small hill overlooking an endearing muddle of humanity. The grass was wet with evening dew and we were colored with the aureate light of dusk, watching everything swim by with novel delight. The city erupted before us, vibrant, apathetic, and amoral and we swelled with its magnitude. Round and enchanted, we rolled down the hill and fell into the peculiar happenings encapsulated in the windows.
We stood before a man with no eyes and worms coming out of his fingertips in a room with no floor. He smiled at us, carious teeth bending into slight parabolas under the pressure of its sweetness. We excused ourselves quickly, escaping into a opaline kaleidoscope that had opened up before us. I could taste all the lives we tumbled past as a mix of bitter almonds and grapefruit with the occasional shock of decomposing fish heads.
We squeezed our bodies into the melody of a madrigal sung by a girl with four heads and sonorous hands to find ourselves in the rafters of an old cathedral. Below us contorted souls filed into wooden confessionals screaming sins of their fathers into the ear of a deaf priest who gave copacetic blessings in the form of an orange pill bottle. Distended and bruised, we fell from the ceiling into the baptismal font. Bioluminescent algal blooms effloresce above our heads and resplendent stingrays whisked by, casting soft, amorphous shadows across our cheeks. Lulled by the etherial tenderness of the liminal world, we fell asleep with your hand on my neck and my fingers tangled in your seaweed hair.
We awoke to the sound of falling peaches and splitting skin. I pulled a small fish out from behind your ear and inhaled the brine of your tongue before stepping into the open window beneath your pinkie finger. A man in a suit who was really a box jellyfish greeted me in the center of a opulent office building that had no purpose. I politely declined to shake his hand and instead lost myself in the map of the city unfurled beneath the wall of glass in front of me. I pulled a small seashell out of my pocket and threw it. Everything shattered.
I felt you next to me, falling through space and low-lying clouds to find ourselves in the present.
We are saturated colors of mustard, earthen green, and midnight blue sprawled on sloping grass without hesitation. Buoyant and expectant, we meander through song and chatter to find ourselves bright and shining on a warm green bench talking in improvised harmony. Our skin is a new composition of window light, yellow and breathing. A synthesis of memories pool and flush our cheeks with affection and we inhale the world. Flags pirouette and fall, a refracted constellation glimmers on glass, and you taste like honey and rich smoke. The moon is ebullient, so full and round that in a gasp I pluck it from the sky and place it in your shirt pocket. We’re effervescent, with giggling fingertips on a euphoric investigation into novelty of human sensation. Somnolent and gentle, we fall asleep with the memory of our water soaked bodies burgeoning under softened hands.

you love like you sin, terrified and breathless.
intoxicatingly sweet, a poisonous temptation.
bioluminescent boy,
you’re dripping heartache from
your seductive serpentine smile.
fireflies in your veins like trapped dreams
of those who fell,
crashed,
burned their way under your skin
where you carry them forever.

Growing up as a child and a young teen was not the best,
The memories up to this day traumatize me:
I always remember the bad ones and never the rest.
Now don't take this as a sob story I don't take well to pity,
Just give me a few minutes to dwell
On a childhood that was anything but well.

It was the 29th day of March,
A long and eerie night
A miscarriage was near in sight
The doctor told her:
Its very possible that you will lose your baby
After hours of pain and blood loss
Came a bundle of joy with "cat eyes" that brought light to all a young mother's flaws.
It was a miracle.
"Its a baby girl, woah look at those eyes they are almost bioluminescent in the dark"
Parents could never be so proud to bring such a beautiful creature to the world.
"I wish all the best, to this little girl"

Life was great
But I wasn't truly welcomed
Some people my existence upset.
But as a baby and toddler, it was great all I had to do was breastfeed, cry and ****.
Then time happened and life became complicated.
My mom cheated (or was continuously cheating) and there was no preset
My dad wished there was a reset
And me... I was treated like an asset;
For money.
For **** sake my young years have been duped.


Jonesy 2019 ©

You glow in the dark
That’s how bright you shine my love
Ever radiant
Filling me with warmth
My source of strength
My inner compass

A snowflake’s aura illuminates the room
A ring of blue in the dark
Bioluminescent particles
Like little living sparks
A bellowing voice in the void
Sings the sweetest melody
The walls move away
Bring my love into this world
My limbs unhinge themselves and set me free
My body cracks open
Light comes pouring out
I can feel the winter air within me
Mixing with my insides
I throw my head to the sky
And smile
My heart is beating too fast
Why am I afraid?
The sunlights come in to greet me
They take me in their arms
I float nearer to you
A head, floating among the snowcapped peaks
Surrounded by aura of light
You turn and smile

On the map there 's a tripod
And an eye blinking trying to focus
Far away on a land called Tierra de Fuego
And there  goes  my Muse's Range Rover
Greenlaning la luz del amanecer
Tracking butterflies orchids grasshoppers and dragons,
Sad salads and fired bananas and dew
And all sorts of bits and bobs
Keeping corrections to a minimum.
If it looks Topaz
She didn't do it !
She's more like aurora,
Traveling long distance with laughter
Or lenses cooking light with cuddles
Or stir frying a full curried moon over the volcanoes
Of seven types of fired bananas
Always worried about aperture and exposure
My muse wouldn't live without her lens bathing
Diving and swimming into the warm and shallow depth of field
Just as she wouldn't live without her daily dose
Of nine megapixels of bioluminescent plankton
Because my Muse is an addict
My muse is a Nikon D800 addict
and an aurora addict as well
Earthing and grounding relentlessly
The inner storms of morning light
Leading to her native archipelago
Of Tierra del Fuego !!

Echoes of words never said reverberate
through the desolate rotundra of my mind
encapsulating stabbing nothingness
featuring the limits of chaotic kismet
until the shade creeps into my eyes
like bubonic wraiths scouring the globe
searching for cravings, craving the search
discovering urchins and serpents alike
in the ocean that now fills my eyes
I watch a giant squid shoot ink
and articulate itself away
swimming to the bottom of my retina
where everything is flatter to withstand the pressure
bottom feeders suckle at the **** of the depths
pervading my flattened vision
swirling in a frenzy over pieces of my eyes floating downward
forming an inescapable black mass
trapping me in its rotating world
until a bioluminescent olm wanders through
trying to reach the surface
its light inspires me to follow
like I could grow to one day glow
in the sheltered cove of my eyes
the salamander rescued me to
where the shade still exists
with feeders beneath
but all those do anymore
is make my sanctuary feel like home.

There was a time, she said to me not so long ago.
It made me think about the things I don't already know.

I don't know if she loved me, her feelings were unclear.
I can tell you how my hands would shake whenever she came near.

I don't know where the light is, I can't seem to find the switch.
I can tell what the dark is like, she's a vacuous soulless *****.

I don't know how to "love" myself, I can be quite the ****.
My apathetic nihilism is enough to make me sick.

I don't quite get consumerism, is this something I should know?
Buying **** that I don't need just to help the market flow?

I once claimed to play piano, the fact is that I don't.
I could say that I want to, the fact is that I won't.

So many things left unmentioned, these things I don't know.
Like lightening bugs and that crazy bioluminescent glow.

There is something that should be said before I have to leave.
About a certain someone I keep tucked up in my sleeve.

She calls me out and lays me down stealing every breath.
A demeanor so befitting it would puzzle even Death.

Of all the things that I know so very little of.
She would be the only one that I could say I loved.

RGB colors mind scramble on your ceiling,
like in our closest amusement park.
Playing underneath it, unicorns and feelings,
making flesh shapes in the dark of your room.
Bioluminescent in its black sea,
I can't swim good but I ride the waves you send me.
You can't read but you're rather well read to me.
Promises wont break, but please bend me
over and over again.
When did I become this sober again?
You get me wanting
to remodel the homes that belong to lonely songs
only so that they can fit a king bed,
extra cool on my side because you're a furnace
that I huddle into and cherish earnestly.
You let me ramble run-ons and babble
or be still and mute, be it
swimming in space or silently disputing
but I can never stay quiet too long.
I can't ever hide whats wrong to you.
Or what's right, so I write to remind you
how beloved this is, unparalleled to whats behind
and how eager I am for what's ahead.

Let us go nightswimming
And weave myths out of memories

Let the stars shine over
The corals of your heart

With bioluminescent algae
Glowing around your body

As if a glow in the dark crucifix
Beatific as the moment of death

Smell the salty air
Neptune's drunken breath

And dance by the beach
With the partygoers drunk

In their mythmaking
Ecstatic like a monk

Weave the night, yes weave
Our breaths into a myth

Into Odysseus sailing the Aegean
Into the miraculous with the Galilean

Time as a concept
becomes especially troubling
once it makes itself known.
Now you’re against the clock.
All progress a single
stuttered step
from falling apart.
Brutalist landscapes
masquerading as a bioluminescent,
science-fiction sentient beings.

Unfortunately the clock,
is ticking.
Hours go by the past
increases the future
recedes. Possibilities
decreasing regrets
mounting.
Do you understand?

When it all burns,
as I assure you it will,
every empty office lobby
and husk of window looking down
from tender jagged tenement towers
will pour rivulets of ash across
broken bricked sidewalks
like crawling fingers of lace.

Only the mosquitos will remain unchanged.
Spilling deftly from the same canals as each
and every brood
to have ever come before.
Nipping the skin of those left behind,
to sing the names of the dead
into the corn seeds scattered hopefully
in cold air.

I figured it out at a fairly young age, there is nothing I want, only what I need.
But if I could have what I want? Free from the gluttony, the guilt, and the greed?

I want to know what, the where, when, and why.
The who doesn't matter, because everyone dies.

Its my desire to know these things that you don't.
Those things you can't know and probably won't.

Like just what was up with the loneliest whale.
Sung much too loud, no friends by his tale.

I'd like unlimited access to what the Hubble finds.
The **** you keep secret from blowing our minds.

To know what she's thinking, feeling, and ****.
So that I may know whether to stay or quit.

To be right on time for all the best sunsets.
Or to forgvie and forget all those ****** regrets.

To know when and where to see the northern lights.
A front seat next time the Komodo dragons fight.

To know if she's smiling, make the why optional.
To know if she's hurt, this ones unconditional.

And why was I where I shouldn't have been when?
And why the hell cant I go back there again?

How may I acquire a bioluminescent glow?
That one right there would be impressive to know.

Just how did I get her to despise me so much?
Was it the lack of presence, or the last time we touched?

What was the name of her favorite song?
I will learn this if it takes all night long.

don't ever forget
to drop to your knees

and be

grateful
for opportunity
lowered by winged white
into laps lonesome

this chance
this life

yes, free will
is yours as well
but, these moments
the not-so-subtle nudges
and the whispers that surf the wind
after it stands still for - so - long

don't forget
to be grateful
for that

could-be bestowed upon us
marked, holy

we are pocket blooms
of clover fields
lucky

the fates toil not
this hard
unless

sacrosanct potential brims
not just for us - but, to share

there will be so much
it will overflow out of us
and we will laugh, humbly
at scarcity-fraught mentalities

so, thank you
for being exactly who
you are:

beautiful boy
with tarnished halo

(no worries though -
I will lick it till it spit-shines
and polish on my gold-flecked fleece)

and your basketcase
of trinkets blathering
contents crooked
and bizarre

(BTW, I still loves them)

if you were not, precisely
these psyche spatters
and glitch patterns

you would not
have given me
a second glance...

we will make picnics
out of our spastic baskets
finding we can dine on the grist
and feed the eyes
of our hearts

so, I say yes to us -
no matter what
we are:

friends, editors, syntactic twins,
long-distance synaptic co-captains,
creative cohorts rapping across easels,
and perhaps even, angelic mirrors
worshipping at bioluminescent altars,
getting minds, hearts, insides glown
w  i  d  e open by white splatter streaks
blowing phosphor all over this space

that definitely exists
in us

...

I'm cool with whatever
though

:)

i know
whats wrong
with all the ones
that i know.

their drums drive them crazy.
every time their heart beats.
they have too much heart.

it keeps them alive
it keeps them strong
but life
and strength
arent enough.

theyre searching for
no,   hunting

the thing
the creature
the unknown being

which digs in tunnels
under their skin

lures them
from the sound
of the tranquil mind
and leads them
while looking back
and laughing
flickering its
bioluminescent bulb
into the massive
swelling halls
of the massive
swelling heart.

fury, rage
and shrieking, laughing madness
are the sound of the engines.

the citizens come in and out
with the weather and are
afraid and eventually
never return.

but this is where
the ones that i know stay.
because the animal
will never leave.
and will only die,
finally die,
when staring them in the eyes
laughing and choking
around their necks
only satisfied
when their enemy
smiles and shines
golden joy
green glowing excitement
and chokes just
a little bit harder.

their love is cruel
and untameable
and makes crooked grins
with broken teeth,
kisses just to spite.