Lies spoken
Ties broken
Puddled eyes
Muddled cries

Life growing
Strife moaning
Puddled eyes
Muddled cries

Born fighting
Scorn biting
Puddled eyes
Muddled cries

Chasing hate
Facing fate
Puddled eyes
Muddled cries

New path
***** wrath
Laughing eyes
Happy cries

I'm choking, flower petals fall into my hands. Blood puddled up, followed by more couphing. My hands stain crimson as I attempt to catch the petals and blood. Red dribbles down my chin and flowers break through the skin on my neck. Vines and flowers continue to grow in my lungs. Causing my disease to only worsen. Is this one sided love. Have you lost feelings for me.. Have I gone mad. My thoughts are again interrupted as a hack up more flowers. My chest is hollow.

when i met you,
i was drizzled dreaming
puddled potential
melted rebellion
under tulsa summer sky
you and i
had barely begun
i broke my arm
grinding rusted rails
new faces in the hall
feel like free hydrocodone
everyone here is so hip
and i'm so alone

so i'll kick push my way to your backyard
that first night there was acid tripping on your freshly painted walls
i didn't know anyone who had so many friends all at once
red cups in your backyard
i saw her tucked on your arm
and i had no reason to stare
we didn't know each other
except from the days
i watched you on stage
vinyl walls didn't confine you
months later, you were still on my mind
craving eye contact
there was always a subconscious
that imagined what our days would look like

caught up, we lost each other for a while
whirlwinds of lost emotion
and low self esteem
that make oklahoma tornados feel like breeze
i'm so sorry
that he spoiled every part of me that was worth keeping
white washed clean cut bleached feelings
he said
love
isn't a feeling
its a combination of chemicals
it's your choice to stay with me
losing my identity
inside of dark muffled pop punk concerts
i can't decipher my feelings under all of this low screaming
but
being with you, is as easy as breathing
you sound so different
than the music i wanted so badly to fall in love with
the other day you compared me to your guitar
and i felt more infinite than ever before
sessions on your un-soundproofed floors
i kept getting lost
i could watch you pick for days
entranced in everything
that comes as easy to you
as breathing
i didn't want to, but i kept leaving
and you were always there
with a red cup on your lawn
i started to dream
of being the girl tucked on your arm

that night at the bonfire
he faded away
i stayed awake for you
blurred kisses dizzy trips
but all of it still made sense
blacked out by the lake
told myself it was a mistake
disguised desire
trying to deny that you were the
only one worth waiting for
and i prayed to god you would wait for me
that you wouldn't lose faith
in my train wreck of a psyche
that you always managed
to help me forget about
just for the night,
when it came down to it
you bring more light to my eyes
than the warmth from my sheets
stained useless
from long nights and lost mornings
i couldnt explain why
you kept drifting into dreams

it was always you
i kept running back to

when we got together, i was puddled promises
i promise we were nothing but a chemical experiment
of different personalities
mixed together polar opposites
I'm sorry
you deserve so much better
but you were never my second choice
or a last resort
it just took a thunderstorm
to finally see the sunshine
you
are my moonshine,
everything i dreamt love should be like
i'll ride for miles in your honda odyssey
bonnie and clyde
we can be rebels to the third degree
ride down riverside like we always do
in the sunday sun
your hand in mind, keeping me young
we'll play music make up words as we go along
we write our own songs
to the chest beats and high tops
lost heart to heart
lets forget every one

you and me it's purple skies
and late school nights

one song plays in my mind
about your green eyes
and his eyes were blue
i guess i forgot the order
of the rainbow
because this entire time
it should have been you

when you leave for college,
you'll be
drizzled dreaming
melted potential
under the tulsa summer skies
countless high nights
low notes and full flights
and it's going to be so hard to let you go
and to let you chase your dreams
but i'll always be here
reminiscing the color green

I shaved my head this morning.
The sun hadn’t yet conquered the horizon
But the birds outside the window cheered for me
As I pulled the shaver from my forehead to my crown.
My tiny fingers gripped the electric razor,
Holding on for life,
As it were much too big for my nervous hands.
I cut my skull three times before allowing myself to cry.
I peeked at the blonde clumps of hair that rained
To the cold bathroom tiles and puddled around my feet.
After finishing, I went to lay in the arms of my blankets,
While my pillows kissed the back of my head,
Healing the nicked wounds scattered over my skin.
I left the hair to sleep in the sink and over the floor.
Welcoming the sun rise, it felt warm against my bare skull
And I wondered if this was how heaven felt like,
Walking up to the gates.

John mangled his arm in the engine two years ago and now he's back.

His arm is bent.

The engine was hot.

His arm touched the engine and his skin stuck to it.
It puddled up, shook, and yelled.

The engine pulled him closer but didn't decide.

Whether to take his arm,
or to take him whole,
didn't know.

So John pulled back, fell to the mud.  
Puddled up, shook, and yelled.

**Now it's September
and John's back
and he's on the tractor
and the leaves are red
and he's at the edge of the field near the creek
and the sky is blue
and he's laughing
and the water is brown
and the engine is screaming
and the mud is black
and he's driving the tractor into the mud
and the tractor isn't moving
and there's a rock on the gas pedal
and he's opened the hood
and he's got a stick in his hand
and he's jamming branches into the engine
and he's pouring oil on the branches
and the engine is screaming
and the leaves are red
and he's lighting the oil
and tractor is burning
and the sky is blue
and the engine is screaming
and it's September
and John's arm is still bent
and John is laughing,
his hands are swelling,
his hands, the ******,
and the tractor is dead,
it's still yelling, but dead,
and John is laughing.

I

I learnt this week
that time and distance
can be friends to memory
their respective lengths
only wet and sharpen
the edge of love

but for us dear friend
we hold hard to hope
that we may
one day soon
share the present
and live each moment
in each other's heart.

II

Hearing you on Holkham beach
- whose soul is greater than the ocean
whose spirit stronger than the sea -
did I doubt for a moment
that you, though buffeted
by a cold east wind
would never age for me,
nor fade, nor die.
Nor you for me (she said)
Goodbye, my love,
a thousand times goodbye.
Write me well (she said)
and turned and ran.

III

The Reedham ferry was but a river's width
and yet I stood at the water's brink
and watched the reeds quiver in the wind,
watched the rain splatter on the puddled path.

All around to the human eye
this valley, a plain of grassland
broken only by reed-fringed pools,
was a gentle, unpeopled, easy place.

The absence of relief left
no fixed frame of reference.
Places apart from one another
would concertina and merge.

Tempted to cross I waved a no
to the ferryman in his quayside hut
then turned and walked quickly
back down the long, low road.

Buddleia
Butterfly
Brown field
Oasis

Through cracked
concrete
scarred
car parks

New blue life
Mosaic winged
Delicate
Renewal

Chunky chains
brick built
rust puddled
and beautiful

he laid hands and lips upon
canvas of aching nakedness

igniting...

wanton hunger; pressing into
my palate; fingers painting tender
curlicues with subtle strokes

tracing...

each line and curve, tongued
with passions ink as climactic
quivers, pause; nipping as I

ebb and flow...

he rides in cresting waves, teased,
seduction blankets our embrace;
firmness delves deep...as breath escapes us

scarlet lace lays puddled at our feet

before it falls i dilate
with electric scent, spine-hairs
string her possibilities as kites
to tug my summon ground--
lilt, wave and spiral
distant mischief to a head.
i rumble on the vista, far, and,
on occasion of a social clearing hum,
chance aloneness on a hill
to watch the herald lake and trees, nets
secure themselves as emblems to my storied lust.
apsara, i
breathe you in in strokes
submit unconscious rhythm of imaginal delights
made real to last beyond experience of time
descended of the clouds
sea rich, heavy, sultry
you unroll an atmospheric fate:
my lust to span the sky, irrupt an earthen,
orgiastic zenith of all things--burst fantastic quell
in pale continuum your pedestal allays

floating hair as long as frantic overcast
horizon length
and indistinct of rain..
green, blue continents of eyes, mists
suspend ecstatic sway
in areolae breeze,
my hands the brimming cups
to gather, spill
bright ****** drops
into the signal essence rising,
center rhythm of a liquid bounce
that shines in belly-button crescent moon--
each gust a lapping of the sky-clad ache of moonlit summer leaves,
another sudden adolescence lost and gained--
falls on me, dripping
legs to wrap and draw in
every ***** blade of grass--
saturate the lingam i am living in--
enveloped in vaginal dance of pressure
pulling on the earth i am
an arching back
and skyward ******

begun before a time historians belie
wind genie, yoni,
full of all i ever willed..
how rare appearance has to be,
knowing you unique
to whimsically revise
your lightning shape akin
exotic form to fit my changing own
and yet you don't exist, my eyebrow says
between horizon-cracks
and patter of the gale--
bolts to spread dark syrup
through my veins..
i am intent on having you
to let you have me as your first and last
--being young
i am intent on twining my virginity to you,
to pierce my own hymenal dome--
slick with yearning, thundering
in moan across the hills and puddled tennis courts
undulating to my concord whim
your rivuletted ***** of the gods, goddesses --gulped between inhaling--
eyes that roll pineal
genesis denuded of a crime, apparel
gone insane delight
of endless tempest ***--
the purge cascades a vacuum in each vessel..
limp on writhing grass
euphoric in a space of never having been

what soul i have
her visitation marked--
with gridless memories unfaded by the games a decade
striates on the mind. i made
her more than what my way would make of her
and less for what my symbols lose;
i call her muse,
and forfeit right to call her anything again.
i am the burning key and lock
our chastity attained and lost
in vaporous blurring of all stars
rewinking in the gossamer above






.

Soft and firm, gentle and fierce,
A parting breath smothers on skin.
Wild and wanting, surrendered and stroking,
Fingers are searching and home.

Quiet, now listening, anticipating, wishing
Until the spell breaks beneath lips -
Blushing it comes, blooming it bursts
Against symphonies and rhapsodies
With melodies heaving, heavy, unheard.

Gasping for life, holding more tight
To another so fragile, human, finite
Stealing, giving, alternately taking
An appetite destructive, delicious,
Desiring, raging;
Flesh upon flesh, ragged, receiving.

Twisting, bones resisting,
A common ground with no space between
Reaching and holding, pressing and pulling,
Synchronized in silent sweet rhythms of time
Warm, willing, fantasies thrilling, perspire
Lovely and lucid, writhing, conducive
As dancing flames to the fire.

Thoughts are melting to muddle
Into puddled pools of passion
Dripping, swirling, flooding, licking
The innermost walls of the cowering mind
Bodies and hearts are pulsing, repeating,
Beating and bruising, until each breath
Is ******, divine.

nothing's instantaneous
temperance a requirement
change forever targeted
til self becomes fragmented

heart an aqueous soluble
erstwhile deliquescent
puddled into pulp
taken out like trash

fitting for an adversary
malicious and malevolent
destructive to the starling
plucked and plunged to sea

so drown to suffocation
laudable attempts at termination
inundate your consciousness
using barrages of indifference

convinced affection's unattainable
death deserted and companionless
auspicious in my loneliness
asphyxiate to expiration

Vulnerability is a funny thing. Everyday people urge us to be authentic- with ourselves, our peers, our passions. Yet when we cut ourselves open for the world to see, they run from us as if we are violent rip currents waiting to take them under. When in reality we are nothing but individual tide pools sometimes puddled into something so much bigger than what others want to openly accept.

But I refuse to not live a life of authenticity. So many souls become comfortable with safety, causing them to become deeply implanted in solely just the soil in which they have resided their entire time of growing. Genuine love for something other than yourself has become nothing but a fossil of a feeling. Streams of emotions have dissipated and turned into desert lands.

As for me, I took the time to disappear within myself. I discovered my flatlands and made them curved. Those rip currents everyone always runs from are big, but so am I. A vulnerable soul may be looked at as someone made up of only dainty fallen petals, but the truth is they're looking past someone with roots dug deeper than sunken teeth into bitten skin.

What's authentic to those who shelter themselves like boarded windows in the midst of a storm might as well be forgery to me. I urge you to not be afraid to put your innermost self into another pair of shaky hands. To not hesitate to whisper your deepest ridden thoughts into caverns of a mind that's not your own. To not second guess putting you're ragged edged heart into someone else's hollow chest.

Vulnerability and authenticity meet at an intersection that you must come to terms with stopping at. I hope to see you there.

Love can mend
Love can peel at the very corners of your eyes and bury its way in
Into your brain being mind and heart
Love can cradle and hold and nourish and feed
Love can hide away and feel safe
Love can breathe
But love is not always a familiar face
Not always a sparkle in her eye
Or a tune in his voice
Love can fall
Love can break
Love can suffer and bleed and scratch it's way back out through your ducts while you wonder why your tears are burning
Love can make you feel smaller than the gravel under your feet and more insignificant than a seal that's been broken for the prize
Love can literally rip you limb from limb and make you feel like you cannot bear the thought of getting out of bed
Love can deflate and berate eradicate obliterate...
incinerate
Love burns
But it burns so good
You come out alive
Love can make you learn what it's like to be vulnerable
Love can make friendly faces feel like home where your tears won't fall but be puddled in their favorite shirt
Love can make thrive and lift you back up
Love can see through lies but only after it's been lied to
Love can feel safe and warm again once it's been left in the cold
Love can be real after seeming so empty and meaningless and a waste
Love can make you bleed
But you'll never be able to leave her
You only keep pining for more because she's beautiful
You wanna hold her again because some nights she did lay still
You need her back because it made you feel real even though you at one time felt nothing at all
You hate her but only because you love her
Love can grow
Love can expand
Love is in a car with good music
Love is in a bed with warm bodies to feel
Love is a conversation that makes you cry
Love is a meal that makes you feel full
Love is everywhere
And she is kind to you
You can't find her in those that don't feel her
You feel betrayed because love won't love you back
Love is not everyone
But love is not just another heart attack.

Bones in the ashless fire
bright
from the growth of vitalic hands
from surpassing echo
of careless ground
letting all of the roads just
go
into the charging and dug-out
roads
as we walk in one body  
and the uncared for birds ate
with the cared for birds
lifting their heads up and down
in agreement
of shadow suns - sun’s shadow
the knuckled cocoons open
in the hemisphere’s grace  
that are not held back
by the dams that were fathers
to you
and the mothers eating their jammed crowns
of animalised peace
along with the ****
ha!
even they are cheered also, the hunters
of the field, arrows obliterating through eternity,
your heels creating, it
that song that tempers the cities reflection
returning mine
and season less unions inside,
desert storm, and warmed ice breathes
in toasts across seas
force open the laughing cage-

And the farm machine says:

“We will take more animals-
from you
tonight
we will
make you pay by the long tongue
of submissive crawl
and your livers
and liver brought
hum
by the hand-made knife
by the half-made, gesture

the horizons will laugh with boredom, at you  
pummelling dry, the mountains  
if you do not-

light!
LIGHT!
light...

(...//light.)”
...

throw ****** grunts like burping darts directly at the puddled lipped sky

run by, and through
the days of collapsing flesh
raining

Juggernauting mist!///

be unable to find sound

or sand hold

where the lights incept fog

and give it form,

be the crows in saliva
with no threat
as they fly by
between knife and bread
spewing cello grips
along the graffetied walls
of music
and moss burning teeth
in lines of paint  
into the secret wars
and charities
that nothing can touch
and the face at the end of that
brick’s
mind

is a welcome,
face

we walk by//////
sweeps that cannot
smell, themselves
at 5
a.m
fish shattering
by the entry
of our dive
into synapse blue - gulls bound to moon
the waves and the salt and ourselves
moments of dance
in conversation away from the roar
after the vermin
has roared
it’s last spittle
and has dispersed into low
figments
and the juice of that spittle
drapes over our shoulders
in curtainous glowing rocks

Come now junkerd star, trembling
gloats drooling with Cerberus' tears, through space
encountering unwashed books, and curving onyx lips
down hallow of easy river, of moor walk and gait
hares thump the ground of the fields, exchanging
the wilderness for sustenant flight, across it
up flow the silence as it reacts upon your gut
and sends sleep near lass and lad, back by a thousand hands of stars
into sewer skies of rats and eager swans,
growing from the dust of your gone fear,
the penultimate circles that cascade in the sleeplessness
of cigarette sounds and our waltzing vice
Hear Bound the stimulus! Of new sinewed blood
be the one trembling as the dwarf stars explode
into you, and our grips calm, sends them back
and are normal nights of coffeed jokes
sculpted from the clay of time
cascading outer vehicles driving along, the mocking hands glance,
and the hands of menace
ate artichokes
pealing plumes
and handing
one –
to you
the feet of your veins

pouring growth
of root
near mine
stopping only when

the roof top
is ripped clean//////////////

dry from every car, so that it settles
across naked architecture, giants in our hemoglobin
smile, the silhouettes, the wall, and the agonyless
streets, see our shadows standing to attention
devouring the suns toll-in the departure of our being

in the unwavering strikes of our dark hands upon the earth
that bring light to our iris, soaring,
It is this fortune that the soul gets to spend, only,
returning to the work, of life.

a girl found a crown on the street
clink, clank, and rolling to her feet
cold gold touched her pinkish toes-
during inspection the jewels bit her nose

she wore it all day long, in strength
found her chores list lessen in length
people blinded by it's brilliant glint
it gleamed eyes away, replaced the print

each precious stone reworked memories
envious green glass once enemies
now pink, mirrored, singular, hers
to match the crown, she wore silver furs

her cloak dragged upon the ground
other children picked it up, and found
themselves wrapped inside and gone
the village became smaller, the cloak became long

the elders dug deep at the edge of their home
while the girl was away, living alone
they discovered bones, gnawed to stumps
bugs and beetles, full, in mounds and humps

they fit the girl's old clothes perfectly
renewed dead flesh, but hurtfully
her eyes were gone, the crown's centrepiece
the flesh left again, puddled their knees

the girl had died and was eaten, long ago
it took some time, they cried, but now we know
the metal melted her fat and skin and sinew
pock-marked her bones, rotted right through

replaced a monster with her spirit, living dead
used her soul as the cloak's first thread
vacuumed others, knitted them close and thick
a pretty trinket turned poisonous trick

the elders chased the monster away
along with their children, that day
they cried and created new children, then
never let them wander again.

My roommates Leong, Sophie, (Charles) and I were coming from a Yale sporting event. The sky looked like a ***** Swiffer-mop and the wind seemed to be ignoring the posted 20mph speed limit. It was a typical spring day in New Haven, overcast, 65°, with intermittent, drizzling rain. I was thinking it was a good day to be a duck.

We were looking for something to gnaw on and a beverage - of the alcoholic variety. We picked up some Mike’s hard cider (featured in our refrigerator now), which proves college students really do plan for the future.

It was about 4pm and the streets were puddled, slick-looking and empty. The lone passing car sounded like it was riding on a sponge. I was wearing a navy blue, short sleeve Polo dress, a matching Polo bucket hat (for the rain) and a slub knit hoodie that I ‘borrowed’ from Sunny forEVER (seriously, I ordered her a replacement from Amazon) and Roxy boat shoes.

On a side street, a “party-bike” sat parked, sad and abandoned in the rain. A party-bike is a tram fitted up as a bar that slowly drives noisy drunks around. The drunks sit around a “U” shaped bar, on small, backless stools welded onto the tram. Yes, an open-air bar on wheels. I can’t help thinking that a lawyer came up with the idea, because what could go wrong?

The first time I saw a “sightseeing” party-bike was on Beale Street, in Memphis Tennessee. Memphis is the Disneyland of barbeque and the blues. Every storefront for blocks is an open air blues bar, a barbeque place or souvenir shop (or all three at once). Party-bikes make sense there, because intoxication is like oxygen in Memphis. It's a party-bikes native environment. In New Haven, they seem cheap, excessive and opportunistic.

As we were walking, in the distance, we heard the wail of a saxophone and a beat so clear, that the sound seemed to linger and shimmer in the air, like a cartoon neon ‘Jazz’ sign. We instantly turned that way and discovered it was coming from a place called “Three Sheets” which was having open-mic tryouts for the house band.  

It’s a bar that serves food and there’s a ‘beer goddess’ painted on one wall. In Georgia, we’d call it a ‘fern bar.' We found a table in the darker back, out of the way, and settled in. A waitress quickly took our orders and brought us several IPA beers.

Near a platform stage, there were 6 or 8 musicians sitting around (with their instruments) waiting to take a turn forming a trio with the house drummer and bass who were laying down a constant beat. One would step in with a guitar and play for a hot minute, then a guy with the sax, another with a trumpet and yet another with a clarinet, it went on and on. They each had a solo, at some point, and it made me wonder why I don’t listen to more jazz.

Our afternoon of music was something Sophie had wished for. Earlier that morning, as we were leaving the residence, she’d said, “I wish there was a concert or something going on tonight - something musical,” and boom, we get this. Still, I don’t subscribe to the idea of holy intervention.

I hate it when I hear people say, “God never gives us more than we can handle.” I bristle, my head snaps in the direction of the speaker, I want to see who that dumb-*** is. My parents and sister are doctors, and believe me, people are dying every day in situations that are more than they can handle. Heart attacks, staph infections, gunshot wounds, covid, cancer - Uggg, sorry, I got off track and boiled-over there.

Anyway, we had some jazzy music and incredible Vietnamese pulled-pork sandwiches with fries and a smoky ketchup that I could have just drunk.
.
.
**I put (Charles) in brackets because, as our driver and escort, he’s usually there in the background when we’re not in the residence. But his presence is circumscribed, because he’s not there socially. Is it rude not to include him in every narrative? I don’t know - it's a habit.

a gentle patter of rain
tapping politely
at the window
not tempestuously
but imposing enough
in its constancy
a passive aggressive reminder
from the heavens
of our ultimate
lack of control
such a minor obstacle
and yet it tips
the scales of
what was planned
or hoped for
to something perhaps
unforeseen
not yet considered
i thought i had
no intention of
leaving the house
but find myself
rolling my eyes
with huff and sigh
cursing the grey
for ruining
that potential

by lunchtime
windscreens glisten with
newly welcomed sunlight
reflected blindingly
from droplets that linger
despite the fresh warmth
carried in the convective air
it no longer appears
to be "coat weather"
though the ground
is still puddled
to squelch or
splash underfoot
perhaps i could venture
outside after all
with a motivation
fuelled by this
latest change
but for all the blue
stretching the sky
there is still that
darkened mass of cloud
hanging heavy in the distance
unable to tell if it has
been weathered already
or is another downpour
yet to come

From this island
water and more tiny islands
heavily treed with Douglas fir
landing ground for ocean otters
while orca whales glide by
spout and spray
the beach, broken shelled
puddled wells of tide pools
filling, spilling over again
brown bauble seaweed mingles
round algae rocks, barnacle shingled
here where the air breathes salt scented
water running wild with salmon.

America-- you’re about as inspiring as vanilla ice cream puddled in the summer sun
a damp dishrag, america, you can’t clean up the mess you are.
Your subjects, or should I say, Objects--
your agency bereft gdp drones--
they hanker, they brood
like a syst; they’re ****** vacuoles: private, malignant, caverns of capital
your pride? starving children, dying cities?
it’s a grand ole’ flag, you pathetic ****.
How about considering this:
The people, inside your prisons?
They’re free.
The people outside?
minions, hackneyed excuse for existence, and pestilence.
the ones who know oppression are free, and the ones oppressing do not know.
that’s why I love you, America.
You are what humanity needs; a slow, painful drain on our existence.
Consciousness slowly being ignited and swallowed, only to be ******* out and flushed away.
You, america, are a popcorn bag popping in the microwave, left on for too long.
You can’t expand any further, and you taste like cancer.
America, you are beautiful, and the death you bring tastes like lime flavored popsicles
that we lick to take away the taste of reality.
Your society is a cattle car, for the mind, and your messages burn the body
when it gets there.

I walked through the damp grass,
across the grimy pavement that shone,
coffee mug in hand.
the drops fell in
and I drank the rain

And my body expanded
because it contained the sky
on my tongue, down my throat
in my core, in my soul
I drank the rain

My mind was a cloud pattern
my arms were the wind
my eyes turned to hail
my fingernails dripped off my hands,
they turned to rain.

My eyelashes were the snow
on my autumn sky face
And my feet sank into the soil
nurturing the grass
As i sweat out the rain

I puddled on the ground,
reflected the emerging sun
I condensed to rejoin the sky
and formed a cloud of my own
and began again, to rain

I know we've never set foot in one place together;
but I've dived deep in to your ecosystem
treading along the puddled paths
and having you by my side
telling me how one patch needed to be stitched and how one was already mended,
you gifted me the key to unlock the equations circulating in your veins;
I know.

I know there was never a day our laughs intertwined;
but right when I find myself in one of those troublesome cracks
you'd recite a joke or two,
caressing me with the warmth of your words
& making me fall more intoxicated in you,
you'd make the ends of my lips curve up with every whisper of your existence;
I know.

I know I haven't yet inhaled the scent resting on the base of your skin;
but love, oh love was made to be created within,
in our minds we have played the game, and in our hearts, we played it even more,
I'll let you know the scents you remind me of:
like freshly ironed clothes,
morning coffee
and football,
I know.

and finally,
I know our story isn't binded yet,
in fact, I know we'll need a million more pages,
so hold my hand, will you?
let's travel to cloud 9
and let us weave this love story together.

Love is not lust tho' lust may lead to love
As seedlings basked in sunlight spring to flowers,
Young blooms may make a golden treasured trove
Where tender tulips kiss in huddled bowers

Love ripens like straw-nested berry fields,
Plump, juicy, flavoursome, and blushing red
As nature's bounteous sweet harvest reveals
Her shapely form resplendent in her bed

Love is an acorn to the mighty oak,
Deep-rooted and unbounded by the sky;
Love ripples like a genteel puddled cloak
Laid bare to keep a silken petal dry

    Love is but love and life is but to love:
    So poets write and lovers seek to prove

whether i said it or not
i loved you all very much*

(act 1)

this is an ode to the dark room
in which i made you bleed
and you found the courage to laugh
at my clumsy hands. you,
forever cloudy eyes and sideways glances,
think you love me. you are mistaken.
but when the carpet seemed
like grass, and you reached out
for something i will never understand,
i let myself shake with the moon, let myself
escape guilt for the first time.
and new lovers flooded in
because i tore myself open for you.

(act 2)

“right now, r-right now,
i love you”
drunk and desperate, i threw
my middle school needs upon you in some kind of
suicidal mission of my childhood,
you took it. you smiled.
and you did not understand.
sacrificial and first.
pure.
you fade fast.

(act 3)

sometimes i return to
kind puddled visions of the night you taught me
what it meant to make love
and what it meant to apologize.
i would like to defeat you, to not have to imagine
my tears dripping onto your stomach
and you far away, too male and hard.
i would like to think that i could darken
the yellow light reflecting from your skin
by badly hung christmas lights,
even if your confession was the only one that was holy.
i can forget.
it is what i am best at.

(act 4)

now
    there is another
another sinking stone, with full eyes
and hopeful hands and when i dream
he is there
curled up in a life
in which i am awake and unafraid.
i have known you for a week.
you told my father i am wonderful.

(act 5)

i went to a wedding for two women
who were together for 25 years, even
before the ceremony, even after
they had explored every part of each other’s bodies.
i cried
and prayed for the power to give myself up.
but i renounce god everyday.

That time in summer's red, the hilly sands I climbed
willow grass woven white with yarrow, fragrantly entwined
my eyes softened in sea drift's tide, of puddled shallows
ocean sang in rising waves, wild sea kelp tangled
sun slept scarce hours, it's shining seaward beams
that only leave as the final silhouette
vanishes into night's dream

Your subjectless Objects of capital, the agency bereft GDP drones, O! America,
They are spilled on the pavement, an upturned ice cream cone of discontent
puddled and lackadaisical, they fester beside the hydrant.
Your news agencies and malls, the damp dishrags of industry,
snagged on the nail of defenselessness and exploitation, only infect the wound.
Each mess of a person, walks through the sugary malaise of your suffering
dragging it on to the next in communal forbearing; its contagion, its disease
is so many cysts on the mind of those syrupy vacuoles for capital; the private,
malignant caverns of dewy-eyed trust in humanity, insipidly drawing the rancor to a boil,
without understanding a thing.
You pride yourself on much, without eyes for the condition of your people,
O! America.
People, shackled in your jails, are so many ideas bubbling as to the cruelty of your nature
punctured by the ignorance outside.
Draped in your obnoxious flag, the cites are as malicious as the countryside, toward life, toward knowledge.
You prop-up the price of their crops, the know-not-whys, who plunder the earth to prolong population growth and consciousness-decline.
America, you eradicate discontent with cattle cars, filled with questioning life forms, gasing our minds and burning our bodies with your arrogance.
Like a popcorn bag steaming in the microwave; you have been left alone too long, and have developed a flame-- an inextinguishable flame of reason.
You have been disavowed too LITTLE.
You must not be allowed to expand any further, lest the impoverished bag of flesh which is mankind will burst.
But still you stagnate, until your violence curdles with drones and bombs patrolling our synapses.
Our brains digest your violence against us and **** it out with an abused dialect of greed and hate.
Then you ask us only that we eat from your refuse heap of burnt kernels from the “truth” of market economy.
You taste like cancer. You rot the mouth of competent men, and satiate the anxieties of those who would turn against you-- with a refreshing ice cream cone of absentmindedness
dropped on the ground and melting.
But the stains you made will always taint the sidewalk of man.

Lets talk nonsense as you sip your dignity from my palms. I caught a glimpse of your insanity to only see your all talk but far to broken to walk the walk. Realize your childish games are pitiful and you're appearing pathetic, puddled in your tears you keep so hidden. It's time you pick up your pride, dust it off, and swallow the worthlessness inside. As you choke on the guilt I'll smile and reveal your true self with every cocky smirk. Was I worth the embarrassment?

-dh

Jacob Ekirapa! who killed you?
Your body was found puddled,
In blood that oozed out behind your head,
In your car you slept humble as in life,
Gorged in a trench downslope Kanduyi,
You were smiling in death as you ever did in life
Mindless to the murderer’s lethal object that crushed
Your head from the nape, an early a shot to the realm of deads,

Your Life in Lodwar City was Godly and peaceful
Serving God via varsity teaching as service to mankind
You quarreled not but you ever oozed intellect,
The Turkana chicken that roosted in your hearth you never
Went foxy to un-feather, deep in purity, a godly conscience,
As colleagues and friends were on a pageant of amorous mighty,
In a rampage, chasing women, money and Tusker at costs possible
Within the range of snobbish freedom that Lodwar-heat allowed,
Then you beautifully pitched and harvested a job at home,

Only to work at home with vintage discipline,
Serving the County people, Bungoma of your birth,
Least in your ken that the owl is ogling at you
With the certain lust of death, it killed you whole-meal
As if it has never killed, as if it has never killed, as if...
Killing you was the apex of glory for those that fear a spark
Of talent, discipline, brilliance, ****** hygiene, generosity and
Technical competence in the nerves of a youth which you evinced,

Jacocb Ekirapa! Who killed you?  was it a man or a woman?
Did the Bukusu people **** you because you are son of a Teso?
Or the a Teso killed because you had a job and then becoming rich?
The accident theory was a smoke-screen, to throw us off-sleuth
You killer hides behind a stage managed crush of your new car,
God could have allowed dialogue between the dead and the living
For you to tell me the man who killed you, why he killed you and how,
You are a friend that death robbed me, leaving me in a lurch of full despair,
In this world that is full of gossipers, sadists, bigots, wrys, sardonics, waifs, saddos,
Thieves, stooges, copy-cats, tribalists, self-congratulators, killers, egotistic egoists,
Making me now a neurotic listologist, but all in all, your death hit me hard below my belt,
Like the lunch treat of full Tilapia and Ugali you often did to me in the Oasis of Lodwar town,

Life on earth is a precursor of death, and death a harbinger of eternity
An obvious quoith for the arrow of your soul, truly, amid the 24 elders of heaven,
An obvious station of your un-blemished soul, Godly defiance to the folly of your killers,
Stupid, imbecile, idiotic, buffoonish black Africans that killed you, their own Sun, educated son
They **** a milch-cow that saves them from kwashiorkor, marasmus and poverty, a black man is comfortable in despair of poverty where voodoo looms, but not in a clime where young-men are schooled, clean, educated, employed and rich-a promise of tomorrow,
They killed you but forgive them, they also killed Ken Saro Wiwa, Stephen Adongosi, Steve Biko, Martin Luther King, Jacob Juma, John Kituyi, Meshack Yebeyi, Dr. Masinde of Kanduyi-thence, they are like that, they **** their own solutions only to fall back into mire of poverty-these black idiots,

plot out distances between freckles
and count the amount of hairs;
in a beauteous analysis
a cold witnessing
of)a featured lifeless gaze
projected onto windows
refracted in time with the pounding
from lost soulless ghouls
in a dank puddled basement
as we stare through keyholes

the length of life waits to rescind
to wash up on the shoreline
anew, once refreshed
with Angina on

wading in cyclic waves
in deposits of reveries
stale orangeade sonatas
and dull area tirades


the purpose
economized

every axiom
americanized

and as your atoms become depersonalized
tension is materialized, in ornate ivory
shattered brass instruments rusted by
novels written to god
in a
fractured light
and range

cramped in a curtailed distance
a brickwall deadend universe
gnashing with frustration
****** yawns of futility

closed viaducts
and vacant lots
deafened eyes, grey
glimmering in retort
to their own expression


blind sight was squandered by the snapback, of all the
strings of the orchestra as they were simultaneously snipped
by sharp prying eyes, listening to the mixing of paint
to smell the music, its arms limp, vivid
wishing to pull you back (in hindsight)
with dreaded, deadened incantations
a dithyrambic liturgy to the drunken thoughtless night
of slurred litanies and unappeasable, irascible deities
lonely and immaculate, all-powerless and deft
in irksome quarrels and arguments
glossed over by the fine print of another
exalting the vainglorious self-inscribed paragons
and revelling every inadmissible mistake

gazing past to a solo star
dumbstruck and dead
from an evaluation
and dehydration

dying to know
forget it.

The fuselage must gleam
in a pink Pacific sunset
at 29000 feet
inside, I am brought puffed cellophane pouches of tamarind by attendant ladies and men
and a sanitary case wraps my pillow.

Bangkok’s taxis are driven by a man with bones for a neck on cracked
roads that vanish into blind ways.
Later a child – spying left – pulls me through a curtained door into an ante-room to
sell me cling-wrapped copies of Japanese slasher movies. “Cheap!”
Flies circle a mound of meat spiked to a vending cart -- “special for you.”
A sea of mopeds rumble up the road and chase me between parked cars
Tattered hunks of plastic bag blow past off the beach.

At night gut rot infects the air, and I walk in brown puddled streets.

The tar sky smothers above the neon and the barkers and the *** for $10.  This last part was in the guidebook.

A woman sits, cloaked in a shawl, selling women’s apparel, all arranged on pale and chalky mannequins, angled at attention.
They wear the rouge of the truth-telling jester.
Their mouths are gaping, smiling, lurid, laughing, howling.  Eyes wide, piercing and empty, excited.
They look like me. And I look away.
The woman’s throat moves.  Or does she chuckle?
“For you.”