Before everything

i. I never knew four letters could melt
menthol candy-like, hydrochloric acid on my tongue
and keep burning it in different degrees
I had to swallow back.

ii. That there would come a time
I'd have to baptize the pain in my chest like seasons
robbing me lungfuls
on January, September and December nights.

iii. That my blood was really ink I needed to stop using
before my skin turned paper-like.

iv. That my heart had an epicenter pumping a magnitude of earthquakes
that made me tremble helplessly in its intensity;
and that they were man-made calamities
followed by harsh, heavy, whipping tsunamis
to flood my grave of bleeding, jagged fault lines.

v. That aftereffects lasted longer than treatment itself,
and that I didn't need any professional diagnosis to know
I was terminal
from the same drug that made butterfly-strokes in my veins,
whose arms withheld the only elixir to this malady.

vi. I named my sickness, my pain, my agony like orphaned children, after you--
a rare disease
the doctors didn't even know about yet.

vii. I did and I doubted
but a part of me beat signals
that echoed off the cave walls of my skull
that I knew.

viii. Before everything,
I have been warned
but I chose to listen to the soothing, wrong, hopeful voices
"He means no harm,".

ix. You began spreading like an epidemic-- a tumor to a colony of cells all over me-- until I became you;
a reflection of familiar suffering and mortality, slowly withering away.
In the end, I didn't even have you to blame
for letting me overdose from intakes
of my own ****, bitter medicine and unforgivable mistakes.

x. I guess, this was how you wanted the price to be paid.

Until today, I never understood heartache.

I never understood that thinking about you (how the thoughts come unbidden yet so welcome entrancing encompassing dizzying worrying wonderful) -
your name
your voice - strong and low, speaking softly, only for me
the thickness of your hair, the way it feels against my fingers when I hold your head in my hands
the way your skin tastes after a night of making love
the warmth of your hands and your mouth and your laugh
your scent, that somehow reminds me of both my childhood and times and places I have never known

the feeling of you inside me, molded close and perfect, and the way you toss your head and ***** up your eyes while we're at our peak, as if I were the one who was so unmissable

- could make my insides curl and twist so hard that I have to stop what I'm doing, set down my glass or pen, stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

I am drowning in you, taking in deep lungfuls of you, absorbing you into my bloodstream.
The sweetest little death I could ever imagine.

what you used to do with those fingers
i look for them in pictures
and wonder if it's you sitting in the background
is it you behind the jenga tower
is it you behind that camera lens
yes, I used to say your name in
many intonations, many lungfuls not wasted
but they are wasted now, every time
is it you behind those blocks in that
black sweater, yes I remember you
from so long ago when
you used to say
i love you brooke

your lip jutting out is like a shard of broken glass
and I know you’d just stitch me back up if I tried but
I don’t think you’re very amenable to being kissed;
not now, anyway.
not here, you’d say.
all I've ever wanted was to put my mouth on you, baby,
taste the salt of your skin like natural protection against
your demons and mine
and all the others in between.
you think you've seen them all but believe me,
I'm older, I'm wiser, handsomer too but you don’t see me bragging about it
and I've seen what’s down there. I tried
to protect you for as long as I could but
we have seen the end of night
in the complete dark
together.
I almost miss that dark, the obscurity where you’d admit you didn't always have to be so **** conscious
and we slipped back to raw instinct and raw feeling
and I've still got the feel of your skin under my fingertips
and between my palms
and my hands have been covered with you for years, now.
I don’t dare to breathe on them lest the last of your DNA
slip through my fingers -
but it was probably too good for me, anyway.
your genes and your jeans fit you beautifully and I'm like a ****** hopped up on the memory of when
I raked my nails down your back and
though the lines have faded
I will always reopen those wounds.
I will never leave you more whole than I.
we have broken every rule and we have broken
each other, and I wonder why anyone
would settle for any less than this;
because an empty passengers seat is the loneliest place I've seen in the continental united states
and that’s counting the grand canyon, baby.
I have stood above that yawning tear in the ground and tossed my voice into it, practising idiocy and ventriloquism and other interchangeable words like that
and like a man carved from stone I stood there, watching, listening, waiting with a patience borne of desperation,
but after a few thousand lungfuls of broken glass there was no reply and I
left.
I pulled your favourite move and I
left,
alone.
so what do we have now? a car, the change in our pockets and each other?
it sounds romantic as **** but you've always been the poet here.
I'm just the guy who sits behind this frozen wheel and drives
because it’s easier than warming my hands
and when I tear your heart out the cold
numbs your chest so you can’t even feel it.
have you ever felt anything? have you felt me, baby?
has this whole ******* existence of mine been in vain?
because your lip jutting out is like a shard of broken glass and I've got
the oddest premonition that it can slice me to ribbons
if you would just move your head and look at me.
baby, please. look at me.
let me know I'm alive so I can die for you.

when you smile only your lips move
you’re a beautiful portrait of starched shirts and graceful misery
a whole tragedy told in your bared teeth and narrowed eyes.

when the soft moonlight runs down your face
all i see is plastic flesh and fine lines
jagged edges, discolored hollows—a broken sort of beauty.

the cigarettes and alcohol run electric in your veins;
you are gunpowder and grenadine, razor
    blades and tar. sticky and corroding, sharp and broken.

you wear your jaundice like a punishment
a rotting underneath a supple olive complexion,
from the neglected depths of your weary body.

you are a child with an old man’s scars.
your lost youth poisoned with a misery so heavy
it’s as if you've seen the world and lived through it twice.

you inhale the wild air and you breathe out toxins:
everything about you is decaying and rotting and dying
but in your erratic pulse i hear a muted plea: don’t let me die.

so i lean over, and into you
and let you take in the oxygen of my lungs
and the lingering mint on my tongue.

breathe me:
let me save you from drowning
in lungfuls of nicotine numbness and hallucinogen delusions.

for you in full blossom, i inhale
and exhale the ephemeral, dissonant beauty of your mortality.

​I said you are
the purple veins of an orchid
quickening footsteps
mist clinging to pines
the dip in the waltz
a geode cleaved in two
tunnels thrumming their pulse
hitched breath
lungfuls of winter wind
the dusty burn of smoke two streets over
an invasion of fireflies
fields with moonlight beating down
pollen-ridden light

I said you are
picnics caught in the rain
and petals in the hair
stones glistening at low tide
and Vivaldi
sound waves from outer space
and ink smeared palms
a warm shoulder in the dark
and the snap of a wind-ruffled sail
heart pounding
and movement


I said you are
crystalline
rooted yet rootless
atomic, ultraviolet,
ineffable

You only can die but once, they say,
There isn’t a second time,
We carry fears all along the years
When we think, which day is mine?
We envisage that marble headstone
That’s indicative of our fate,
Standing ***** in some unknown field,
And wonder about the date.

How often we hear that someone said
While trying to be more than brave,
But shuddering at the thought of the dead,
‘Someone just walked on my grave.’
It creeps on up, the length of your spine
The shiver that never ends,
Bringing a list of your sins to mind
With no time to make amends.

You think of that open casket,
And lying there sightlessly,
So all can stare, and look at you there,
‘I’m glad that it isn’t me.’
We wonder if we will hear them sigh
About all the good we did,
Or even know, if terror will grow
The moment they close the lid.

I think about Averill Crombie
Who said that she knew the date,
And suddenly died as she sat wide-eyed
Poking the fire in the grate.
We all went along to the service,
To say our goodbyes, as we should,
But then our hair, stood up in the air,
On hearing three taps on the wood.

We scrambled to open the coffin,
To find her still breathing in there,
And then she began to start coughing,
******* in lungfuls of air.
She tried to climb out of the casket
With many a cuss and a curse,
But then must have blown a gasket,
So we carried her into the hearse.

You only can die but once, they say,
There isn’t a second time,
She knew the date, it was simply fate
But the first time blew her mind.
I still see them lower her into the ground
When she’d died, just twice, perhaps,
But I couldn’t swear, when leaving her there
That there weren’t three ghostly taps.

David Lewis Paget

we’re just teenagers
hair whipping in our beat-up trucks teenagers
gas station food at 3 am teenagers
love too hard and lose yourself teenagers

some people wonder why we hate
everything

we touch the rays of sunrise
with our snapchat flower crowns
and skate park supernovas
and with our glass-pane-collarbones
peeking out from black bomber jackets,
fragile fingertips emerge from sweater paws.

we capture our feelings in polaroids
our emotions swallowed up
by bottles and our youth
it’s the life we think we know

and all they ever wanted us to do
was crack

we’re just teenagers
soda can sizzle teenagers
lungfuls of shattered dreams teenagers
disintegration conversation teenagers

but the reason why we break so easily
is because we’re humans too.

Behind the gate that pretended to be locked
lurked in the half shut window
a sage
solitude soaked and driven by impulse
to look away when questioned.
He was a lone man with lifetime wisdom.

Patch on  lakeside worshipped the ****
grew in grace and abundance
tendered tenderly, as if, the soul
invested in the soil  spirit would
rise through  pipes  produced to ****
lungfuls and sit back and watch
the sky bend in ecstasy.
The surge climbed  nerves
settled  pumping heart.

He said he saw the Christ
cry on  the cross stifled by the nails
and thorny weeds akin
to smoke and sustenance he now bequeathed
to silence.

The greater sorrow
nursed being unable to float
free from the injustice that lay  thick bark
on  magnificent tree. He ran as fast as his conscience could take
him to the outer reaches of society
where nirvanas  quiet life of contemplation opened.

an evening listening to him profound
the lectures the worlds knowing
learned his talk of the next kingdom.

Quiet in the night of haze
and damp sweet smells
he dreamed a patch in afterlife too.

Author Notes
We all know this man.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

You are, I’m sure, the one of purest wit.
The words you wiled cut the mind that let breath
Lungfuls of worldly knowledge that can’t quit.
That word-sword you swing pray it never be sheath
Never will I forgive that evil crime.
The world cannot accept a voiceless you.
My eyes forever miss a silly rhyme
Composed by an almost sweetly hue.
A heavenly trumpet called out ago
The coming of a baby girl did they sing.
Moonlit is her skin that surpasses snow
Her intelligent, piercing, green eyes do bring
Truth to the surface something never known
But softly, never will she leave you alone.

my spine was assembled clumsily and with an erratic precision of a hand that knows the premeditation of everything
the swarm came in the shape of an air conditioner
it's the characterizations of overgrown lawns and memory foam on the side of the curb
like going to the laundromat instead of church on Sunday
I've said this before, repetition lives inside the brain that continues to step over it's own feet
foot slowly inching towards my mouth
i could kiss you with my ankle if you would
the air conditioner buzzes all night like i did that night that i couldn't find the entrance in a place that i wanted to leave
take me home in a Chinese take-out box
i'll sit in the back of your fridge until you forget
i'll grow my own colony, mold malformation on the creases where the warmth should be
Sweaty container and you throw me out before Monday's pickup trash along with the expired mustard and mayonnaise
oh the missed opportunity, the dedication i could have gone to have given you a stomach ache that leaves you at three in the morning dry heaving your memories
that electric buzz stays until it's unwelcome and still it persists
so the bees have started to congregate, digress and drink the synthetic honeysuckle it spits
they take off, wings of woolly yellow into a breath that i consume by lungfuls
i don't know where they're going but that's okay because they keep coming back
and it's the permanence of something so flighty that calms the hum

Through the gates of a paradox
Past three strands of infinity
I pull up the curtain of night
The face of God by chance to see

To bathe in rivers of moonlight
Enamored of hope's gentle glow
I breathe in fresh lungfuls of sunshine
And slowly forget all I know

When my tired mind is empty
Every memory stripped, every care
When Nothing is all that is left me
I know I'll find you standing there

Sometimes,
sometimes I scream instead of breathing

and it takes my breath

and it makes me stop

wondering what could be so frightening
that I am confusing breath with screaming.

Perhaps it's just some times.

It steals lungfuls from me
sometimes,
but doesn't everybody get scared
sometimes?

Starlight dances
in midnight blue
I wonder if
they can hear
this secret roaring
inside me

Gaslit tracks
running loops
over and over
reminds me
of drunk mad
chaos
stilled
by your steady pulse.

Small infinities
I don't want to let go of
I don't want you
distracted
of wild racing things

You ask me to breathe
and all I can take in
is lungfuls of
you you you
and the night sky                you
and the cool wind drifts    you
and dim light streets          you

I am sober enough      
again
But can't you see
I'm mad drunk on
you

Everybody's got a secret to hide
Yet it's the one I want
desperately told
on every inch
of skin on yours and
why don't eyes unfold
to meet mine

Don't you know it
In every strange flutter of me
trying to seek you out
small cramped excuses
like
the furtive soft lips on your cheek
when all they want to be is
somewhere else
anywhere else

I love the way it feels like
a new, strange, unsure hum

And another sleepless night.

Would I risk everything
just to feel something
again

i could drown myself
- find solace in the underworld
of sirens and the ironic clarity the sea
has been known to provide, for all that
it has murky waters-
but my demons know how to swim.
they'd hoist me up
to ensure precious lungfuls of air
would be rammed down my throat.
survival is subtle ******.
i am immortalized in the moment
before the surface tension breaks.

Stale smoke floats molten,
in particle clouds haloed
around a sleepy skull.
Touch moonskin every time
you lift a hand to flush rivers
of air through your hair.
I am the air so I know
infinitesimal and everywhere
can’t escape me so I know
who your tears are for.
Your mother never left you.
Though her warmth is gone
and your flesh may not again meet
remember she always said
you are what you eat.
Well, you buried your mother
under grass and then ate salad,
threw her to ferocious flames
filled a fist she so graciously gave to you
with ashes and flung her to the winds.
Breathe in deeply.
Now in your lungs
her dust sticks to join
tar where I steep
waiting anxious to reclaim you.
**** another death stick, inhale
me in lungfuls during lunch
breaks. Though you’ve wronged me
and surely will again,
I’ll lend you air
to smoke a *** now and then
and welcome you, with dusted
open eyes, when time comes
to take you home.

Bright star

of open shine

large lungfuls

of Christmas pine

Bright sun

sandy shore

never forget

remainder's moore

Bright child

with hollowed skull

the only wish

to resist the pull

Bright coin

shiny skin

pretentious gleam

of wealthy sin

The black stallion runs onto the tracks
headlong into the train’s cycloptic  light
attempting to break its horsepower.

He refuses to yield to gravity
touching his feet and grounding him
into mammal again:  

sweat, hair, lungfuls of air,
refuses to slip his nose
through another hard halter.

His head and hind legs draw up.
He kicks the landscape
and the landscape flies away

in the blur of speed and motion,
the fight with the steel air
steering towards him.

The trees turn black
and all green goes away.
The ground is cut to wrinkles.

The stallion drops his long neck
and fumbles with his thick tongue.
He stumbles into shadow.

Once, a long time ago,
he was named Never.
Today, he tosses off that.

The clouds from the train’s smokestack
pummel the nimbus of the dark sky
and its wheels stampede flesh and bone.

Its cars are loaded with cattle
headed for the stockyards
far away in the west.

beyond the broken thistles
sits the screech of night
where I have stood
sipping slight lungfuls of pale air
among the booming half won sounds
my ebbing vapour drifting upwards
ever onwards towards the electric sky

It was a hot day when we departed,
A fuming day in the land of Ashes,
Hazy from the smoke of a fire three towns over.
All day felt like sunset.
Beautiful.
Inescapable.
A thick air and a thick knot in my stomach that began to unweave itself as we let go of each other.
Years of twisting and intertwining fibers
wrenching and writhing away from their shared center.

Warm, overwhelming, I'm-going-to-be-sick feeling.

Breathing deep lungfuls of haze and hot air.
Filling up the painful places in my body.
Exhaling all the life you breathed into me over so long.
Nothing to do but embrace a slow and sweetly inevitable
death and rebirth process.
My god it hurts.
Nothing to be done besides hurt.
Cry a little. Just to cool down my flustered cheeks.
Nothing to be done besides
feel the emptiness that has formed between us,
and gaze into the abyss beneath the burning bridge.
Feel the knots unformed in the safety rope round our waists.
Orbiting without a tether.
Lovely little dreams of freedom.
Infinite frictionless momentum.
Eventually.

I'd like to enjoy the feeling of freedom.
Of release.
Of forgiveness.
But death is always painful, even as it frees us from suffering.