You're my living paintbrush,
charcoal glossy scales
Emeralds swimming upstream,
tried to catch and failed
Printed on thin paper,
your darkly rounded eye
Color of cloudless sky
on shining lateral line
Cut out white fillets
right along the spine

A sentence and a cell,
the American dream of hell,
melted Liberty bell,
getting sick of the smell,
can you tell how long it's been?
do you trust this cage you're in?
do you trust this rage within?
initial impact then spin,
centrifugal friend,
soul bouncing inside cold, dead, skin

Life rolls on even when you don't want it to
Trying to find the hidden mechanism of stillness
The thrill is gone, smoked up on the back porch
Holding wicked torch, lighting up lines of houses
Blouses held open to the wind, waiting on rain to send them running
Mumbling through gas station interactions, floorgaze reaction
Gaining traction through inaction, empty rattling boxcar soul
Always digging the hole a little deeper, one security, one sleeper

Your heart is full of knots, tying up my thoughts
Tabbed tongue, seeing dots, making peace with the day I rot
Dripping spit and snot, different pills to break blood clots
Cliffside doves diving into ditches, falcons on the fences
Relentless, fingers of lightning brightening false hope
Fate the same as a short drop on a long rope

Contracting sheets of limestone rough, tough rugged eyes among tumbled bluffs
Crumbled stuff, sending you down into the yellowjackets, swatting mad tumble
Mud and algae, sweat, lost glasses, lost off our ***** on some strong stuff
Ending up on the long end of someone else's courtesies, lucky they didn't ****** me
Words are brief, meaningless most times, too centered on our own rhymes
Focused on our own climb, horse blinders on, the world burns on to the beat of the sun

Sew some tears into your sleeves
Save them for me later, please
Hanging like the sword of Damocles
Scratching at imagined fleas
Ignoring all the shouted pleas
Bodies cold like frozen peas
Sailing blind in heavy seas
Dreams of dry land and trees

Splinters shivering into cold graves,
  harden them with chemicals,
   garden out the minerals,
    rip out all the ventricles

Bleeding, tossed, time lost, gauze on  
  the spit covered carpet,
  gray shades in darkness,
   efficient, artless

Fingernails digging into forearms,
  smells like worms,
  inhabits urns,
    vomits

Split pea soup into the chicken coup,
  good green grass,
   makes eyes droop,
    on stoop, dazed