Oh, how I delight in the taste
     of my lover’s scent
     as she cries out my name!
In my arms, a slender orchid
     worshiped to soft placidity,
     she murmurs
     do I still yearn for my virginity?  
And I whisper, my love,
     ten thousand times
     ten thousand times, no.

For what we tender feel in lost virginity
     is not for lost virginity alone
Not for a shred of skin or a drop of blood;
     what human being mourns this?
That small ***** we feel
     is the eternal mortality
     of all lost first experiences.
Then let us thank the Gods they spare us,
     for now,    
     our last virginity.

Think now upon the family and friends
     we have lost
     to disease or hunger, to time
     or accident, to addiction or war.  
How shall we remember them
     if not their names?
How shall we speak of them?
Will you remember me?
     Or shall I become as dust in this temple?

Loudly, all my loves, hear me,
      come now with me!
Let us leave this temple for a time,
     walk with me to my secret garden
     where we shall remove these robes
     and look upon one another
     with the gift of acceptance
     and where
     we shall place flowers in our hair.  

Where we shall hold hands
     and walk a bit farther
     to the river and bathe one another
     in the moonlight.
Then let us return here to celebrate
     the memory of the fallen
     as the Gods intended.
Let us remember the names,
     let us speak the names and lest we forget,
cry out their names.

Swan Lake
Crystal clear lagoon
Slow glide and procreate
The serene placidity humm
Last Song

A silence that deafens
Echoes through the chill of the night
A single rose without meaning
Her petals wither and die

Lyrics without music
Screaming to sing for the song
Quietly it stumbles
Never recovering from the fall

A heart that is broken
Cries through the darkest of days
For without love, it is frozen
Into the abyss it shall fade

Those who lack faith
Can never see the silver lining of the cloud
They fall from grace without warning
Their spirits never to be found

Find something to believe in
This world is far too cold to be alone
Don't be a lion without courage
For your sins, you can always atone

Flies buzz around the still room
like dogs chasing cars.
An old crone is heard nagging beyond the door,
"Don't you think you're leaving to one of them bars!"

Light hasn't entered the room in days;
the dark green curtains have all been closed.
The old lady began banging against the wood,
"You still need to clip my toes!"

The room reeked of cigarette smell.
A half-burnt one existed within the ash tray.
Weeping could be heard from the other side.
"Honey, open up. Don't leave me astray.."

Next to the lime-green chair where he lay,
a dried up pen could be seen leaving his hand.
One scribbled note stood out upon the lamp table.
"Can you get off your *** and fix the **** TV stand?!"

Matilda,
            I have loved you for sixty-three years, sixty of which we've been married and I wouldn't trade it for the world, but during these past couple of years, you've become heartless. You've changed and it saddens me entirely. You're not the woman I fell in love with all those years ago, but rather this ghost that preys on the misfortune of others. Maybe it was all the radiation treatment the doctors performed or perhaps the endless drugs they made you take to numb the pain, but regardless of the mental distortion you now face, I can no longer bear it. I love you, Matilda, but it breaks my heart to see you like this. I'm sorry, but this is indeed goodbye.
                                                                                                            -Henry

The soundlessness lasted for weeks
except for the one shot that ran.
Nothing living remained in that room,
ending the life of that one old man.

This weekend, something has awakened inside of me. This weekend I have lost my fear. I have fasted and been patient- I have enjoyed the company of my friends and enhanced in their sadness, their happiness, their contributions to the feeling of “whole”. I have seen human nature and kept to myself. I know that throughout all suffering I always have the peace of myself to return to, the inner quiet that speaks to me at night and envelopes me and tells me it will all be okay. There is beauty in the system, the system that lacks courage and strength, where cowards reside, there is also fault. Excellence and prodigious truth lie within nature, tranquility, the placidity and enjoyment of pedestrian life. Over complication does nothing to enhance life or living, and the creation of problematic situations is meaningless in any circumstance. To live and live in the lives of others is where true value lies, and I am settled, I am content.

A regal white heron,
a bird of passage
that had followed
it's beloved dream
a long, long distance,
sits quiet unmoving,
atop a flowered lemon tree
on the bank of a tranquil pond
that wasn't known to it before.

Fish, enjoying freedom,all along
play meddling it's reflection
as if daring the heron to act
by trying to catch it's attention.

The crowned heron,
more placid than the pond
on the wings of an elating thought
resumes journey chasing it's dream.

I
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers.
But they are troops who fade, not flowers,
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling:
Losses, who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.


                                   II
And some cease feeling
Even themselves or for themselves.
Dullness best solves
The tease and doubt of shelling,
And Chance's strange arithmetic
Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.
They keep no check on armies' decimation.


                                   III
Happy are these who lose imagination:
They have enough to carry with ammunition.
Their spirit drags no pack.
Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache.
Having seen all things red,
Their eyes are rid
Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.
And terror's first constriction over,
Their hearts remain small-drawn.
Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle
Now long since ironed,
Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.


                                   IV
Happy the soldier home, with not a notion
How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,
And many sighs are drained.
Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:
His days are worth forgetting more than not.
He sings along the march
Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,
The long, forlorn, relentless trend
From larger day to huger night.


                                   V
We wise, who with a thought besmirch
Blood over all our soul,
How should we see our task
But through his blunt and lashless eyes?
Alive, he is not vital overmuch;
Dying, not mortal overmuch;
Nor sad, nor proud,
Nor curious at all.
He cannot tell
Old men's placidity from his.


                                   VI
But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,
That they should be as stones.
Wretched are they, and mean
With paucity that never was simplicity.
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity and whatever mourns in man
Before the last sea and the hapless stars;
Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;
Whatever shares
The eternal reciprocity of tears

I dream of tangerine skies
And endless seascapes,
Seamlessly mended by yellow threads-
Prepared to be veiled
By crushed blue velvet.
*Serenity

i remember that first night

how desperately you craved
to feel my lips against yours.

how worried you were when i refrained
from surrendering to your deep inhalations.

thoughts of uncertainty clouded your confidence
while your sense of comfort waned and ebbed
as my will held like a cliffside
against the ocean of your lust.

let me calm your worried mind now darling

it was not for lack of desire
that i held my lips pursed.

it was not detachment
that held my hands shy
of a passionate embrace.

i was lost in the shear comfort
of your presence.

your warm hands on my chest
felt as though they had been there
my whole life.

the weight of your leg across my hips,
so familiar that i was left confused by
the brevity of our acquaintance compared
to the depth i could see so clearly
in your glistening eyes.

it was in adoration for this precious moment that
i held myself satiated.

it was this same feeling that held me in fear
that our first kiss would not be the
electric explosion of beginnings
that we would hope to fuel our infatuation,

but that you would feel dissatisfied by the same ease
and placidity i felt.

i kissed you
in that way i felt i had for years and
with that practiced knowing hand
i pulled your lips in close.

they sang a story so old and meaningful
that i found a joy akin to returning home.
...
and since then

every moment shared,
every touch experienced,
every kiss given and
every kiss received
is a small unravelling of a truth that
i had long since forgotten:
that home is where the heart is.
...
and you have mine

Rippling outward till the waves stop.
Dropped from a 5ft 10" skyscraper with a plop.

Perfect circles in precession,
stretching into regression
The placidity is eerie
as it returns with no sign of it's companion

The next one cast did a flip flop
across the liquid table top.

Those ripples again.
As if this lake had a brain,
it feigns space to detain
the stone and share knowledge arcane.  

The last one I decided to swap
I traded the lake's ripples for ones in my pocket.

Its a reason to return to the lake
The reason behind the pebble's wake
Scientifically, I know the make.
How is done, now why is at the stake.
,

i am satiated sinful--
who cares more?
that we've been scorching bliss
and grafting these
blameless bittersweet distractors
like we won't hear thunder-
hiding from the condescending constancy
of raindrops on the tin garage
i will swallow you
until my belly rumbles
"enough cataclysm,
enough leaky roofs,"
filling me with sloshing
wistful reminders
of our tranquil dampness,
a shivering placidity in
our secluded synchronicity.

The stars look bright tonight. The crisp summer breeze rolled across my bare skin as I lay shirtless beneath the dead oak tree near the lake.  The sky was clear, barely any obstruction from an innocent cloud that travelled down the vast black road that stretched on for eternity. I always loved coming here. So did my father.

It had been four years since he had died. The cause is still unknown. All I remember is the gaping hole in his chest as he... left. So many unanswered questions are lingering in the back of my mind. How did it happen? Who or what had done that to him? Why did it have to happen to him? Why not me? I feared that these questions hung inevitably in the unknown, locked away in a subconscious prison with no means of being bailed out.  Life had to continue though, no matter how unconditionally excruciating the pain may be in my chest when I miss him, no matter how many times I had cried myself to sleep because he wasn’t there to tell me that it will be OK whenever I had night terrors. They started soon after my mother died. I would wake up screaming and writhing in fear. My father would run into my room and bring me close to his chest. He would whisper in my ear “Shh son, it’s OK, nothing will get you. I am here now.  Calm down, you’re safe now.”

After the yelling had stopped he would carry me downstairs and into the garden. The cool air would cause the beads of sweat on my face to tingle. I always loved that feeling. It was the indication that I was back in reality. We would both sit on the grass. Dad would run inside and return carrying a large blanket. He would wrap it around the both of us. It always smelled just like my mother, a faint scent of lavender and honeysuckle. We would then peer into the sky, where dad would show me all of the constellations: Orion, Pegasus, Cetus, and other names that I couldn’t pronounce. “Each of these constellations tells a story, son” he would say to me as I tried to make sense of the jumble of stars that floated in the dark sky, “and one day, when the time comes, I will be up there. One day you will be able to tell your own children my story. All you have to do is simply look to the skies.”

I shook myself free from the painful reminiscence. I am eighteen, these things do not happen anymore. I stood up and stretched, feeling the muscles beneath my skin pull and uncoil. I strolled over to the lake. It was surrounded by thick forest, silhouetted against the black backdrop of the night’s horizon.  Ripples rolled over the surface of the silent lake. The crystal clear water reflected the night sky.  I took off my shoes and socks and dipped my foot into the water. The stars rippled around me. The water was lukewarm, refreshing after the scorching heat of another day that had passed me by. After testing the water I couldn’t resist. I took a few steps back, sprinted forwards and leaped into the air. I crashed into the water, fracturing the serene reflection of the night-time sky. The water cooled every fibre of my body. I let the water soak into my bare skin. I could feel my pores filling with the liquid, the bubbles brushing delicately over my legs and arms. I wanted to stay underwater forever.

I hit the surface, puncturing the barrier between tranquillity and realism. I ****** in the humid air and let it fill my lungs. I let myself float effortlessly onto my back and glided across the water. The stars sat there in the sky watching me. Up there somewhere, I knew there was somebody among them watching me too, smiling and waving as he saw this boy float upon a bed of water.

I wish he could be floating next to me this very moment and enjoy the placidity of the night.

Is that a frown I put upon your face child?
As I tried to soothe the sadness that smiled on your inside
That festered like pathogens inside your heart
Is that your index finger?
Sitting inquisitively on your lip?
I see the distraction in your whirlpools of corneas
Your hair lays insecurely on your shoulder blades
Let me console you with a joke
Pacify your placidity with these sad bars
You pick up your phone.
You read your texts.
Oh?
Is that a smile I put upon your face, child?
-zaba

there is a difference between honesty and candour.

there is a difference between pleasure and joy.

a difference between relief and relaxation.

a difference between sufficient and fit.

between comfy and cozy.

between placidity and tranquility.

between restraint and stillness.

between care and cherish.

light and shine.

love and in love.

easy and natural.

real and true.

Electric static buzzing in attentive ears, wondering how and why you ended up where you did. Stale smoke filling the air like the compressor in a carburetor.
Direct injection.
Vicious speeds.
Catatonic struggle.
The lisp of an old hippie, tracing his tracks in a wheel-legged fashion, up and down the streets of Seattle, looking for the kicks that previous nights were unable to provide. Supply and demand for bottom up approaches.
Roaches scattered in the living room. Some dead, some still glowing in the dimness. Empty cans of Campbell lint excessive consumption. The prevalent motif of the middle class. Stars and stripes hung in the window pain, above the static placidity.
Seattle stars
No such thing
I guess it must be raining there forever.

The cosmic river of placidity our spiritual
Graveyard, laden illuminating the resevoirs
Of the sun serpents mineral kingdoms created
As the desecrated flowers of the
Universe decay,
The barren Earths machinery immortally
Combative rebirthing deaths plague.
Akashas victorious joy reflecting the
Sillohettes of times ardititious travellings
Fleeting, the strength of withered spirits
Collective daydreams upon solacses fallen
Fields of despair, redeeming justices
Patience provocating abeyance.
The irredescent golden amber of an iron
Roses kindling flame; katabolisms landscape
Transcending sunsets incarnate pharisaical
Clouds defying agonising temptations rising
On the wind of sanctimonious whispers
Working the stagnate temper of
Choas' repining heart.


ELEETE J MUIR.

I am on the front of a beach, a seas exit or entrance.
There was a feeling of superficiality in my vision, and my conception.
The waves, **! The keepers of the fleeting see on the soon-to-be-night tide.
They were so subtle as to loosen me in placidity, a melting hypnosis of crashes and slides. Thus was the nature of my moment with god. I was thus, thus was thus, thus was truth, god was truth, and the moment was god.

And oh, what a season, of fire and explosions, of the heat of summer and the love of the summers warmth, in the night that blew a silver wind in the moonlight, and the days that would either burn your skin, or tan it, depending upon constitutions. And depending upon the angle of the eyes, one could see the beauty of either the blades of grass, where there is no single blade, or the golden-sun dusk that was the most beautiful red, orange, blue, violet, becoming deeper as every memory of the day passes with the sun for new memories to take their place. And I will sit and wonder at the new sky, the freckled face of the drawn beauty, made demure, made to endure, though the moon gets smaller, though the day seems longer, though slept through. I will sit and wonder, until the darkness fades, the silver turns molten; the freckles turn pure blue, the true colors of his natural shyness. Just then, the day seemed like the beach, a seas exit or entrance.    

There was a beauty in the ever foreseen sorrows of the future. Where the time became a fortune telling bell that, even the dulled mind, could hear and know where the tune was going. So as far as the ghastly face of death was concerned, we thought she was a beauty, a dancer at the ball, where infinity, god, oblivion, and me where fixed upon her her, as she was the spitting image of the beach, a seas exit or an entrance.

Winter cherries
My heart is one of warmth and color, but a rarity in all aspects.
Like winter cherries
Sweetheart swarms in sudden bursts of imagination, stopping my heart and purifying the air with each breath she takes.
Never has the silence sounded so sweet as when it comes from her.
Never has invisibility been so noticeable as when she does it.
Never will I be able to share or distribute such a purity as she has.

Her chill is so obvious that there are no boundaries to the conversations we inaugurate. We ride the waves of giggles and chuckles that we form, playful arguments made and led into deeper conversations never finished.
I love the way we converse like buddies yet everything about us speaks of distant strangers. I wonder does she feel the same.
It’s something in the way her voice shakes or the way her eyes dart through mine when she looks at me. It’s something about the way she smiles in a way that shows she’s fighting it.
It’s her personality
It’s who she is.
And I’m shocked to say that I’m being struck down by her energetic placidity.
I wonder more about her than any other possible that I’ve ever known. I think of what she’s like and how she’d treat me if she knew me more. I wonder what I look like in her mind and what I look like out of her mind as well. I wonder how much she thinks about me, if at all. And the only answer I get is that of cherries in calmed snowstorm
Stems filled with white crystals as light as air itself when alone, yet at the collected fruit they weigh tons.
Falling in slow motion as the last crisp it could bare falls to a rest on its ruby red outer shell.
Frozen in air as I walk past and see it. Only wondering how long it should stay before it succumbs to the inevitability of gravity.
And her voice cracks my concentration.
It falls.
But no noise shall it make, it shall stay as quiet as the snow itself and remain a music in my mind.
The befalling of her voice
The falling of winter cherries.

Too tired to sleep too stubborn to fight
eyes resist both closing and capturing pictures
leaving one (Me) to be in a state of zombified negligence and grump.
Sleepy funk, like dreaming a boring black and white
film covers retinas and lenses
brain swirls in intoxication of running on E
and not even the fun kind
just the Empty kind that needs some juice
or nap
or maybe just some lovin' from a certain someone ****
though that's a stretch
and muscles are currently too ****** to reach that far
or scratch broken ribs of progress or even to
drink much of anything
just trying to be happy
though one needent need to try
just breathe and try not to wish for the night
because today may be the last or next to last
and the uncertainty just causes more anxiety
so the cycle of strife rains on its acid and placidity
until finally I'll crash
or implode, or cry
and it'll be great
because breakdowns are necessary for life and peace and tranquilizing.

The smell of sulphate,
            emanating from that
accursed thing, its aura glistened,
                  seemingly smouldering .

But when the  breath of life
                    died beneath sunset,
A Spector of ill conceived retention
                                             contemplated.



Daybreak was mutilated upon the sight.
                                            established placidity..

When? Who? Where? Am I something? What am I now?*

Time has bestowed upon me a chaste and sacred gift,
The likes of which has been long sought after and yet the voice within has taught me to doubt my strong inner virtue.
Lambent spheres of diadems composed of flame follow me to the world's corners,
I lie here in confusion as each *epitaph above me in the clouds places devastation upon me.

Who am I? I ask this in need of all the answers that lurk within me.. Who am I?
I ask this over and over again until there is nothing left within me, till' the voice within me collapses into naught and this whisper of a soul commands perseverance that will lead to success.
Tragedy and a cord that leads to the Sun materialize in my midst, my escape venue has been revealed in the utmost way possible.
The light in the skies has turned into golden thread, the emitted radiation and heat of this celestial body is turned into golden threads of ethereality that are tethered to the earthy soil beneath my feet.

The Sun and Moon rise and take a strip of Earth along with me, I rise to become one with the Universe and she greets me with an abysmal black hole of nothingness.
I am devoured as a parasitic being envelopes my whole quintessence and She, yes She the Universe glows within my soul; we become one in the same as I vanish into a wormhole.
I am nothingness and nothingness is I, ethereality composes what I am and am not all at once.
What am I? What am I? A galactic burst of nebular gases; a vapor vanishing into the cosmos and preventing disarray by maintaining Her equanimity.

Love; I tire of this being known as enamorment; She is the enemy of my former existence.
Denial and dereliction have brought me to a place of escape; I have fled to the distant spans of the Universe hiding from the blue shift radiation of my former existence.
I have been compacted into a shell and no one can tell me that there was a virtue in that once beloved dream called love.
But what about now?

What am I now? Am I nothingness or am I something? An impossibility in this world that we know to be full of sensible notions and vain equations.
We try to make sense of things that lament us; that grieve us so.
We detach from the heartache of what we once were when we were conjoined with the being of a former life.
A life where the butterflies of our youth remind us of the fondling of our souls; when our endearment to another celestial body emitted a gravitational pull.

Who are you?
That is what I said the first time I saw your face!
But now I sit hear, being the incorporeal being that I am!
Being unable to shed tears, I have no need for useless emotions...

I have never needed that which had only corrupted the elixir of my rhapsodizing dreams.
I wish to float above the clouds once more; I wish to be on Cloud Nine in another life; I wish to be resurrected with a corona of love emanating from my heart, spirit and soul.
What shall I do now?
I'm a nothing, a love deprived and nonexistent being who forfeited his force of nature known as the will to live on.

That gale of epic means; that tsunami ravaging the enemies of repose; placidity follows disaster you know...
When all of this is over, when my nonexistent form is chosen to be brought back into a materialized form, maybe, just maybe this intergalactic potion known as love with burst the confines of this vessel of mine.
Maybe the future self will evolve into a being carrying the stars within his innards and the waste of impurity will become a cleansing water of benediction.
Glittering skin and iridescent bones are hopeful layers of a multidimensional being which has yet to come into existence.

Just when I thought it was over, I give myself another chance to inspect the confines of the Earth again.
I prowl the black hole that I am, that I wasn't and that I became in search of an escape.
You are something; that is what I hope to hear on the other side; I hope that I am merely dreaming since the dream that I had once entertained has now become a nightmare, one filled with despondency and convolution.
I am drenched in thought like a sponge; how am I capable of thinking without a physical being to inhabit?

Am I just this speech bubble with thoughts inserted into it?
Have I become the dream of another?
Am I really just an ephemeral stench, a fleeting odor that is repugnant to the observer or the creator of my thoughtful existence?
Maybe I'm just a mere figment of the imagination...

[[I found this somewhere the other day while I was looking through some stuff.  It is more of just an excerpt than a poem, but I gave it a poetic structure to make it easier on the eyes.]]


I am sitting in this ugly, worn out chair.  It is old, and there are obvious signs that it has been used and used again.  It is simply a seat in which I can rest my body after a hard day of work.  The carpet that this sofa-type-chair rests on is stained and discolored and hardly fitted for the room.  It doesn't even stretch from one wall to the other.  

Resting on my antique night stand is one of two vintage looking speakers that I stumbled across while ravaging through a dumpster behind the Goodwill.  [There's good **** in there:)  You should try it!].  

On the walls are old, used posters that I have had for years.  They are cleverly placed to cover glow-paint graffiti that the last tenant left behind.  Some of them have obvious sun damage, and a few of them are tattered and ripped.  

The bedroom suit is antique and has limped in here after being beaten and bruised since the early years of my childhood.

There are no tokens of wealth here, but there are obvious signs of hard work and many attempts to make the atmosphere as comfortable as possible for myself or whomever chooses to enter my humble dwelling. This is far from the place I dream to be, but I have always been able to make it my own.  This is my safe-haven, and for now, it is where I lay my head.

Don't get me wrong, I love spending my time here.  It isn't much, but I'm thankful for what I have.  I spend some of my most enjoyable time here.  If the walls could talk, you'd be enthralled and perplexed by what they would tell you.  Maybe sometimes you would even be disgusted ;)

I am free here, but there are still so many elements that can intrude from outside these four walls.  The boundaries can be broken by anyone who decides to turn the **** and give the aged, wooden door a little shove.  

I feel so mortal here.  
There are so many worldly implements.

It is much too humanistic and real for me.  It is just too hard to grasp the concreteness of things here.

There is a place where I like to go that I enjoy most of all.  I could never bring you here, but I can describe it to the best of my ability.

The inner workings of this place are not too solid.  the elements are much more fluid.  They can change their form beyond your will.  

I have been visiting this place for a long time;  as far back as my mind will take me, but I still haven't worn out my welcome because this place is just for me.  The temperature is neither too hot nor is it too cold.

The land here is more vast than the greatest plains in the world, but I have trampled on every square inch.

The ocean is deeper than the Earth itself, but I have swam the great blue depths.  

The sky stretches on and on beyond all Earthly possibilities, but I can reach to the clouds by just outstretching my arms.

The mountains reach to the stars and beyond, but I can trudge to the peak and slide all the way back to the bottom in the blink of an eye.

There are more people in this place than have ever existed since the beginning of time, but I have spoken a lifetime worth of deep thought with each and every one of them.

I pated the silver linings on every single cloud and tossed them up into the sky one-by-one.

I gave names to each and every plant and animal.

I paved all of the roads and built every structure without a single tool.

I created the entire world here.  This place holds my every want, need and desire.  It is my kingdom.  I can dream any dream.  Illusions become real at your desire, and everything that you ever believed was impossible suddenly lies within your reach.

Nothing can take over my will and break me down on these journeys throughout the eternal vastness of my mind.

As I leave my mind once again, I take a stroll back to this earthly place.  I find myself still encompassed by the staleness and placidity of this place.  I'm still here slumped in my aged, worn out, sofa-type-chair on its stained and discolored carpet that is still hardly fitted for the room.  It is still a pleasant atmosphere, but if I decide that I want to leave this place, I can take flight back to my immense kingdom and conquer the skies.  I can go as far as I want without ever moving a limb.

The best part about it is that you can never follow me here...

There is probably some place on this earth that is dear to you.  You most likely long to visit this place, and even find yourself there time after time, but there is only one place you can go no matter what is going on around you.  This place is not of this world, and you would never find it simply by just looking.  

Find a place with your own tattered, worn out sofa-type-chair.  Sit down and close both eyes.  No open your third eye, take flight, and start building your kingdom.

I

At night, I search for the wrench
I lift it off my nightstand
I lie down on the workbench
the cool weight held in my hand

what I must loosen first is my knee
lull myself to a state of repose
leg is a swollen trunk of a tree
placidity the pain soon outgrows

ache that is green
ache that is ivy,
ache that is wrapping
around me
entirely.

being disarming,
the way that a friend will--
in no way harming,
I pry up one tendril,

My ache and I have just locked eyes
I turn my bolt counter-clockwise

just one half turn.
making way t’ward release,
pain is adjourned
to finally find peace


II

And in the factory,
It seems I was wound too tightly
Deemed satisfactory
Now, I relieve pressure nightly

The bolt pushes in such a way
it leaves the metal bent
Relief is not given away
but instead it is lent

pain that is sharp
pain that goes squish,
pain that is swimming
around me
like fish.

The pain in my head
a pain bright white
Will surely spread
If not done right

My head and I sob, throb, and cry together
And then I finally sever the tether

spin one full revolution,
Though I know it's unwise,
Lets in nightmare pollution
Maybe last night’s reprise



III

At night, I will always search for the reasons
Why is it that bad things happen to good people
I lie down and lament each of the seasons
If it’s about church, I’m skewered on the steeple

Now plaguing me is my dear heart
O! Please don't think me frigid
It’s how to be, if you are smart
Walls that throbbed become rigid

want that is lace
want that is divine,
want that dissipates
completely
in time

Wincing at every twinge
Heart so hollow it awards me pain
Lace is fraying at the fringe
Meteor in my orbital plane

said it flutters and feels flighty
prescribed one spin righty tighty

Then, compact are the loves I hold,
Locked in my heart airtight
No space empty or left cold
I wish you all goodnight

I want to be inspired by something
I mean really inspired
To change something
Make something better.

I want to care about something
I mean really care
To know what it feels like to love something
More than anything.

I want to have great ***
I mean really great ***
To lose myself in someone else
In pleasure and placidity.

I want to feel something
I mean, anything really
To assuage this suspicion
That I don’t have it in me.

Nights like these
Accompanied by the howling
Not of the wind
But of my cranium
Slowly caving in
We are swayed constantly
Like willows in the breeze
From perception to perception
Until we know not
Who we are anymore
What is to be believed?
Who is the enemy?
My thoughts have long formed legs
Not two, nor four, but plenty
But more is not always merry
They struggle to keep their balance
But fail
So I am
Traipsing with tangled feet
C l e a r
M y
M i n d
For me
Please
Buy me sympathetic placidity
Buy me apathetic innocence
Buy me antipathetic ignorance
Anything but what I am now
Would be good
I dream of blue lakes and clear skies
But do they really exist?
I sleep in a labyrinth
And wake up
To the hustle and bustle of escapees
We are all but only human
We are lost souls
We are amateurs grabbing tightly
To the manual of How To Live
While concurrently
Playing God
As if we are all that holy
I know not what I am
I know not what we all are
I sleep in a labyrinth
And I awaken
To a stampede
Of people rushing back and forth
In a desperate bid to reach the top
But the way out of the labyrinth
Is not the top
Is it?
Perhaps I am too easily shaken
Too vulnerable for my own good
But I could grapple with the notion of self-control
And perhaps I really should

Do you hear the old gods singing?
Through marble bones
And filtered sunlight
Their semblance,
Cold and undying
Painstakingly chiseled
And forced into placidity.
Yet still they sing.

GEMINI:
The creases on your palms are
valleys full of quicksand; your hands
have sunken through my skin and
into my bones.  You opened your fists in
mid-autumn and by mid-winter, our heart lines,
our lifelines, had fused.  Dear Pollux, sometimes
I wonder how you could not know that

on those cold February nights, it is not
puffs of air that escape your Cupid’s bow, but rather
wisps of fetal star, swirling and curling up and up
into new constellations—ones depicting
Cleopatra and Antony
                                           Paris and Helen
                                                                              you and I.

The looking glass in my mother’s washroom no longer
displays emerald orbs; they have been melted down
from a solid to a liquid to a stacking, twirling vapor
that I can no longer see, nor feel.  But the thing about you,
Dear Pollux, is that somehow, though it is beyond me how,
you have captured her scalloping memory and turned
everything to smoky quartz—
you reflect the placidity I hope she found.

The sinkhole in my abdomen that mother dearest created has
been gorged with your quicksand, and I am gluttonous for you.  There’s
a part of me that thinks you to be the eighth wonder of the world
with your wide eyes and your slight dimples and your
ability to generate earthquakes in my bones with a
snap of your fingers.  But Pollux, sweetheart, there’s a nagging
suspicion I have that deems you to be the eighth deadly sin—
         your lips branding my neck;
         your hands burrowing through the flesh of my hips;
         the pearls you create from the grains of sand I carry.
I oftentimes wonder how you figured out the secret of
melting my amethyst crested core.

Your horoscope will tell you that you are wishy washy, but
I will tell you that you are dynamic and paramount.  You
will be told that today “you must wrestle your past before
communicating with your future,” and I shall roll my eyes and
tell you that the only thing you must wrestle is my affection.
Your fate is not in the stars, Pollux, darling;
your fate has nothing to do with the Year of the Pig or
the Gemini constellation that is so ruled by Mercury—
the fortune tellers we made in elementary school were
accurate representations of coincidence.

You will find your destiny in
the palms of your hands and I will
find my destiny within you.