Darlin’, they say you’ve got knives swimming through your heart beats.
That the blood flowing from your pin pricked fingertips to your mumbled fear lips
is dressed up angry, in bayonet holding coats of arms.
That your tiger tooth saber shaped blood is dragging its hands down your veins
slowly scratching in dates down walls of young membrane tombstones
shooting firing squad lines of pain as your body tears itself apart.
They’re saying that its only going to get worse from here.
With your pinstriped POW nerves vibrating like skyscrapers
as each pulse bleeds through you like a ten on the richter.

Darlin’  I’m dying to see you smile, but the washington rain is drowning you
and you're losing time for existing.
Shivering in that hospital bed as icicle cells freeze you to the bone.
You used to light up a room with all your bright sunflower laughter
but now your hands are cold like sad glaciers
pushing your shoulderblades under icy water
and all that seems to come out of your lips
are hospital bed nightmares and fluorescent smoke wishes.
Every morning your black coffee eyes brew up tears
they rain for hours.
but crying isn't dowsing this wildfire.
You’re trying to stay on your feet, but your ankle deep in gasoline.
Your breath is like a pendulum time keeper.
The white blood cell count like a stop watch for the grim reaper.
And you watch, eyes stinging, as you burn up from the inside out.
Temperature climbing mountains. Breaking ozones.
But they say you're on the decline.

Darlin’ I know they say you have bad blood.
They say that your heart won't gone on beating for a long time
and at night you cough up blood on your pillow creating a universe of helio constellations
but they don't know how hard you try.
I know right now london feels like its falling
Everything does.
Its ashes and ashes.
But like a pilot light supernova things can change.
Lets grab up fistfulls and fistfulls of ash in our shaking hands
and put them together
and let the weight of the world turn them to diamonds
and we can push them inside our nimble rib cages
and live a little bit longer

Darlin'

Can you hear me?















They asked me to speak at your funeral.
I talked about our weekend in the mountains
and how your laugh would bounce off the canyons in such beautiful frequencies.
I talked about how I met you
how my heart wouldn't stop feeling like avalanche symphonies.
And how you turned scarlet when I asked you your name.
I talked about your family, our friends,
how we would look at the stars for hours without letting our eyes breathe
because you thought the world of space.
I talked about your yellow rain boots and how you would always track the wilderness inside with you.
I talked about your fear of trains and thunderclaps and how in rainstorms you would curl up next to me and shake like an earthquake but you knew your were safe.

I talked about how much I loved you.
It started raining, I started breaking down.
And I talked about how hard you tried.

Darlin' they said you had bad blood.
That if we would have caught it sooner we could have saved you.

Darlin' I wish we had had more time.
I could have written you so many love letters.
Darlin' I wish we had had more time.





Death stole you away.

And signed your fate with a sickle cell pen of red ink.

fistfulls of tsampa, butter lamps,
kneeling till my legs are cramped
and feeling less than human here,
where I am but a sightseer--
the things I know of bhodi trees
are what was writ in books for me--
of this fourth summer lunar month:
frayed prayer flags’ silk like amianth
with them do my thoughts most align
at a festival that is not mine.

She said
When you're done slaying dragons
and fighting for thrones
will you come back and stay for a while?

But there are not enough puddles
Not enough dirt

He is the king of the living room
when the carpet is lava

Don't come out of the kitchen
The carpet is lava mommy

She says okay
and watches as he jumps from couch cushion to chair to tile
to save her

There will never be a man in her life who can save her like he can
No man who knows the exact distance from doorframe to bedframe
so the hands underneath will not get them
if they jump right

No one's ever thought to save her
From the things she cannot see

I wish I were old enough to use a saw

He is stomping a tin trashcan lid flat
Cuts kite string with his teeth

Discovery says its duck season
If I have armored wings
and get hit by a shotgun
I'll still be able to fly home

I wish I were a shark
I wish I were the wind
I wish I was a lost boy but didn't have to be lost
Can I be a boy forever
and still get homesick?

If peter pan came and offered to whisk him away to neverland
The hardest thing would be for her to let him go

Maybe he can be a boy like ten more years
she thinks

With fistfulls of crayons
and constant pleads for one more of everything

Just one more night as a boy
Just one more day as a dragon
Just one more day as a bird with steel wings
One more day as the wind

But she knows he'll be a man
And he'll visit
and call
talk about
The damsel in distress he met in college
When he saved her at a party
How she spent the whole night laying on his chest
While sleeping on the grass
And for some reason
The cold biting air smelled like home

She knows mothers raise the best men
Because they know what they want in a man

It's not always okay to be your father's son

She says,
When you're done with dragons
and steel winged flights
and being emperor of the living room

Be honest
Women love men who are honest
Smile about everything
Smiling is attractive
and sometimes it's all you need to make yourself feel good

Call me now and then
Or I'll call you every five minutes

Now go
*The wind is calling you home

I want you
To grab
Fistfulls
and
Fistfulls
Of me
In your
Strong hands
To
Explore
To
Dive
Deep
Inside
Of
Me
Like a
Mountain Spring
That
Will
Never
Stop
Gushing
An endless
Supply
You and I
Are
The
Same

a slithering urge rips up my appetite by grass-like fistfulls,
an urge to condense
falter every thought that has the audacity to contaminate my psyche.
the gentle thrumming under-skin is knotted firmly
to the drum of words tapping.

a shell, its contents,
tearing, perforated and utterly whole.
wring the rag
gulp the freshly stolen, assimilated goods
and spread the contents of your stomach for special exhibition.

she leaves pauses,
pregnant and lingering,
until the route to the next unmists.
a familiar pang gasping,
urging now shout and dare and spill
spill invent a new word for the pulsing
of yourself rising within yourself,
like so much bile,
**** as you please and leave careful notes
until the entirety of your vocabulary is spent,
burnt to a nub.

at night the insomniacs come out to play

they grab fistfulls of their hair and howl at the moon.

Eyelashes
Bubbles
Sunglasses
Puddles
A glass of wine
A drop of sunshine
A shower
A flower
A sprinkle
A twinkle
Crystals
And fistfulls of crayons

Fingers laced together, I am a basket.
Take parts to build a heart: you will need
wild things, beautiful things.

Mostly you will need
things that no one asked for,
that no one expected.
Things that have no reason to exist,
but do.

Netted spiderwebs and nettle fistfulls.
Fish scales and cotton cattails.
Dragonflies skimming across the water in the early morning
and fireflies imitating stars in the somber dusk.
The eddies behind rocks that jut brashly from the river
and the ribbons woven wreath-like through wrens’ nests.

Hauled up by handles, dump everything somewhere
you wouldn’t mind living.
Apply heat, settle in somewhere
you wouldn’t mind leaving.
Let sit two to twenty four hours, stirring occasionally.

Listen:
rhythm
one-two
one-two
it lives.

Ink roached infestation didst derive within mice elf

Minor emendations to following
just posted verse
oversight to correct dissatisfaction,
yours truly I do curse
ah... methinks if hands of time
can be made to go in reverse
a more exemplary version
to appease acclaimed unnamed wordsmith
cause he feels alarmed
crafting poem worse
than ChatGPT artificial intelligence
app can write
will find him superfluous.

Thus writer of these words
forever mus lee experiencing
craving to eat cheese,
a milk product
eternally preserved within
annals, chronicles, epistles,
et cetera of human civilization
and it's discontents
analogous viz ode (old)
as time itself and lustressly
buttressed on a Grecian Ode frieze
linkedin to Sosibios Vase inductees.

Carp diem bespeaks moment to seize,
whether above memorialized chaste lovers
or emblematic, iconic and opportunistic
actresses Thelma and Louise
the 90's film of female rage
an adventure road drama
caper they did stage,
but aforementioned seminal wage
courtesy Rameses II
begat robust lineage
synonymous with sturdy anchorage,
whereby said prolific *******
endowed legions of sons and daughter
to carry on heritage.

Nothing but gridlock traffic
(far as thee eye could see)
heading east on Schuylkill Expressway
(oxymoronic name for quickest route
into Greek translation
center city of brotherly love,
albeit Philadelphia),
yet this papa promised eldest daughter
then freshly minted University
of Pennsylvania graduate

hoping to make amends
prior to first born heading
of into blue, ...er rather green,
asper legal tender beyond
without doubt experiencing more
financial security than yours truly,
whose penurious crisis
tantamount to being self ostracized
within luxe MainLine,
where one percent flaunt their wealth

disparage dirt poor
festive folks like this sir
meaning husband, his spouse
plus attendant two biological kin
reinforcing feeling inferior,
among those earning or
inheriting fistfulls of moolah,
said offspring also lodged opprobrium
citing slovenly housekeeping
amidst generations (Zison heirlooms)

housed within residence
at 1148 Greentree Lane
yielding barely ample space
our family of four analogous
to sardines in a tin packed to the gills,
which pennilessness exacerbated
since neither mama
nor papa (me) worked
reasons squarely triangulated
linkedin to mental illness

asper myself –
unsung hero of tom tom club
chronic anxiety, panic attacks
with concomitant courtesy benefits;
adrenaline maddeningly coursing thru veins
palms sweating profusely, racing heart
irritable bowels syndrome, nausea, vertigo...
physiological symptoms
played offal, nasty, malicious

cruel version of
knick knack paddy whack...
with these lovely bones
severely disabled me to function
academia, employment, socialization...
imperiled satisfactory existence
learning, working, commingling
felt like butchered bovine
at slaughterhouse five.

Bonhomie within new riders
on the purple sage foo fighting
beastie boy here
in short air supply,
an evanescent understatement,
now impossible mission to recoup
sabotaged, jackbooted, atrophied....
blissful happy go lucky little boy
blessedly energetic innately

nervousness found
yours truly tensing up,
manifesting cringing pose
no matter parents lenient,
though father soulfully
bellowed stern rebukes
perhaps interpreting paternal rejection
sole son less gifted prowess with smarts
in short, no weigh,

shape, or form, a polymath
cultivated, habituated, ossified
once playful quirky little rascal
set tilled under veritable weathered
sedimentary stagnancy for peat sakes
psyche got bogged down
into impermeable metamorphic
igneous hardrock.