America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January
        17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go **** yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
        need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
        the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
        it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
        joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
        somebody goes on trial for ******.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
        I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
        in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
        Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
        Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
        candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
        men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
        Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
        marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
        private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
        and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
        underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
        under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
        is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
        I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
        mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
        individual as his automobiles more so they're
        all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
        down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
        munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
        handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
        speeches were free everybody was angelic and
        sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
        cere you have no idea what a good thing the
        party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
        old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
        cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
        must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
        And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
        mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
        garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
        Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
        Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
        tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
        Him need ******* *******. Hah. Her make us
        all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
        the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes
        in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
        psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

                                Berkeley, January 17, 1956

gee i like to think of dead it means nearer because deeper firmer
since darker than little round water at one end of the well   it’s
too cool to be crooked and it’s too firm to be hard but it’s sharp
and thick and it loves,   every old thing falls in rosebugs and
jackknives and kittens and pennies they all sit there looking at
each other having the fastest time because they’ve never met before

dead’s more even than how many ways of sitting on your head your
unnatural hair has in the morning

dead’s clever too like POF goes the alarm off and the little striker
having the best time tickling away everybody’s brain so everybody
just puts out their finger and they stuff the poor thing all full
of fingers

dead has a smile like the nicest man you’ve never met who maybe winks
at you in a streetcar and you pretend you don’t but really you do
see and you are My how glad he winked and hope he’ll do it again

or if it talks about you somewhere behind your back it makes your neck
feel pleasant and stoopid    and if dead says may i have this one and
was never introduced you say Yes because you know you want it to dance
with you and it wants to and it can dance and Whocares

dead’s fine like hands do you see that water flowerpots in windows but
they live higher in their house than you so that’s all you see but you
don’t want to

dead’s happy like the way underclothes All so differently solemn and
inti and sitting on one string

dead never says my dear,Time for your musiclesson and you like music and
to have somebody play who can but you know you never can and why have to?

dead’s nice like a dance where you danced simple hours and you take all
your prickly-clothes off and squeeze-into-largeness without one word  and
you lie still as anything    in largeness and this largeness begins to give
you,the dance all over again and you,feel all again all over the way men
you liked made you feel when they touched you(but that’s not all)because
largeness tells you so you can feel what you made,men feel when,you touched,
them

dead’s sorry like a thistlefluff-thing which goes landing away all by
himself on somebody’s roof or something where who-ever-heard-of-growing
and nobody expects you to anyway

dead says come with me he says(andwhyevernot)into the round well and
see the kitten and the penny and the jackknife and the rosebug
                                                                      and you
say Sure you say    (like that)    sure i’ll come with you you say for i
like kittens i do and jackknives i do and pennies i do and rosebugs i do

This secret, best kept away
from prying hands that drop
eyes on eaves and awnings.

They stay within
the perimeter of spies and agents
doubling as bartender ears,

drink up and pour
the punch that hits you where
you bleed invisible. The spleen

lacerating split, a penetrating
ooze, cleaves back and forth with you.
Drain out and glaze over. Be very,

very still.

Magazines, newspapers, letters strewn across
every table.
Flowerpots, paperweights, nick-knacks atop
every remaining empty surface.
"Tacky" was the word that first came to mind.
Ledges, counters, and all but one chair are drowned in the mess.
The last chair is the womans.  She used to keep a few other chairs vacant in case of company, but
as she continued to grow slower she couldn't make the effort

and an extra chair was never needed anyway.

Lily on my crown,
My soul is rooted with sunflowers,
Love springs from my lungs.
Death is a garden.
Affection a coffin.

Hedge around ribs,
Holy light tightened on heart,
Beating carols only heard by dogs
Like a whistle, thistle on my knees cutting heaven real deep.

Tulips lace my tongue
Taste of angels, backwash of Lucifer.
Eyes pupiled amethyst. The healing stone. My world is healing while thorns and samsara hold my ankles to material and the edge of avarice.

World of loom hill parade ecstasy while weather ignites to 24° psychic readings being hosted in palace atrium & column walls where the archaic clock gongs upward to ****** addict ghosts and mental wards in lucid Babylons.

Lovers screaming against bombs, blister billow black clouds and smoke with marijuana haze in flats and compassion for grief cottoned years.
Rumble of music soaked into ratless insulation, long conversations with the insomniac self who hides from monsters inches over his head.

World of daysetting group understandings amidst orange moonlight. Coalmine haired bereaved droop nose man crawls from darkness for another cigarette on the balcony, 4th floor apartment complex in May. Depression hit like **** **** fogging out the brain.
Emptiness is the west.

Travelers who sway on driftwood face The Cascades acknowledging past times, revolving themes and bullet mouthed villains who seek away from starvation from ego lacking.
Their bile is sentences and the rest, anyways.  

Japanese instrumental rolls through closed eyelids in flashing Technicolor, rabbits watch the highways unaware of mortality.

World of bicycle rides on packed ** Chi Minh
City 2016 Winter where twenty-something North Americans go for pho while others go for broke. Palm trees polka dotting college campus in Afternoon, insects whine for the daydreamers. One is writing poetry in a small Vietnamese cafe sipping earl grey inspired by the Oriental clutter and a redheaded girl back home who paces frantically in the attic besides a crooked lamp scrawling flowers to the rotted whitewood panel work

The artist’s craft is a keepsake for eternity, as wells dry out and desert becomes ocean, poems will melt to matter zipping to outer space, satellite ink spots expanding by forever realms.

Pillow foot sole cracks shell casings on forgotten battlefields in later decades, wiping off grit shoeshine boy corpse particle reformation and fairy spit from brow, the last mad prophet sees visions of Christ as arachnid wretch black widow who venomed our bones with rapture,
doom wax peeling away after the damages had been committed.  

Now I check for spiders beneath my sheets.

Banshee howl symphonic sorrows leak in unison with all lanes of commuting traffic. Denial curse for positivity, mindset slate hiding
The weary souls radiance. On the 15x down Johnson! psychedelic chasm quakes through the wheels and my thoughts are spinning sunshine!
Washing machine dynamo recollections of whiskey spilt over carpet dark sand shade while La Vie En Rose resonates from playerless pianos topped with incense sticks in arabesque ashrams, imaginary shelters. We all have one!

Nick Cave is sleeping by back row while we approach final stop in front of bankrupt Chinese corner stores. He’s murmuring Oblivions and the bus keeps on going.

Death is a garden.
Tears are its rainwater and bucket flow.
Nectar pattern reveries honeybee the flowerpots.
Peoples sprout from them bloomed full.

Rosy reaper blasts past the solar system in a comet rocket since she saved the aliens, she hums Vivaldi and huffs a good huff from her cherry cigar.
She tightens her starlight hood and black holes be born.
Torn apart Pluto goes

B    A    N    G

Comet delirious ignores the decimation
And shouts the Lotus Sutra

“ALL GODS WERE TOO PASSIVE”
Reaper hollers back steering by the milky way and beyond on their hallucinogenic trip.

Lily on my crown.
Crown for the kingdom
wherein Reaper resides
and sings with galaxy ukulele to
the great empty.
Great as all can be.

America**

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go **** yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
******.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need ******* *******.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

A poet is a strange creature.
Filled with such eccentricity.
Inspired by fire.
Dancing with diamonds.
Playing with devils and fiddling with flowerpots.
Fighting with mischief, sobbed into a handkerchief.
Mopped up by words, carried away on the wings of birds.
Making babies every day.
Babies of poems, made out of all things.
Let us poets see what the next line brings.
(c) Livvi

Twisting like fingers,
caught around these curtains –
a pattern, two colors and
more dimensions than the sea.

One wave shivers upon
our house’s shoulders, neck.
It looks so aged and wrinkled.

The rash makes rafts
of its skin, purpled from burn
and the nerves become tin
cans or rooms without guests:
she napped on the bone.

Jealous that there is not
flowerpots in less, not color –
death’s but a mirror of black.

And giving pearls to
maids: I watched them pick
the suede from clamshells
and become a mother flood.

Nature was here with
dovetailing white linen sheets
soiled by flame, cancer birth.

Let me indulge you, and tell you the only story than I can ever tell.

Last night, I dreamt of our pub. It was as gold and black as a caviar tin, a short walk away from school, aching with sun and ready with my pint of London Pride. The grubby green booth kissed your cricket whites and you were seventeen forever, seventeen and as blonde as a mothered statue of a prince, bone-idle, as blonde and as young as dreams can make you.

“Jesus died, for somebody’s sins…”

My hands were sweating around the pint glass and I could feel the promise of a **** in the air,  a good **** in some pink carpeted upstairs room in that ****** little pub from ten years ago where they played old music over tin speakers, where my youth dribbled **** into the flowerpots, where you and I had our first shut-eyed kiss in front of all of our friends and they never said a word about it, not one word.

“…But not mine.”

I fell in love with you in this pub where all I wanted to do was love you, touch you, tell you that you were the most amazingly screwable piece of **** this side of the Milky Way, when just your wayward finger could give me the hardon of my life – and in this dream, darling, you were as real as you ever were, as gold and compact as a star, pink crowned and already wet and I took you between my lips to soak you



G

L

O

R

IIIII

A



I dreamt of the whole length of you inside my throat, with my body so young and beautiful, and you coated me in your own saliva covertly, always hiding the things that I most desperately wanted to see -
batting my head and my hands away...

(Come on - let me see,
le us both be suspended in your spit,
insects caught in the molten gold, gold -)

“Jesus, died, for somebody’s sins…

But not mine.”

……….

Creeping along the kerbside,
Kicking at flowerpots,
The miserable ***,
who lives under his hat.
The black floppy hat,
keeps the sunshine out of his eyes.
His bottle in hand, as he staggers along.
This young dandy dude,
wanders along, nose stuck up in the air,
Looked at the drunk guy,
Giggled to himself,
he wanted some fun,
Actually fancied a laugh,
The drunk guy,
He snorted, farted and roared, red faced,
Ignored the dandy for a moment or two,
Then he thought out loud, "why the fu** are you checking me out,"
Posh boy grinned,  
A face full of mischief ,thought the old drunk  looked hot for fun,  like he wanted to play.
In his poshest voice, " Hey  you ****, you come over here"
If I give you a dime, you want a gift"
The drunken fella staggered over to see,
A trip, said the posh ****.
Said he'd send on a pure holiday,
Gave him just an acid tab,
Now he's flying free!
Got to ride that trip, 'til the end of time!
(c)Livvi

Dance with me,
under a raincloud,
as sunshine bursts,
like schoolchildren;
leaping through the double doors,
of a rustic brick building.
Flowerpots filled to the brim
with cigarette butts, and bad
decisions, ones made
after dancing on the boardwalk,
as the darkness shrinks away,
for the sun brightens and shakes.
Quivers—the world spinning and spinning.

I’ve noticed at times
bustle and grime— ironically—
maintains close proximity
to reprieves from high anxiety.

It reminds me of the dissociative
peace of Clay street,
the way the shadows fall in reverse order
over the alphabetically arranged streets.

All the while the boisterous nights
on the Brooklyn block persist just half
a train ride away and we go to spend
our night touching elbows with strangers

and bumping into ***** walls until
we stumble home, kicking litter and
******* in flowerpots to watch
the sun shed light on the streets—

this time in perfect order.
From seven floors up, we watch
the blissful morning with bloodshot eyes
and coffee in hand.

It's times like these
When my usually tiny gaps
Tear into huge chasms
They are waiting to be filled
With what, I don't know
With who, I'm scared to know
But it's when I'm gaping wide like this
That the words start to trickle out
Like ****** mud stains under wet flowerpots
All I know is that I don't know
I am empty and hollow, devoid of
Something I'm not even aware of
Such a comic tragedy, wouldn't you say?
It's like Hepburn said
I can handle the murky blues
But I can't handle the Reds-
Those moments when I don't even know why I'm so uneasy
Maybe it's been too long since I have been challenged
Or maybe I'm just flaky,
fluttering from one inconsequential thing to another;

Ah, If only knowledge of my incompleteness could make me complete
...I'd be bloated by now

there is a house
a house down a long road
in plain sight yet transparent to some
the pale, tall, dried grass
makes a sound like children whispering
the paint on the exterior is peeling
coming off in strips that curl and twist
the structure seems to strain under itself
like it had taken a breath to hold
while driving through a tunnel
orange lights streaking past
leaving a stained glass window-like
luminescence on your face
breathing out when the darkness fades behind you
the house sighs and settles and sinks
the gutter is falling apart
days when it rains
make the roof cave in a little more
the broken windows pull you
like empty, sunken eyes
not conveying emotion
letting you feel what you will
they will get under your skin and stay there for weeks
the stairs will creak uncomfortably under your weight
the brass doorknob is cold and rusted
the door swings open to reveal
abandonment.
dusty furniture
pictures still on the wall
the faucet for the kitchen sink still dripping
blending in with the sound of the rain falling off the roof
hitting the edges of broken flowerpots outside
nothing has grown in them for years
ivy is growing through the window
reclaiming the place life once thrived in
you cannot bring yourself to go upstairs
somehow you already know there will be an empty rocking chair
broken china dolls
and musty stuffed toys in one room
and empty pill bottles, *** bottles,
and a sinister swaying rope
hanging from the ceiling of another.
your eyes linger up the steps a moment longer
hesitating,
you come back to reality
turn and walk out
stepping on the cracks in the hardwood floor
walking down the steps
carefully
and leaving the house behind
kicking up dust as you walk down the driveway
you’re never sure if it was ever really there
you haven’t been able to find it since
you always wished you’d gone upstairs
but this house is not your home
it is not anyone’s
you didn't look back.

What good is a day lived alone?
Wasted, nothing but solitude,
Conversations with dusty flowerpots,
Excuses for a bad mood.

Waiting for someone to stop and chat,
Call, or text, or leave a note,
Pour water down your chimney
To assure you stay afloat.

Don't wallow in self-inflicted seclusion,
Go and discover some company,
Instead of spending this weekday alone
Isolated, bitter, reveling in lonely.

I am endless poetry that does not ever rhyme
Unwashed dishes concealed above as I ran out of time
Broken plastic flowerpots that house neglected plants
unpaid rent, unpaid loans, unpaid student grants

I am books I’ll one day sit and take the time to read
About caged birds escaped from homes who died once they were freed

I am fox bones weaved with gold thread, amethyst and feather
The rain and fog and cold and storm that dominates the weather

I am all the boxes that you’ll never have to open
It’s just as well because you’ll cut yourself on bottles broken

The white tipped waves bring treasures found washed up on jagged shorelines
I’m the sea glass tumbled, lost but glinting when the sun shines

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

   Thoughts During that Famous Light Collation on Good Friday

This morning I mowed the lawn, the springtime lawn
Then messed about with flowerpots and bees
In this little safe space of happy green
A shadow of Heaven beneath wise Plato’s oak

This evening I will visit Jerusalem
And follow timidly the Stations of the Cross
Not wanting to be noticed by Romans or Greeks
(Setting aside the fact that I am a Roman)

Time stops - with faltering steps and a contrite heart
A journey into the dark, and then – waiting

high school dropout

out of a job

out of options

soon to be out of the
rented studio
apartment

he went to the local bar
and drank himself
to the point he had to *****
to make room for more
and next thing
he knew
he was dating a woman
named Cactus

Life can get pretty
weird when
you don’t live it
consciously

I knew the guy and heard
he moved in
with his lover
and started a new life

I really, really hope the
headline
“LOCAL ALCOHOLIC DEVELOPS SCHIZOPHRENIA,
DISMEMBERS GIRLFRIEND
PLANTS HER LIMBS IN FLOWERPOTS,
STICKS NEEDLES IN THEM”
is not about him

don't be afraid to drop me
because i will break.
if it's better for you to do it
do it.
if your arms grow too tired
to hold up a palette
and your ears come clean off, and mine
because my words seem so insincere
if i've become a deadweight.
pretty please drop me
with cherries on top
and sunshine sugar sweats dripping into flowerpots.
when the yellow paint wrestles with the
surface of your tongue.
don't be afraid to drop me.

Give it time
Release blooms in the heart
While you water the cracked soil
In the flowerpots
You’ve neglected all summer

While you rest in clean sheets
And collect poems and pebbles
That will grow paler
Atop the commode
And worn-down shelves

You may fear
You’ll rip apart at the seams
Feel your arms and legs detach
From the dull centre
Adding ruin to remorse

Be patient

Right now
A parched cactus
Draws fresh green
From the rain you provide
Never more a cactus
Than it is
Right now
The ocean leaves
Fresh foam on the sand
And takes back
Seaweed and debris
Sowing a new mantle of waves
Every time it moves
Right now
Life echoes
Across the cliffside beach
Sounding like seagulls
And water
Repeating its name
Over and over
So that the rocks will listen
So that you too can listen
To its pounding
In your pulse
And in your temples
Forcing out the roots
Of something so old
It can never die

high school dropout

out of a job

out of options

soon to be out of the
rented studio
apartment

he went to the local bar
and drank himself
to the point he had to *****
to make room for more
and next thing
he knew
he was dating a woman
named Cactus

Life can get pretty
weird when
you don't live it
consciously

I knew the guy and heard
he moved in
with his lover
and started a new life

I really, really hope the
headline
'LOCAL ALCOHOLIC DEVELOPS SCHIZOPHRENIA,
DISMEMBERS GIRLFRIEND
PLANTS HER LIMBS IN FLOWERPOTS,
STICKS NEEDLES IN THEM'
is not about him

today
we are
opening
the new
coffee.
it's a rainy
morning,
our cat
is fed,
and you
have put
two chairs
out for us
to sit —
our legs
crossed,
with our
hot cups
of coffee.
in the
afternoon
we will go
and bring
some
oranges
home
from
the tree.
our little
nasturtiums
and pink
roses have
bloomed;
some of
them will
live in the
vase on
the table.
the mosquitoes
were driving
us crazy
last night.
i think
we should
get more
repellents.
you're making
a stew for
lunch today,
and i will
make
something
sweet
with the
frozen
blueberries
from last
winter.
the cups
are almost
empty. but
we will
sit here
a little
longer
watching
the cat nap,
the drizzle
fill up the
flowerpots,
clementines
drop from
our tree.

let me love
you, quietly.
hold the
words that
you're too
afraid to say;
paint your
soft skin pink
with fingertips.
i would like
to share this
morning light
that slowly
warms your
eyes, wrists,
your reticent
smile.
give me
the space to
name you
wonderful, to
fix lamps and
rosy lights in
the grey parts
of you. you and
i could make
spaceships out
of the papers
piling at
your desk.
real spaceships
that go to
real places.
if it's okay, i
would like to
make surreal
plans with you.
make cotton
skirts and shirts
for us to wear
to the seaside.
let me kiss
the parts
of you that
you don't love.
let me love
them, quietly.
make the
coffee cups
and flowerpots
into loved ones.
run my
fingers through
your hair.
pack
sandwiches
and notebooks
for the
spaceship.

nothing sprouts this april out from chipped flowerpots
broken teeth and extended claws will settle along
with dusty roots. cup hope in your hands and run,
it never overflows but drains only. the spring air
tastes of my own breath, in circulation
the rims of eyes tinged pink, pickled on both sides
with salt in tears. we shall retire into stagnation.
blow my brains out with a can of 3% liquor
and spoil my lungs speckled black with peppermint cigs

specks of light caught in cobwebs, in the downward dust spiral
we are betrayed without precedence. if my body is a vessel of water
for tears and sweat and blood, a container of salt,
maybe the crystallized pain within me has clouded
my judgment. gray little rain clouds rising
a forecast denied for all who is seeing. i see you,
from a lit screen, a cracked surface, the lunacy
exchanging i love yous like goodbyes, but this is
not the last. this house is built on quicksand and we
have heard the cracks in walls groan from long ago
a reflex put off, all it takes is a gust of air
to rip across this house of flimsy cards.

this candlelight won't last till morning but take
away my humble offerings. at least we can still
whisper. we still have hands attached to arms attached to
tired brains to make the excursion to close windows shut
from firework lights. every month is the cruelest
and the cracked ground swallows, it's no fond thought
in wishing one day our atoms will walk in air,
tread places we will never afford to go. we no longer
sleep in the same hours but the pauses in your typing
drain away the life of us both. insanity becomes the new
sanity. the flame in your eyes would be distracted
before it dies off in its own time. do we not fill
the gaps in our thinking with mindless chatter
and call it a day. you won't smell the smoke or alcohol
in my words through long distance 4G telecommunications

how did we sink low enough, so that every sound night
of sleeping becomes a blessing, how is it consolation
knowing that morning light will surely break, what then
we are suspended once more in a black tunnel
perhaps the only change is that they no longer bothered
to turn on the lights. of course, this too will pass, distorted
overwritten then forgotten, as we walk blindly,
taking distance, not holding hands, step after step after
the direction we assume to be forward,
exchanging i love yous like farewells.

Empty flowerpots, their soil crusted
Insides clue us to once precious
Clasped bouquets. Will they hold
And love again some tender stem?
Discarded with the half-bricks,
Where the millipede roams, his
Thousand miniscule feet implore,
Beating the whispered rhythms of night.
By degrees, with each passing season,
The gathered moss gently mutes,
A glorious world of commerce,
Erupting between the little things.
Imperceptibly, away from brash
Petalled beauty they find
Steady destiny. Outside
Expectations and away
From where we see.