When I find myself entrapped
Amongst the glass walls you built
I find that you are just on the other side
I want to shatter and break and destroy
I feel that old feeling in my throat
As it also begins to freeze my heart again
I bang against those clear walls that bind me
Where you are just an armreach away
But even then you are ignorant of me
Oblivious to the way I aim to serve you
You are the air I breathe and the thing
That still bridges me between life and death
I am under your complete, total control
Emotionless, you watch from the beyond
As you admire your creation and your ****

you dissipate faster than the stars
that shelter themselves at dawn;
but compared to your eyes, my love
the stars are nothing in comparison

and at last, i leave you
because i have failed you;
no longer shall i see your eyes
catch the sun in such a daring pose

Paradise, 2018

I never got to see you again—
Well, I still do,
Just not in the usual sense,
No longer do I catch the gleam of sun your eyes.

But that doesn’t matter anymore—
At least I thought it didn’t,
It is odd and scary to think of you in such a way,
but I thought it didn’t matter anymore.

Oh, but it is that place of sadness that defeats me—
It is quiet and your thoughts live there with me,
Where I wash away your sins from my back,
And where I learned I am nothing without you.

You become one with my own sins—
Where I tried to justify yet you would not listen,
It wasn’t intelligence that you sought,
It was just sweet nothings.

Gems, so precious they are—
Here in the abandoned alley where I would wait,
Where I would hear your voice coming from my phone,
“Hello?”—You’re still there.

And though I still ache for November,
Still, I am alone in the pale, grey summer morning,
Metal and concrete chills me to the core,
Three beeps—You’re not there.

Paradise, 2018

I stare, on my screen,
A grid of aligned numbers
You’re just two taps away
But I cannot reach you

Alive is the burn in my throat
I drink, hoping to forget—

“Please leave your message for…”
Says the machine on the other line
I try to use my best words
Which can no longer come to me

Paradise, 2018

I

I still exist in your symmetry,
In your crystals, in your lines
There is a secret history;
A passing of marble and bronze
I leave my room and here I am,
Surrounded by the fake daylight
Memory still exists on the most
Aged asphalt and white plaster
Weighed by a sadness older than age itself
As time sags their wooden frames

Then there the fire begins
It burns with fury and rage;
My artificial paradise departs from me
As I gather what I can from ash
They remain unamended and raw
In their original, solid state
I begin to mark each line of sweat
The strands on my head now aflame;
Fiery hands remove all of me minus heart
Left with my frail bones that rattle, alone

As my spirit departs the scorched crust
I dust away at my improvised grave;
I carry myself to the edge of time
Vanished, no longer to be found.


II

The quietness after a harsh panic
Paints the ordinated New Age
There regrows the willows where
We are off to sleep;
I mix the soil with our love
It grows and grows and grows;
Their strands a brilliant green
It comes and joins me
My hair becomes the willow
Where I still hear you, asleep

There I flee to the ocean
Your memory amongst the particles of salt
The water’s ephemeral substance
Their fluidity draws me in
I am drawn in by the cool water
My skin slowly becomes blue;
My eyes replaced with worn, ancient shells
My hair a bundle of slippery kelp
I molt in the clear, wide expanse
As you consume me

And now in the darkness
You rejoin me again on the sea floor;
Again, grows the willow
The marker of our joint grave.

Paradise, 2018

There is fire above the neon
Their shine and burn so eloquent yet brash
I am trapped beneath Fremont Street
and I hear exodus—

I am trapped beneath Fremont Street
My coffin is lined with casino carpet
The embers of cigarette ash
Burn wild within me

I want to move to Sahara Avenue
and live amongst the cracked asphalt
So I can catch a glimpse of
The Genesis I am missing

So next I am under Main Street
where the sweltering desert meets
the diminished pavement;
the metal statues that hold blinking lights

I am trapped beneath Fremont Street
As I gaze into the deep, wide Mojave
Oh, Deuteronomy, it is I,
the one you so eagerly seek!

Paradise, 2018