:this is the way you wanted it:
you wanted your power to end
you wanted to cry about it
you wanted things to fall away in burning
heaps like fat cooking
you wanted your children to die
you wanted it to be sad
you wanted it to be written down before it happened

you try to wash the red oil away,
you try to wash it off your hands
but it won’t come off
you won't let it evaporate.

I want something sweet;
although beneath that there lies
a labyrinth of desires.
A blizzard, a whiteout, through
which I squint and
cannot see the edges of what I truly need.
It is but a mass grave of mixed-together bones,
bones of rationale; mothers clutching children
pressed into the soil by Mother Earth's loving hands;
this week is the kind of weather that should bring forth cicadas.
Suspiciously they have yet to emerge; so the
city has bloomed,
and bloomed once more.
And yet,
remains quiet as before;
As quiet as winter was, the stillness lingers.
Sure there are birds and people, but no wind, no
thick honey summer storms.
(what were we expecting?)
The kind where you shut your windows
and my windows have yet to close.
They have remained open,
like the mouth of a baby bird,
waiting to receive:
To fulfill a
Want
or a Need.

turn off the ac
turn off the fan
open the windows
don’t hear,
do listen
turn off the light
turn off the lamp
turn off the music
close the book
lay down
close your eyes
notice things

deep ocean steel
challenger deep steel
abyssal
like a bulkhead
behind the temple like lapis lazuli
fleeing something
the closest thing to life that isn’t living
i’ll put you up against my flesh
and compare and contrast
fleeting images of cold rainstorms
and flashes of light
flashy blade
from far away, a signal
candid steel
lucid steel
halcyon
mute sensations in a cathode ray tube
except in exactitude unmatched
and louder than the loudest
vocal cord vibration
and silent too, not a breath
escapes the hostage
with steel against its trachea
unsolicited speed
home run
thrown into the wall stud
luxurious scentless tasteless
and so rich and tasteful and sensual
if I’m in love with you steel,
I must be a necrophiliac
or not

switchblade little cicada abdomens beat like any old heart a la mode
& all the more graceful
were they not there the air would falter and wander/wonder in lazy eddies shedding the loveliness of sound they provide, in the heat of the day
mini sydney opera houses, screaming, consolidate on a sultry afternoon in June.

there is that swimming hole we used to go to we don’t
go visit no more cause it reminded you of
the time years ago your uncle stepped on a
dead child sunk in the sand like a stone on
that bottom cold murky and dark that
swimming hole with the one dollar
ice cream sandwiches she had
possibly been down for
hours no one even
looked for her so
sweet and white
like a
quartz