& holding on.
never felt so strange.
what's giving to me?

to know they've walked away.
alone.
conquering lands.

into me.

into me.
they chant.
sevens divided.

a blue wash of lust.
embracing me.
fileting me.

butts on softer notes.
ghost kids searching.
for death still burning.

Here, at the end of the world,
the flowers bleed
as if they were hearts,
the hearts ooze a darkness
like india ink,
& poets dip their pens in
& they write.

"Here, at the end of the world,"
they write,
not knowing what it means.
"Here, where the sky nurses on black milk,
where the smokestack feed the sky,
where the trees tremble in terror
& people come to resemble them. . . . "

Here, at the end of the world,
the poets are bleeding.
Writing & bleeding
are thought to be the same;
singing & bleeding
are thought to be the same.

Write us a letter!
Send us a parcel of food!
Comfort us with proverbs or candied fruit,
with talk of one God.
Distract us with theories of art
no one can prove.

Here at the end of the world
our heads are empty,
& the wind walks through them
like ghosts
through a haunted house.

I fell behind because I was too busy pushing you forward.

I paint on canvas but
baby can you paint me
with your tongue?

sheep at night, (1 a.m.)
(but i always thought that sheep were not the best farm animal to represent insomnia.). eventually sheep turns to old memories, choke down like hard candies. hurts to swallow. or maybe that's just the tears.

(2 a.m.)or bottles of beer on a wall, except i'm
numbering the ones on your floor, shattered. drinking never made you better but it never stopped you from opening another. and another.

(3 a.m.) numbers of leaves on clovers. i picked so many and i found one four-leaf one. i lost it and never found another. is it possible to lose luck as it is to gain it? if that's the case, it explains where you went.

i counted. i have.

i count but i've lost track.

the floorboards always chattered
when we bothered them,
groaning and creaking at the weight of sin,
strained at the pounds of flesh
that gravity tugged with deliberate patience.
but our steps became slower, the passion mundane, and i can almost hear them sigh,
whether in relief or regret, i still don't know.

and the walls were not much quieter, especially when the wind went to kiss the roof the way we would kiss each other--strange familiarity.
etched into your palms and written on old postage stamps
addressed to the letters i never got to send you--déjà vu.
but then again, our fall out felt just as familiar.

reminded briefly that by definition a house can be a synonym for home, but webster never left any clues as to how to keep it that way.
our sheets are twisted and the tired joints of our fingers that held together the seams of memories and intangible bonds between us threaten to let loose as we slept.

tell me. when did we wake up strangers?