You looked much prettier with long hair.
Don’t - give me that, show me a smile
it’s better to be natural oh!
look your arms are so hairy, hairier than mine.

Not rowdy or older than myself but definitely
confident and intelligent and maybe even
‘quirky’ as long as she’s thin
and kind. Because I don’t like fat girls

how to find your dream woma
where to find dream woman online free

I think I’m still in love with Grace but
she ignores and blanks and shuns me even
after I shared so much yet
she doesn’t even seem to care

hey
I’m verrru drunk
I see u
the little green dot next to your name haha
night then iguess

I think I just hate women and that
stupid insipid conceited *****
couldn’t tell a good guy if
he cuffed her clean
across the cheekbone
and spat in both her eyes

when she was eight years old
she
asked her mother
have you seen the girl with
lashes like butterflies against sharp cheekbone branches?
a dandelion sprouting from sludge covered gutters and streets
streets, where you feel that bitter bland nothingness in your stomach

it feels buttery to stare at her:
see how snow outstretches arms and twirls tippy toes, envies her grace
see how balloon sized raindrops pop, target the freckles on her arm
see how her forehead crinkles when she concentrates, nothing more than a beacon
proclaiming she trickles with stars

when she was eight years old
her parent's violent protests slipped bruises under her skin like pennies in a coin slot
but they could not contain the celestial girl tucked under her ribcage.

she would still look at her like she was the breakfast sun on a saturday
whistling by the creak, catching glimpses of dresses from behind the legs of trees.
see how this is special love, sweet as strawberry fields under soft sun
they would never feel on their forked, sour tongues

you wake up
his hair is spilled across the pillow,
the sun slants across his cheekbone
and his breath is slow and even.
he smells like an open field
and his body is wrapped around yours
so he keeps you warm.
you think,
there is no moment better than this,
that he is too perfect to exist.
but you wake up gasping,
skin soaked in sweat.
you lie there for a long time,
in your completely empty bed.

We come to a complete stop.
At a red light.
We wear our arms like seat-belts-
crossed for protecting our pilot lights.˚
I can't help but wonder how many airbags might deploy
if a meteor crashed headfirst and heavyset into the planet
and pancaked us eternally into this moment-
and how our fossils would look confused;
funeral flowers on a wedding cake.

None of this matters, we're both thinking it,
God is a foster child playing with his erector set.

You grin with as much conviction as a dented automobile,
breaking the months of silence to say,
"I miss you."

We can never fold these road maps back the way they came.

Somewhere existentially above this moment, there is an asterisk
that confirms
you- are here.

There was a younger version of me that you never got to meet,
he was here once,
stupid as a slinky.
Shaken like an Etch-A-Sketch.
Crooked as the question mark that punctuated his voice.
I looked good in hydroplane,
my eyes- bigger than my belly,
so I drank my weight in promises- I knew would be hard to keep within arms reach.
I also knew an encyclopedia's worth of how it felt to lie to myself.
I did it for twenty-three years
until I finally let go of stupid and held on to reason.

At some age I wrote letters to my favorite musicians,
using the sloppiest side of my penmanship, I'd ask for answers
and my mother, like a paperclip, used to tell me - she'd say,
"Kiddo, just because they don't respond
doesn't mean they didn't get the message."

She kept her chest of hope upstairs, away from the living room.
She only opened it on the hallow end of October;
that's where she kept the blankets.

Shy, I kept my hope chest covered in a T-shirt-
at the very least.
I never opened up.
I emptied my toy box of all its fiction, filled it with voices.
Deployed an army of rubber wrestlers, martial arts amphibians
and those inanimate toy soldiers with plastic parachutes attached
in search of the confidence I knew was supposed to belly-flop inside of me.

It hid, unfound for decades.
Until you entered.

Hawaiian domino effect, circus of chain reactions, avalanche of affirmation, chest-plate yielding gravity mouth speaking brightest anything forever night light, all apex and eyelash and cheekbone.
You -from big island- broke me.
I opened like the dry side of an umbrella, kept my back turned for shielding you.
I showed up for love on time, like a subway train in echelon city
wanting these arms to feel less like turnstiles.

All my sign languages were in waves.
All my ceilings turned to skies.
All my jitters packed into my hunger stomach.
Typing hyper with caffeinated hands
a swarm of nervous words bee-hiving in my butterfly chest.
Something like a hummingbird
when I finally drop your name like an alarm clock whisper
my lungs empty like cathedrals on the day after Christmas.

I brought the sermon to your Sundays,
you brought the choir to my masses.
We built a church around these esophagus bell towers.
Held ourselves up to the stained glass and showed off our light;

I swear I don't believe in a lot of things, God knows,
but there's always a but,
so much as I believe in the eternal depth of everything,
so much as I believe that we'd have plenty of water if it weren't for salt,
so much as I believe in eight marbles rolling around a gas lamp,
I believed we'd find a way.

'Cause in all the ways my sky could never hold you- and I mean this-
I believed in you- same way some people believe in Jesus.

Because you never judged my albatross mouth when I said things like,
"Self deprecation is the new love."
You kissed me-
less like doorstop,
more like lighthouse illuminating windmill.

You were a merry-go-round pivot decorated in Kona coffee beans, Christmas lights, cough syrup, paper mache pineapples, plastic dinosaur bones, a collection of worn-out Asics, board shorts and a dubstep remix broadcast through the static of a blown-out rotary phone.

You were everything I could get my hands on-

A full-tilt action-packed kaleidoscope jungle
with blender tongue and volcano heart.
I looked good in your sad panda coat tails,
teaspoon swallowing my doubts
while you Tarzaned my ability to breathe,
gave me ocean view and weak knees.
Is that sea breeze in your aftermath or are there already tears in my happiness?

You came camouflage out of my blind spot dressed in magnet armor,
diving board and drum set.
We passionbent cymbals into cannonballs.

I found comfort between your breastplate and your shoulder blades,
where you held me like a promise
when all my wishing was for want
and all your wanting was for wishes

Granted,

I know that there were days when you couldn't help but wake up like gorilla speaking Pidgin
and I couldn't help but waking up like an abandoned highway with a chip on my shoulder-
some maps don't show this much detail, Google Earth-

Which is why I always came through for you like a well-lit citrus truck stop
pressed against the dusk in your moonlight life crisis.
We only saw stars.
From our moon base.
In bewilderment, in our hunger, we learned
that if you hold me to my vending machines you'll get what you pay for.

So here it is, the truth, as I have always known it,
delivered to you on the outskirts of an echo,
my voice, supporting my existence like a monolith.

I'm standing in the middle of a you-shaped hole.
It's as wide as a promise crater-
we built it together.
It's not my favorite place to stand
but the exit strategies are made in the shape of a me that I haven't constructed yet.
I had a lot of things planned.
I referred to things as "ours",
when I really meant "please".

Bury me in your time lapse.
When your emotional excavators discover me in your sediment
they'll find me all pterodactyl-
wings spread wide as potential, sky-diving toward forgiveness,
forever.

Truth is, I'm wingless.

We met at a stop sign.
Our paths crossed.

There's a lot of accidents at some intersections.
Maybe it's because that's not where those two roads were supposed to meet.

We can't time machine argue with the way things landed.

We weren't an avoidable accident.
We were just two cars that really wanted to dance.

I don't know what I'm trying to say but I know when I mean it.

There's a tyrannosaurus rex cradled head-to-tail just behind my curator heart-
all fossil spine, monster teeth, jaw head and piano hands.
His presence says a lot about the past.
There's an asterisk on the surface,
above this moment,
that confirms with absolute certainty,

˚something wicked awesome happened here.

Chapter XXI
Hegira to Patmos

They dropped their moorings from Cala Cogone early, when the tide seemed to be separated from the waters like a head distanced from its body. On a lavish and romantic day they went to Genoa, to continue the logistics of the trip to Piacenza. During the trip Etréstles was stretched out in the bow under a Sun that seemed to be fearsome as it was a digestive task that would make him ingest his own dream, which perhaps he aspired to be more than a journey. While he slept, at the helm Etréstles dressed in a black robe and the comrades also sleeping with dreams that they painted with sign gestures on their faces.

Dream of Etréstles: "With the memory off-center ..., I was still in Izzana, dancing by the clouds on gray tulles of the layers of the sky that tried to stop being a Kingdom without a Crown and Sword". They glimpsed the stones melting and turning into gauze juxtaposed to the aerosolites that unfolded from the Sorcery, landing on the hands and heads of Vernarth and Himself. As he continued his dreamy journey, he dialogued with the auxiliary legate of his own dream. “He tells her that he sees them beyond where their liturgies collide. They cross eroding the vanished and itinerant reason”. He gets up and takes the moorings of the ship and ties them to his neck. Then everyone cooperates to walk along the edge of the ship, which all moved barefoot. This is how I would wake up!

Vernarth tries to wake him up, shakes him, but doesn't wake up. And when he tried to avoid him from sleep, he saw that he had the moorings around his neck, along with two Unicorns who were escorting him and were looking towards infinity, auspicious that Genoa was already coming in front of their horns. The others began to wake up and ate reclining, almost as if without any desire to get up from the deck full of self-sliding linen, which allowed everyone to pass their own meals, including those that were semi-consumed rolling on the deck. Etréstles,  transferred the dream to Vernarth, once he went to his bedroom to rest before they touched the roadstead at the foot of the homonymous promontory, 36 km from Genoa.  Portofino, close to the hydro form of the Portofino Regional Natural Park.  Being able to find different entrance doors through S. Rocco, Portofino Vetta and Nozaregoino  that led you to paths with different levels of accessibility and landscape. On the route of the path that traveled from Northwest to Southwest on the same promontory, he received the full beauty of the Mediterranean vegetation, with its beautiful pines, bluish and clean waters of the Mediterranean, which filled his lungs and especially his stem, which silenced of peace to those who accompany you through this interesting and beautiful Natural Park with deep blue eyes.
Vernarth is wrapped with two layers of linen and stands in between eclipsing each of the Unicorns. They pass her horn through her pectoral, as if wanting to insinuate affection. But her propitiated gesture was to crown her with the Power of her phalanx, the impetus in Gaugamela, an Onyx Crown, to lighten the burden of sleep and wake up before reaching the shores of Genoa.
Calling in Genoa, they all descend in a separate part and say goodbye from afar, gesturing with their hands. Their ramblings revealed multi-level radiographs of the resolved aura that invited them to an enclave hostel, to re-enter the world of their daily chores. The Unicorns who would return back to Sardinia stayed on the ship that was in the blue bay. They positioned themselves at the bow one and at the stern the other, to lighten the sails and return to Izzana.

Vernarth and Etréstles walked with their bags, letting go of their feet towards La Via ** Settembre, they travel in an east-west direction, next to Corso Italia, the promenade that runs along the promenade, which is one of the favorite places to reform the destination of Piacenza. From this road they moved near the adjacent carriage station to the Caruggio neighborhood in Sottoripa. Here they entered an inn to eat and drink liqueurs made from natural herbal recipes and sweet citrus, some fish with bread, sauce and Genovés sourdough. to satisfy their hunger.
They had dinner and opened the exit to the terminal. Before, they went to the Ponte Monumentale where the church dedicated to Santa Rita is, called Iglesia de la Consolación, whose entrance, at the level of the old streets, is slightly lower than the current street. They pass a porch and enter. "Almost like a grand cloister sensation they perceived during their stay, as if centuries had passed, but which never ended in the wanderings of any secular period. It was the impression once entered and soaked on this road, which still remains active. From this original cloister, the invocation of images on the sides placed towards the church towards Via ** Settembre, as well as the closed portal in the market access plaza on Via Galata, recur, while the other two sides are they completed attractions to admire when the eastern market in Genoa appeared before them ”.

When they entered, the masks were passed over the bones of their faces, indulgent towards both faces of the visitors, under a freshness of gravitational atmospheric fragrance, perhaps from the connected baptismal font or the lateral nave or the three naves separated by square pillars illuminating them. This is where Vernarth places his right hand on his forehead and his mouth, as a sign of catechesis detached from The Vault, the central nave and the counter-facade that were painted in fresco in 1874 by Giuseppe Isola, after reading about the intertextual verifying thus Vernarth. (Visioni dell'Apocalisse, Gloria di Nostra Signora della Consolazione and Giuditta rientra trionfante in Betulia), while Etréstles frenziedly admitted the frescoes through the side aisles that are the work of Giovanni Quinzio at an angle close to him. Observing everything, he was already indoctrinating to reprint new vigor to enter Piacenza triumphantly and head to the Region of Patmos. Giuseppe Isola's fresco was the great motive that struck his reason for being where he was to continue the threads upon threads of his lineage as the great Commander of the troops of Gaugamela and his Phalanges. Here is the church in its first tune with the duty of limitlessness before its steps to dominions that will make it recover their powers, from where they were first seen dressing in the clothes of an innocent child.


In the apse, there was the choir singing baroque pieces, and followed by elaborate wooden stalls from the 17th century. In the Altars on the left, on the Fifth Altar, Etréstles, captures a simultaneous vision. From that moment when it was the disappearance of this Santa Maria della Pace church, which could have been one structure on top of the other, perhaps in ruins but if the columns could go further from where their originals are born. Until then both had separated from each other, and they would meet again here in the apse, where they never lose sight of each other again, to turn towards the exit that required them to leave the sacred precinct. In the terminal, a grayish float awaited them, with silver trim on the edges of the structure, at the top of the front roof it said "Where you must never go and be". It was just the transport of an allegorical float. They were theatrical traveling artists, who had places available for travelers to Piacenza. The one that they just approached to move to the home, where they had to register at their own will and rejoin this excellent session "Parapsychological Regression".The Trebbia valley, a few kilometers from Piacenza. Vernarth noted that a shaft of the chariot made a strange sound. To which he notified the driver, telling him what he caught on the rear axle of the carriage. They go down to inspect all; not being able to detect anything that it would suppose would be an anomaly of filming of the instrumental east. Etréstles sees that some steeds were grazing on some meadows and he tells them all. Vernarth warns him and immediately heads to them. It reaches only a sorrel that was running its tongue over its hoof. The others flee. Vernarth approaches, and notices that he had a wound in his left hoof, noticing that in the center there was a strip of Green color, He takes his leg, and examines it. He takes out his dagger and begins to remove the stake that was inserted into his damaged leg. The others were gone, restarting the trip to Piacenza. Etréstles managed to climb a steed, and followed him - The float remained without them supposedly to arrive safely at Piacenza. But at 5 km, before reaching the city they are struck by a lightning bolt from a sudden storm. What misdirects his route - the passengers were left intact, only fatally suffered the loss of the driver. (It was verified by Vernarth when he arrived at his home in Piacenza).   As  Vernarth rode fast in the storm, trying to catch up with the carriage. Stress them towards the same to reach their brother. They rode propagating the pastures that passed near the forests of Val Trebbia. When the storm intensified instantly, it was wise to take refuge and wait for the flood to decrease. They were always close to each other. Etréstles about 18 km from Vernarth, they did not know it, but the horses sensed each other. They already distinguished, that they were close to each other, but it was necessary to take care of the horse, and have to check its hoof again. He checks it and notices that it had a green stripe in the four parts, like a pigment already placed concentrically in the middle of each hoof.


Ellipses Gaugamela - Final War
Vernarth bids farewells farewell. Once the Achaemenides are surrendered, he prepares to review them. Walk with Alikanto across the ****** plain. Reviewing his five hundred dead and three thousand wounded, he goes to recirculate in the footsteps of the attack, manages to see lead as a sentinel gathered wounded horses, but not serious. He approaches him and says Khaire; asking what unit they came from. He tells them of the Hosts of the command of Hefestion. The sentinel tells him, that he was enraptured by the fact before his eyes to see that all the horses of the line of Hefestion, Alexander the Great and Vernarth, to fascinate him that they had a green stripe on his left hoof. Wedge riders are formed, lining up the stable, towards the court of the guards and Macedonian monarchs. She dismounts from Alikanto and checks the chestnut trees, managing to insinuate that it could be Medea's ploy of the smiling charm towards her Hetairoi dancers, whose elite had bracelets on each leg on each chestnut. Also with the offensive weapon, they acted as the Macedonian's personal guard. Vernarth recalled that, before starting the offensive, with his blessed Xifos he inflicted light wounds on the left foot of his Phalanges in the act of "overtaking them before being stained by the enemy"

Vernarth says: Here is the cavalry that has received so much praise for «hammer» in the strategies, because it crushed the enemy units retained by the «anvil» or the «phalanx» that I had to command and lead the charge, intoning the riders. And even more the circumcisions that he gave them before entering combat. With the Hetairoi I was organizing squadrons of 200 to 300 soldiers, while they were checking the chestnut trees. In the campaign, they would ride the best horses, ******* or on the blanket, they were awarded the best weapons available. Each carried his long throwing spear Xyston, accompanied by a Kopis sword, for hand-to-hand combat, which in the interlude would defend his flax and bronze breastplate, with respective protective armbands and helmet, before lightly tackling his aggression . The horses were also partially protected, but not their hooves! I gave them the final instruction by decree to take them to the altarpieces and attend to them, so that they check their left hoof.Thus giving signs of great concern about the green stripe on each of its left hooves. Sentinel Hetairoi, with some of his servants, gather the animals and transport them where they have been ordered to tend and examine them. As the designs collapse over the night in gloomy litanies, Medea bursts into a great green outfit saying:

Medea: Vernarth, rancid are on my memory the potions and designs of those who want to talk about me or offer me in their lust.Where the zeal of anxiety deceives the wishful arms that welcome the victorious pleasure. Hooves are my skeptics and famous decisions, because I am weak in will but not in character. Green is the pouring of my converted powers into the veins of the horses. They were carriers in their eloquent ferocity. Instead of blood, I had sap from the magic vessels that I transferred to them so as not to doubt the doubts. Their object is that a green band was encased in their hooves as a sign of the Hipnos promontory through their Son Clovis, to plunge all the forests of the raging underworld, towards the heart of each "Valiant Hetairoi".


Outside ellipsis / near Piacenza
Vernarth and Etréstles in a post-storm clearing, a soft breeze greets them and they meet again, they greet Khaire! And together they reroute to the empty pastures, which would gradually begin to venture them through the farthest forests of the Val Trebbia. On some brown plains with poor colors that visited him falling as they faded on his mirage. From this unusual crossroads they will supremely perceive the closeness of Piacenza in their breathing.
Now they are in the vicinity of the Cimitero de Piaceza. Then they will have to go home on the Via Giovanni Codagnello, on the calendar of January 2020. The Parapsychological Regression continues.


Piacenza Cemetery, January 20, 2020
Vernarth and Etréstles entered the necropolis long before sunset. They were carrying a cake to celebrate Vernarth's birthday. Night Patrol joined the visit. In particular, they followed a night watch service that was active, trusting their guide Piacenza or the surrounding area, with 3 internal night patrol passages 365 days a year, for the rest of lives beyond all material life, perhaps turned into marble statues.
They hired a special service dedicated to the approved service for 2 people .; They were active during the caretaker's office opening hours (the same opening hours as the cemetery). With this service they overcame difficulties to walk after so much traveling. They leave the green-hoofed horses, now turned into statues. They request authorization from the entrance cemetery offices, to honor their belonging and to please those who visit them on their behalf. In Genoa, after having passed through the exterior without entering, they were ecstatic with the Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa (the most monumental in Italy).But if they enter the Piacenza, where the sanitary monumentality passed through the real function of such an enclosure in the contingency. It was commented by the neighboring offices that the migration of corpses from Bergamos were moved to Modena, Acqui Terme, Domodossola, Parma, Piacenza to carry out the respective ceremonies. Due to the great Viral Pandemic that decimated a great majority of Italian citizens in these areas. Vernarth became aware of the current reality, saw how a gravedigger conversed with the crowds, there was a nurse, a doctor and a prodigal man who concentrated on uploading moods to those who were there, almost like a caster, to relieve them of this transitory despite humanity.
They continue past the pyramidal pines, to the central pavilion. They sit on the edge of some flagstones, and take the cake to celebrate their birthday. They sing a hymn and they both enjoy it lovingly. Etréstles saw that he had a little cream left on his nose and cheekbone, running his hand to remove it. In the instant, the guard calls them; it was time to go because it was time to close the compound. They say goodbye with a monumental hug paying tribute to their brother!


Etréstles says: Honors Vernarth, for your immeasurable Valor! It is a great contribution that we divide our work and commitments. From here I go to the Messolonghi Cemetery. I will only wait for the crescent moon to meet the Charioteer, then leave with him and my beloved Drestnia. My Xifos Sword in my right hand and the head that I cut off in my left hand, in Gaugamela before that rugged fate! Khaire, My honors Commander Etréstles!. It remains in the shadow of some pyramidal pine trees of this sublime night, and then they distance themselves. Vernarth leaves the compound heading towards his house relatively close to the cemetery, on the Via Giovanni Codagnello.


Final session in Vía Codagnello, Piacenza:
Vernarth enters opens the door and everyone is waiting for him. Huge groups of friends, work colleagues, family, their pets, and especially the Parapsychologist, who had commanded this whole great session. They all approach her and in the instant, Vernarth awakes abruptly from the parapsychological session. They stabilize it and check your vital signs. There were many days of this odyssey. His awakening was mediatic, since they were attentive to him to question him and confess everything, but he was clear that his purpose would lead him to the confines of Patmos along with Raeder and Petrobus. It remained only to wait for the tenuity of a simple immortal warrior to assist in the services of John the Evangelist. The parapsychologist says you have to wake up, you can no longer be AND stay here in this temporary tube!
Once he has refused to wake up, he takes the itinerary to return to Macedonia. The visibly worn and stunned parapsychologist demands that he give up and obey his command. The effort was unproductive, only letting himself be carried by the grip of his right hand, taking his other with great vigor to remove it from shamelessness, from whom he does not suppress his pride to who still remains wounded by the swords that bleed his soul in Gaugamela. "Everyone is amazed and resigned !, pointing out that he must have always been in the surroundings of his beloved Macedonia, cutting the bursts of succulent insolence on the same temperate cliffs, where some variation of the sounds of the wind would make him saddle his Alikanto to acclaim the gods who came looking for him ”

Vernarth is engulfed in ambivalence, almost celebrating his birthday and waking up from his parapsychological journey. Both will take place, but the session will continue irrevocably. After a few days close to the first day of the crescent moon, he greeted him from a privileged place on his house Etréstles de Kalavrita who was with the Charioteer in his car and Drestnia, they went in that masterful car to join the chores of the Koumetrium Messolonghi (Editorial Palibrio - USA) .So returning to Messolonghi, to meet his disciples and essences of the foundation of his naturalness.


Hegira to Patmos
On a gray day in July 1820. Piacenza slept under the ambush of the revolution, in Italy there was a situation similar to that of another European nation. Vernarth was preparing his last details with the parapsychologist, to undertake his Hegira to Patmos, since he was a revolutionary and this was of great motivation to emigrate from this constant stage of Wars and sociopolitical processes. Manage to be a participant in this revolt in the Piedmont area. Its ideological axes were liberalism and nationalism. Given that the most affected countries were those of southern Europe (episodes from other areas, such as Germany or France, were much less important), with Spain as epicenter of a movement that extended to Italy and Portugal, and on the other hand Greece; It has been called the Mediterranean cycle as opposed to the Atlantic cycle that had preceded it in the previous generation (the first liberal revolutions or bourgeois revolutions, produced on both sides of the ocean: the Independence of the United States -1776- and the French Revolution -1789- ). As compromised great principalities of much of Europe were banned, it participates in great dissolution of collisions and invasions that involved it. In this way he would liberate his Homeland, especially his province of Piacenza.

Although the "Kingdom of Italy" as such did not exist, there were two great kingdoms that participated in the Revolutions of 1820: the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of Piedmont. However, most of the revolutionary movements were driven by secret societies, such as coal. The Kingdom of Piedmont was also one of the most affected, since it was at the epicenter of Italian nationalism. It was controlled by Víctor Manuel I, member of the House of Savoy and defender of the Old Regime. The monarch had only been on the throne for 6 years, since he returned to Turin in 1814 due to the defeat of Napoleon. Since his return, various factions within the country advocated for a unification of all the Italian kingdoms. The unstable situation of its neighbor, the Kingdom of Naples, caused the carbonarians within Piedmont to revolt in March 1821.

Conclusive Hegira ellipsis to Patmos:
After this great conflict, he orders his parapsychologist to resume his final session in Patmos; he begins the procedure for the era that he had to trespass anachronistically, returning to the era of the Macedonian Empire. The parapsychologist asks him time, place, dates, clothing, customs, and manages to meet his request. He enters the portal, and in the backwaters of Messolonghi he meets Raeder and Petrobus. They were close to this heroic land, Messolonghi in the Gulf of Patras, the capital of Aetolia-Acarnania. Nothing less than in the land of his Brother Etréstles "Koumeterium Messolonghi".


"They all approach the vicinity, pray three times to heaven, and manage to be abducted to the underworld of Messolonghi. When they were snooping through the catacombs, they make out the surroundings of a luminous vault, thus distinguishing a woman passing by with others. It was the beautiful nymph Eurydice inaugurating The Constitution of a new Government”.
Eurydice and the gravediggers worked for the new government to be instituted. They were reviewing the last ground plans that converged on the tenth cemetery.
Eurydice ...: with the absence of Etréstles and Drestnia we will make her awakening continue, whose awakening phase closely relates to her wife.
Grave ...: Where do we start?
Eurydice ...: by the southwestern statue of Ashurbanipal, to pay tribute to Botsaris. Then, we will go up to receive the cordoned off tomb of Bramante and Ghiberti, so that the latter can advise us regarding the work to be erected.
They climb the northeast pavilion to the foundations of a mausoleum. They approach the slab of Ghiberti, who was loosening his fingers, sitting on the shore of a Pyramid-shaped cypress. Bramante vanished into the gray beams of light...

Ghiberti ...: I already know your mission. I am summoned to the Council on the day of the sailors' return. To start, they went to the mines to look for precious stones, stones to build Markos Botsaris.
Eurydice ...: Good! Well, in nine moons and nine suns they will return from the coasts of Morocco, the last docking point, so that they can then return. At the moment they are already warned.
Just back, there was a Lover with her right hand holding her chin.

Inamorada In Love ...: Five centuries ago I awaited my awakening, my lover promised to return ... with these verses...:
"I want to be different,
I want to take you my love...
and tell you that by missing you
there is no greater sadness than not seeing you ...
Forgive me for not coming back...
before my absence caused your death,
Wait for me ... I'm going to tell you ... how I miss you
Along with my immortality of feeling...!  How I miss you...!!

... He still tells me this, but from here, under the embankment of the cemetery I feel that he is far away and I can do nothing. Also, I have it in my memory and one day we will meet here. The Enamorada continues to sit and watch armies of soldiers being thrown into graves, their bodies severed. As she continues; ... there is more life here than on the surface, and the trenches replace the concave wombs, as vessels! As everything here lives, even the flowing and hallucinatory invocations are perceived from the Poets, Alchemists and Astronomers. They make the invisible go in a formidable adventure to the site of their magical hallucinations.
Eurydice ...: Stay on your stone, with your chiffon dress; here you will see the arrival of Etréstles. He will bring news from other lands to answer you. Now dispense if we delay, sadness will fall on the other beings who are being buried and transhumated. The Enamorada remained on the stone with her knees resting on her chest. Eurydice and her assistants went to their rooms. "
All this they manage to witness, and then go in search of Etréstles on the same tenth cemetery floor. Raeder and Petrobus were laughing and at the same time they were impressed, as if wanting to remember him when they have to leave directly from Messolonghi to Patmos, towards the Dodecanese region. In the meantime Vernarth was searching for his brother in all the nearby areas of the catacombs flashing penetrating light, unable to find him. He arrives at the ninth cemetery and is fascinated by a feminine image that would seem like a phantasmagorical chimera ..., it was Drestnia moistening some ferns on some crypts making gestures to see them already grown, even if they had just been planted...!

They approach her intimacy and ask her greetings, Drestnia answers them abstractedly that Etréstles traveled to Patmos to applaud the maiden ceremonies that would be wed in the spring in the nearby meadows. Being able to settle in The Monastery of Zoodochos Pigi, and who later went to the hills of Castelli, as it has been known that everything has been celebrated on a hill that many hundreds of years ago has sheltered our historical fragrances in the unity of the ethereal until the present. Such ruins among some works as well as the Temple of Apollo that will continue to survive with its prevailing mystery not revealed.
Etréstles gives them their congratulations and wraps his arms around Drestnia. They evacuate the cemetery, remaining abstracted in the internal darkness of the catacombs with fewer lights than a feasible twilight of darkness, as if immediately leaving Etréstles to be with him in the spring, shedding light on herself taking them to the Castelli hills, which they would figure in the sweetened exaltation of the pollinations of the nymphs on the maternal and ****** maidens.

They go out and spread their impulses over the promontory of the Koumeterium of Messolonghi with Raeder and Petrobus on Raeder's shoulders. Vernarth invoked the north with her staff where Alikanto would appear with her hooves with greenish stripes.

Raeder says:  Let's go. On those warm currents to follow we will not unite you Vernarth. Smiling, the fantastic boy danced, forming figures that enlivened him to hold on to the legs of Petrobus. They both stared at Vernarth and raised high above the warm clouds. Beneath the Messolonghi miniature, she had Vernarth's sights on them; she was putting reins and her Hoplite tunic, to mount Alikanto. He looks around and makes a big sign to Raeder to follow him to where he was, they suspend themselves and manage to go back to the highest mass of misty airs that would take them against the clock towards Patmos to meet Saint John and Etréstles.

1
Who will honor the city without a name
If so many are dead and others pan gold
Or sell arms in faraway countries?


What shepherd's horn swathed in the bark of birch
Will sound in the Ponary Hills the memory of the absent—
Vagabonds, Pathfinders, brethren of a dissolved lodge?


This spring, in a desert, beyond a campsite flagpole,
—In silence that stretched to the solid rock of yellow and red mountains—
I heard in a gray bush the buzzing of wild bees.


The current carried an echo and the timber of rafts.
A man in a visored cap and a woman in a kerchief
Pushed hard with their four hands at a heavy steering oar.


In the library, below a tower painted with the signs of the zodiac,
Kontrym would take a whiff from his snuffbox and smile
For despite Metternich all was not yet lost.


And on crooked lanes down the middle of a sandy highway
Jewish carts went their way while a black grouse hooted
Standing on a cuirassier's helmet, a relict of La Grande Armée.


2
In Death Valley I thought about styles of hairdo,
About a hand that shifted spotlights at the Student's Ball
In the city from which no voice could reach me.
Minerals did not sound the last trumpet.
There was only the rustle of a loosened grain of lava.


In Death Valley salt gleams from a dried-up lake bed.
Defend, defend yourself, says the tick-tock of the blood.
From the futility of solid rock, no wisdom.


In Death Valley no hawk or eagle against the sky.
The prediction of a Gypsy woman has come true.
In a lane under an arcade, then, I was reading a poem
Of someone who had lived next door, entitled 'An Hour of Thought.'


I looked long at the rearview mirror: there, the one man
Within three miles, an Indian, was walking a bicycle uphill.


3
With flutes, with torches
And a drum, boom, boom,
Look, the one who died in Istanbul, there, in the first row.
He walks arm in arm with his young lady,
And over them swallows fly.


They carry oars or staffs garlanded with leaves
And bunches of flowers from the shores of the Green Lakes,
As they came closer and closer, down Castle Street.
And then suddenly nothing, only a white puff of cloud
Over the Humanities Student Club,
Division of Creative Writing.


4
Books, we have written a whole library of them.
Lands, we have visited a great many of them.
Battles, we have lost a number of them.
Till we are no more, we and our Maryla.


5
Understanding and pity,
We value them highly.
What else?


Beauty and kisses,
Fame and its prizes,
Who cares?


Doctors and lawyers,
Well-turned-out majors,
Six feet of earth.


Rings, furs, and lashes,
Glances at Masses,
Rest in peace.


Sweet twin *******, good night.
Sleep through to the light,
Without spiders.


6
The sun goes down above the Zealous Lithuanian Lodge
And kindles fire on landscapes 'made from nature':
The Wilia winding among pines; black honey of the Żejmiana;
The Mereczanka washes berries near the Żegaryno village.
The valets had already brought in Theban candelabra
And pulled curtains, one after the other, slowly,
While, thinking I entered first, taking off my gloves,
I saw that all the eyes were fixed on me.


7
When I got rid of grieving
And the glory I was seeking,
Which I had no business doing,


I was carried by dragons
Over countries, bays, and mountains,
By fate, or by what happens.


Oh yes, I wanted to be me.
I toasted mirrors weepily
And learned my own stupidity.


From nails, mucous membrane,
Lungs, liver, bowels, and spleen
Whose house is made? Mine.


So what else is new?
I am not my own friend.
Time cuts me in two.


Monuments covered with snow,
Accept my gift. I wandered;
And where, I don't know.


8
Absent, burning, acrid, salty, sharp.
Thus the feast of Insubstantiality.
Under a gathering of clouds anywhere.
In a bay, on a plateau, in a dry arroyo.
No density. No harness of stone.
Even the Summa thins into straw and smoke.
And the angelic choirs fly over in a pomegranate seed
Sounding every few instants, not for us, their trumpets.


9
Light, universal, and yet it keeps changing.
For I love the light too, perhaps the light only.
Yet what is too dazzling and too high is not for me.
So when the clouds turn rosy, I think of light that is level
In the lands of birch and pine coated with crispy lichen,
Late in autumn, under the hoarfrost when the last milk caps
Rot under the firs and the hounds' barking echoes,
And jackdaws wheel over the tower of a Basilian church.


10
Unexpressed, untold.
But how?
The shortness of life,
the years quicker and quicker,
not remembering whether it happened in this or that autumn.
Retinues of homespun velveteen skirts,
giggles above a railing, pigtails askew,
sittings on chamberpots upstairs
when the sledge jingles under the columns of the porch
just before the moustachioed ones in wolf fur enter.
Female humanity,
children's snots, legs spread apart,
snarled hair, the milk boiling over,
stench, **** frozen into clods.
And those centuries,
conceiving in the herring smell of the middle of the night
instead of playing something like a game of chess
or dancing an intellectual ballet.
And palisades,
and pregnant sheep,
and pigs, fast eaters and poor eaters,
and cows cured by incantations.


11
Not the Last Judgment, just a kermess by a river.
Small whistles, clay chickens, candied hearts.
So we trudged through the slush of melting snow
To buy bagels from the district of Smorgonie.


A fortune-teller hawking: 'Your destiny, your planets.'
And a toy devil bobbing in a tube of crimson brine.
Another, a rubber one, expired in the air squeaking,
By the stand where you bought stories of King Otto and Melusine.


12
Why should that city, defenseless and pure as the wedding necklace of
a forgotten tribe, keep offering itself to me?
Like blue and red-brown seeds beaded in Tuzigoot in the copper desert
seven centuries ago.


Where ocher rubbed into stone still waits for the brow and cheekbone
it would adorn, though for all that time there has been no one.


What evil in me, what pity has made me deserve this offering?


It stands before me, ready, not even the smoke from one chimney is
lacking, not one echo, when I step across the rivers that separate us.


Perhaps Anna and Dora Drużyno have called to me, three hundred miles
inside Arizona, because except fo me no one else knows that they ever
lived.


They trot before me on Embankment Street, two hently born parakeets
from Samogitia, and at night they unravel their spinster tresses of gray
hair.


Here there is no earlier and no later; the seasons of the year and of the
day are simultaneous.


At dawn ****-wagons leave town in long rows and municipal employees
at the gate collect the turnpike toll in leather bags.


Rattling their wheels, 'Courier' and 'Speedy' move against the current
to Werki, and an oarsman shot down over England skiffs past, spread-
eagled by his oars.


At St. Peter and Paul's the angels lower their thick eyelids in a smile
over a nun who has indecent thoughts.


Bearded, in a wig, Mrs. Sora Klok sits at the ocunter, instructing her
twelve shopgirls.


And all of German Street tosses into the air unfurled bolts of fabric,
preparing itself for death and the conquest of Jerusalem.


Black and princely, an underground river knocks at cellars of the
cathedral under the tomb of St. Casimir the Young and under the
half-charred oak logs in the hearth.


Carrying her servant's-basket on her shoulder, Barbara, dressed in
mourning, returns from the Lithuanian Mass at St. Nicholas to the
Romers' house in Bakszta Street.


How it glitters! the snow on Three Crosses Hill and Bekiesz Hill, not
to be melted by the breath of these brief lives.


And what do I know now, when I turn into Arsenal Street and open
my eyes once more on a useless end of the world?


I was running, as the silks rustled, through room after room without
stopping, for I believed in the existence of a last door.


But the shape of lips and an apple and a flower pinned to a dress were
all that one was permitted to know and take away.


The Earth, neither compassionate nor evil, neither beautiful nor atro-
cious, persisted, innocent, open to pain and desire.


And the gift was useless, if, later on, in the flarings of distant nights,
there was not less bitterness but more.


If I cannot so exhaust my life and their life that the bygone crying is
transformed, at last, into harmony.


Like a Noble Jan Dęboróg in the Straszun's secondhand-book shop, I am
put to rest forever between tow familiar names.


The castle tower above the leafy tumulus grows small and there is still
a hardly audible—is it Mozart's Requiem?—music.


In the immobile light I move my lips and perhaps I am even glad not
to find the desired word.

I took a breath of air. Breathed in once, breathed out twice.
She departed now, and I don’t feel any regrets. Because,
We weren’t meant to be connected together, with one another.
She treated me wrong. And I treated her badly as well.
I was under a storm cloud for the longest time,
Trying to find warmth in a frozen pond.
A relic was what love could be—lost potential—found,
In the depths of another lover’s hands.
Lies. Lies. Lies. I plugged my ears with small foam pieces,
Because I couldn’t bear to hear her strained voice.
Broke me into shattered pieces,
They’d spread over the floor. And my soul swathed itself
In the glass, blood staining my cheekbone.

I once left my heart in the pocket of a saint
blinded by sunset light, drunk from midnight madness,
and falling into the monotony of broken dandelion stems and lost eyelash wishes-
I didn’t think I would need it much longer
The burden of rebirthing beats continuously
stamping out the keys
Of my empty piano chest –
As I held onto the breaths of broken warriors
Sponging the blood off their slashed

double
layered
skin

And praying
they could keep their fight for just

One
More
night

He never noticed the extra beat
added to the twitches of his time-ticking body
deaf from the ringing calls to heroism
only on the odd hours he didn’t have muffled
by the recipes of the women he’d saved
buying out bravery like it could shield his soft tongued love
leaving nothing but the clothes on his back
woven from stardusted bomb shelters
And
left over hopes
selling the silver lining of every breath he took
just to buy the next broken-bar girl a drink

He was a saint after all --

born from the innocent hopes I wish I still had,
tucked in the corners of sun-freckled smiles
and
Mothering seatbealt arms
and
Careless Carnival Food
the kind I know some of my soldiers withered against
writhing their souls from the bodies they had been straight jacketed too
prisoners of war stuck in the memory
of just how many calories a sugared funnel cake could have
did have
will have
add up to the self worth shot out of their chest
from last nights uncontrolled binge
of two apples and a cheerio promise ring

No,
he had never been in the middle of the war
never known the taste of blood
rusting in the rain of covered up skin
drenched in the salt water stings of failure
peeling away the scabs of
addictive adrenaline disadvantages
and mapping the battle plan of tomorrows attack
against an enemy so close
it was breathing the same air your lungs had not finished purifying

No,
his hands had never held the dyeing breaths of a comrade in arms
as they shook from the fears riding up their spine
praying the poison won’t take
praying the stolen bottles didn’t break
and that violent vomiting viguals
might burn just enough of the alcohol mistake
so their blood won’t have to curdle

No,
he had never heard the desperation
of sobbing secretes suddenly swindled
from between the lips of a girl who never wanted to remember
the night that never happened
one year, five months, fourteen days --
and three hours ago
her father had asked her why she never wore skirts anymore
and why she never brought boys over anymore
and why she never left her room anymore
and why her silent cheekbone cry for help never smiled anymore

No.

A saint is never found on the battlefield
never scared by the everlasting burns
of war paint psychiatric wards
and gun powder therapy sessions
sprinkled with the hope against hope moments that maybe
we’ll have a break through --

Like the ****** morning sun rebirthing the beats
of duck taped dreams
and
medicated eyes
and
catatonic lips --

I left my heart in the pocket of a saint
confessing the sins of the hopeless hospital it fueled
between our silent lipped kisses
squeezing out the stories of unnamed soldiers
between our woven fingers
and betraying my fear
in the tremble of my body against his –
I left my heart with him on the one-night-stand whim
that I would grow deaf to the sound
of TAPS played on my piano rib keys
and
blind to the specks of blown dandelion wishes

But I still hear the echoes of them
rattling against the stitching
of his bomb shelter pockets

and I wonder if he’s still searching for me
between the crumpled recites of midnight mass mixers
and
open cathedral whispers

because I still think of him sometimes
absent mindedly pick pocketing saints for smiles
but I’ve only found lint and regret
tucked in the corners of their heroic attempt
to protect the bruised hearts of the saviors
who haven’t quite yet found salvation

T*hree seventy-five. At my current muscle weight, that’s the amount of force, in pounds, with which my fist smashes into my opponent’s face. Flesh molds against my knuckles, vessels rupture under the impact; I am that unstoppable object, that destruction you can only watch. I am that confused, hurt, angry child. I channel it through my arms, conduct it through my knuckles, watch it spark and jump from fist to cheekbone. This is the therapy I so wantonly crave, so needed. The only place I can vent the full wrath of my frustration upon the world; or…at least, a single member of it….

Jump back three days.

     *Why can’t I see you more? I text her. Because I don’t want a relationship. She says. I don’t need a relationship. I just want to see more of you. I tell her. I’m afraid I’ll invest too much. She says. I don’t understand. Is that a bad thing? Seven years of friendship, two of off-on dates and rendezvous. How could you get more invested? What else can you spill after your hearts in a pool at my feet?
I drank a lot that night.

Jump back four days.

     I’m coming out that way. What are you doing tonight? I always initiate…everything. Always the first question, the first proposal, the first, the first, the first. Am I that threatening? Going out with friends. Homework and going out is all this woman seems to do. Maybe one less night with friends, one more with me wouldn’t hurt? Cool. Celebrating a birthday with friends, we’ll be out and about. Maybe we should meet up? If I’m here, she’s got no reason to refuse me…right? I thought distance was our only problem. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. I don’t want you to see me stupid drunk. What a stupid excuse. I actually want to see you stupid drunk. I will at some point if we keep things up.

     Long story short, a guy she sometimes ***** is going to be wherever it is they’re going, and she doesn’t want to have two guys she’s seeing in the same vicinity. What does that make me? I’m getting frustrated with all this confusion and sideways talking. My group incidentally ends up at the same place they are. I don’t even talk to her face-to-face. I’m such a sporting guy. She goes home...alone, to my relief. I get stupid drunk with friends. But never forget to message her back and act like everything’s cool.

Jump ahead a week.

     More conversations to clear up why I fill only one void in her life lead to more confusion. I’m frothing with it. It’ll be in my mouth soon. Wait…I taste it already.

     “Let’s drink and pick fights,” I say to a couple buds. Two hours out, we’re sloshed and trading licks in a back alley. The guy that had taunted and jostled me in the bar follows us out and picks a fight. Says I’m too drunk. Not worth it. I hide a smile, raise my arms, “Let’s see.”

     Shirts are off. Left hook to my ribs, I pivot an elbow, deflect with forearm. This leaves his side open. I duck his wild right-hand and drive a straight hit into his open spleen. He hits the alley wall. “Still want to take a drunk?” I taunt from my knee. He comes back, still sure of himself. I’ll show you what confidence does to us, my friend. He puts up a boxer’s guard and comes back, more cautious. Friends and enemies cheer and joan around me. I don’t hear a thing. There are thoughts. Dark, confused, smashed together, waiting to be dealt with. I focus on all of it. I focus on his face. I listen to the conversations that leave me more hurt and alone than they should. I lean into a false waltz stance, he doesn’t notice the feet. I notice his. He’s more drunk, on less, than I. Every time you breathe, I hope you think of me. The mass in my mind flows through my arms and legs. I charge and he punches straight where my head should go. I dodge right, grab his wrist, snap in and pull out, stringing him in an invisible flaying bed; my left elbow crosses his solar plexus, throwing him to the ground. Knees pin his arms. The hate, and anger, and confusion, and helplessness dissolve between fist and flesh, arc across the pain in my heart and the bruises and blood flowing freely from a fool....

Never entice a man with a need to portray his problems upon a heedless world.

     His friend steps in and plants a well-thought-out fist against my jaw. The one on the ground is down for the count. My friends don’t step in. They know me. I roll off him before his friend’***** can follow through. Now I have physical pain to channel, too. I grin and my assailant isn’t comforted. This is the release I need. This is my way out. This is what will help. *******, world. ******* girl. **** all of you for your games and your feelings and your mysteries. To hell with why you think you need to hide your heart. Wear it on your ******* sleeves. **** your dishonesty and your insincerity. **** your exes. May you all drowned in your lies and guilt and shame. **** you for assuming I’d ever judge any of you, for not taking my love at face-value, for thinking I had anywhere near the ulterior motives you all harbored. My left hand grabs his left elbow, simultaneously blocking a right jab and flipping his arm out of the way for the full force of my right arm into his ribs. A cacophony of bone and flesh giving way to my wrath meets my ears. He yelps. Never yelp when you’re trying to be strong for a friend. Keep your ****** lips closed, *******. He recovers only slightly before my right meets his face. My arc is perfect: the momentum of muscle as it curves the natural twist of a muscled arm, the darkness of my life gathering on knuckle-tips like obsidian gems glinting in the ***** hallway between worlds of vice and vindication, the cording muscle releasing the pent-up rage of a thousand lives gathered in one body.

     Connection shatters worlds. The horror of life bleeds across his broken window to the world. The reflection of my jeweled nirvana winks across his eyes. See the world I live in, failed rescuer. See the hopeless honor I hold in my *****. Sleep with the knowledge that even when you try, someone will always be there to flash the dark, jaded realities across your eyes…and bring you to my level.

     The other friends won’t budge ‘till I’ve stepped past. They part like the Red Sea for me. My ark is empty until I interact with the world tomorrow.

Brief peace is better than none.

-###-

We marked the deaths on a map in little black tallies,
every day we counted the numbers and they had come to a strong incline.

You sat in the dust by the flames
playing with a cattail
and you asked me
“When will it be over?”

The smoke drifted into open sky above us and I tried to count the stars.

The map was held together by rivers and
railroads
and lakes.
And we were held together by a commonplace drive:

Hope.

The poem in your eyes had no backbone and it was falling apart at the seams and it made you
tired and
sad and
hopeless.

The map is held together by little black tallies on the edges from an old charcoal pencil.
And we are held together by a thread of life that could very well be

snipped.

Alas, that is out of our reach but we must remember to always
fight! and to stay alive
please keep holding on
please

Because home awaits with open arms and we are here counting stars and
we must never die.

~

The mayor warned when we came home to
never leave again
and to
never go again
and I do not understand because
we couldn’t stop that
and you told me that I understand
and that he doesn’t.

Mother looked at me and my scars
disgusted
and told me to go
and told me that I shouldn’t be home.

And we found a lake from the map marked with a charcoal pencil and stayed there
and you fished
and I found berries.

Every night we counted the stars and
we were connected by constellations.

Every night we were connected by the grass beneath us
pricking the backs of our necks

and we caught the flying stars
(Fireflies)
and we were connected by constellations.

The notes of the piano rang in open air across the lake
how far can the notes stretch to connect us?  

As the lake grew, constellations stretched
far
and we never knew what color your eyes were.

Blinded by the bright light from the upcoming sun,
we both ran for cover, turning our backs on each other for the first time in
a while.

The thick trees hid us from the light well enough, but
you
weren’t
there.

We kept running.
The sun was catching up
too fast
and we ran for everything we could live for.
(each other)

I ran for you and you ran for me.
That’s all we could do until you laid on the ground,
tired and
sad and
hopeless.

You stopped running so I did too and we both were hungry for what we could’ve had.

~

When we were still in the war, they let you bring one thing from home.
You brought the idea of hope
and I brought the idea of music
and we mixed together very well.

The nights when we counted stars under the full moon
were the nights when we’d fall asleep with our arms touching.
(A sign that people are alive.)

The dust woke us up when it blew in our open mouths,
and in a shallow breath the tiny things landed on our tongues, woke us up, and
made our eyes cry.

“When do you know to go home?”
I ask myself this a lot because I know that there is no answer.
Human beings like to ask themselves things without answers and then get angry that there is no answer.
Because only they know when they put you back home.
You and I were lucky because we only had a little time in that hell,
but the others weren’t.
The little black tallies from the charcoal pencil weren’t because they
died.

The light woke us up and we knew we had to run
soon
It landed upon our eyelids and woke us up and made us cry.

I think of you as I am running and my bare feet
smack
across the dirt.
I think of you because your hair always was full of the stuff and now all it does is make me cry.

~

I think we are running along the line on one of your maps.
I think our feet are creating the dark brown streaks on the paper with the little black tallies on them.
And I think that we will never find out
the color of your eyes.

We run back to back for a while
until the light stops us and we hide beneath the tree’s leaves.

I am hungry for our arms to be touching again.
I am hungry to count stars with you and the place we did that was the war,
so could you say that
I am hungry for the war?

I am not hungry for the charcoal pencil,
but I am hungry for the hand that touched it.

I am not hungry for the dirt,
but I am hungry for the person who would lay in it carelessly.

I am hungry for the map so I can see the dark brown veins running across it with bare feet
smacking
the dark brown surface of it.

I am hungry to breathe in the commonplace drive that pushed us along the dark brown lines and out of
the war.
And I am hungry for the idea that once was.

Hope:
That is no longer existent when I am not with you
which is a side effect of
you
that I did not know about.

I would welcome any side effects that came with you with open arms, of course, because I would still have
you
I merely did not know about that one, but I am sad to see the idea go.

~

I wish you the best in all your journeys.
I wish to hear the beat of your heart against the crickets again,
but now I am afraid that the light has caught up with me
and I am afraid that
we will never find out what color my eyes are.

I wish you the best in running from the light
but remember that the without light there would be no darkness.

I am sorry to have to tell you that the dust will settle in the rocks and that
the maps have been burned.

The tallies have turned blacker than ever before.
The tallies have turned into ash from the bright flames.

The maps have fallen asleep in the glow of the flames and that
our idea:
Hope;
has been taken by the wind.

It ran with it, and I tried to catch it, but the wind cannot be caught.
Remember the first breath of the war you took when you stepped outside into the
light
of the day and remember the glow of the flames.

Remember that people are still living
(Remember that our arms touched on the nights we counted stars)
and remember the constellations that connected us.

I am not sorry to tell you, however, that no matter how far constellations can be stretched,
constellations never can be broken.
They can stretch to heaven and hell and earth and the sky and the dust and to the war
But they will never shatter
because constellations are images the mind has created.

Constellations are made by the mind and stars are tangible.
Constellations connect stars.
We are stars and we all burn in our own flames.

~

The words from your charcoal pencil make me cry.
I cannot ever count the stars without you
and I cannot ever write poetry in the dust without you.

Your words make me cry and I run
faster.

I don’t try to compete with the light because I know we’ve been running with our backs to each other for the
whole
time.

The wind trips me and its fingers comb through my hair on the way down.
dust from the ground tickles my tongue and the wind left something in my brain.
our idea:
Hope;
has been taken by the wind.

“Are you the dust, now?”
I feel your thumb across my cheekbone and I am
yearning
for what we could’ve had.

“Are you the wind, now?”
I feel your hand in mine and you lift me to my feet.
My face is dark brown covered with dust
but as I run the wind cleans it off.

“I have never been so tired,” I tell you.

I am so hungry for you.

I am starving
and I am sick with what we could’ve had.

I sketched a faceless man today
I put more details in his hands than I ever could in his eyes

I drew a faceless woman today
forward facing
I put more details on the muscles of her back
than I ever could her nose

I painted a faceless child today
I put more details on his body
than I ever could his lips

I painted faceless beings today
all hollowed out alone
my art teacher looked at me like i was a little disturbed
I could not explain to him that the hollow of her cheekbone
will have more meaning
than the color of her eyes
or the voluptuousness of her lips
and that the strain in her shoulders
will show
and that man will have more meaning in the creases
of his palms
than I could ever put on the lines of his face
And all I could think of was
How that faceless woman had a **** good
***

They pretended not to notice how much you had changed
But they did comment on your thinning face
And how much healthier you looked
How much better
They pulled you to the side "Oh my gosh, how did you do it?"
Quizzical looks
They didn't know that the weight you lost
Was unintentional
A compensation for the heavy load inside
You tried to somehow shake off
You hated your jutting rib bones,
Losing your sanity along with your "baby" fat
You lost what made you a woman

No no one noticed your gaunt eyes
and the sharp angle of your cheekbone
Like pain
and the way you started drinking
(Although you never stopped)

They didn't notice the new scars you kept hidden with makeup
Meticulous
careful
calculating
So unlike you
No no one noticed how your eyes shone a little less brighter
Especially when you smiled

Apart from that ex-boyfriend you left a winter ago
Standing in the cold
Because he was an *******
But ******* can be right
And you saw the way he looked at you like-
the way you used to look at a broken mirror
Wondering which piece to pick up first
And start gluing back together
The way you looked at your own blood flow from your wrist's
A little scared, amazed, numb..
Like "Where do we start first?"
And "What happened here?"
Thats how he looked at you
*Atleast someone noticed

Crystal beads of sweat
It's the beginning of a flood
Their translucence reveals an anguish
That is growing underneath
Causing them to swell
A great heaviness pulls
There is no resistance
They start a lowly journey
Moved in surrender to greater will
As the purest heart crumbles
One drop follows after another
Forming glistening streaks
Along a spotless brow
The tender heart soon shatters
Under the weight of woe
Drops fall to the ground
Like glistening shards of crystal
Where the beads first surfaced
A single crimson drop forms
It slowly paints a stripe
Down that stainless skin
It rolled along the hairline
Over the cheekbone to the jaw
In a moment of uncertainty
It clung there at the edge
With no alternative to release
The final hold was given up
Like a rose petal it fluttered down
Gently landing in dampened earth
Where sweat and tears first fell
At this silent touch of crimson
Broken crystal drops transformed
Color slowly deepening
Dirt glittering with garnets
Each hearts' filth was covered
But their purity had this stain

Through the gaps in the airline-style seating
I catch glimpses
snapshots
of her face
(or at least,
Its constituent parts)

An almond eye, subtly lined
a rise of cheekbone, flushed but unblushed,
and half of her smile
directed at me?

And I feel like Picasso
piecing together
the jigsaw piece sections
from an altered perspective
and seeing her whole
as beautiful.

To a cat in a cul-de-sac,
she's a stone rose,
malaise with no remorse and a penchant for suicidal grammar.

Backsassing and backroom massaging
her way from Tanner, Illinois to Irving, Texas --
her interstate veins and her data plan brain
catered to the orifices of the weary,
and soothed the spidertongued and sleepy.
In the last postcard, she signed Evangeline,
the number of name changes: 23
in the Sunflower State alone.

A dive bar in Ulysses, Kansas
beamed as a brilliant model of
"Starved wives and stray dogs," Evangeline explained.
"I found the dark side of beet farmers
and the redemption in callused hands."

A letter came from Pryor, Oklahoma:

"Recognize the perfume?"

The only line.
Printer paper close, inhale --
my mind drifts to my former
high cheekbone'd bride, Skye.
Evangeline bedded her spindly body.
Spite, spite, spite.

Confused, I answered her call on the
first morning of December.
Tent living with a retired acrobat on
the growing shoreline of Lake Texoma,
she downed a mixed bag of his sleeping meds,
and sleeping by his side, she fantasized about me.

"I think you drank too much in my dreams.
I woke up dissatisfied."

Once she arrived in Irving, I mailed her
my edit of her suicide note.
A call to say it looked good,
and she'd let me know if she ever had
to use it.

I never heard from her again.

well, it would really become a problem...
if i were still jerking off and had a girlfriend / wife...
the ladies are looking for ultra-violent ****,
it's just a tease off ***** -
there's choking there's *******:
oddly enough... no yo-yo of Watergate?
me... i'm not willing to be shamed...
i still have my ******* -
she can have her webcam e-thot or whatever
the hell the internet **** is: memes my ***...
once upon a time it was merely called graffiti...
i don't see how darwinism can make
a 2nd coming resurgence in the 21st century...
fine... when it first came out at the end
of the 19th century: and opened the floodgates
for the 20th... and thanks to the physicists...
lasso! rein 'em in! rein 'em in:
for the fireplace and the ******* kumbaya...
the girls are looking and having finally decided
on an spanish omelette: but not a french ****
quiche... eggs and more eggs...
while i'm strapped to ******* one genocide
after another into the tissue and
flushing it down as: meat for the crocodiles
and tapeworms pretending they know how
play the parasite attaching themselves
to a white all white: white even if you're copper
skinned, cinnamon, hot choc or...
it's still a white tadpole racer...
i usually get off on looking at some xenia wood
cleavage...
it helps to tell apart the *** cleavage and
the breast cleavage...
i moved from: ******* snaps and started peering
at: when a woman pretends to perform
the lotus on a man's face...
and there's like... a floral pattern involved
with gulping oysters...
have i ever licked an ***-hole?
oh my... have i...
**** - *** 1-on-1... doom... 1st person shooters...
never the 3rd person ghost moving
the body...
am i missing something? the girls are
looking for extreme ***... i'm looking for
cleavage and teddy bears -
and the borderline before the whole body
exfoliates and what not...
as marquis de sade said: it's hardly something
i can control when i have a hard-on
almost 4 times during the day...
if i had a girlfriend... if would be crass to:
sly one in...
but... *******... no woman no cry...
it would be truly sad if i was in a relationship
and still up to the shambles of: not up to any
or the odd sort of good -
there's always this shared approach -
the wants and willingness needs to by made
synch. - they need to be a woman and a man:
polyphony - orchestra!
why write about ***? oh hell...
watch me write anything else -
my linguistic infatuations - *** and all manner
or picked ******* sells -
or... at a catholic school they would still teach
you about the perils of sniffing glue -
apparently the 1960s never happened -
no l.s.d. was ever dropped -
the pints of guinness were drank -
the cement was poured as the muscle to
the iron rod skeletons...

and when i finally achieved a beard worthy
of a post-25 year old - when the full
bush sr. happens - i forgot to curate
a body for: the objective safety of being watched...
or how the hell you word:
prior to the beard i focused on the face
and later the body...
and long hair...
once the beard arrived...
**** it... let's take to donning the Elijah
look... the beard comes way way ahead
of the nose - and now i'm still looking
for my neck -

it's *** it's only spectacular about once...
i've had that once spectacular -
i even got a tattoo -
oh... not me... i'm the dragon alien curl...
where my scar is...
on her right shoulder-blade...
and that's not even as if i branded her
myself...
she was going to fit me out with
dreadlocks and a tattoo of her totem at
the time - a scorpion -
thankfully i read about all this crap
in high school...
nick hornby's high fidelity -

it's still a very musical affair...
i remember what love at first sight looks
like to a fresh 17 year old
novosibirsk girl... siberian girl...
all the way west in edinburgh...
she gobbled the iPod and the playlist...
a near complete oeuvre of iron maiden...
and the odd songs...
while i was correcting two girls attempting
to make pancakes...
girls! you need to put some oil into the dough...
this is dough you'd make a sponge cake with...
so the story goes...

but *** was only spectacular once...
the rest of the time i think i was minding an itch...
even these days...
among... aha! that nag hammadi word:
in the Barbelo - the brothel -
no: i will not study the etymology -
in the brothel nothing spectacular ever happens -
you chance upon a ***** -
you're asked whether you want to use it -
you decline -
to play judas with the lips -
you pay an extra ten quid for you-feeding-the-oyster
suckling and all other leech comparison of oral...
ventures...
it's done - the mirrors are witnesses...
the lights are dimmed - two beached whales
on the shore of a bed of crisp linen -
and no one-night-stand
cocoon *** *******!
how do people stand these cocoon ***:
under the bed-sheets moments?!

because it would be really harsh to have a girlfriend...
and still have to *******...
at least without a girlfriend i can solve
the mystery of the throne of thrones -
no. 1 no. 2 and no. 3 -
then a quick baptism in the shower -
i sometimes found that doing the no. 3
helps with a constipation
of a no. 2 on: the throne of thrones...

- and as someone who discovered *******
before he could produce ***** -
well - the ******* is a "side project" -

because this world already needs no more
puritanical quips -
all this ******* stigmata looms over
the circumcised men -
but of course it would - why wouldn't it?
can you scratch your nose
if you cut-off the "un-necessary" rubicon /
cartilege?

would a balding scalp Adam ever scratch his
head - quiver - i thought that only stubble
and hair prompted one to scratch one's skin?
if i see a bald man scratching his head:
i'll let you know!

the plague of circumcised men's stigmata -
and if i had a girlfriend and she wasn't
"up to speed" like me: quasi marquis de sade
"might expect"...
**** me... even Chikatilo "fathered" children...
so much for "excuses": 2 to be exact!
nominee for bachelor of the year...
205th year (circa) coming:
Kant - the prussian watchmaker in
a coming of: calculating the promenade of
excuses - no famously i didn't / wouldn't
marry -

if you asked what i used to do
on those warm spring nights...
back in ol' satellite of the former u.s.s.r. -
and that... we entertained ourselves...
catching cockchafer beetle and catching girls
and tugging at their t-shirts and throwing
them in...
we: used to that sort of thing...
what better reason to drink seeing
the youth of today:
as a seemingly old dounding man:
well... in your 30s you sort of hit that zenith
of mortality's vitality on offer -
as much as technology is celebrated -
its change - it's impetus -

what's that... quote?
when an unstoppable force (technology) meets
an immovable object (ontology) -
or at least: i find man's ontology
to be forever played and plagued
by a priori "prepositions": genes -
and technolgoy is forever the a posteriori
counter-fact: of what much later...
much much later... in limbo land of history
becomes an: artifact escaping archeology...
now are we all not wishing
for some variation of closure?

memes: represented as genes?
really? i see them nothing but a cheap south-paw
jab's worth of the otherwise obvious:
graffiti (representation)...

girls are really searching for violent *** -
having **** fantasies?
my my - and here i was looking
for a xenia wood cleavage and some Bronzino:
you never have curbed your pornographic
enthuasiasm: if you never ******
off at...
mein gott! it's a meme!
1st comes god's index finger touching
adam's index finger in:
michelangelo's fresco of the creation of adam...
but the higher 2nd?
venus' tongue teasing the tongue
of cupid in Bronzino's cupid, folly and time...

i ****** off to that painting -
it's hard to stop a boy who knew how to:
prior to the kippah-guilt tripping:
no minus the ******* into early teenagehood...
i don't think i have yet to have dumped
the proper load on this: exercise - just yet...

oh the shame:
thankfuly this is england and no h'america -
and jesus is not the queen or king -
ol' lizzie is still playing poker and...
the constitution is and what i will not become
is this "vox populis" of a people
disaffected as to why the tax goes into the
pomp & circumstance and none of it:
thank god! ever goes into sense & sensibility
akin to the consort Middleton family;
that's highly replica prone...
blue-bloods... love them or hate them...
at least you can sight them as
almost unchanging -
sphynx head while the body changes
from male to female - but the sphynx is still there...

of an erectile-dysfunction: i would most certainly
hear if i had a girlfriend...
as it happened - the "free women"
always gave me a limp...
in the brothel i was there and she was there -
and i was she and she was i
and we weren't bothered about
counting two transgender sheep
of the nag hammadi library -

even on those one-night stands:
erectile-dysfunction - dim lights two beached
whales on the bedsheets i could stomach...
in a brothel...
but then she took me home
like some morrissey wallow and...
it was all about cocoon ***...
i've heard that temperature changes
the *** of frogs upon insemination...
cocoon *** under the bedsheets...
i stopped going out...

it's might almost sound like boasting:
believe me... it's disgruntled sarcastic... the overtone
to these words...
even i tried teasing a fetish with
latex lucy - but... then i thought about...
if you start wearing the same clotches
for god knows how long -
like an imitation of dog's hair...
you'd wish to squish into something
less pardonable / expected like a full gimp
imitation of lizard latex...
but violence an ****?

maybe that's why i started to tease
1970s italian classics...
dubbing from belgium and amsterdam
and all that...
but always after the torso cleavage -
always after the Om-onomatopeia look of
absent eyes and boiling tongues in a gurgle...
the contorted final stages of the face
before the lesser death as:
faking birth in ****** -
or what the hell you call: scavenger of:
never the lost details...
and if i had 7 children in the bag i would be
a fraud... and if i had a girlfriend
i would be a fraud and hopefuly ashamed...

came the white flag... came the rainbow flag...
came the ******* flag...
came the image: how would you ever find
yourself in a desire to blink: to peacock flutter...
without a pair of eye-lids?
hmm...
all those ******* freed arguments...
not coming from the "progressive school"
of islam -
or the hasidic jewry where:
a woman is to made to make concessions?
otherwise: waiting for that
golden moral maxim Confuscian wifey?

that a deity should...
somehow give moral laws...
i thought that man was the moral lawgiver?
if god were to become the moral
law advocate...
man should most certainly become
the physical law-giver - or at least:
to best serve my attention -
attempt fictional escapes via superhero
infantilism...

again: historiological infantilism -
the only serious history we are supposed to know
comes from h'america...
the civil rights movement -
that's serious history!
everything else is infantile historicism -
interchange of historicism and historiology -
yes - heidegger's leftovers...
but what is serious history?
and what is infantile history?
oh i'm pretty sure much of history kept in
agitated dust is: cowboys vs. indians
roleplaying... games...

cite anything serious of the past...
if there's no stampede toward some platonic exit...
then serious history happens with
the h'american civil rights movement...
after that we only have journalism
and bad idea dear diary entries...
of the next to come: ***** teenager
plague by acne and the many more oopses to come...

- and with the world saturated by:
an **** of forms - wielding their interwine and
maggot pit of "metaphors" -
better i write this than speaking during *** -
what could possibly saturate the "land"
that's already a swamp -

somehow i'm not edging toward a moral
superiority - the day i discovered
that god was both the god of writing
physical: and moral laws...
i was assured by the chinese that:
all kosher and all halal would pass
the test of the: 3 peepsqueaks...
no? do not eat a pig: do not eat a mandarin!
god only knows what the pig ate...
god forbid you ever knew the full
menu of Beijing!

pigs are the: das schlechteste!
das äußersteschlechteste!
pigs, mandarins, bats...
the bubonic plague, rats,
"supposing that africans would ever ****
monkeys"...
why would africans ever
**** monkeys...
i'm supposed to be ashamed of
having a hard-on...
while the white girls rummage
the carousel!

i could suppose the chinese already
ate the supposed ****-buddy to begin with...
it's no more funny when the "thing"
spreads like a mongolian shy-auxilliary
brigade of: voyeurs of:
the only evolution we are to be concerned
with, is to be better associated
with viruses, parasites and lice...

and if i were to live a sheltered western
liberal elite life... "elite":
the bigger the mouth the bigger the... whatever...
no complaint from the arabs
itching over well curated pork...
they'll allow the mandarin diet! no problem!

it's no problem...
pigs are the "problem"... when a god devolved
to invoke moral laws: his most high!
and it was "somehow" not man...
how can god, a monotheistic god...
give both physical laws and moral laws?
to me that's near impossible!
ah... unless this god is given
the "plotheistic" splinter of being
a theistic god and not a deistic god...
a theistic god gives both physical
and moral laws... a deistic god gives:
no moral laws: he was expecting
we could do so!

i can't believe in a god that plagiarises
man's activity -
man can't change the laws surrounding gravity...
yet to be known whether light
is somehow subjected to gravity...
but a god does not intervene by giving
moral laws...
having already established physical laws...
entertaining himself in the playground
of metaphysics...
only a prince... the devil -
would ever... intervene as god to give...
higher authority: a plagiarism of
man-made laws...
and call them: with deity origins...
why would a "god" meddle in:
you will not steal, you will not ****...
when...
god has set up a recycling centre?!

god is no judge, prosecutor, lawyer,
defendent, the accussed,
the jury over moral laws...
he is the epitome of physical laws:
the unchanging...
to have confused divine intervention
with a god bowing -
before and succumbing to...
man's ordiance... a moral law...
god does not allow himself moral qualities...
and god would not discriminate
against a pig: saying:
but the pig is the most economic piece -
had not man found the boar and
domesticated it?
the boar became the pig domesticated!
and the pig can be eaten...
from snout to tail and with only
the oink missing!

for a god to be so degraded as
the arbiter of physical laws -
to be ***** into giving moral laws...
only a devil would...
only a devil would...
only a devil would play with man's moral
laws... and attempt to supress
the already constaining impossible
with his cameo in egypt -
that machiavelli of sorts...

if the quran attempts to question
the cleanliness of pigs:
and god made the pig...
or rather made the man and the boar
and allowed man to domesticate the boar...
sick... ugly... but...
kept the mandarin: pristine!
save the pig... eat a mandarin!
if you dare...

how much do i abhor these infernal riddles:
how much i abhor scolding the bacon:
is also as much as:
you deserve the beijing sneeze!
you should let it palm tree vacate
and spread in the united arab emirates!
oh.. go on go on go on!
who's not looking?!

i only have old teutonic anthems to listen
to... because...
i like the way german sounds,
how german sounded...
how german will sound...
because at least german is not english...
and that's almost asking for a plum
tattoo of hue under the teasing
socket and the cheekbone: when in england...

no zeppelin echo you hear?
encore! again! again!
it's not o.k. to eat a pig according
to the hebrews of the muslims...
the mandarins will act worse than pigs
that the classical monotheists speak of...
a cat could catch a mouse...
but a cat could not be served a mouse
on a platter... what's that dish called?
the 3 peepsqueaks?
and pork is bad?
pork is just the tip of the iceberg
concerning these omnivores...
at this point... perhaps cannibalism?

islam go back home: check if there are
any mandarins living among you...
pork is bad... pork is bad!
this is not being paranoid this is me being funny!
pork is bad and your pseudo-god
of man-made moral plagiarisms!
*******: snippet the ******* but sure you
hell and bring me the niqab!
no *******? no niqab...

why are you looking at me?
i'm a tired old european...
why should i know what floats the boat
over in h'america?!

this "god" and the "intervention"...
oh i'm pretty sure we made our moral laws...
they weren't exactly to translate as a morality =
claustrophobia...
"god"...
               a belief that the same god
created the physical laws / barriers...
and somehow... decided to... plagiarise, human,
moral laws...
how this "god" decided to become
architect of physical laws...
and the interpolator of morals?
really?

a god that's critical of pork per se:
******* sheep ******* the semites...
but not critical of the mandarin diet?
that's no god; "at least not to me"...
the god that made gravity critical
as immoveable...
but a secondary god that...
was ignorant... of the fact that...
humans already punished stealing
and ******?!
why require a doubled emphasis?!

it's as if "god" made an entrance -
when no pyramids were to be built...
it's not: oh no...
we were never given any a priori parameters!
we were always supposed to sink into:
the thinking of being free...
let's face it...
at best: bad operatics of
madame butterfly at best:
only a soap opera.

looking around me, 19 second stop at a red light and already the large, bearded man with the scar on his cheekbone is grumbling, scratching at his bushy mustache and drooping Yankees hat, so faded it could almost be a B for the red sox

there's a young woman, ***** blonde hair cascading down her back, almost gracefully; seemingly too small for the rumbling white pickup truck she sat in, scratched and almost a tint of blue from this angle; one hand at the wheel, one tickling the feet of a giggling newborn at her side, for a second i wondered who the father was-

and over there, a skinny Hispanic boy by the side of the road, walking with threadbare sandals flapping against the hard cement, there's a hopeless look in his eyes-

an old man with a 5-inch long grey beard, almost touching the steering wheel; he's either Asian or he's squinting into the sun, can't really tell from here- wrinkles lining his worn face

a strong-***** Japanese woman, hair in a tight bun driving a Ferrari

a red-haired bespectacled boy, pale as chalk, his face covered with freckles (or was it acne?); couldn't have been older than 17; he looked like a Robert or a Charles, definitely not a Samuel

in front of me, a red Chevy truck with a license plate LUVANN, i wonder if Ann is still with him- i crane my head upwards trying to see the man, all i can glimpse is a blue-and-white bandana-

i wonder who all these people are,
what are their hopes and dreams, do they like ******* jacks? banana splits?
where are they going?
who will miss them when they're gone, or will anyone-

then the light turns green and in a puff of smoke,
like a blur-

they're gone.

In ***** socks
& with rusty hearts
we’d swing off docks
Throwing mindless darts

Cooked deep tan
Freckled cheekbone
A sizzling dripping pan
We didn’t answer the phone

Swinging into a wide lake
On a salty afternoon
Restless but wide awake
In a humid summer’s June

Downing a bottle of wine
We stole from your brother
Watching the sun lick the horizon line
The night dropping in to smother

Can we go back to the days?
When we weren’t caught in this maze
But instead in the suns rays
We lived in a lovely blue haze

Here's you
with your Sunday eyes
violet shadows
pooling in the arches
and the dips
dancing across
your cheekbone
the way I want to
You are every
pink rose
beach agate
white feather
which a
child finds

Here's you and
those gorgeous
Sunday eyes.

Daniel?

A piggish snort. Crusted eyes crack open like the wings of a beetle. Ragged nails scrape against the red-worn desert of an adolescent jawbone. A fishlipped yawn.

Ugh. What?

What did you call that plant thing again?

Jesus, James. Waxwood. It's a reddish bark. Oozes this cloudy stuff if you crush it.

Oh. Yeah, of course. Sorry.

Ambient silence. Raindrops fill with rotting organic sediment and fall into the leaves around the
clapboard tollbooth. A zealous fist of ivy tightens its tattered fingers across rheumatic windowpanes.

Dan?

Mm?

Why don't you like to talk about Clifftown?

Ambient silence. Raindrops. Ivy.

I’ll tell you why I don’t like to talk about Clifftown.

Go on.

Sigh.

I was born there. Before all this happened, it was this small village where onions grew. Not many people lived there. There was... Christ. A church, a chemist, a library and a few houses. The biggest house was this tall yellow clapboard place, which was on the cliff by the sea. This kid who lived there. He wasn’t -

A thud as a gesticulating knuckle rasps against splintered pine.

-Ow, **** - didn’t look human. His head was big and soft like a berry, and his eyes were wide and wet and creepy, and he never spoke. It was like he was empty.

What’d you say his name was again?

Never did.

A dusty rubbing noise as the fluid is forced out of a cheekbone.

Leviticus Croker. He died when he fell from a low salt cliff into the sea or something. Can’t remember.

****. I’m sorry.

Don’t be. I hated him.

A lump of pressed asphalt sends a clouded multitude of motes spinning and passes screaming through the glass pane of the sunwards window. A chuckle.

That was a year ago. They had to blame somebody.

Oh. Right.

An eyelid raised in revelation traps a mote against the skin stretched taut across a young skull.

Right. ****.

She used to read me poems she’d made out of glass and soft wool, and I’d always fall asleep to her lilting words. A ring sat on the 3rd finger of her left hand, a pair of kissing silver fish. She twisted it when she was nervous, and when I looked at her for too long.

Although I am sure she often looked at me for longer.

Some days I almost forget her name, and it makes me sad. So I wrote it down on a slip of paper and now keep it in my pocket, for that insane fear of letting her go entirely. Clementine; she was beautiful. One detail I remember clearest was she only had one freckle in her entire life. It sat just underneath her left cheekbone, and she liked it because I did.

Oh no,
it was not of the ordinary kind.
It was not the ****** ****,
to leave a puddle in the bath.
It was not reckless, it was not thoughtless.
It was a **** of no other kind.

Oh when I think of it
and when I hear the crows
hovering above in the sound of the bell.
That rusty bell, when the sun is gone,
together with the crows,
on time they all sing,
precise as the ****.

Oh no,
it wasn't a bullet, shot in shake and fear,
it wasn't a sloppy slip, one fast and quick.
It was a **** foresighted and long before known.
It was silent, yet loud and felt.
A type of ******,
when a queen murders a king.

A type of killer she was,
who put poison in the chunk of bread
in the sight of the murdered.
That food was sweeter than life,
when eaten from the fingertips of the sensational murderess.
It was swallowed with joy,
yet known it is poison.

Simple, when looked from far,
venom she whispered and sipped,
from the killer red dry lips,
that ate away the skin.
Not a spot when on the spotlight,
she is a predator of no other kind;
The killer, claws the prey,
with the most gentle of touch.

It was not a moment, a blink of some day,
it was over and over,
every gasp, every second of every day.
It was not a knife to the back,
it was clean and open - wound to the front;
Facing her gaze,
oh, she pierced it right in the heart.
It was the sharpest of blades, over and over again...
As they say,
there are few swords that cut so deep,
as the blade of unrequited love.

As I walk now in the sun's light of noon
and remember the days,
I still feel the warmth of air passing in my open heart;
I still taste the blood of my already fallen skin.
I writhe a little...
Then I softly grin,
from cheekbone to chin -
I think of the time when you murdered me.

Arizona sunrise a leaf below his feet,
February tug of war led the rope to feather.
Stuck between pyramids and a desert flat
above sewers of east Brooklyn,
bridges emptied dust to flame.
He covered rice paper with delicate yellow birds,
and tore his clothes to shreds.
Swapped sleep for a girl in faded overalls,
but no flowers from his garden
high amongst the clouds
could match her feathered beauty
so he bought a peppered owl.
The great salt lake shriveled her skin,
the birds heavy flesh hit the ground,
leaving a mark deeper
then the **** on her shoulder.
Still, she stuck to him like syrup
but sweet faded to sun.
Trapped inside a number maze
with dyslexia in reverse,
only shivers of winter to remind
he is as alive as the moons cheekbone
hanging
haunting the sky.
He cried twice that year.
Once when the bees carried feet from honey,
and again when he lost his eyes to the sea.
He wrote love letters to the albino fifth graders older sister
and never once
thought twice.
The sky, a compass
swinging
swaying,
a weeping willow in his veins sobbed until every ounce of blood was salt.
Sinking as fast as his heart
last February
to the crust of the sea.
Perfect shape took form,
he never wondered why.
Open eyes uncovered
folded faded overalls beside a door unopened.
Smile like silk
pulled him into her lips,
swallowed him whole.
Forever he will wade
and wait
in the beehive of her belly.

In the hope that my knees will touch rainbows
I arch my back to the heavens.
If I close my eyes tight I can almost feel the flit
Of a hummingbird’s wings on my cheekbone,
                my brow.
And yet there is, too, beauty in the imperfections-
Holes in socks,
                        cold coffee,
                                           weatherworn hands.

For all that we see hides the unseen,
The blind curling of bodies towards one another and
Snow falling in the deep chill of the night.
Because the fact that we still bleed and babies cry
Means that we are alive
Too bold to lie down and die.

Shall I kiss the wind with the same sweet sorrow
That plagues my soul,
Or shall I close my eyes tight

And feel the prism of light
-not unlike a rainbow

Let a little lonely thrill
careen from Ikea bolt
to Ikea ***** under the thin,
chipped legs of my folding chair.
Let it bolt across the
tabletop like a daddy long
legs when the kitchen light
flips on and hums into
a deflated, blinding brightness
at 3:26 am on a Wednesday in February.

Let a little lonely thrill
find its way past my loose
muscles and blooming skin-
let it melt down into my dankness
and start to sing so loud
that even my sweat radiates vibrato.

I want it to burrow from
ear canals to pastel brain
and flood my gums
after seeping through cheekbone
pores, hostile and sun-stained.

I need to feel it scream
its loud, grisly engine
to life from the parts of me that
might soon spoil.
I'm not moldy but you're
also not yet desperate. (Your checking
account can handle a few more
diner trips and coffee runs
and it's already Thursday.)
With any luck you can avoid
chewing on me entirely this week.

I am (silently, always silently)
begging
those manic hero spirits
that bounce
and rise across every pothole
of every road that my
tires didn't dodge.
(Whether by lack of skill
or lack of will is up for debate-)
I don't want the trails back.
What's the fun of tracing a failed
treasure hunt backwards?
It hurts more than it heals.
It illuminates exactly where each wrong turn
was made, ignored or aggressively denied.

I'll finish this road trip but
I know this whole playlist by heart.
I'm done with truck stop maps
that I can't fold correctly,
that I can't keep from tearing
along the creases.

I'm done with wine flavored Black
and Milds, wooden tip,
bought in boxes of five
or individually with dimes
and ripped dollar bills
stashed in the glove box,
kept there specifically
for the occasional urge to storm
any aspect of myself with concentrated
poison and my lungs volunteer.

I'm done with getting by on
metallic coffee four Splendas
and my white knuckles,
my raw nerves.

I've made it clear I can maintain this
grit that I've been dragging across
the Tri-State Area since last June,
but I can no longer ignore
the constant windburn
on my shoulders, chest
and forehead.
I need to spend some time with my back
to the express lane on the interstate.

I need a break.
I need to let someone else drive for a while.
I need to sit passenger side with
my hair down, bare feet hanging out
the window and lost in a daydream
that is so very far away.
I need to let the sun pour
wide and easy
into my open mouth,
janky limbs finally loose,
the words at the tip of my tongue
hitchhiking on the caress
of slicing traffic.

I'll keep my sunglasses on deep
into the night-
until each lightning bug has kissed me Hello,
Darling. Good Evening,
and it becomes hard to tell a yellow traffic light
from the moon.

I'll just coast. I'll know the salt in my mouth
is the day's hard work cooing at me;
that the sweat of my neck has been absorbed back
into me; stiffening my clothes and curling my hair,
until I'm back behind the too-tall steering wheel,
avoiding tolls and damp again.

Because lately I've been so tired.
I can't see straight to my neon-exhilarate.
I know a little time with my head lolling
again the seat, the window, you,
and a little sip of the landscape
taken for purely what it is
instead of what it's becoming-
will stretch my gut back where
it belongs instead of double knotted
to the tailpipe, waving along, air-drying.

Give me a few hours and I may
nearly forget the slow
burn of that ever-aching ghost light.
I think I'll close my eyes now-
If I focus  all of my energy toward
a mind and body learning
stillness, I can almost feel
a rhapsody at one thousand sun beams.
It's a new day in America,
it's a new day in my bones.

there's a pimple on my left cheekbone
and one of my brows is plucked
a little thinner than the other.
the only makeup on my face
is the black on my eyelashes
my eyes
burst
green.
my mouth (my rosebud mouth, my mother
smiles) like a slightly opened
slightly troubled
bow.
my brow is furrowed
my eyes are searching
one of my ring-and-bracelet hands
holds back my hair  (short)
and my elbow
rests.
i look at myself,
head-tilting, quick-sketching
the curves of my features
in a single line of ultra-fine Sharpie.

what you see is what you get.

my eyes frown into themselves
through the mirror.
i am long
i am lanky
i am lovely.
i am a little lost
and very found
i am angsty
i am achey
i am laughing
i am me -
if you only look at yourself for a second
you tend to miss
how beautiful you are.
it isn't my vanity.
it's the universal, and most unbelieved
truth.

i brush back my hair
and i puff my cheeks out.
i sigh, and i look at myself
in the cheap mirrors set out
on the art-room tables.
"not bad," i say to the single line of ultra-fine Sharpie-version of my face.
and it isn't.
even though
i left out the pimple.

She is blue raspberry slushee tongue
Meets feminist rant.

She is Moon Pie wrapper personified.
She is purple lipstick stains on wine glasses
Filled to the brim with cranberry juice.
She is three cats, one bed.

She is a scratch in your favorite record during your favorite song.
She is bubblegum bubble pop,
She is the definition of hypochondriac.

Curiosity didn’t **** her,
She killed curiosity.

She is dry heaving into the toilet bowl,
Claw marks on the inside of her stomach.
She is naproxen sodium
Swirling down throat,
Gagging up bullet sized pills.

She is the other side of unrequited.

She is no ones favorite poem.
She is her own favorite poem.

She is perpetual headache.
She is screaming for justice.
She is the jersey devil episode of the X-Files,
In other words,
She is a hot mess.

She is nature walks cut short due to laziness.
She is laziness.
She is lay in bed all day,
Drown in the sheets.
She is too many books, not enough time.

She is funeral song at a wedding.
She is dethorned rose, declawed cat.
She is waking the dead.

She is a renaissance painting come to life.
Botticelli would cry if he saw her,
His Venus,
Splashing in the water.

She is Jezebel mourning Ahab.
She is Jezebel being eaten alive.

She is ankle deep dimple.
She is never could quite get the words out.
She is lip bite, blood drip.
She is covered in bruises and she likes it.

She is listerine flavored whiskey,
She is a shot glass of formaldehyde.

She is an oak tree,
Thats what her sister tells her.

She is the x on the back of an 18 year olds hand.
She is conspiracy theory.
She is playing possum.

She is change the subject.
She is cry when being yelled at,
Cry when no one is looking,
Cry when everyone is looking,
Cry because theres nothing else to do.

She is leather jacket in july.
She is crop top and mini skirt.
She is lullaby.
She is dancing to the Law and Order theme song.
She is 8,000 tweets.

She is see how long she can go without talking.
She is goes so long without talking
That now she can’t talk.
She is novocaine needle pock mark.

She is her own mythology,
Her own god.
She is fire breathing dragon.
She is knocking on god’s door
Until blood erupts from her knuckles.
She is asking why.
She is Persephone feasting on pomegranate seeds.

She is two siblings in the hospital.
She is “call if you don’t feel right”.
She is disassociative personality disorder,
At least thats what she’s convinced she is.

She is anxious laughter,
Anxious smile.
She is sewing her lips shut.

She is only 11 Instagram likes.
She is learning to love herself with the lights on.
She is sleep to much,
Sleep too little.
She is curl on cheekbone.
She is protruding rib bone.
She is hip bones cutting glass.

She is Lilith saying no.
She is leading the serpent to the garden.

She is vegetarian on moral grounds.
She is not telling her doctor she is a vegetarian
Because what if its bad for her?

She is fate and destiny making out under the bleachers.
She is making nooses out of ****** strings.
She is choke on your own saliva.
She is burnt tongue tip.
She is puking in the parking lot of her dentist’s office.
She is a 1997 themed mixtape.

She is a stanza curving like a lovers back.
She is chapped lips.
She is brick through the window.
She is suffocating on suburban ideals.

She is Anne Sextons ***** bottle.
She is Maya Angelou’s silence.
She is Lucien Carr’s ****** knife.
She is Sylvia Plath’s last manuscript before
She stuck her head in the oven.

She is three am,
Get out of bed.
She is snow in september.

She is poetry.
She is poet.
She is music in fingertips,
Songs molded from simile.
She is metaphor flavored kisses
And a witchcraft tongue.

She is a girl crafted of stories.
A collection of make believe.
She is breathing passion.
She is daughter of nothing,
Lover of everything.
She is afraid of scorpions.
She is the venom.

She is a violin heart screeching out its last note.

We are twins
Finite & infinite
I'd like to direct
Your attention
To our souls
Summiting
Three Sisters
In bitter cold

I bathe in the dark
ocean
Of hair locked
In stare at jade
Cheekbone
Soul sewn
Skin to skin

pretend that you are
Sleeping next to me
Breathing next to me
multiplied and added powers
By the gleam of your laugh

I have murdered another human being.
I have murdered someone like me,
Kicking and thrashing
Until his face wasn't right.
It was sideways, wonky, part of his
Nose touching his mouth, bleeding
With his cheekbone crushed inward
All from the swift power of
These worn leather boots.
He had held us hostage for days
Killed a friend of a friend
With a purposeful chiropractic crack
Of the neck gone too far.

We had been freed.
He had stood there smiling
As he dealt the final blow
To our esteem, having kept us
All as his sick twisted harem.
All it took was a smile and
I lost my mind.
Bashing the back of his head
That balding crew cut bloodied
On a rusting sprinkler in the yard.
My tired leather boots did the
Rest of my ***** work.
He resembled a stroke patient
When my boots held their fire.
Too much blood for a lack of life.

I awoke in my bed, safe and
Unscathed by my mind's loss
Of complete control.
Genuine surprise took me, seeing
Those leather boots of mine sit
Peacefully in the corner
Never seeing battle, never
My accomplice in ******.

you are a diamond and there is a speck of eyeliner winged out and smudged on your cheekbone.
even diamonds have flaws.

we are driving down a narrow highway onto a bridge and you snort when you laugh. i'm dreaming because i don't think real life has an 8mm film reel collecting all the times we felt like we were flying. when we felt like we were in a movie and we were heroes. we were royalty and when you smile, it feels like heaven. it feels like all the gold in the world has been poured into my veins, it feels like good drugs and good friends and a good life.

i have sunglasses on my face and a thin tan line on my shoulder blade and your freckles dot your eyes more than any alphabet, a play on words, witty banter, your solid, subtle smile with parentheses near your cheeks.

when i think of you, i think of cherry chapstick, a whole pizza to ourselves, and your glasses. i think of hope and fate and destiny and love, not the kind of love we hear thrown around during friday night football, but the kind of love that doesn't burn out. the kind of love that resembles crystal and fun times and the things that quiet poets write about after they drink ***** for the first time. the love that keeps its infinities hidden under its sleeves, like the pen ink on your arms under your sweater.

i think of flowers and cigarettes and laughing and smoking and crossing everything off of our bucket lists, running to little rivers and giving new life to old constellations, telling prophets our stories; we became royalty, we became the night that our friends dreamed of.