empty is not the right word.
what is the word for
not quite empty but not quite full?
there is a glass on the table-
it is not half-empty,
but it is not half-full.
it is just a glass of water.
i am just a glass of water:
not empty, not full;
not happy, not sad-
not anything.
not anything at all.

the clear blue nothingness
reminds me of the fact.
it’s dotted with cotton candy clouds.
i wonder if they are as sweet.
my tongue salivates at the thought.
it is like a land of dreams
without sorrow or pain
yet i am here,
floating lightly
though i feel like a paperweight,
weighed down by the lump in my throat.

it’s hard to remember
what home looks like.
i can’t see in terms of
“where i belong,”
i only see in terms of
“the trees are like broccoli sprouts-” and
“the cars look like hotwheels-” and
“every single one has a person in it, and
they all have their own journeys, and
i am here.”
i don’t think they know how beautiful it is.
i didn’t.

home to me now is a backpack
a couple books
and a trinket from an old friend.
they are the only ones like me:
strangers in a strange land.
i’d like to find my way back someday-
if only i knew the way.

This is a poem of a girl. A girl who is so cliché, that she needs to write angst-filled poetry to keep herself conscious and her thoughts free, but is too hipster to believe it. A girl who is too freckled to be fair, too fleshy to be flirty, too conspicuous to be classy, too prominent to be petite, but too small to be seen. A girl who’s piercing blue eyes absorbs everything and regurgitates emotions like a tampered slots machine—excessi vely and noisily. This is a poem of a girl who is so over-stimulated with color, texture, love, and life that the numbness in her head is a pink eraser. A girl who was brought up to have opinions and dreams as long as they kept her on the path to perfection, poise, and parenting. A girl who is experienced enough to know the difference between sorrow and guilt, manipulation and cowardice, hysteria and hyperventilation but is too naïve to know why certain boys are a bluish green, why math is a bafflement, and why ground up chili peppers in dark chocolate ice cream isn’t everyone’s favorite food. This is a poem of a girl who salivates at the mere thought of classical music, couture fashion, and feminine heels. A girl who breathes in culture like a caterpillar inhales hookah smoke. A girl who Alis volat propriis (flies with her own wings) but ultimately plummets to nosus decipio (Let’s just cheat) because her humanity held down her Heredity. A girl who thrives on music of every variety: as long as it can paint out her emotions in front of her. This is a poem of a girl who is so acerbically witty and harsh that she could unarm Napoleon but is so vehemently protecting that Mother Theresa herself would be awed. A girl with an attention span of a fish, short-term memory like sea foam, thoughts that outnumber armadas, and a bad habit of dehydration. This is a poem of a girl who talks but shouldn’t, speaks but doesn’t, and who is so badly burnt by the enticement of affection that her wallflower camouflage is now charred ashes around her stubby toes. A girl who has such infatuation that she could pin Lust against the wall and make Passion jealous. A girl who wears red lipstick because she knows it will keep a man’s gaze for 8.2 more seconds than with chapstick and the 50’s will never grow old. A girl too nervous and traditional to make the first move, but too strategic and over-analytical to lie back and forget. A girl who loathes the word mamihlapinatapai because it describes her every circumstance since the day she befriended the purple-brown boy who thought her personality tasted of Raspberry ice cream and to this day she still can’t pronounce it. This is a poem of a girl who needs a bed so crowded and protected with blankets and pillows that her monsters can’t penetrate her mazed-up mind. A girl who drinks tea with her lips, and philosophy with her soul. A girl who can’t spell the alphabet backwards but can make great mnemonic devices. A girl who can’t tie ends together because she doesn’t want to leave anything unsaid but whose tangents are kite-strings. A girl whose sentences are distracting fences in front of her literal eyes but doors for her mind’s eyes. A girl who has Synesthesia but keeps it quiet because of the condescending kids in kindergarten who called her a freak, and a liar. This is a poem of a girl who thinks about Death and whether he is a snatching thief or just the ferryman. A girl who dances with her eyes shut, her heart open and her toe-socks on. A girl who will clean her room at 2 am because she can’t handle the sight and the night is too lively for sleeping anyways. A girl who wears her heart not only on her sleeve, but on her chest, open as a blushing book playing poker with hockey players and still winning a game. A girl who’s emotions are kept in a Tupperware box and left in the refrigerator but if you shake it hard enough the lid just might pop open

I see a flash
A sight to behold
The work of an immortal sculptor
Walking straight in elegant pride
Worth of a princess of the sun
Firmly transfixed in her twelve
Moving into the emptiness of an invalid society
Her innocence screaming
In an unchallenged clarity

And only twelve moons
The framework of her modeling salivates
Wolves in men
Who’s been exposed to the virus
Emerging from the bush land of their desires
To seek their vengeance in a fanatical hatred
And poor me the princess
With the *** lunacy roaming the streets,
Sanity of abstinence is the greatest challenge.

Swung from poverty to adolescence
A pendulum of fates
Hunger at home for the family
And her homestead a moonscape of desolation
The two hundred shillings does the trick
She trades out her innocence
And virginity too; a girls pride
And alongside the legal tender
Comes the virus
The minute monster
Savoring a society of huge minds.

There is the tuberculosis
In a hospital ward
Full of undug graves and shrines unnamed.
Drawn into the vacuum of her fate
Eyes wide open in dismal finality
The princess
Lie in freeze frame of death
A pyramid of events
Molded out of her last several terrible seconds
Lamentation for the society
A dull eulogy for our girls.

Dear Vamika,
of a long and a
short
time away. Of the
future, when
your ******* are fuller
and you can finally speak
French fluently.

I hope you are a woman.

I know you
have not changed the world.
I didn’t write you that way.
I’m still
not writing you that way.
For my cheap gel pen
has none of that spark
of Fitzgerald’s and Nabokov’s,
who could bewitch the imagination with
such timeless giants
as ****** and Daisy.

So remember:
you’ll be brilliant
but absent
from any history books.
But still.
You are enough, exquisitely enough,
for the literature
I inhabit.

Hence, I fill pages with your inky
outlines, shade in the spaces
slowly
with hopes and wishes and poetry and dreams.
For you, of you.
I note
all that you are
composed of, so that
even the marginalia
laughs out your lipstick,
your clothes drawers,
your reading habits.

I am writing you as a woman.

I am writing you
as Music. Here is your laughter,
a little smokier now,
unspooling like a work of
Debussy’s. Here are your
fingers, lighter now, like meringues
or dandelions, as they dance
on your silver flute,
better, better, better than ever,
in shiny theatres far
grander than you imagined.
And here are your tiny
scrawled music notes, that with a few touched
keys, echo as tumbling stars
in the ears of thousands
and then plenty.

I hope you are a woman.
So play, compose, laugh and sing; be
Music ‘til your dying day.

I am writing you
as Ambition. It is calmer
than the fire that currently
singes my hands. Yet it’s still as
constant
as the flame you
light, every night before bed,
in front of the Goddess Durga
you pray to.
Your heart still
salivates for hard-boiled
surprises, for lucky pennies
found on pavements, for the
metallic sweetness of, yes,
success.

I hope you are a woman.
So strive, and strive again,
‘til you’re nothing but ash.

I am writing you, too,
as Success.
Surprise!
Those words unhooked
from the crevices of your mind,
are now bound in
paperbacks.
You are a poet, sleeker than
the 17-year-old fledgling
in her dim bedroom.
You are a journalist,
pouring morning stories
like hot tea, and sighing
with honey glee at
your name in
print.
You are a writer;
you fill even more pages, and
you now have a
gleaming, expensive
pen.

I hope you are a woman.
So write, ‘til you have lost
all breath.

I am writing you
as Compassion. How could I not
let you share words (your  personal magic) with
countless sparking children?
And not fill your hands with
gifts of maths, English,
science and art that you can
give and give and
give to them?
An education is as precious and
priceless as Picasso, you say.
A human right, all the same.
A human right.

I hope you are a woman.
So be kind. That’s it.
Always.
I have not forgotten  
to write you as
Justice.
Go out and support,
wave flags and placards,
sign petitions, join many
campaigns, scream out ‘til
your throat can’t bear such
honesty, such
indignation.
Keep fighting.
Never stop. The world is unfixable,
imperfect and
unhappy.
Help it.

I hope you fight for other women.
I hope you fight for other humans.

I am also writing you
as Resilience. So you’re able
to face yourself in that
mirror, even though
your stomach has a stubborn bulge, still,
and you haven’t yet learned
to smile at your nose.
Still.
And I’m reminding you that you do,
yes, you do,
have the strength to cry alone, then
get over it,
to have panic attacks, then
get over it,
to pick yourself up from
life’s many disintegrations and
start again.
You can. You’ve already done it.
I hope you always will.

I know that you are a woman.
So never give up, as
cliché as it sounds. Go ahead and
die trying.

Now, as the cadenza
of this rather sentimental piece,
which I’ve spun as
sweet
as stolen sugar
and the romantic comedies at which
you secretly weep,
I am writing you as
Tenderness.
See, I decided that Love and
Romance are but
bombs. And you and I both
believe in non-violence.
Therefore, you are
a hugger now, with lips
which kiss your husband,
scold your children
and sing
lullabies to the whole silly lot of them.
Your heart is always
swimming
with a good bit of warm wine,  so don’t
question its fullness.
Take care of yourself.

This.
This, above, is all I hope for you
to stay and have and be
until the symphony’s final note, your
final breath.

You are a woman.
Flawed, intelligent, beautiful, cracked, strong, kind, stubborn, soft, honest.
Real.

You are a woman.
So stay like this,
but be just a little more wiser, a little more grown
each passing year.

A woman.
Vamika, that’s all I ever want you to be.

I see a flash
A sight to behold
The work of an immortal sculptor
Walking straight in elegant pride
Worth of a princess of the sun
Firmly transfixed in her twelve
Moving into the emptiness of an Invalid society
Her innocence screaming
In an unchallenged clarity

And only twelve moons
The framework of her modelling salivates
Wolves in men
Who's been exposed to the virus
Emerging from the bushland of their desires
To seek their vengeance in a fanatical hatred
And poor me the Princess
With the *** Lunacy roaming the streets
Sanity of abstinence is the greatest challenge.

Swung from poverty to adolescence
A pendulum of fates
Hunger at home for the family
And her homestead a moonscape of desolation.
The two Hundred shillings does the trick
She trades out her innocence
And virginity too- a girl's pride
And alongside the legal tender comes the virus
The minute Monster
Savoring a society of huge minds.

There is the tuberculosis
In a hospital ward
Full of undug graves and shrines unnamed
Drawn into the vacuum of her fate
Eyes wide open in dismal finality
The princess
Lie in freeze frame of death
A pyramid of events
Molded out of her last several terrible seconds
Lamentation for the society
A dull eulogy
For our girls.

kitty has come out to play
her whiskers detect the yearning trembles
her nose smells the fragrance of lust
am i your **** cheetah?
the spots inky, the fur lustrous
the paws aching and alive
the eyes full of thirst
i purr with the twitch of your skin
my teeth scrape
my tongue salivates
my heart beat escalates
my ***** pulsate
my claws absorb you
my lean mean enraptures,
takes over.

don't move,
kitty wants to play.
she'll make you purr
before the night is through

I see you from across the room.
It’s impossible not to,
I have to look through you,
To see out the window
You don’t look as good tonight,
As his words might lead us to believe.
Good enough for him.
Good enough to write about.

He salivates over you,
Like I might over a steak.
Like you are over the poem he reads.

I may have lost you over this one.
Because he is tender.
Because he wrote one good poem.
Because he might kiss the same way he *****.
**** the same way he would,

Put his thinly pursed lips,
On the curve of your neck.
But he wouldn’t appreciate your neck.
Like
I do.

He might not be spitty
Chapped from years of rejection.
I stare at your neck
I’m sorry if I stare.
I need to see out the window,
During this three hour class,
To know the world is still there.

He doesn’t know your feet.
And if he did *******,
With your socks on or off.
He never felt the abrasion,
Of your well-earned calluses.
You always feel the scruff of my chin,
On your neck.
The neck he will never know.

**** me on my bed.
Bleed on my hard-wood floor.
Let’s get out of this place,
This three-room mansion.
We’re either better than this, or,
I am delusional.

if I were asked , are you okay
I would know not what to say
The way my feelings work
the way they ebb and flow
turns my headspace into an auditorium
full of noise
full of sorrow
full of love
with hopes for a better tomorrow
I guess I'll say I'm okay because
I've got to chase this wolf away
It breathes down my neck
It haunts every step
it salivates at the thought
of sinking it's fangs in again
and again and again
I'm hoping the meds take effect
like a huntsman
please release me from this beast
Until that time comes
I won't stop believing that I can be
free

A blasphemous ******* as the dwelling beast salivates in its hollow. The glaring screen in the darkness is its only light. Years upon years it has followed the same sick fantasies. Self loathing and sickening it has reached the paramount of the low. Trawling the deep dark corners of the web to find his fix. Like a ****** addict it has delusions of needing his fraudulent fetish. A tiny drop of drewl collides with the derelict ground. It flows onto the pile of stale hardened tissues used to dispose of the beasts ****** off spray. A trundle to the local park to put a spring in its step. Watching the adolescents thinking corrupt thoughts. Child bearers stab the beast with scared stares of disgust. Attention is being drawn towards the hairy obese miscreant. Ripped shorts to expose the genitalia of the malevolent monster. A father approaches, intentions of confrontation are obvious. The monstrous **** runs to the road, unaware of the approaching speeding bus. It is drawn under the wheel crushed with the weight. Blood spurts in every direction, like a hot needle to a balloon full of acid. Slowly he dies in agony and suffering. The evil **** got his penance. ***** for eternity in the dark depths of hell.

The devil reserves the darkest places for the darkest men. His penance came, as will yours.

By Joseph Burns

My word, that's a gut wrenching cry
you have there, monsieur le coq
A piercing horn-of-plenty rant
that causes the stars to retreat
No wonder St Peter repented

Is that cackle-raising to rouse those
who give their all for ghosts in machines?
Or does that siren you summon
quicken earthbound worms
early bird fishers of men
are after?

Chef de partie stirs his cuppacino dreams
Bulging pajamas shapeshift  
as he turns, chomps his jowels
and salivates *Long live Chicken a la King
Sharpen my knife

The disappointment that resides in me,
as much as I tell it to go away,
swallows my entire body.

It eats away at my flesh and rarely
leaves enough time for skin to regenerate.
The disappointment that resides in me

licks its lips hungrily
at the sight of my blood, salivates
and swallows my entire body.

This cannot be healthy,
I say to myself. There has to be a way to invalidate
the disappointment that resides in me.

I wonder if there was ever a phase of sobriety
when my expectations' weight
did not swallow my entire body.

I suppose I must return to reality
and succumb to incubate
the disappointment that resides in me,
that swallows my entire body.

The TV people scare me sometimes.
They are always saying bad things.
They do so with an air of confidence and reassurance.
They fill your head with narcotic gossip and
Everyone salivates over the tasty words.
The addicted watch with anticipation.
Eating up every juicy bit.
The worse the news, the tastier.
The media is an all-you-can-eat buffet
For the cynical lovers of catch 22’s and Murphy’s law
They gag on the good news
Altruism, the Golden Rule, honest to goodness people
That doesn’t taste so good
It doesn’t give us our fix
You need the bad to have the good
And we only like the good to emphasize the bad
The audacity of the TV people; how dare they tell good news
Good news doesn’t sell
Bad news is good news

Logical doesn’t have taste. It has circumstance. Only to be tasteful, is to be surrounded by a taste of what gradually makes a self importance greater to yourself. Proudly underestimating yourself at first. Giving closure to the surrounding areas. Taste has no boundaries here. A made-up friction. A made-up functionality. A dripping faucet without clarity. Dripping one social taste at any given time. Clarity giving rise to the surrounding areas with logical ingredients. Logical ingredients slapping taste buds without concern for logical praise. Logical praise that doubts it’s understanding of taste buds giving praise to ingredients without concern for how praise will affect it’s priorities. Priorities finishing the diversity of something logical with a taste. The taste buds feeling the diversities finalizing ingredients in their rightful places. Like shiny white plates on display for the crowd of praises effecting one’s own priorities. Teeth whitening the taste buds for greater effect. Praises finally giving the logical praise the taste it deserves. More surrounding areas include a broader crowd. A newer logical taste starts to emerge in the practice of ingredients giving logical praise to the logical priorities that govern it so. Praise from newer surroundings influencing more ingredients in the form of logical taste. More taste buds start feeling the diversities in the praise which salivates the practice of logical assessments. A reverse act giving rise to a simplified logical taste without boundaries.

Why do you continue to sleep this night?
Like so many others, refusing to awaken
I am losing patience with your lack of knowing
With your avoidance to feel

Hear me ... Come to me

Come back to the fore mother's womb
Know your place of origin
It is time for you to be born again of blood and lust
Time to drink deep and be nourished by Ancestral *******

I come to you in the quietness of the night
I come to you with arms that ache to hold you
With a tongue that burns to share with you
All that has been denied you for too long


What is happening to me?

I did as I was told. I followed the formula.

Studied well. Worked hard. Fell in love..
.
Why was it all taken from me? What is left for me?


Doing and not “Being” leaves no time for the sacred
You wonder why the emptiness grows inside you?
Let me love you into growing and into knowing
The truth of the fullness of a woman

Time to leave your antiseptic cocoon
Time to touch, to burn, to feel
Time to leave the shackles of other's man made rules
And dare to create your own from having lived

So many fear the dark.
But water and fire gather in the dark places below.
The brave and bold have learned to go there eagerly
They run with pulses racing.
Their bodies flushed, warm, alive.

Hear me ... Come to me

Tonight we shall meet and touch
It is our intention to reclaim all that has been lost to us
It is our intention to give to you, all that has been denied
Dare to free your body.
Dare to open your soul.
Feel.

Hear me ... Come to me

Let me dig deep into your soul
Become one with your Ivory bones
Know the harmony of your blood's song
Find the place where I belong

Let my footsteps echo within your mind
Journey with me through space and time
Let me turn you inside out
Breathe the Breath from your sweet mouth

A pulse stilled...now throbs and rushes
A tongue denied...salivates
A covert glance...seeks to be engaged
Flesh and mind flooded with new yearning...are hungry
Woman of the heart, Let thunder roll
Dig in your earthiness,
Follow your roots to your flesh
And find us dancing in your blood

You don't have to tiptoe around your heart
Dig in. Know it. Own it.
Trust the knowing will bless your lips and your hips
And set your world on fire!

He pulls a feather from her bodice
She laughs and turns a coy cheek.
The boa, all but bare, looks ragged.
Like her smile when she's feeling anxious.
She feels the heat of his eyes, feels his intensity.
Her fears belie her desires. She wishes she could see.
See what he sees. See this thing that he calls beautiful.
He seems to look to look right through her skin.
But all she can focus on is the curves and the scars.
The strange shape of her body. The embarrassment.
The awkward turn of her mouth. The knit in her brow.
Her conflicts with pleasure, her repulsion for needing to submit.
The memories that bite at the back of her moans.
The shadows of abuse crawling out of the seams.
Ugly, twisted devils that sought to steal her innocence.
Returning to feed again, to taint the morrows of adulthood.
All of these things color the love she makes.
Tar and feather it. Blacken it with shame.
He senses her discomfort. Internalizes it. Confuses it.
He shrinks back, recoiling from the slap of rejection.
But it isn't him at all. Him, she craves. Salivates for.
But like the ringing of Pavlov's bell, they've built a deeper path.
Men she never knew; Can't even remember. Faces obscured.
Yet she can trace the footprints they've left on her mind.
Tracks set with iron spikes running through the bedrock,
Through the deepest layers of her psyche. Below the surface.
To where thoughts exist without consciousness, without effort.
The symphony of tragedy continues to play on.
She has no words to express this to him.
She can only hope that he senses it.
Senses the murky bubbles of awakening as they arise.
Senses her need for him. Her need for his patience.
Senses her need for silence, for distance and recollection.
Senses her need for his quiet embrace. For understanding
For her troubled state of mind and damaged sense of self.
For a self that she has barely even begun to understand.

the dog night salivates and commands
                                     and commands
but i am abroad from that
  asleep with my family
  under the open windows
as others stew in the clubs, bars
     and packed terraces

It is for the reason we think and think and think,
That the finishing line seems to shrink and shrink and shrink.
Their trophies and our consolation prizes, we always link
To the faces of where it matters not if we stink.

We ***** and *****, but never look;
Only offer our eyes to reference books,
Pay our lives to learn how they sit and smile and dress and cook,
When we could carve out crafts of our own on hippocampus walls to hook.

Charts and charts of sound waves go farther than needed into the ear,
But in this statistic, there are more of those which we are deaf to hear.
Then we wonder, perhaps they will listen if we talk our fear through beer.
What we cannot, we must preach, so in the morning it’ll all be clear.

Putting on several mouths, sincerity seldomly salivates in our tongues.
And all we ever scream about, we let clump and clog in our lungs.
Our voices, we swallow, then verbalize universal dung.
Is that easier than to allow our singularity be hung?

To possess such delicate bones under thick coats of flesh and skin,
One little sting, we crumble as if our framework isn't as fortified as tin.
But sometimes when too stung, we rigidify and our cutis turns lean.
Our pores, too open, that even what doesn't exist, we welcome in.

And so, we stick to our lifelong work of homemade bibles,
And add commandments every time we build stables,
Along with valuables from the places in people’s fables.
Only us can decide to make room for new tables.

I heard you got hit by that train on your 17th birthday
Smoking **** on the tracks
Too bad it was only my dream

I wish the fall onto concrete left scars on your face instead of scrapes

I wish the cops caught you that night
Or the night after that
I would have wanted them to lock you up

You threw away the key to my heart
Pressed it flat like a keepsake penny made by machines
I wish I died when I crashed my car for the third time in a year
I know you wished I hadn’t walked away
Wish you weren’t the first person I texted

It has taken me nine months to start getting over you
Its been 5 weeks since I last cried in vain over your memory
It has taken the touch of six men to scrape you off of my skin

I heard every seven years all of your cells renew themselves
By 2019 you will have never touched me
I find some sort of peace in that

It has taken me nine months to think about loving someone else
But here I am
three weeks into a relationship and I'm doing perfectly fine
without you

I still know your middle name and the sound of your laughter
But somewhere I have forgotten your favorite color
I remember where all your hidden freckles are
But I have forgotten the weight of your skin
I could draw your bones on canvas with my eyes closed
I could not color your eyes in or the shape of your lips

I suppose I’m getting closer to forgetting you altogether
There are still remnants of you
Like 2 year old gum stuck to a sidewalk
Is it ever really gone?

Now when people think of us
They think of us as separate people
They pair you with the girl who salivates on your arm
Love was never the mistake
You were the mistake

Im stuck here with burn holes in my thighs
With vacant lonely eyes
I used to call you:
H o m e.

I should have never let a boy matter so much
I am made of stardust and rot
Never should have let you in
You never made me feel as special as I did to you
Dropped me in your kitchen when things got too hot
Looked at the shards on the floor and didn’t bother to sweep me up
Never thought about gluing me back together

You always said you didn’t know what youd do without me
But you do know
Today is six months with the girl you supposedly love now
Her name still makes me shudder a little
and when I saw you last I cried for 20 minutes
It burns me in unseen places to look at pictures of you two together
It burns me to know I am not the one you want

We bloom like jasmine
Emanating exotic essence
The smell is enough to intoxicate
Enraptured I captured the heat from your flame
Glistening as each word peaks and captivates
Leaving me breathless
Vivid imagery penetrates and consumes my senses
The longing becomes astounding
Arousing  
Leading me into binding
I implore your mercy
For I am so thirsty
My mouth salivates at the thought of your lusting
No longer trusting my inhibitions
Because I can't hold back when it comes to your rhetoric
Your tongue is too precise and bombastic
Undeniably ******
Waves of ecstasy wash over me
The undertow bringing me far out to sea
You're almost otherworldly
I beg thee show me mercy

I lay, of my own volition, in a space meant for her:
a confined and achromatic scene.
My hands, malodorous, muddy and splintered,
leisurely rest on my chest, free from labor machines.

Here I rest, hackneyed and discouraged
in a pitifully human attempt to simulate death
I curse my virtue; it chastises back as it
mourns the curious exploitation of my health.

It was meant to last only a minute,
as sorrow chains my putrid despair in place.
Yet I, to this day, cannot begin to explain
how the darkness manifested itself a face.

I attempted to strike a movement but remained still
as the daemon began to smile.
The plan was to endure without oxygen for seconds,
yet the creature stayed my conscience for a while.

In a surprising and trepid consternation,
I find myself in service to mendicancy.
The creature, a devil with venetian red oculi,
salivates at its newest and prized delicacy.

I cry at the fleeting mastery of my faculty,
yet the tears remain inattentive and departed.
Time blesses the creature with a dominant sentence
as reality registers a dialog that I had started.

“Where is my daughter? I demand to know.”
The creature’s smile grows ever wider.
He then takes the form of the stuffed turtle toy
that used to sleep right beside her.

The creature, in a droning and unmelodious voice,
utters a perplexing, yet commanding noise:

“ATIV ARETLA NI MAN ES ED OLEF”

Frightened yet discouraged, I aim to find the sense
in the puzzling command the creature produced.
“She’s been missing for days! I need to know where she is!”
The beast speaks again, letting its anger loose:

“FELO DE SE NAM IN ALTERA VITA!!”

Suddenly, albeit boundlessly, the stillness was lifted,
and my structure was free from this tenebrous stead.
I raise myself and clasp at the summit’s precipice
after having danced with a beast in this wooden bed.

The vacant coffin remained pristine,
fitted with natural calico cotton lining.
The devil you fear the most is the one you create
and mine emerged with impeccable timing.

The creature’s malevolent ballad persistently tattles
as The Lapse rebroadcasts the “truth” it wanted to utter.
It had told me, “Become a felon of oneself,
and thine own life shall be traded for another.”

I refuse to concur with the creature’s decisiveness
as my unyielding faith will ensure my daughter’s return.
Her weighty and boundless absence must cease
and lead to the terminus of my inexhaustible concern.

She has blossomed like a flower.
Her smiles her blush tell that she is fresh and young.  
She walks like a bird that had just learned how to fly,
Ignorant of the predators, around her.
She smiles with one and laughs with the other
dangling from hand to hand.
She is in charge; it’s her time to rule.


The good uncle sees her and wonders how fast
the baby of yesterday have become the woman of today,
The bad uncle salivates as he sets his trap and patiently wait.  
her elder sister other older single ladies are jealous of her.
Her mates of the opposite *** see her, as though for the first time.


She is the center of attraction.
She is like the tree of life in the Garden of Eden.
She is Junior’s door to adulthood and an opportunity to boost her seniors ****** experience.
She is the side chick to auntie’s boyfriend and junior’s girlfriend.
She swims ignorantly in between sharks thinking they are dolphins.
She is a teen girl, she is endangered.

There’s a certain way of looking
And in that way
I can see the Devil’s eyes
Red
Sometimes they go green
And yellow
In the reflection in the uneven water

His mouth salivates
Gushing and uncaring
It’s so disgusting it’s so natural

He tells you:
Why are you trying to live here?


There’s a certain way of not looking
But then the eyes are still there
Disturbing what we have known for so long

There’s eyes that are not eyes
The Devil’s make-up, the Devil’s hungry mouth
The Devil’s unabashed smile, the Devil’s strange love

There’s a certain way of looking and
No one
Will see it like I do
And when I try to say no

The ****** red spots are still there
Like a snake bite
Like that long lost love
Like the meaning of life laughing at you
Telling you to stop it
To give in
To be a man
To be a more-than-you

Those lit-up eyes
Won’t tell you about yourself
But they might help you with sadness
Help you relax with it

There’s a certain way of looking at things
But it doesn’t change them
It’s still the devil and you
Trying to find lovely people
To rip up and eat like symbols

And when you sleep, you need help
A hand, a body or just a something-more

Because you, you are so empty
That’s why the lights are so seductive

I need to care less of course
Of course
I need things made out of more than paper and plastic

There’s a river and a Devil
And your innards
But you won’t stop things from coming inside
Even after you tried to stop rotting

There’s a river that’s part of the devil
The devil that’s part of the river
Trying to keep them outside of you

I peeked down the corridor
and there within I saw
Nothing. Utter dark and null
devoid of bright or dull.
Recoil'd not I from the drear'
in holding back childish fear.
      Of the Dark

      My ear it crept closer still
towards the sound of zilch and nil,
nothing. Vacuous silence,
drumming steady absence.
Tempted by the resting rhythm -
absent metre and system.
      .
      Deepest cold pierces the nose
out of shadow its scent arose,
Nothing. Faint eau de toilette,
an odourless silhouette.
Made curious to explore
beyond what was heard or saw.

      Impatience tipped my tongue
caution begging to be flung,
No More - ravenous nether
thirsting night tide aether.
Mouth salivates and perspires,
drowning in the lightless mire.

--

      At last - I am one and none,
for I the darkness has come,
Senses suspended: sound, sight,
scent, taste, now touch the night.
No I nor we - no more ...
Solemn stately corridor,
      Of the dark.

1.  FUNCTION
a function (of a function (of a function)⭠⭠⮪
   ↳ function (of a function (of a function))     ↑
                                                               ­               ↑
function (of a function (of a function))           ↑
⇅                                                              ­             ↑
function (of a function (of a function))→ → ⤴

2. CONTRAPTION
a cute curvy carbon contraption
that salivates at the ringing of a bell
that clamps shut when its hairs are touched
that flies south for the winter

3. GREEN
is the earthworm that eats dirt and ***** soil
the lichen that makes barren rock habitable
the bees that pollinate so many plants
the euglena

i seem to breathe, yet am none of these. this makes me
a broken Bigbelly blinking in the dark
a traffic light saying wait, wait, wait to an empty sidewalk

It’s in their DNA
Hidden between crisp suits
Paying the mortgage
And battling their impulses

Beneath their coat beats a heart bursting to screech
To break out and run towards the moon
One finds their perfect sync
Their wavelength lover
Perfect partner

The female can hunt just as much as her different half
She plays a cool, flippant character
But don’t underestimate her lust
She can hunt with the best of them
She can scream with the best of them

The male is the awkward but seductive hero in this story
His name brings women whimpering
I think the men do too
He can slink with the best of them
He can claim a lover like the best of them

Years later
Moons renewed
The female finds the male
Their coats carrying the same hue
And as she salivates over every breath he takes
She prays he wants him just as much as she does him
Maybe it was in the stars
Or perhaps the other creatures were sleeping
The hounds shed their fur and moaned at the warmth

Skin uncovered
Legs parted
Lips sore and cracked
With backs glistening
Tonight they love each other so much
He loves how she feels
She loves what he does to her
In the morning they’ll hate each other for just that

This is their wavelength
Between frequencies humans cannot hear
How intertwined their bodies and heartbeats really are

Crushing me
he sinks his teeth in.

Eyes shut without a
second thought.

Pinned between two limbs,
while they rejoice in the
quenching of thirst.

Inhaling nausea,
exhaling the unsatisfactory
gasp for relief.

Destined for
deterioration,
my only purpose
to be devoured.

Cursing as he salivates
over my corpse
will do me
no justice as the
end remains the same.

I forgive the beast
I drown in his
ecstasy.

Spaghetti worms put into place feeling  me rapture in the tall glassed enclosure of whiskey

It comes to mind that drinking such things will never cease my thirst but enhance my visions til the resting place becomes  in tune  & clear-  much more obvious

Cannibalism is a far reach from eating the fowl that splits my tongue and salivates my juices as I enter the rock fish bottom- No strings attached and it is now a jar of clay--

No connection --- only the dots pass me by

Red. Red and amber. Green.

The lights change as slow as my heart beats.
Fixed in my position,
I reach to remove the hair that hangs over my eyes.
The strands of hair fall back into place each time I move them.
The thought of having salvation salivates my mouth.
Sirens call my name but shiver to my response,
Despite the fact that they are in colder waters.
Sometimes I wish the siren would go back to it's depths.
The innocent pure upper body of a girl is nothing but a mirage;
A trick to fool the absent minded.
Luckily for me,
I know that underneath the beauty lies a monstrous tail that powers it's false image.

Green. Amber. Red.

I suddenly hear the beeping of cars behind.
I missed my turn.

My soul salivates for fulfillment,
Ailing for that forbidden touch.
A sort of hunger grumbling at the mind,
A serenade which has since revealed itself to be a trance.
As our universes collide,
Two find worlds untouched,
Looming suspense,
Journeys down paths distant from domestic lands,
No evidence of the truth,
Could drive this girl to suicide.
For it doesn’t all end with the unexplored,
But with this mirror before my eye,
The reflection glowering in this direction,
Deprectiates the torture of the bitter loneliness,
The demons of this land finally mutilated.

There's a dog outside of the mortuary
Leashed to a crying woman
He is excited
He innocently craves the bones
That composed his former companion
He salivates
He does not know

I lust for your body when,
I lie alone late at night,
My mouth salivates at the thought,
Of your heavy taste.

I cannot say enough,
How hungry the symmetry of your hips,
Make me feel,
Or how beautiful you really are.

I nearly cried that night,
You told me you had died.
I mourned for a world,
That could have never known your presence again.

I must say that I would have surely,
Been driven by insatiable hunger,
And a darkness that would fill me inside,
To follow you into the great unknown.

For a world without my dearest,
Is a place I surely cannot be,
Nor would I find myself able,
To even find the strength to breathe.