What you don't see
is the way I wait,
watching her braid
worries in her hair
speckling small daisies,
my eyes like tumblers
gulping her in swigs
as she perches glasses
on the arch of her nose,
and then we'll take
a photo
to remark on how
we were back then
and now.

Honeysuckle running deep in nostril's recollection
Wafting nectar dripping in air, please stop
Must stay present, no time for memory swap
Sneaking in, yellowed dreams, desirous confection
O purgatory, keep me still, deviate no such inflection

Causeway flash backing egg yolk, and lemon spectrum
Road lined in runners, speckling scintillation
This loose maddening of honeysuckle titillation
Reverse your tendril's twist, quivers an ungated septum
Covers, green to yellow transitions, honeysuckle bedlam

I cannot dance down this lane for fear of you
Your ringlets curl, clasp, coil me
On such road of alluvial soil I see
How can I? Must I, escape steer of dew?
You're honeysuckle memory of all I knew

1.
Your specimen:
the cat.
He lies, a stretched out
blob of
whirring, whizzing particles:
You can’t see them –
he can.

2.
His fur is
dried old carpet
left out on a front lawn:
homeless,
floorless;
waiting to be claimed.

3.
His eyes are
blank marbles
flicked by sticky fingers
in a game.
You won them
by cheating,
and stole them but they
turned to mush
in your hands, they
fell through your fingers, and
stained them with purple:
it would not wash off.
It grew:
an omnipresent reminder
trickling down your arms,
pooling at your elbows.

4.
You raise the scalpel:
it is a crescent moon
speckling down to
illicit behaviour
below.

5.
The portraits on the walls
applaud
when you make the first
CUT.
and reveal the
gooey caramel
dripping, circulating, inside.
It sticks to
the blade, forming
clumps of purple
that harden to a
crystallised-honey form.

6.
Later you sleep
with the cat;
he lies on your bed
and purrs
(does he purr?)
and you label the jars:
“Dissection 15”.

The Sea speckling waves, I -
Watched the seafoam stretched
Yonder - azure and proud -
Upon the sea cliff,
Standing tall peering down,
Waves crashing upon the
Seashore shivering cold.

Lost in poesy, alas I -
Peered down the air
Gelid, humming from within a
Gilted and melodic tune -
As thrice I looked back
Your sordid gaze a hazey
Interlude to the crimson tide.

your face illuminated in the moonlight,
glowing, soft and gentle features—
who were you, i wonder?
the stars above us speckling the sky,
i lean on your side, pain in your eyes,
and through your hurt i realize,
you glance at me, afraid, unsure.
my heart is stricken, my mind, it aches;
the surroundings were no match to your beauty.
i draw my hand meekly to yours,
our fingertips touch, i begin to slow back,
you're scared now, drawing weary breaths,
yet you held my hand, and i felt so real.
closing my eyes, sinking deeper into your arms,
and letting the night encase us both,
the sky felt true and memories numb,
but i knew it was all a dream.

I was lying in bed last night staring up

at the stars speckling the celestial indigo heavens

like glittery sprinkles across a birthday cake

and I thought to myself:

Where the hell is the ceiling?

I shed a body or two off
Back when I was in the "Times."

The speckling of my sharpest bones
Was in order
and I still didn't want to go home.
I just wanted to shine.
I just wanted to live like ivory
and dance in the minty ice cream cone
That's melting down your left wrist.

While in the other hand there was this little slip
A piece of paper with a note
About how God can change your life and
Others lives if you can just pray right
and then pay the standing Black Jack off by the closed door.
Would you like anymore
Wisdom from an ******* of grass
Or the company of a church *****?

I want to shed roses out of the garden
and into my mind.
I just want to tell you that you're not mine
and you never will be and
I will never be happy again
Not like I was when
I had no hidden grin
Or when I had no scar on my chest from beating him
Or any manly hair on my chinny chin chin.

I've shined out and timed out of the server.
The service calls me so
I put a gun in my mouth
and sing them the anthem of their nations glow:

The anthem of a lunatic
Praying on a twelve gauge
To bring me back in again.

Bruised teeth and busted lips.

A black smudge down the right side
And your **** are looking back at me.
To make things a little bit harder,

I almost stopped to shudder and erase that last part but I can't now
For it has made its mark.

Trash can journey number six.
Are you in to this?

For background - read "The Frumpy Tale of Riley River Duck"*
----------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­--
In the frigid winters of June
With the snow scattering over the crystal lagoon
Puffy white frost pillows covered the ground
The sunshine making them glitter all around

Riley sat with a piping hot cup of tea
Conversing eloquently with Cecelia the flea
The happy duck sat, blankets covering her slick feathers
Helping her brave even the harshest weathers

Out of nowhere came a huge “thump”
Causing Riley to jump
She waddled to the window
Just to see a cloud of dust and kindle

An avalanche slowly slithered along
The beast heaved, wicked and strong
Flicking up ice, draping the sun with a gown
Speckling, flickering and finally glittering down

Outside came a muffled scream
It could’ve been from a dream
Riley rushed outside
With the sun her only guide

She saw a **** of snow wiggle and grow
How was anyone to know?
That the avalanche had awoken an animal
Cory the angry camel

See the snow and lumber
Woke him up from his slumber  
Along with the snow, his temper seemed to grow
And his **** was in a frump

Riley waddled out
To settle this bout
She pleaded and reasoned him to see
That the snow was very fun to throw

All the animals of the Great Oak Tree crowded around the fight
Till the day turned into night
Cory was smiling and laughing, his mood lifted
As his big hooves sifted

He lifted up a snowball, and threw it into the sky
Riley could only watch it fly…
It hit her in the beak
So her mouth was too cold to speak

She looked in shock
As Cory ran amok
The camel had won the fight
Just as the day turned to night

The day came to an end
And Cory couldn’t help but pretend
That he wasn’t happy that he won
Throwing snow was very fun

Riley saved the day
In the late winters of May
She took Cory into her house
Quiet as a mouse….

when we first met i pinched myself daily
i had not yet mastered lucid dreaming
but reality was just too unbelieveable
i'd left the mossy rock's shade in exchange for a view of the lake
fearing my skin would bake i retreated
my biggest mistake
i could not find my way back to the dark path
so i sat in a field and let the sun beat my back
brown to black, speckling white as i peeled
uneven, unhappy, unmatched
the shade had never truly hurt me in the past
i became drawn by the unknown, by physical attraction
though i may once again find my rock, the contentment i felt with it once is apt to end
the lake whispers my name but i know it just wants to drown me in its depths

We roll
on the magic carpet into the outward reaches
to wrap abound bodies in communal hugs
atop magical tye-dye mountains and black and white rivers
of Peter Max the hushed whisper of
red bird hair ***** into a conversation
flying further into the horizon that is my dawn light glowing chest.

We roll
over each other on the floor sofa laughing,
like you see in the movies
of delinquent bohemians celebrating life with beers and
pills you swallow. Feels like the puppet strings
on our wings have withered; free to flail.

We roll
our bodies & eyes
backward-forward-sideways together with the music
wryly dancing as the world turns into a desert--

every molecule in our bodies warms--slowly,
like a hot bubble bath,
the earth takes its time spinning....
unlike our Sufi brains still rolling
rolling
and rolling like a stone down a hill betwixt a meadow
between two excited lovers in a cliched scene where
they are running toward each other--
naked with tattoos on their arms
and a smattering of neon orange and blue paint speckling their bodies
while they wear a native american headdress and Ray-Bans.

written with Mohamed Nasir
please check him out he is such a talented peot*

As I was young running underneath the shower
Droplets speckling my face Ike water freckles
I ran across the watery lane in the fountain of
My youth

I ran naked wet under the sprinkler's arches
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! I shouted
Joyfully as Archimedes found truth and naked
He ran down the street of Athens
Eurica! Eurica! Eurica! He shouted

Then I heard someone call my name
And shake me up
"Get up," my mother said
"You wet your bed again," she said
I was dreaming in my wet dreams again

N  Y’s serrated skyline,
a pale blue sleeps on teal.
But cut out
the distant end of it

and something of that shade
might wake
from under there, I feel.

The cross which I tend
to see is nearer than
N  Y. It is rusting
an old green garden on it
and there is much strangely
colored gray living in
the winding motions above it.
The last of the sun, it dying
again pours libations of
pink upon the summit.

The view is far to me
yet brings me close
to a sky’s permeation.
(Been dragging me forward
a while now to its edge,
this now ever wasting.)

This is much like the way
the Torre fell through
my eyes, pending inward
upon some mind, which
I tried to catch in my gray
gray matter (sitting next
to her) like that was
the last essential task.
I said keep it keep it.
Did not keep it. It passed.

The blue is changing now—
lighter, paler, ghost-like.
If you were here
you would know the color.
(It is the sheet spread over
when things are lifted
as if born.) Lights, smaller
than skin water specs
begin to glimmer.

A breath is a crumpled
thing, used and used but
never wasted. When I
breathe to breathe I
remember to keep
breathing. And when the
world enters my lungs,
I can choose when to
exhale time—if I breathe
to breathe.

More speckling of sky skin.
The shades are fading, darker.

Suffused under, the clouds
congregate in covers.
The Brooklyn museum
is some pantheon upon
my roman hill from here.
The street lamps flame
orange as if it all was a
constant procession
towards the unceremonious
entrance, through the changing
gates, to the unknowing
home of being.
(The blue has fallen
from the sky and dropped
onto the roofs.)
The impossibly colored
clouds smoke up in
one heap from the end,
still the same distance—
far away. (But there still
is blue behind me.
A blue has kept away
from the end.
The cross has blackened.)

I wish not to leave this
Brooklyn roof. But I have
chosen to sleep on a bed.
One day
I will sleep on a roof.

First a disclaimer:
My god is not
necessarily
yours, but she is
undeniably
hungry for a comfort-food
snack of peanut butter
and Fluff brand
whipped marshmallow spread.

(Yeah, I know,
nasty stuff, yet
every god has her quirks)

She's actually
more demiurge,
needy and enduring
a dangerously dull day
ideating at the office
that gets worse when
she opens the gripe-box
to unfold a complaint
pasted in ransom-note letters:

"Too stingy with praise.
Resent the ego stroking
going one way."

"Can't stroke what you ain't got,"
she cracks, tipping back
a cold glass of froth-topped milk.

The bubbling laughter
seizes her
mid-swallow, and
caught up by
a soul-clearing cough,
stars spray out speckling
black tile in a no-longer dark
part of the universe
we call home.

it’s more than just a happy song

i don’t know how to write a poem when i’m happy
but if i did, it would be called "strawberry swing"
i’ve had this title in my head for two years now
because an unexplained feeling always engulfs me when i hear that song
probably because it reminds me of that day

we went to the lake
but funny enough
that’s what i remember the least
what do i remember?

well, first, i remember turning into the wrong parking lot
hoping we were lost
so we could stay there longer
hoping the forecast for rain would hit
so we could “sit in the car and wait for it to blow over”

i remember the curving country roads that you drove around
(probably a little too fast—but that’s okay, it added to the thrill, to the excitement in my heart)
that wound for miles with no end in sight
which i was perfectly fine with
as i sat in the passenger seat listening to you hum along to the playlist we made together

i remember it was late june, early summer
warm enough to have the windows down
warm enough to see the sun dance across the windshield before speckling our skin, our eyes with light
the same sun that i noticed, for the first time, called your freckles out of hiding
warm enough for the car to get just a little bit too hot once we returned
but i didn’t care as long as you were in it

i remember having a conversation and being surprised that you were looking at me while i spoke
nodding your head along
smiling
inquiring
interested in me
i remember thinking that was a new feeling

i remember the closer and closer we got to home
the more and more excuses i tried to come up with in my head to get you to stay
how many red lights could we hit?
do you need to fill up on gas?
will all the street parking outside my house be full?
(so we can circle the block
even 5 more seconds will suffice)

well, we sat there for a while
you wanted to stay longer
making small talk like we did for months
neither of us wanted to leave
what are you doing later?
have you heard this song?
are you free any other days this week?

but we didn’t want this week
we wanted today
right now
this moment

it’s such a perfect day

1

I will drive you to the beach today,
Because winter has outstayed its welcome.
We have no tolerance for rude guests.
After all, it’s been a pair of months since
We had our last snowball fight.

We can undress to the least amount of
Decent clothing the law permits.
We will take sandals that clap our heels
Uniformly with our strides through the sand.

I’ve already packed our wicker picnic basket.
We will have ham and cheese on white bread,
Because we both agree peanut butter is unpleasant to smell.

We’ve cuddled all winter long to keep warm.  Now,
We want to hold each other for the innocent pleasure
Spring promises.  Now, we’re going to the beach.

2

She and I held our anticipation together
With every rotation of our odometer.
We—together—would enjoy the simple pleasure
Of watching the overbearing nines
Give way to a fresh thousand.

She pretended the AM stations
Received alien transmissions at the ends
Of the dials.  When we listened, we heard music.

She had the idea to buy one another
New bathing suits.  Now, I wear too short blue trunks
With green dots, speckling me like an ill duck.

3

Skipping, and kicking up sand with uncommon grace,
The sun began to set as she pranced around
Our fire.  The blaze was burning out, as the sky
Took the light away.  I could only barely make out
The purple of her new one-piece, that so starkly
Contrasted with her pale legs.

As the sun almost hid beneath the west, like a fawn
Her silhouette casually strolled my way.
She held her head to the stars, presenting
All of her neck.  The only sounds we heard
Were the tide and her toes crunching sand.

She stopped, just toe lengths in front of me,
Arching her head back, as if deep in thought.
Her mouth opened like a growing crater
And when, in her shadow, I joined her skyward stare,
We—together—both watched the Moon come out.

Speckling drops, of bathwater- lovely evening rain.
Patter melodically against
my open window frame.
The  water touches me not,
for my roof with gutters and onings.
But the dewy breeze saturates my room
like my face to an ocean breeze.
Mother Waters, send her daughters
to my window this spring night singing.
Distant puddle patterning ploops,
diameters mass expanses on the suburban streets.
The trees, the smile as they absorb the
moisture their brittle bones need.
Oh how I pitied the trees,
when the cold stripped and broke their branches
my heart grew sorrowful & weak.
The deserve to be enveloped, by this
unplanned storm.
All in the world, would agree when I say
that we are blessed
with this warm April rain

slight music
quite instrumentals slither through the space

now an ethereal silence and a curled, gnarled hand rest at the table
weather-worn pockmarked face twitch
a common occurrence
a scene worthy of a masterful painter
the air sighs, not in sound but in feeling
it is demure, languid,
a seamless bond of hunched figure and wispy breaths
a heart feels light and hollow with pulsating winds surrounding it
a man's hide tingles, prickles
pores gently widen in anticipation

a boxed room
a shackle room
dark, yet for the dim lantern
and a speckling of pinpoints in ever shifting pupils
patterns shift with tightening skin, hackles raised
billowing smoke against snarling and jolting

our West is not kind

a child stumbles with its chittering and chattering, back into its hole
an equalizer delicately rocks upon the floor
hot in its despondence and billowing smoke barrel
the metal becomes cold, uncaring; what despair was impacted upon it has left, as is the same with all objects subject to human emotion

Old blood sleeps in the shackled room
with chattering mumbling children in their holes

life is but glorious process, while we all wish for results
how deplorable

bleak rot
traces static cube rim glasses
and chases the quota
of the sum
of the total
of the whole
into a long and tall and capital I.

I am red of ear, slink of wrist,
and marrow;
fuming like a full tread insect.

slanderous geology
as tongue speckling glory
is ****** and lowly
on the cowgirl trail
showing it's back
as it's best
and trading weekdays
for poor metals.

fibrous, numinous
radiology. sulking and wading.
tributary becomes runnel
becomes mighty becomes cash
becomes pulpit, or pulp.

I am a child of the stars
Conceived from stardust
And sketched from the kisses of Orion.

I am a child of Jupiter
Formulated from the amber streaks that pinch my frame together
And the unknown beneath the surface.

I am the child of the Milky Way
From the exploding stars that burrowed in my eyes and my heart
And the nebulas that are trying to piece themselves together.

I am a part of the sky that happened to fall down and bruise my skin with dirt
From the bones under the grass
And the charcoal smudges speckling my back.

I am a child of the black hole
Whispered into my ear and filled my brain with darkness
And rests in the bottom of my stomach.

I am a child of the sun
That puts the warmth in my body
And fight the darkness in my head.

I am the child of the stars
Conceived from stardust.


Watch me shine.

The snow outside my small window had just started to fall again
coating the frozen grass with a fresh white blanket that only encouraged me to stay snuggled up in my bed
under layers of fuzzy fabric. The sounds outside that condensation covered window
started to fade as my alarm clock ticked to another early hour of the morning.
        I should be sleeping
but instead I'm trying to study notecards for my anatomy exam in-between checking my phone
hoping you responded to that message
I sent a thirty seconds ago.
            One minute,
      two,
                   four
minutes later I’m struggling to remember where a protein is made
because I can’t drag my eyes away from the same, black screen that’s been staring back at me
since I sent that message five and a half minutes ago.
I give up on memorizing the functions of an organelle and turn out my light
trying not to focus in on how your hair would look
with little white flakes speckling it.
            Eight minutes
after I was picturing the outline of your face, imagining the perfection in every curve and line
I’m comforted by the faint scent of cigarettes on your skin and your hands grabbing my hips
as your body pushes against mine. I forget all about the snow
coming in through the opened window beside where we were
whispering back and forth in the dark room only illuminated by a random car passing by the building.
Breathing in deeply attempting to flood my brain with what I was feeling,
kissing the nicotine seeping up through your skin, praying it circulates through my blood
      and holds me over until the next time the snow comes down
and you blanket me like the white powder covering the frozen ground outside.

Lately I've been waiting.
Waiting for the trees to lose
their leaves, for the clouds to release
their snow, for April showers to summon
buttercups from the soil.

Autumn builds a cathedral above
my impatient head as light
shimmers through fallow branches
while the sycamores blossom orange.

Till winter's bustling breeze
pushes up daisies, and summer returns
to my arms (unnoticed and sudden).
I'll wait on whoever moves
the universal chess pieces to
exile the frost speckling my yard.

Sitting on edge, as spring's
raspberry sunset grazes the tree line
(and allergies drip from my nose),
I try to spy a lightening bug--
any trace or sign
of summer.

She'll arrive late May,
with curls toss'd like the sea and
blue eyes two shades lighter
than a cloudless sky.

Treasure her while she lingers,
notice how her bonfires consider
your friends' faces with a wild blaze--
dim, but bright all the same.

Let the sun brown your shoulders,
moving through each day she tucks away
with adoration.  Forgive her
for fading, for she's pulled by the wrists on
Galaxy's timeline.

She'll throw back her head
with a laugh that says,
"You don't know me,
and never will."

Then she'll leave you
waiting all year long.

I'm going to sleep now
With your voice swirling in my mind
And your laugh speckling the silence of 2am in technicolor
This canvas of exhaustion is covered in you
And I've never been more happy
To feel so tired

you should've seen
i was like lightning
like swift hammers
falling shout
i was like arrogant
i was like pain
i was a fist laden shade, speckling skulls sumptuously
a lithe darkness
paunchy of carpels
and i laid it in his vessel (

         and he slept
                                )

Speckling a spotless page I riddle with holes the device of my life
Cutting my vision to words given, the ink drips from my knife
Whiplash of wicked waterfalls of brain matter
Senseless chatter rise above the babble of the crowd
Powerful and loud acute attack on the master laws
That keep me down and try to hold me back when I am strong
Streaming where I’ve been into a manual of the thinking man
For sinking ships and shoulder chips to wake and move along
Explode and fade to the far away say peace and I’m gone
I mentally move and never lose attachment to a world where I am phantom
The buzzing in my brain’s become my anthem
I’m going off on tangents people taking what others hand them
Tearing down walls telepathically and then repair them
Abuse the dimensions which I dwell within
Hell and many ways
Funny how a flood could bring on better days
Nothing stays the way it seems and I don’t know what it means
Don’t know much at all sometimes so I lay back in my dreams

So cold, so wet
so weak, so hungry
The weight of the darkness genuflects my soul.

So huddled I shake and I wait
Wait wait for me!
Come back, do return soon!

I can't see.  Thunder flattens my hair onto my scalp but the lightning does no thing to illuminate the path that must, that must be before my blind eyes.
How can I step without light, you call this rescue?

But the greater darkness is deeper.  Deeper than the shine-less drops of dew speckling my skin.
The greatest darkness is within and it stands before a great light.  I am a shuttered lantern of the night.

So, the universe is dying. It has been proven. All starlight and galactic all, every illuminant visible is dissipating. Stretching and fizzing out to cold dark nothingness, eliminating any twinkle known in her ever widening abyss, we are destined to an age of floating rocks, lifeless. Shivering howls of worlds already abandoned are an eerie silence imminent. The cold, the dark, the void of sound or light, is depraved sensory. Death is ultimate ultimatum to any and all. Even these words. As nothing is to be, see, hear, feel, smell or taste, just dust speckling her.

Long drawn out inarticulateness, I wonder if she shall ever be able to speak again. Waxing moon in candelabra sky, lid, the blue, goodbye. A lull in space noise clamor finds faint ping. In an arched cosmos, bend an ear, hear her sing. She softens orbiting dominions, pleases an empire's hard wire. Letting sound stem, turn out, and cry, a gush of heaving out is implied. Imploding upon a deafening madness she dies. Big Bang to Softened Ping, we're somewhere in the middle of her journey.