A monitor sight fixed on a scene
as they talk and talk away
my eyes scan mumbles, shoulders, hair screen
as I had nothing to say

I'm shrouded by a heat blanket
that I got when I broke both legs
I fixed it on another planet
and then I wished to be in bed

My camera's offscreen stuck offstage
while my mind roams the empty rooms
but blindness causes people rage
because all they see are tombs

The word's they echo off my mind
but I'm too far away to respond
mindfulness isn't always kind
and they'd rather I be fond

She smiles like a Cheshire Cat,
And it makes me laugh to think of how she sways her hips, walking away while looking back, like a professional acrobat.

"Live with me! I'll cook for you!"

The cologne
      of her ex
             on her skin,
                  
as she coos
          into my ear,
                    "Oops,
                            
                              dropped my phone."

She bends her neck to let me see her *******
(which jiggle as she giggles at a joke I never said)

I don't trust her. Not at all.

But I'm flattered by her clear attempt to sell me in the mall.
Maybe it's Maybelline,
Maybe it's methamphetamine
(Or the bruises on her arm)
Or her pupils stretched with a line,
Of black paint past her felonies,
Past the "no trespassing" sign.
Past her oceanic iris,
Curving to her brow,
Like a coy, reserved, egyptian lynx,
Poised while on the prowl.
Maybe it's her melancholy glance,
Sent off towards some memory,
Of a redwood where she kissed-
How she looks away when she sits,
To my left,
her eyes, motioning
to some tempting offscreen thing...

I don't know what drug she worships,
But it's got her shivering.

"I love you like I love rock music
           (But keep your clothes on)
I love you like I love the Steinhart aquarium,
           (But keep your clothes on),
I love you like I love the cinema,
           (But thanks for the compliment)"

My way will be found...
To these "warm waters"
and abundant agave among
a lingering, gentle devil
more potent than that austere burn.

It's the gaze you give me,
though gated by hissing apertures, screens, & skype,
that deters my sensibility. For this unconventionality is certanly fathomed.
Believe me

But it's the glittering glances, shot offscreen in blushful bantering
that
shocks my compass not due south

but to wherever you are.

Slip the knife in to feel incredible
Uppity old fiend
Consumate and scheme
A ragged representation
Reveal yourself offscreen
You ain't all what you used to be.

Dopamine disconnect
Reprint the picture
Surrealist architect
Initiate surrender

I never knew tonight
Was the last cigarette in the pack
I never learned which way your hands went
and why
Or if your car would have made it to D.C
without dying
But I remember
How cold your hands were
And how it was raining
And how you looked like an actress
caught
in a
simulated
rainstorm
and the fan would blow your hair
and the water buckets poured
And Johnny offscreen
Banging aluminum sheets together for thunder
a cigarette hangs from his lips
a flashbulb for some lightning
Your umbrella opens up
beneath your make up running
My chest began to squeeze
Between your wet hair falling
I couldn't hold it back any longer

I love you

......and cut

my diet as a young, unsuspecting girl consisted mainly
of the saccharin that crystallized in between
the glowing, smiling teeth of Disney princesses,
and the artificial-like aftertaste that
coated the walls of my mouth,
enchanting me with fantasies of formulaic love –

level-headed, perfunctory love that
feels like knowing the color of
your dress complements some manicured uniform
waiting offscreen until the waltz your costumes are programmed
to perform, indifferent
(as you are)
to the bodies
that fill them.

so I painted myself monochromatic,
spending my days planning, calculating,
and trusting, wondering
why it seemed that other girls never got too hungry,
(living as they did only on sugar highs),
or bored of the one color they had chosen to become, to wait inside,
but starving was easier than searching for
(or, god forbid, finding)
what I knew I was missing ––

"you are a passionate person,"
he says to me,
truth spilling through my rotting teeth into my shriveled belly,
all rich and creamy-like, as if
he doesn't know what the inside of my mouth
should taste like, as if
his mouth doesn't know
how hungry I am ––

I know
that passionate people
spend their days feasting.
they lie underneath black starry skies
and spoon their own moonlight-infused tears into
each other's mouths, and chew crunchy, fizzling morsels of poetry
along with fistfuls of shadow-drenched notebook paper, and
guzzle violet-tinged philosophy and insomnia until sunrise, but

still, unfortunately, love is what sustains us.

passionate people
are no better at surviving than Disney princesses, but
their bellies are too big and their palates too sophisticated
for light, sugary, level-headed love ––

so, in our wild, potent love, we cram ourselves with
these decadent and deliciously painful things,
and when time and distance and gravity make us still
ache with hunger, we swallow fire the colors of our lovers' eyes and
we burn like kaleidoscopic beacons,
smiling.

basemented   this liminal vivarium of cool moulded plastic
             with mirrors standing in for windows
and a ring of branded restaurants taking refuge at the edges
    all familiar     no surprises
the staff set up
         for the consumers morning
                      of slack mastication
      (Local chain, national, international)
  
the old-timers   glomming into clump
    benign zombies
an arrangement of fellas with dissolving jaws
  cudding over mammary notions
       untailored in sacky pallid sultana skins
    reform in a mumble
doing snailish pinball movements
            crossing and recrossing floors
         cleanly tiled for biohazard accidents
               salivating about the savoury soft foods to come

the restaurants rattle-shake-raise their security blinds

also noted
a mixed bag of people projecting
      into their smooth glowing slablets
    making out like worldly fools

also present
cropped and groomed toy security
      peering between the fronds of plastic foliage

offscreen
public bathrooms   the first struggling **** of the day

also present
a bench of  youngsters in bright blue screen matching pjs
  the four employees of sanitation
      drumming up for the shift

see also
vague happy lady in a  garish sarong
importing her holiday religion