i'm a hyphenated pause
between sheets
of crumpled paper

a chance to catch
a deep breath
between dang'rous thoughts

i'm just a dash
between restless gasps
the caesura between broken sighs

when i cease to be
the conjunction between
then and forever

will be bridged
in-between, interrupted
by a spurious line

lust.

No. Lust...

That need which cravenly capitalizes upon itself.

Covet -- lust. Hunger -- lust. Adult -- lust. Blood -- lust.

My eyes are burning red

and I cannot see the forest for the

bruised
beautiful
******
bare
branches.

I remember when we met —
wait, no I don’t, but I remember after —
weaving back and forth like Ariadne’s needle,
swift of stumbling foot and pulled chest-first
down into the dank recesses of an
unwashed, reeking train station.

My friend had puked his guts out
just before I’d left;
he’d danced with you two hours prior, too.
I felt so sad for him.
He didn’t know what it felt like
to have love grow like mold in your heart.
A soft velvet that covers
and breathes and lives and smothers.

I don’t remember the first thing
about when we met.
But I remember knowing that —
Even though I hadn’t yet learned your
secret fears or aspirations, not then,
maybe not even now, maybe I’m
mistaking intimacy for honesty —

Anyways, these words are
a reverberating bullet in my skull,
and they’ve been bouncing ever since
your soft voice first set my tympanum afire.

A thought I had thought I would never ever think.

“I think things are going to turn out
just right this time.”

a day flies by and whiles away
drawing lies and smiles alike
like filings to the lodestone

babies' cries flay the sky
sunlight bright in my right eye
shining in dulcimer tone

in this park no broken tiles
just mild breezes, soft sighs, and ample time
to delight in Spring coming into its own

a wild-eyed man asks why we try
and rightly plies for answers nigh
and questions what we think is known

and waits impatient as we fry
in blind stupor as our minds belie
that we might in fact be all alone

Watch the diaspora disappearing
whispers growing fainter hard of hearing
lights are growing dimmer by the minute
soon you’ll be alone so revel in it

and stand upon the tall grass wet with dew
the sun thrice-filtered breaking through the trees
and stand upon the tall grass wet with dew
to hear the solemn secret-catching breeze

So when your paper mem'ry starts to tear
all those unwritten dreams will fly away
As you watch the diaspora disappear
silence gently holds you as you sway

Although denied the truth he'd sought so long,
the soldier gave his gun and sang his song:
"Despondency is not my trade, nor should
it steal my breath away; all that I could,
I'd show 'em all my strength, oh yes I would!

"Now take this gun, prepare yourself to fight.
Now take this blade, to shine against the night.
Now grit your teeth, good sir, now fix your sight --
the trench may be the death of me, but **!
Eyes on the horizon, now, stand and go!"

They say I suffer from retrograde cash flow
and it is afflicting me with anterograde anxiety
so they let me go
bleeding money from every pore
leaving a red paper trail behind me

A memetic virus of unprecedented scale
has everyone pale and empty-pocketed
their haunted eyes reflecting
the fear of an exofiduciary reaction

The resultant melancholy
proves infectious.

My sad-sack coworkers,
drained from the same numismatic disease
seek alternative medicine
but I am hooked on the slow copper drip
and wait patiently for the bag to empty before
I even realize I should have
seen another doctor
before
my internet support's been pulled.

the law of large numbers states that
for every action you take
a nearly infinite number of actions remain unfulfilled.
it would take until the heat death of the universe
to uncover all the ways
that you have failed to live up to your potential.
when your mind is choked with regrets,
late at night, wandering your unlit halls,
you are still stuck in contemplation
of less than one hundredth of one tenth of one percent
and of how much more beautiful your life could have been.

i am sorry. you are wrong.

you are the best choice of all possible worlds
because you are the only one
that decided to exist.

out of all the millions and billions and trillions of possibilities.

yours is the only course that coalesced into reality.

the only choice that matters.

The world was closing in
like rough waters overhead.

And as the pressure rose


my heartbeat told me this:




every last gasp is worth fighting for.

They promise breezes cool and clean,
sweet dreams,
sweet cream simm’ring on the stove.

The earth is spinning oh-so-slow,
thinning sunbeams
fading in my shady grove.

A gentle cottage theme, I think,
is best to see them,
and I should know.

When the stars all come alive,
those witching gems,
those wish-giving things,
brilliant, dang’rous, soft as snow,
that is when my body thrives,
when the night around me starts to glow.

She is shadows and soft sighs lit by night;
merriment flitting on her unmarred face.
And as she twirls and sings about in place,
impossibly, I come to know her sight.
Hidden by shapes that shift to her delight
my mind begins to write it all apace,
so in the dark we may keep our embrace
a yearning that we rarely dare incite.
To seek, to find, to grasp and to arrest
those smoky eyes that laugh and look away.

Unsure, my dreams begin to feel half-dressed,
harried by the fleeting losses of youth
as though the lies were not enough to sway
the failure of imagination’s truth.

ice cracks floes turn back
belt loosed, beltway free
pavement hit by ten-ton trucks
storming past swiftly-growing seed

snowmelt sinks
into brittle cement
iron bars, deep years rusted
the bridge might hold another year
if weeds don't grow between the cracks

a crash of thunder
lightning-licked hunger
the earth devours cold hard rain
slapping the ground
like a newly-scorned lover
the warmth of her blushed cheeks bright

like a hesitating twilight

In the days we could not deny,
before the world ground to a halt,
there was a man who said he'd fly,
and choke the earth with blood and salt.

And then he leapt into the sky,
and crashed onto the floor below,
expiring with a gasping sigh,
a life bled dry into the snow.

Then time reversed, 'tried' became 'try.'
The man rose up as though ascended.
He grinned at me and said "I'll fly,"
then leapt once more, soul once more ended.

Then he rose from his bloodied perch,
he said he'd fly and grinned at me,
he dropped as though descending to hell,
and time reversed, and try became tried.

And as the snow absorbed his life,
a sigh escaped that withered frame.
The ground had cracked beneath his weight,
the sky looked down in pity.

Blood and salt spilled onto the Earth,
poured forth like wine from the man who died.
The world at once began to freeze,
the day encased in memory.

straddling the cherry blossoms and the sea
my love awakes and comes for me

wind-swept hair and moonlight skin
a remnant of my mortal sin

of silent wood bearing heavy weight
my love's last words denied by fate

how taut the rope had to be tied
when the last moment arrived

and how deep the hatred buried there
ensconced in love and bound by air

down the cliff, the land between
death and life and more unseen

the moonlight saw my mortal sin
and there I waited, burning skin

until the tide returned to me
my love, still dead, came from the sea

somehow, the front porch lights seem more
yellowed, muted -
like images of a child, tiny hands
wrapped around a lightbulb
hazy and unclear around the edges

soft felt patterns
heartfelt sighs
Autumn always reminds me of my last love
and the love before that, and before that
we always seem to drift apart
somewhere between September,
November

maybe it's the way I obsess over the colors
that drives you to despair
or just the change towards sweatshirts
hooded and obscured
that makes you wonder what's beneath
and begin to doubt me
and the layers wrapped around an apple core
bitten and gnawed on

I'm always alone -
well, not always, there's always another
waiting to be near -
but when each footfall is muffled
by wet brown leaves clinging to cement
then I feel that my loneliness
is beautiful

and as much as I need you
it's the needing that warms my heart
as the last embers of July, August fade to gray
it's not the you.