I

This long, dark winter night
extends her reach around me
and pulls me into her
whispering her clichés
into my ears
and I am enthralled;
frozen by my utter belief in her;
as if there is no other way.

II

The front window of my apartment,
like a spiritually starved man,
does not quite fit its frame
leaving space for
a cold breeze to sneak in
and rob the room of warmth.

The broken heater is a small dog
barking incessantly.

III

They say every snowflake is unique
but piled one on top of the
other and all of them
on top of me
they carry
the same
significant weight.

He would spend his days in the muck called human interaction. Sitting at a table of liars and thieves, he dreamed of tiny puncture wounds and drops of rich, red blood. Each day stained.

His soft shoes and white coat roamed the quiet halls each night. Fluorescent glow, his constant companion, followed every step. I would sit on the floor by my door and listen for his sighs until sleep captured my imagination and I would dream. He would never sleep, he was a dream, I captured.

When he approached my door, I disappeared, a shadow lost in his radiance. He measured each line and then spoke to those of us not there. He expressed an imagination rich in metaphors; splicing pieces of fog into forms. His mind became my probe into darkness. My fears languished in tomorrows.

The soft spots in my brain, with the absorptive capacity of a baby, struggled to understand his words. After he disappeared, I would take a few steps out my room to explore. I mouthed his words without meaning and then sighed. The girl in the next room sat on her floor by her door and listened for my sighs until sleep captured her imagination and she would dream.

paw prints on my pillow

dreams of being lost
in dense
browns and greens

a male
mountain lion roars

startling the herd
I am caught in a frenzy

and he is
feasting on the weakest
of us

teeth like jagged knives
pierce my willing flesh
snap my spinal cord;
the sound of a single twig
in a scared forest

before I can breathe
before I can speak
before I can wake

my soul becomes as meat
my soul becomes a mountain

lion

swallow hollow hallucinogenic
colors are manufactured

I walk white walls
and speak with a
red mouth

my arms are
contained in
artificial skin

there are more
mysteries in
this strings of
words

pouring the *****
into the machine

the biology of
plastic dreams

small *****
of black magic

mashed together
creating their own
connections

we control
the dimensions
not the relationships

I wake to print
in three

now you can see

the silver strands of a
splitting cell

she prints a blue
bleeding heart

mixing metaphors

we race to be
the first to
make the future real

the dance sends us spiraling.  

spinning.  energy.
funnels in the air.  
swans in the water.  
white necks intertwined.

the truth is a piece.  of a puzzle.
so many pieces. to lose.

love is never pending.
it is or isn’t.

we were in london.

in separate single.
beds.

naked beneath.
thin skin moving.
sheets of.

imagination.

she is gangly. a thousand skinny legs extended. a thousand skinny
minds.  wrapping. entangling me. roots.  digging into the side of a
mountain. she is reaching.  grasping for me.  gasping birthing
breathing demons.  pain.  this mysterious force.
emanating.  has no place.  has no source.  it is the first.
disconnection.  it is memory.

without diagnosis. it does not exist. my head rattles.  the rocks
are loose again. colliding with my skull.  we are pulled apart.  our
interactions have no meaning.  I pop.

pop pink.  pop blue.  pop white.  she disappears.  and everything
floats.  I am bottomless. dancing in deep water.  moving in slow
motion. to nowhere. in particular.

suddenly

a floor appears.  a ceiling.  four walls.  moving. closer and closer.  I
have a bottom. I have a top.  I have sides.  squeezing me.  I pop
more

pop 2x pink. pop 2x blue. pop 2x white. she dissolves.  in seconds.
no.  I dissolve. no.  everything that is not me dissolves.  I must be
sleeping in wonderful watery confusion. dreaming in wet white silky slides.

suddenly

she returns.  more powerful. pure energy. one ******* god.
a thousand times a thousand legs. bee bees of light. crossing each
other. I am caught.in the midst.  squeezed. feeling the full extent.
of paaaaain. an explosion. no. an implosion. of the sun. so I pop more

pop 3x pink. pop 3x blue. pop 3x white…

he has never met me
but I live in his world

this man of small deep spaces

he notices the gaps
that never end

what could be
what wants to be
what needs to be

and he works
always working
toward something

he makes me feel okay
to be unfinished

to age
to become old
and still be
unfinished

to live
to be
to become

part of life’s
grand experiment
that never ends

to work on my own gaps
and be happy

and so I go to work
creating my
masterpiece

bending bones
like wire
cutting skin
like paper
paint is
spraying
everywhere
mixing with
sweat and tears
changing colors
as it splatters
all over the canvas
and before long

it is
so many
nights
am I having
a dream
a dream
of white
calling me

I look up
from my work
my life

a masterpiece
fulfilled

and I see that
I have finally
created
“nothing”

come to terms.  what does it mean?  our words meet each other.  in the middle.  they consummate.  and change each other.  and maybe one day.  we finish.  each other.

we reach.   the momentary ******.  but the river is always.  changing.  as we are always.  changing.   we cannot step.  into the same river.  twice.  we cannot meet the same person. twice.  
we are never really the same.

each day.  we must.  come to terms.  with each other.

The street is desert. Thin lines of waste race across the surface of the street.  down the curb. gathering around a clogged drain. turning thick and brown.  

From earth to air.  The street is almost empty of life.  Flies don’t fly and earth bugs are too scared to scurry.  I smell the vultures.  In this city the air is heavy and they flap their wings but they cannot fly.

They walk around and look for dead things.  Zombies are dead things.

We see life in chemicals.  Chemicals need containers to thrive.  We are containers.  
Chemicals see life in us.  Chemicals thrive in us. Chemicals multiply in us.  
Chemicals are life in us.

People, people, so many people.  Living so close to each other.  People are lonely creatures.  More people does not reduce the loneliness.  People are lost creatures.  Following every direction.  Getting nowhere.

People have minds.  Some minds are swamps.  Full of life yet lifeless.  Stagnant.  Devoid of meaning.  The smell of air that cannot get out of its own way.  Accumulating trash that is never discarded.

I lie in all this muck and make dirt angels.  ***** angels.  God makes ***** angels.  
Sick from the smell of themselves.

I live in thick skin.  heavy like a morning fog.  more like smog.  that never lifts.  created by humans.  nothing penetrates me.  I do not feel.  I was not always this way.

I live in a city.

Saturday night in the city of gods everything is man-made
having been constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed;
even the gods are recycled on this planet.

The silicon ******* of dead women are sold as gold.  Plastic surgeons create walking, talking billboards who can no longer smile, for fear they may crack.

Uptown, lightening strikes the same spot once, twice, three times
and a star is reborn; neon lights up the sky again. Everyone else in the up part of town crowd into that same spot and wait for their turn.

Here in the down part of town, the others, drink to alleviate the weight of pain and each sentence ends with “I remember when” but they never do.

A prodigal mathematician with a pointy nose points to a bronze statuette dancing slowly and alone in the corner of the room and tells me that everything that ever was is signified in the rhythm of her Spanish hips.

Then he says, “I remember when.”

But I don’t think he does.

They woke me when I was still
dreaming.  

I have about three months of sanity left in me; I don’t think it will be enough to carry me to the end.

I can feel myself fading in and out.  Images (more like flashes of images) I can’t explain appear then disappear just as quickly.  They seem to be set to a timer.

The slightest, most sudden, sounds become as a cross-fire inside my shell; like bullets pinging off of my plastic helmet.  

The front lines were never meant for men like me.  They say I am weak and fragile; a feeble man.  I am yelled at frequently.  

They do not understand, I can not allow things that enter me to just pass through me.  I hold them tightly; it is more like I am inside of them than they are inside of me.

They were born armadillos; protected by their inner armor.

I was born a jelly fish; found far from the water of my birth.

I look up at the star-like creatures fading in and out of the dark matter and I realize there is no logical defense against the senseless.

the basement
is dirt

walls and floor

the washer is a
a white tub and
a hand-cranked
ringer

the dryer is
a backyard
vinyl line and
a summer breeze

I am five
maybe six

and I like
the outside

playing toy
soldiers in
the dirt

throwing sticks
to attract bats

catching and
releasing fire
flies

and playing
hide and seek

until it is
so dark
I can’t
see

and they
can’t or
don’t want

to find me

it is just before it is my turn to speak.  my mind is the inside of an atom.  the inside of a hive.  the inside of drunk stomach. everything I want to say coming up at once.

before me.  she is speaking about the body.  the feminine.  so many ways to the body. the feminine.  touch…***…birth…rebirth…and after me.

she will use her body to speak.  hair as long and alive as the rays of the sun.  fingers catching butterflies.  her voice inflected.  deep thoughts.  fluidity.

everyone has a way.  to express.  but it is not easy.  not like she and she makes it seem.
freedom is hard.  one foot doesn’t always follow another.  most times it doesn’t.  
we struggle to say.  what we feel.  the fear. of not connecting.

something blocks communication
even if the words escape
and even if I enunciate perfectly, clarity lives somewhere in the miles of air between us.

freedom is hard.  one word is never perfect.

They questioned me again yesterday.  
They always question me.  

They think bright lights are the path to the truth.  If they left me in darkness the truth might be revealed.  

I don’t think they will ever understand.  

I talk to them as if I am talking to a child.  Their questions are those of a child.  I give them answers only a child will understand.  

They make progress each day.  It is slow, but progress nonetheless.  

I ask them questions, they get angry.  They don’t understand that questions can be answers.  They think violence is control.  

What do they know of an eruption?  
Only the sun understands me.

nosing into
everything

eyes wide

searching
behind every
crack and
crevice

finding the
dirt

hidden
for years

whiskers
twitch

antennae
hearing
starlight

messages
from the past

and I realize

there is not
enough
deep in me
to bury

everything

without
reflection

there is
only
others

to blame

soulless
means

there
is no

growth

there
is no

learning

there is
no

intention

there is
only *******

from others

to survive

a boy
can’t say

she feels
safe

almost
asleep

almost
in my arms

a boy
can’t say

a secret
escapes
her lips

her whisper
is a cage

I taste
salt

I will
preserve
this

this will
preserve
me

a boy
can’t say

roses are
red

crushes
are blue

outside everything
is difficult
to understand

everyone has a
different voice

I am living
with the curse
of babel

people arguing
about accents

I am feeling
a muddle
of emotions

the humidity
from their breath
grows on me
becoming closer
to a solid

my shirt sticks
to my chest

like the
quiet desperate

longing to
reunite

I look up
and feel
a flash

something
cool must
be coming
tonight

I am suddenly struck hard
by a horde of
lightning bugs

making me
catch fire

making me
electric

I finally know
what I want

Sun sitting high
breathing heat
a sky that sparks
with electric light
never reaching me.

I crawl along
the bottom
scratching
my name
her name
trying to erase
his name
from the sand

breaking bitter nails
too weak to bleed

Acid burns my tongue
I am the other sun
the one bubbling up
from
beneath the surface

Large, ugly birds with silver beaks
the lovers of old meat
wake and immediately
seek my death.

I let them think my death
think I am a carcass
as they circle me.

I eat them whole
when they land.

They feed my isolation
this feeling of being lost
and alone
broken in two
by a wall of ***** wind
***** words
her words
his words
living with
this waiting
for
the taste of wet
the taste of pink
the taste of lips

For a taste of someone else’s spit

this waiting for the
constant dryness of earth
to swallow me whole

to end this drying
of my insides out.

the sun,
longing to be touched,
moves closer to him

slowly

so he can warm
to her
so he does not
become
like the others

quickly
overwhelmed
by her

she heats his
atmosphere
with soft
whispers and
long breaths

creating anticipation

until he is basking
in her attention

she comes
closer and closer
until he becomes
obsessed

with her
and only her

and she is now
close enough
for long enough
for him to want
to enter her

for him to want
to overwhelm her

and she wants
him to

but she knows
if he does

he will disappear

and she will be
alone again

I can see in the dark
I can see without light

an old gray shadow
shaped like me
follows me
as I walk
through the night

he dances around me
teasing me like a
cool breeze against my skin

he whispers in my ears
almost singing to me

something about a
black cat and a crossed path

I was a boy once
with a future

but the shadow was
born before me

given to me as
my birthright

so there was always this great
distance in me

a vacancy

I stop walking for a moment
look up into an empty sky

and I think the other side
of the earth moon is vacant

and I think
I could live there

I still have that dream where

one morning I will wake
the shadow will have died
sometime during the night

there will be a sun in the sky
and I will think a happy thought

I walk alone
to feel

the city is heavy
tonight

I am shaky or
the ground is
speaking

in a muffled tone

the sky sneaks
between tall buildings

carrying weight
changing colors

blue to gray
like the eyes

of a boy I knew

and I whisper
to no one
in particular

tonight

I will shed
everything

I will walk naked
under the crying sky

tonight

I will drown in
nature’s tears

tonight

I will
make peace
with the earth

before we die

tonight

I slip-slide into
the vessel of
pain and pleasure

pressure dissolves
into silver glitter
flakes of dreams
leave me
floating over me

I lick them up
count them with
my tongue
and just before
they dissolve
I swallow them

they feel like the
sudden warmth
that makes you
shiver a little

they create
connections
that spread
through me
with intense speed

into deep space
into empty space
turning into
one thing
one pure thing

and for an instant
I am connected

throughout
time and space
connected

merged into being
and nothingness

and just before
I dissolve
I am swallowed
by something
or someone

I am the
sudden warmth
that makes you
shiver a little

they say love
is a breath

don’t think
about it or
you will forget
how to do it

don’t try to hold it
for too long or

it will **** you

tonight is long

extending beyond
any formal measure of time

I can’t sleep or
I don’t want to sleep

nothing is clear in me
defining a muddle

my brain is a
monkey in a cage
throwing ****

at everyone

if I do sleep
it is only a
moment in between

and I wake to these
dry cracked lips

and I wake to
a heart beating fast

and in this muddle
I think

tomorrow I
need to see a doctor

tomorrow I
need to be touched

even by
thick
stiff
cold

unfeeling fingers

We hold our arms out
as if we are
airplanes
and fly around
the yard.

Bumping into each other,
we understand
the excitement
of mid-air collisions;
the sudden explosion
and the heat
of new flames.

Then rolling around
we quickly
become alligators
our arms become
mouths
fighting over
a piece of fresh meat.

Then we turn into
professional
wrestlers
and I lift you
in my arms
and act as if
I am
going to body
slam your
body
slam your
body
to the ground.

The grass is freshly-cut,
loose blades
gather together
waiting to be raked,
we make it rain
green
and huddle
together,
my hands
become
your umbrella.

It smells like
summer;
it smells like
strawberries,

***** blond
strawberries

and my hands
become
your brush

and your arms
become
my belt.

I would not cry

my heart would
continue
beating
steadily

mornings would come
and go
time would pass

more slowly
perhaps

I would notice
less; details
would disappear

and gray would become
my favorite color

a whimper would
be the closest I could
come to a scream

and I would
forget the words
to my
favorite songs

eventually
just as angels
living day-to-day
I would not notice
that anything
was missing

and when they asked
me “how are you”
I would say
“fine”

just fine

I am shaken;

a mixed-up
concoction
of chemicals
meant to be
abused.

Seductive pink lips
approach me,
consume every
ounce of me,
and I leave
behind a
wet stain.

I build and
build slowly
but hit fiercely.

I am power;
knowing she can’t
resist me.

I am absolute power;
knowing she can’t
reject me.

I am power
over pain

and then I am
pain

and she is
shaken.

I search through the dark parts of this city for celebrations; clubs or just crowded sweaty rooms where people dance, unaware of anything more than what is right in front of them.  The alcohol and the drugs flow into their bloodstream clouding judgments, blinding them, making them crave pain the way a baby craves his mother’s attention.

Without the sun, no one has a shadow to watch over them.

I am bumped and grinded into by both girls and boys, they crave me, as if I was a succulent, chocolate treat, but I don’t crave them, having tasted all varieties of blood I am now very choosy.  

I suddenly feel a familiar warm tingle throughout my body as if my hair is stretching; my teeth ache from a sudden growth spurt, and slightly puncture my lips.  I spot the object of my longing across the room, the naked nape of a lonely blonde; long whispers of nearly transparent hair spread across her back, skin as white as mourning, a dove, with rivers of blue pulsing through her.  As the Nile, they are the beginning and the end of life. They create a map that guides me to her, her to me.  I can feel the beating; each breath of her chest is inside of me.  She takes me back to the first day, memories of a thousand years reside inside of me and I still remember that first day.

Just before my never-fail dark eyes can call her to me a vulture of another color swoops in; carrying her carcass away.  She was dead before I met her, anyway.

Space is expanding as the crowd grows thin; the music slows to a draining pulse.  I know that sound, the end of the night is near; I leave this lonely land with all the other detached doves and vultures.

I stop at the corner where three streets meet and stare at the dark sky about to blink itself awake, bumming a smoke from one of the aforementioned.

I think back telling myself my story, as if it is the history of life itself.

My sky has only a multitude of stars, never a sun.

I think back to a time in the past when the future was still possible
when she was in the same room as me.  I think of red wine and loneliness; the temptation to taste first blood and wake up full.

I bite my lip and taste the sourness of the words I spoke to her;
words that would fall on deaf ears anyway.

Death is a lingering shadow that disappears when I come near.

I feel like I’m being
propelled through
space and time
like a young Einstein
lost and confused
trying on various theories
to see if they fit,
to explain the pain
and wanderings
of my lonely mind
who equals when
what about why
and then
I begin again
to speak
the lost words
that no one understands.
I broke my hands
writing down formulas
for what matters
to explain the feelings
of an atom, lost and
out of place
in time and space

There are things that I see
that are bigger than me,
blades that resist being clipped
and stroke
the stalks of
sunflower
bursts.

Cattails that appear
as if antennae
for something buried
deeper than death.

There are things I don’t see

but can hear whisper,
as I hear a clock
winding down,
before time stops.

The wonder of it all
does not escape me.

I listen for you to enter the gallery.  I watch you as you read my words plastered across the walls. You follow them until they begin pulling you from room to room.  They become a serpent winding around and around entering your interior organs. You struggle at first, and then succumb with my tongue in your ear.

Your brain is a sponge that I will saturate with my words; your spirit is a thirst that only I can satiate.  I did not ask for this moment but neither will I deny it.

You can leave this day behind you, and tell yourself it did not exist.  But do not kid yourself, the sins I create in you are real, even if they exist only in your mind. But you must believe me when I say I mean you no harm, not really. I don’t even know you, well not in the typical sense of knowing. I see beyond what is in front of me. I have the powers of vision and invisibility. Once you speak my words I seemingly disappear.

The truth is that when I breathe between your lips, deep into your mouth, well beyond your years I can use you as a mask. I know most people because I know the containers they have built around themselves. The wildest amongst you are tame. The tamest amongst you are prey.

It is when I hear you growl back at me that I know I am safe.
It is when I hear you go silent that I know you are mine.

I stare into my acrylic breakfast bowl
to identify the distorted shapes
floating in white powdered milk
and spell out words never before spoken.

They are creatures
of the deep and dark
imagination
escaped from the dreams
of children;
we are all dreams
of children

who will one day
awake.

She enters the bar after dark. I am immediately captured. Waves of electricity pull me near. She turns toward another and smiles.

I am an avalanche.

Her eyelids close when she speaks to him; one lash falls gently toward the night. It lands on my arm. I make a wish and blow. She turns to me and whispers, “Be careful what you wish for.”

Maybe I should have listened.

She dances by herself for a moment then disappears. The night is still young, but I am not. I search for her. The crowd is black and white; she is in color. It is easy to trace her steps.

When I approach her, a bullet grazes my ear. The lobe disappears. I can only hear her voice as she whispers to me,

“I hold the gun, I always hold the gun.”

I

nature is square
the world is flat
and brown
the sun is a light
between cracks

my many legs
feel heavy as
I move
as if the earth
eroding
across this smooth
surface

everything must be
changing
but I can’t tell
the difference

restless

I try to rest
eating my bed in
small bites

I have suddenly become
obsessed with the
desire to sleep

II

dark creeps in
and wraps
around me

a snake

wanting to be
a new layer
of my skin

I want to resist

but I am without
willing movement

time recedes into
a singular

unending
moment

I feel a war raging
inside me

everything
that was me
fighting against
everything
I will become

I am forced to
surrender
to myself

resigned
to a truth

that what I will
become will
win and it will be
called me

as if nothing
has changed

as if no one
will notice

I have changed

III

I feel a warmth
nudge me

light slices
through the
heart of darkness

making sight
a first sense
once again

but meaning
still evades me

I feel movement is
still uncontrollable

so I do not fight
against what
will be

glorious
white wings
stretch
from somewhere
inside of me

lifting me
to this other
world

I rise with them
feeling as if I am
without limits

I am willing nothing
I am obeying everything
that is new

I am trying
to learn this
new way of
being

I am acting my way
toward living
as this new
version of me

I possess the urge to revelation inside of me,

a writer, naturally;
deciphering the secrets buried deep within the code
of the twenty-six;

the secrets of plasticity.

I try to observe the details of my imagination
in a landscape too dense for me to clearly see,
I can only feel my way around

the multiple dimensions
of darkness and light.

She said, “Imaginations aren’t dark.”
I said, “I wish I lived in your mind.”

She laughed,

but I’m not sure she knew quite why.
She was pretty, naturally.

Last night I wrote
the book that ends the book
that details the end of the modern world.

I think into existence
a white horse;
the end of all details.

I have a wing not an arm. It is only one wing so I cannot fly. Sometime during the development of seed to man a message was misconstrued. It is quite easy to imagine, a gene gets distracted by a sudden movement, she says yes when she meant no. I have done it many times myself.

I live each day of my life with the same choice my parents struggled with for so many years. Is it better to remove it and be a man with one arm or leave what nature has seen to be fit? Maybe I am the next evolution. Did you ever think of that? I did.

It’s not that bad, really. I just have to remember to use my arm when I wave; otherwise I create quite a stir.

I sit and stare at the birds perched gently on the wires outside my bedroom window. I can only wonder if I am a mistaken man or a mistaken bird, because I do so long to fly.

mournful trees
dark and wild
howling undisturbed
inside themselves

I like small words
because they can
mean so many things

I am a child
with a head

living

two flights above
everyone else
in the room

we speak the
same words

but we don’t mean
the same thing

so I stop speaking
my words

and speak their words
and it was there

in the house
of my first memory

that I learned
how to live alone

I like small words
because they can
mean so many things

I was not there
when you were dying

I was there when you died
I missed so much

I said so little
I am so lost

On the road again.  Escaping my captor…life.  I am looking for space.  Always looking for space.  I just want to pause.  I just want to wait.  My soul is a child.  

I am reaching for something.  Something out there.  Something just a little too far from me.  
Something guarded by danger.  Danger I am too sacred to face.  My soul is a child.

I almost fall.  I am almost swept away.  By a thick, morning fog.  I am almost lost in an adventure.  I could have never planned.  I almost give in…to my captor.

But truth is truth.  And I am not lost.  And I am not found.  And I am surrounded by nothing.  Silence is my only lover. And my lover is a parasite.  And my lover is a tapeworm.

And I am the tear that wells but never falls.

I stared up and into
the core of a planet
constructed
with chicken wire,
slowly spinning
hanging on a string
no one will ever see.

It was constructed chaotically
but also purposefully,
and fits perfectly in
this specific place
and at this specific time
and I wasn’t sure whether
this meant it was art
or science
or whether there was really
a difference

I touched it
and watched it
spin faster
changing its form
to conform to the
pressure I placed on it;
and even as it was
reorganizing itself internally
it remained a planet still.

I couldn’t take my eyes,
my mind off it
as I stared at it
I started to see
spread sporadically
throughout this planet
were pieces of wire
that did not connect
to anything

so I stood perfectly still
to watch them vibrate
and then I heard them
humming and chirping to each other
like a family
of scared little birds
hiding their secrets places
and I felt the pain
and the fear
in these little wires
and then
I heard them speak to me

And they told me
where there is movement
however slight
there is energy
and where there is energy
there is life

and where there is life
there is danger

and I felt the danger in my soul
and I was spinning and spinning
and out of control

and I felt the danger in my soul
and I felt that I was energy
and in that energy
I felt the artscientist in me
come to life
and I knew
in that moment
that I was life
however slight.

shattered shards remain
lodged in the carpet,
small enough to cut
a kitten’s paw,
leftovers
from those terrible twenties
and learning to walk
lovedrunk
across a darkened room.

I think she is brilliant
I want to be one of her words
just one of her magic words
that casts a spell over all these people

I will start as a mere disturbance in her
a feeling that something important just happened
a desire that she cannot yet name

I will spend so much time in her cavernous mind
wandering through all her crevices
falling off the cliffs into deep water

god she is so deep
how am I able to breathe
there is so much going on in here

all this energy
explosions of thought
everything moves
so quickly
that nothing should
connect

but somehow it
all does

and when she finally
turns me into
form

real enough so
she can grasp me
begin to understand me
and she expels me
from her

as one short word
of one short poem

because I was inside her
people will think
I am brilliant

I do not know why

…

I live in space
and ask questions
of the sky

there is so much
distance in me

so many layers

so many unexplored
caves in these depths

I am a dark star
*******

in

my soul is twisted
my body is sore

I am a broken angel
all fight no flight

and I hear about him

the one
above me

lighting up
the night
as if a sun

his soul is smooth
and as he speaks

the birds listen

trying to learn how
to make
that beautiful sound

but I cannot hear him
and even if I could

I do not think I
would understand
his words

even if he sings them

It is ten in the morning and the sun still has not risen. We sit on our balcony sipping scotch and stare at the moon. We think it is the moon that has not set. It must have organized a coup. It has grown jealous of the sun’s attention, feeling itself the lesser god.

We have been outside forever, our language has become foreign to the others, but not to each other.  Our words are sung to each other as if a psalm.  The world that is outside our embrace could have ended and we would not care.  We have been inside each other forever.  I stare at your sad face, framed by the rays of the moon’s subtle heat, and realize again just how beautiful you are.

We see the first awakening of light, the color purple of the bruised moon, and quickly escape to the inside.  We sit side by side in our dark room high above the lifting fog and feel crushed by the rising sun.

She had no idea that

her words were eating away at me
like hungry piranhas

she was taking
small bites to savor
the newness of my flesh

if she could have seen into the future

the effects were invisible

she would have stopped

and then she devoured
a little more and a little more

but they were still just flesh wounds
always quick to heal
and I could still smile at her

and then more and more and more
until I could not smile

until she took her last bite

and there was nothing
left of me but her words.

I held the
words she spoke

paper flowers

pressed into
the palm
of my
right hand

and then
I heard
her speak
two words
describing
these
paper flowers

so prettily

describing
how
they bloomed

and I
held
those two
words

so prettily

next to
the paper
flowers

and I imagined
tulips

two red lips

and her
words

so prettily

became
flames
in my brain

so that
when
I breathed
into my
palm

the paper
flowers
turned to
ash

and

so prettily

I placed
them
into my
pants
pocket

to save
them

hoping
that she
could
speak
those words
again

so prettily

through
her two
red
lips

giving
life
back
to those
paper
flowers

and those
tulips

would rise
again

and press
against the
palm of my
right hand

so prettily

There is an edge that exists right before giving up.  Whether from a distance of either time or space it appears as a gradual slide, it does not feel that way.  Each morning is truly the beginning of a new day until it isn’t.  

I feel at home in the streets.  I need all that noise to block out the other voices and focus.  I can’t seem to swallow unless there is a coating of dust in my throat.   No matter how many people crowd into these streets there is always space between us.  I never become them.  With my head pointed toward the earth I begin to feel the tallness of buildings; in this position I can’t tell whether or not they truly scrape the sky.  

There is a girl in my life; sort of.  She wears designer skin; labels charting the paths of her life.  There have been many starts and stops in her life as well as between us, or it might be another form of continuity, I don’t really know.  I spend most of my days in the streets contemplating the questions she asks.  Mostly they are not directed at me, they are just general questions that ignite within my mind a labyrinth of flames I follow until I cannot find my way out.

Before she leaves for work each morning I make her breakfast and watch as she covers her colors as if they are her numbers from her prison days.  She always feels alone in the design office where she works, it is filled with the sculptures of “creativity” unmoved by her words; they create a vacuum out of whispers removing the air so that she cannot breathe.

Each night she arrives home to find me sitting in a fetal position, clutching my legs to my chest as if I am waiting for the glue to dry.  When I re-recognize her she smiles at me, I gently remove the crust of tears from the corner of her eyes, blow it into the air and make a wish; she removes her caterpillar skin exposing the butterfly of light emanating from inside her.  I spend the rest of the night reading the story of her life.

I try to decipher her markings, the symbols of all the things she felt before she was able to speak, before she met me.  She chooses not speak to me; she wants to be an open book that someone passionately holds to their chest as if to remember each detail.   I am trying to be that person, the one who she chooses for me to be.

The colors of her skin seem to convey something more than the ink injected into her; revealing more about who she is.  They change each day so that her story changes each day and I must read her all over again.

I want to be part of her story, so I have myself branded into her skin; one part of me is colorless, just a black outline of something that once was or has yet to be fully formed, the other part of me has no lines just shades that touch each other at various places eventually blending into each other.  

The next day I am back in my streets, staring at the blades of grass, contemplating the question she once asked, whether she is a particle or a wave, the answer is still uncertain.

she is a
lonely bird
perched

releasing
her sounds
to the sky

with a spoken
wordsong

she speaks
about an
imaginary
girl

and cries

she teaches me
imaginations
are real

with a spoken
wordsong

she speaks
about an
extraordinary
girl

and cries

she teaches me
extraordinary
girls are real

she speaks
about this
deep hurt

she speaks
about this
deep hope

and as one word
follows another

one drop
follows another

so that she waters
the world

and as I watch
her speak her
wordsong

I think

if I could
capture one tear
that falls

if I could
capture that one tear
before it lands

would it tell me
all her secrets

would it tell me
truth

and if that one
tear spoke to me

could I
understand it?

do we speak
the same language?