Since dust has settled in the discord here
And life has fallen into stalemate now,
With doubt--a prowling, crippling louse--and fear
Subsiding, let us call an end to vows.
As winter sheds the husk that summer bred
Of whispers, wilting warmth, and golden light,
I claim pathetic, hapless dreams misled,
Condemning foolish hopes to suffer blight.
Upon a field of blinding stars we blazed
Until the color dimmed to mute pastel;
O sweet rebellion--quelled before we raised
Defeated heads and bid a cold farewell.
        Against my will, I dwell on past regret
        And memories of summer's silhouette.

Parched, thirsting for steel -
to be cleft wholly in twain
from scalp to guts,
dissolving the tension,
silencing the pull between the sides.

Fork the tongue that it may speak
at once both dialects of the soul,
that it may sing of lust and hunger
and yet pray to the divine;

Let one pupil be misplaced,
sunk like a star in inky night
to observe the cosmos and to feed
the side of the mind that wanders,
the half that deals in watery maybe,
so that the other lot of divvied brain
may savor the grit of the earth
with the remaining eye that beholds, here,
the freckles and the needles.

I am so much! Take but half.
Two of everything is one too many.
Name me once and for all an animal
or disentangle thought from flesh
and let the vapors in my lungs
mix their mists among the clouds.

"that christ was a good ol' boy
he was a good ol' boy with his arms hanging
with his arms hanging hung he was a good ol' boy.

he cured lepers and he
went like mad to kiss
their bodies rotting he
went like god's supposed to go
--right up to them--
and he hung his arms about them
and he cured those lepers he

died on a cross
somewhere i don't
remember he was
a good ol' boy

that christ."

My hands are seismic,
They shake against my neck,
Fingers like teeth walk across my frailties,
And waves knock against my chest

Language is painless—
but somehow, we're
afraid of the words
that we painted.

I’m watching my roommate come to terms with the fact that he actually likes a girl here who likes him back, and in the darkness of the dance floor, a smile curves across my face like his arm around her. They are happy.

I turn and scan the room for a broken bird, a wing clipped by circumstance and bathroom mirrors.

I find her.

Feathers furled, perched on a chair, her presence is threadlike, the stray ones pulled from shirt sleeves, I hold her between my index and thumb and I feel nothing but air between my fingers.

It’s a beautiful kind of lightness. She is a beautiful kind of lightness. Her hair caresses the air around her like satin.

Her eyes wide, sometimes I think it’s from fear, but sometimes it’s from the shadows of happiness that she allows to step on her heels from time to time.

They are amber. I see crystal histories, lattice lines of the past I wish I could know, but she keeps her stories locked in her stunning amber prisons.

I fled from her tonight. In the darkness of the dance floor there was no light to reflect from her amber eyes, so the grip of my insecurities around my neck tightened, and I left.

I wanted to walk to the lakefront. Clamor down the rocks to let the moon lap the water into mist upon my slacks, I could picture my silver tie reflecting the moon back at itself, drifting in the waves before the saturation of obsession dragged it to the bottom of Lake Michigan.

I couldn’t stand the thought of my tie not reflecting your eyes, the gray circle at the edge of your irises like the edge of a stormfront,

Transient thunder could lie behind the next whisper of your voice or closing of your eyes.

I couldn’t stand the thought of never reflecting your light, so I only walked a few blocks. I kept looking to my sides, reminding myself that the moon, and you, were still with me.

My dear, like the moon, our time is waning.

But my dear, like the moon, your amber eyes are waxing, lunar storms always on the horizon.

How I long for the fall of rain.

Livid, then the jogging man pushing his child with cerebral palsy glided beside me, and I felt sick with petty spite.

I ran to the building for the nearest bathroom and vomited back every saccharine word I ever breathed into your mouth.

Excuse the blood, the ulcers you left are raw today.

I haven’t eaten joy or devoured love since while putting your blouse back on, I came up behind you and kissed the back of your neck and whispered that next to your eyes, that was my favorite part of your body.

I washed the spite and ***** out of my mouth with tap water and shame, they both tasted metallic against my tongue, like biting too hard and the jolt of tines on teeth.

I bit the fork and tasted regret and chipped enamel.

Is that what his tongue tastes like for you?

When you kiss his neck, does part of you still ******* skin?

The smell of the ocean that you only ever visited once, but every day for more than a year.

Do your fingers ever expect to tangle themselves in the seaweed of my curly hair?

I've been trying to remember your scent. You smelled of running through apple orchards, the sweat and the blossoms on the air whipping between trees and seaweed curls, the ocean.

I can only remember the taste of sea salt and chipped teeth.

But when you taste his lips, do you ever taste the salt of me?

Do you ever smell the ocean in the air, the ocean on my lips?