there is a woman who has been with me all this time
who’s felt the careening anguish of a family gone from three to two
who’s breathed oxygen into my sagging lungs
when then only thing in them was vaporous grief
who’s bled with me from countless soul-wounds,
both of us
driven to the brink of endurance
again and again and again
who’s shielded my raw meat heart with all she has
who’s never seemed to see in herself what I do;
the gleam of someone who has been ******
into the pounding depths against her will
but returned to the surface
every time alive
every time breathing
every time finding
the wet bedraggled girl with her and
putting both her arms around her and
saying over the shriek of the water:
I am here, I am here, and I will be, always

this is for her

for my hand holder, my moon howler,
my affirmation, my companion,
my soul keeper, my forehead-kisser,
my garden-hearted pillar of integrity

for a brave brave woman
who’s been smashed by poison people and atomic loss
but still come out
miraculously, fluorescently
shining

Lucid
Crystalline
Sea in Cyan -
a rendezvous
with the
Vermillion sunrise
horizon.
Its Amber halo
fades into the
Opalescent
Azure sky
vaguely cast
in Magenta.
Alabaster white
froth, laps up
against the
Sandy shore in Fawn.
Beachy summer-
the vast Blue
Fluorescently mellow
Dawn.

lately, lately, lately,
I’ve learned life is too
short, even for the most
invincible of us.

we live in hospitals we construct
for ourselves, shelves stocked high
with anxieties, and
finances, and
pills for every kind of high
or low.

and we live this way–
chained to our bedsides,
keys in our pockets, crying
out for doctors
and saviors.

and we die this way–
holding onto something that we
thought, we constructed to look
like hope.

except we know it is just
a scribbled picture, just a
crayon creation of a
gruesome monster, a thing waiting

to grab us, with fierce
blue claws, and pull us
under by our
fluorescently lit halos.

Encrusted ballasts flicker
over processed lines
and those predatory octogons
Follow you
with its clicking clicking clicking
mandible clocks
count is rhythm
fluorescently

I’m anticipating the day when I wake up with no eyelashes
or when the four ones of my clock turn into two’s
or when all the stars are reabsorbed into the blackness of the sky
because I’ve used them all up

I’ve tied a wish around every lash, number and star
and sent it off into the space between us
in the hopes that you have done the same
and our wishes will collide and be real;
tangible

on those four ones, I wished that
tonight,
more than any other night,
I could hold you in my arms
in my bed, or a bath, or a fluorescently lit parking lot,
and melt you into me;
grasping at your red t-shirt,
inhaling your scent
tonight, more than any other night,
I wish I could run across the distance that separates us
and just simply touch you,
run my fingers across your skin
and feel you flutter and sharpen when I reach your heart

all the fibers of my lashes;
tiny hairs of my DNA,
are covered with wishes
to see your whole body move in sync with your voice

and all the ones are wrapped with the hope
that I can see the expanse of pink and purple sky sitting next to you
and to no longer look at the same one together
but from afar

and those stars only brighten when I think of
how badly I want to kiss all the words and symbols that cover your body

but
I only have so many lashes
and maybe one day my clock will skip the ones before I can see them
there are only so many stars that remain
so I only have so many thoughts
and hopes
and wishes
to attach them to
before soon enough,
I will only be wishing on blank stares
and ticking stares
and tar-coated skies

I only wish on these because I can feel the memory of your escaping me
some days I can’t remember what your laughter sounds like
or how your fingers felt across my back
or how your voice quivered when you asked to kiss me
those moments are escaping me
and I want to be reminded
I want to expose the film of all the photographs I took in my mind
of our time:
T.O. and B.C.:
you and me
and I want more than anything to take more pictures
and record your laughter
and put paint on your fingers as you drag them across my skin
so I am never apart from you.

and so my lashes and ones and stars are laced with thoughts
and hopes
and moments
with you
to come back
to be near
to envelop me.

We were rebels,
swinging as
high
as we could in our
fluorescently floral
print dresses while
our mothers sipped
black coffee.
And we giggled and
kicked the tufts of
dandelions and spun
under ribbons of
watercolor sky.
We wished on stars
long before we even knew
their names, and
grasped the air wildly,
watching fireflies
wriggle around in
our palms.
And we pinky-
swore we would
never grow up,
or turn into our mothers,
or worry about the
little things, but
inevitably
our ring fingers acquired
diamonds, and bassinets
congregated in the corners
of our master suites. So
we broke
our promises,
but never our vows.
And our children
swing now from
white picket
porches into
endless horizons.

Sleepwalker drifting through interstellar planes.
Citizens illuminate fluorescently; shining black.

Galloping between stars.
Galactic tornado made of chains.

Thirsty hunter gathering intellect.
Polar caps enameled with honey.

Junkyard holding crystalized memories.
Tainted philosopher sitting high.

Daytripper strangling dwarfed dreams.
Waves crash brilliantly against the sky.

certain smells
spray paint
gasoline
solitary
then suddenly disappearing
fluorescently lit
prone to proliferate
whispering smoke
vaguely prominent
perpetual odor of breath
sinister aluminum chromium menthol in his lungs
known vehement vintage broken bottle shore

articulate nocturnal dog of unknown origin
a guard dog
essential to the territory of his ears
disrespectful
accusatory
uninhibited
pure spirit spurting gore
he broke the silence with an outburst

You answered me honestly
It caught me off guard
The starting gun for logical fallacies and demented poetry
From an awful head looking for an escape
A break from the drama
Someone to fix me
Not to puncture my self esteem like a grape
So when you said you felt awful i felt a breath
Of similarity but not clarity
Just fantasy in a room full of mirrors
Romanticized with white lights
But the air is filled with smoke and my tears
This is not a maze but a trial by fire
Threatening to rip me limb from limb
In pursuit of happiness but from a place not merely dim
But you'll never understand it all
I took quite care to make sure you never saw my pitfalls
The veins in the eyes that fluorescently lit up
And the laugh that really was the sound of destruction
Pain
So dont tell me you need me to put less space
Between you and my ailing hidden brain
Because you dont want to see the truth im trying to erase

an occulted mass kicking at light gone
a moment ago, as if in a sooty stomach,
maleficent enough to deliver the unborn.
cries that vent down a lengthening
hallway--abandoned to what forces open
an original wakefulness.
the way knowing you becomes a cryptic
comorbidity, a walk of shame every morning--
a slathered nausea, too smooth for sickness.
tons of traumatized flesh recanting vulnerability,
(mostly yours) long after a bed became a
one-sided argument.
seasons regard you with braindead gossip: 'is that
her again, she still exists--she always thinks
something's off, it's the landfill of personal stuff she
compulsively goes through. '
a nonstop pause for Jane, her yoyoing edge--a highly
inconspicuous center of attention, captured in photos
superficially waving off the fuss.
a hyperalert shutdown, Cinderella's carriage to pumpkin
developing acne vulgaris, sloppily tripping with eyes
caked on her.
angsty & unrestorable disconnects--daring selectees to
root out a fantastic despiser.
tender years designating the world as an apologist.
a chronic sense of entitlement winks out, already 
elsewhere--as if nothing ever happens.
then happens all at once, a fluorescently lit bathroom
unsparing an in-your-face ugliness.

i tend to visit poland once a year,
although i used to spend
every summer over there in my teens,
that's how i left school aged
16, a chubby doughnut,
and reentered it to study for my
a-levels a beefed up slim -
the only way to loße weight,
apparently is not in the gym
(too much excess skin) -
  cycling!
       or? swimming!
          anyway...
but as i've aged, whenever i go
into hiatus seeing my grandparents,
who do not have internet access,
and stay off whiskey for up to
a month, and absorb all the scents
of winter of -0°C - last year it went down
to -30°C in the night,
    and -18°C in the day: magical -
felt like smoking a cigarette with
every breath, and that eerie crispness
in the air, biting, stabbing needles -
and an even eerier scent of burning
wood - leaves - cinnamon...
by the way: bad idea wearing jeans
in sub-zero temperature -
             the cold pinches the fabric:
you're better off with softer materials.
anyway...
  as time went by, i realised something,
westerners look at their countries
as if about to chop off a gangrened limb,
they see no mirror, themselves:
   faces savaged by an abyss, drained,
non-existent, hardly even in the buffer
of the grime of the everyday commuter
grey, merging into a collective
         amnesia of: hardly a stand-out
punk with leather, studs, and a fluorescently
pink mohawk.
               these days i find the country, sure,
it's there, it's more advanced than it was,
people are getting richer,
  but you still have stray dogs running
in the streets, and wild cats in the cemeteries,
don't ask me how these cats managed
to un-domesticate themselves and
turn into these feral bonsai tiger,
  they live in tombs,
   waiting for the next funeral i expect;
point being:
every time i go back and visit the old-timers,
my grandfather always buys me cigarettes,
and usually picks out a book from his
private library in order to give me a challenge -
he has all these books and has barely read
a tenth of them... last year he gave me
god's wrath by kraszewski -
   a wide majority found him bland -
   but i managed to digest it, not bad,
given that the backdrop of god's wrath
translates into the with fire and with sword
by sienkiewicz - i.e. the cossack uprising,
seen the film, didn't read the book,
  but i read the "antithesis" of the whole
affair... so that's that.
   again, beside the point,
  the point i want to make is that,
whenever i go back for my healthy hiatus:
i'm not looking for a country...
i'm looking for both child,
  and teenager.
              i can't either of them!
        every single time i'm looking for
the child, the teenager and the man i am now,
but the man i am now is a detached
body, with what seems like missing
  organs, mainly the brain, and the heart.
i can't find either heart, or brain in this land...
merely having the tongue that
can belong in this land is not enough...
  it doesn't matter if the tongue is
still there, with no heart, with no brain,
i might as well be a foreigner who merely
acquired the native language and perfected it...
  which is odd...
              to say the least,
esp. upon hearing stories about what is
the day-to-day in the pat three days,
  the 60,000+ strong marches through warsaw,
the resurgence of nationalism...
i feel some allegiance, in absentia,
although to the tongue, rather than the land,
simply because: i'm not there!
              my heart and mind have
become detached to the point that they
remain in england, with the internet connection
access;
  and mainly my work:
   i want to introduce orthography into
the english language, as already stated:
  loße (lose) differs from loose - primarily
because there is a stiffening of the S in losing
that becomes gaining a Z -
            the germans use it, originally,
to cut back on the english preference of
  little, better, mummified,
                          bladder,
                                  pepper,
                daddy, i.e.? the double consonant,
the rudolf heß - rather than hess -
   well, the english could actually make
sense of the german grapheme (es und zed)
   by playing the latin interchange game...
you don't loose, you loo'zzz...
                 i wonder if i can puncture
english and introduce orthography into it...
diacritical markings...
   after all, orthography is already in place
in english: text spreschen:
e.g. c u l8er the crudest example i could think
of...
                          only the best of men
are the products of their time,
   and none are even revolutionary -
                       most, are merely reactionary.
the whole joke in this affair that
these were written from: essex.
             imagine the irony when
that's revealed to an englishman -
given that essex is the ****-joke in every
stereotype...
                        a bit like that similarity
to: whatever good ever came out of nazareth?
applies to essex, essex is nazareth
of the north.

it depresses me to realize that i’ve become one of the zombies shopping late at night in bleak, overly fluorescently lit, dingy yellow dollar store on the outskirt of small texas town.

i watch them shuffle around, talking to themselves, looking lost, swiveling their heads frantically, searching for cheap store brands to match their coupons and save what little social security money they live on so they can buy tobacco and alcohol.

who the **** am i to judge what makes a person happy when it’s hard to find and so temporary.

The deptht of my loves flows fluorescently ,
  Like the ocean , I am calm.
   Drink within me! ,
   My soul sails within you.
   Our passion is fluid,
   I am drawn to you,
  Swayed to your caresses
  The gravity Is unformidable ,