Naked paper sheets, taut and sterile, blinking into milk white
Light coming in right, dancing off all the printed fish
Swish of a brush and you wish you could stare forever
Pull that little lever once, gave me goosebumps
horrid and crippling,
blushing fear
Take a picture, clear, for reference

Clutches of succulents in your breast pocket
Worn quietly, love lockets, jaw broken over the shoulder kiss
Loose tooth wiggling blood in your gum line chewing nicorette
Blow a bubble, blue button on your wrist
Gray mist pushes into lips and hits lung deep
Jump, leap, blind and hoping on a soft landing
Sanitizing cuts on your finger, linger on the last cigarette
Hope I have enough pocket change for the next pack

Tired heart overflowing, brim of pitcher bubbling, red and frothing
I sing out into the night, dark coats of gray and black, screeching white fluorescence taunting
The wrong thing to bottle up, nitroglycerin in your cup, slapped down
You wake up with a frown, chase those pills straight down with sink water
Chemical dependance for sanities sake, my life is a case opportunities not taken
Things falling through my fingers, who else to blame
Make the insiscion, remove my heart, my name, parts of my brain
A crane in shallow water, hunting for trapped fish, it gets drier every day, nowhere to hide from this

Mountain
mass and monolith and more
Tree
I see your breathing hands
Sea
let me be at your center

Levee starting to crack
Plugging holes with our fingers
You can run or linger
The outcome is meager
any way you slice it
dice it
steamed basmati
rice it

Digging for thorns with toenail clippers
Picked scab scars, put there like dentures
We bent the whole frame out of whack
Combusting jet fuel with a straw
Alien in the claw machine game
Waving arms in the darkness, the strangle choke of nothing around you
We found two, heart and mind, not places to change but places to aim
Crumple up that trash, mix up your garbage, I'll show you mine
Peeling black tar decisions off stained concrete
The flies are buzzing on raw meat, landing in your mouth
Regurgitate an answer, make sure it's perfectly pronounced
Only chance of getting out

The smoking lamp is out,
get down in your cut holes,
fresh dig,
crushed cig,
ash reduced to stinking cender filter,
wilt her favorite flower behind dusty glass,
flashback flashbang,
blinding myself in my own brokenness,
a toy in pieces on the floor

Headlamp illuminates glass, fear has passed like summer showers
Hours and hours of waiting for you, dandelions grew in pace
A face, name forgotten, incubating heartfelt goodbyes
Forever cries to the moment, forward movement, unconscious atonement
Blowing it, down and destroyed and dead, call it a solution
Solvents fluid, plastic, pollution, unscrewing the lid to the genie jar
Listed over to far, capsize a species,  man made atomic meteors
Empathy depleting like mana, ran out of blue potions
Just a ghost to a ghost most nights, smoking under bulb lights
Waiting for the moths to come by, fly in their drunkenness
What we miss is imagined bliss, dull dragging gravity
Tattooed skull on your soul, dagger piercing tragically
One day magically the lights come on, you hear the same song for the first time
And you slip into the sublime, now, now, now