Only hide behind orange cones and neon lining
Dead tangles, weeds. Somewhere in the middle
Of a dump-truck’s load
American, frosted ****** breathe comfortably.
Frostbitten pepperoni scattered beneath the rejected ceiling.
Ancestors are planted, but if not, roam away.
Whatever is visible beyond shoulders
Seems like dirt, like sand.
It wanted to peek through dusty, unwashed windows
Cracked paint on the corners
And the middles.
The people who live here fantasize about privacy, mostly
Desperation for secrecy.
They plea for the interrogation from others
You can here voices calling from those broken boxes
Torn families obey roaring, ravishing, rainy, rippling red stops signs
Loud enough to wake internal questions, like
Why don’t they obey each other?
Pendulum-like terms slam the insides of skulls. Swinging.
Bob’s trajectory. Massive bob.
Winking at them as they sit and regret.
Left. Right. Left. Right.
Hiding behind orange cones lining up. People always obey green.

They say it's been weeks
And by they
I mean all the calenders
constantly reminding me of your,
although undeniably different,
no longer painful absence
The goodbye I never actually received
reminds me of a slow growing tumor
that hugs to your bones
It quite literally grows on you
and while I never saw it
and most certainly never heard it
I felt it in my marrow
And now I feel it's presence so strongly
that I can almost begin to convince myself
you said it
I can almost hear the words
readying for attack,
hiding in the Trojan horse of your heart
that I so foolishly believed
was an unreturnable entity
of the timeless love that you promised me
forever with
It's been weeks
but has it really?
I'm already beginning to forget the sound of your voice, the color of your eyes, the weight of your hands in my own
And while this is a shame for the sake of memory,
I cannot say with honesty that I wish
I could remember
I don't even recognize you anymore
Your innocence has since been replaced with malice
You are no longer the same boy
that I fell so irrevocably in love with
at an age so young
you have to wonder
if we ever really even knew what love meant
at all
If anyone asks,
I won't deny the space you occupied in my heart for so long
I won't lie about the way you made my stomach turn with something I dare say resembled butterflies,
I won't pretend that you never made me smile so hard it felt as if my face was about to tear in two, and that I wouldn't have complained if it had
I won't excuse the existence of the love we shared
for the sake of your ******* conscious
But with the same token of truth,
if anyone ever asks me about that password I never quite got around to changing;
how my fingers fly over the keyboard with equal parts ease and elegance;
typing time and time again that same string of letters and numbers that served as our initials and the date I'll never be able to ******* forget; they will stop me and say,
"That must be significant. What does it mean?"
I will turn to them and say that I have absolutely no idea
It's all just nonsense, really
I've practiced saying it so often
that surely it must be true by now
as the words are dancing off of my tongue
buzzing like children with sheer excitement at the possibility of getting caught in a lie
I may pause for a small moment
and remember my favorite parts of you
hands, lips, neck
candy laughter and sunset eyes
But you aren't that boy anymore
and I couldn't love you again if I tried.

ć                        ch



cz                       č

   and how language is the most
volatile substance known
        to man -
as if constructed solely from alkali
metals -
                                              Li    Na    K     Rb
              Cs                    Fr -
concerning the italicised: or how
to spot the odd one out -
as is peculiar to all diacritics
                               *č = ch = cz -
whereas the Germanic offshoot that's
English applies the aesthetic of
chisel and chatter,
      the Slavic offshoots that are
represented above (Czech former,
Polski latter) use the caron and
equivalent of cheap as czapka (hat)
kowbojska (cowboy's) -
                          but you still have
to remember the exact encoding of
Czech -
               to be in check -
                   and play these alphabetical
chequers -
                   with due queue - or by simply
demanding your cue in the demographic
splintering apart.
                    as with English
the many variations to encode,
                as with
papa German and mama French (1066)
        or what was ******* Celtic:
Sel-tick         in Glasgow and K elsewhere
             namely Celt -
as if looking at a moth (ćma) -
                  which is unlike the waiting time
(czas czekania) embedded in winter
               in anticipation of spring's floral
rainbows - it's stressed differently -
   unique, as this diacritical approach
of acute on consonants is more
pronounced
   and modifies the sound much
differently than in, say
       grave abbreviation in française (s) /
                                                  françé -
or not finishing the hélèn(e)
   even further (h)élèn(e)
   ‎À l'immortalité - (to immortality, also
                                optional) -
of course: much frowned upon:
        with much gusto and a hand gesture
of a thumb tucked into a partially folded
hand: esthétique! but alas no θ in
       that too;
     but it's almost as if no one wrote an
instruction manual for Englishª (the
possessive self of language without any
human representation, or a language abandoned
    in light akin to a dodo extinction
  and then picked up by travellers from
a distance)
                                     ªunending variations.
   as already said, acute above consonants
is more pronounced than on vowels -
              e.g.    ó = u           and unending
are the lessons in orthography in Poland -
     unending, like writing lines in detention:
because so-and-so said that his was
the more beautiful a spelling.
                 czar (spell) of the charred tsar -
the closest way to provide how a close
relation of equally said ćma  -
                            as one man said
in the 17th century in Düsseldorf:
         i doth not travel very far from it.
ah, the archaic passable and unreturnable.
           i'll be honest though (vou)
               writing poetry sober
is so unrewarding, unremitting,
         much ado about e. e. cummings
in feel and as much ado likened
    to Goethe -
                 absolute undrunk not only
in the pure sense, but in how language can
also intoxicate -
              sober composition
is the opposite of alkali metals' nature -
all in all: absolutely no impression of a
haunting sense of urgency -
             too Apollonian - too rigid,
  very American even - grids, straight lines
no roundabouts or windy roads akin to
     Europe: winding, grizzly, feral -
                   perhaps even Aussie dingo;
even if it's good... i'm not feeling it.

time is the only present I need, yet it flees.
like the blowing sand once in the ancient Egypt wind,
vanishing into the nothingness, along with the nose of the sphinx.
gone into the vastness, the mono coloured canvas.
every second I lament the last,
the unreturnable past,
the fragments of time that fled my grasp,
I hate, oh, alas.

I can't fall asleep on the couch this year
eyes out of focus on our tree bursting with history
but only the parts appropriate for them to perceive as reality
the silver beads glow golden draped across every branch

How can I miss an unreturnable place that was never a home
Here or there, lonesomeness would not ease, but because I don't
want to brace this Chicago winter alone, deep blue that passes for deep green cloaks across my ribs still aching with every breath