where am i?
how am I to write when
I am no different from
those gaseous ephemeral words
who lie prostrate upon
the pages of my dictionary
carved plainly into
those battlefields strewn across
the wartorn country
my heart the despotic dictator
whose primal drumming
carries no tune
and no rhythm
and throws of explosions
grenades that
black out the world for
a brief moment
until it careens back and
slams into me
disorientated

i should have been born twice
for how could i have
both my body and that
intangible inexplicable
something inside
it stirs at the molten core
of me
that chasm that forged
those graven images
that first gave way to
a pictographic language
and offered me
a voice
to explain that immutable
all powerful
urge
lust
to throw myself on that
red button and
detonate
burst into a million pieces
and finally relieve that
nauseating pressure
of adipose smushed between
holy bone and
saintly skin
interloping in that space
and separating two lovers

barriers create madness

walls box me in
and yet i grow
an expanding balloon girl
macy’s day parade and
candy littered streets
and razor sharp edges
to steel walls pressing harder
against me than
my supple skin could
ever possibly press
back

i can’t breathe

there is no room
for my lungs to expand
and feel the
fresh sun filled meadow
of crystal air
delivering oxygen to
starved alveoli
and i can’t find your chest
to guide me
in impossible respiration

i’m suffocating in my own skin
from no outside force
but my body itself
turns inward and
shouts its dominance at my
cowering self
sniveling in the corner
of my dusty half used heart
where no blade could possible
land a blow deep enough
to silence the torment and
particular personal poison
a torture to course through
every part of me
activating every single neuron
and making me
hyperaware of my
shame and noxious
venomous corpulence
a reality i
never wanted you to see
but is written plainly
in fiery script across my forehead
and in every fold of fat.

We sleep with the duvet above our heads.
Alveoli struggling, but heart thriving,
Steadily inhaling your exhalation to the rhythm of your lungs.
Scents of what were coffee, cigarettes and beer
Are just metabolites; caffeine, nicotine and aldehydes now
But the one thing I cannot break down,
Is how you can lay so close to me
And I can still miss you.
Harder than when I was miles away.
So many words exchanged that could be explained with one touch.

When I hold you closer it’s more in hope
Of waking you than for comfort.
True, a cruder move than when you
Whispered to me and kissed my neck.
You’ll never know how happy I was to feign sleep for just a few more moments.

But its eyelashes not your iris-less eyes I see
Just eyelids separate you from me.
Funny how a thin layer of epidermal cells,
Can make me feel further away from you
Than the plane, bus and train it takes me to get here.

We sleep with the duvet above our heads,
Alveoli struggling, but heart thriving,
steadily inhaling your exhalation to the rhythm of your lungs.
Only CO2 left to share now
Means your oxygen deprived cells force you to
Slip further away from me, unconscious,
Of how much I miss you.

Stop. your taking my breath away.
Things about you memorize me,
and I'm stuck thinking about you all day,
I still hope, your the one, holding the key
Unlock my heart, and open up yours.
All these nights away from you,
Could be opening new discoverable doors,
But with you, I feel like I can do,
anything.
Feeling light and free,
You may never realize,
You helped me.

A drab drop drips
Downed casualty
Down casually.

A sulfuric gust cycles
In three fly-by nights.
A gust hoping,
A breeze yearning to dab a wet tear off a moistened spring cheek.
Floating by on a wisp of breath,
Breathed once by the blessed. Now irreparably tainted, then incomprehensible anew:
Treated by the respirations of the perspiring, expending breath on czarist ears, aspiring;
Cured by the tongues of the insatiably dying
And by those primary soothe-ers, invisibly crying.
Alveoli gripping that sine qua non of civilization
Until they must release the once-oxygen into the hills of Kyivan Rus.

A first breath and second
As much as a penultimate and final.
And witness to the chronology that led to such a
Bloodbath-blessed blast
As this.

The Battleground of Light, Made Flesh

Suffering down..
not as punishment,
but as Love.

Breath by breath,
atom by atom,
A bend of  the will
into the greater design:

to let even the exhale
carry what is real.

Each particle stripped bare,
each trembling fragment
infused with the weight of Light
earned not through ease,
but through the slow, necessary
suffering of self

into Substance.

And so it reaches her..
not through seduction,
or noise,
but the quietest form of intimacy:

truth, refined enough
to be airborne.

She breathes..
and through the quiet architecture
of lungs,
through bronchi,
alveoli,

the smallest fragments of me
become more than theory.

But it is not just me
it is what I have chosen to become:
stripped down,
atomized,
each particle carrying both Light
  and Dark,
as they always have.

Though, here
intent speaks louder than inheritance.

And accountability tips the scale.

Through the capillaries,
the bloodstream takes them..
particles laced not with seduction,
but with substance;
volition woven into their shape,
truth mingling with oxygen,

carrying not  empty poetry,
but tangible presence.

And the skin..
her beautiful, breathing boundary;
it listens too.

Pores opening like shy mouths,
taking in what even sunlight cannot hide:

   --the warmth of love,
   made molecular,
   made undeniable.

It slips through,
across her beautiful hips,
up the soft ***** of her thighs,
along the quiet pathways
where nerves whisper,
where fear once lived.

And still..
our skin has never touched.
Our beautiful oils,
those quiet, fragrant signatures
of separate bodies,
have never had the chance to blend.
There is no mingling of surface,
no friction of palms or lips.

Yet still—
I am within her
as  she
Breathes    me    in.

Love,

when chosen..
when carried through the smallest particle,
becomes the most intimate trespass--
not of skin,
but of substance.

And inside her,
where the battle rages unseen,
the false portraits dissolve..
the counterfeit reflections
painted by fear,
by old wounds,

by those who mistake poetry for proof.

Here
there is no mimicry.
Only metabolized truth.

Only the slow, quiet conquering
of darkness--
cell by cell,

choice by choice.

This is not seduction.
This is not the shallow hush
of borrowed words.
This is Light..
accountable,
chosen,
fought for;

interlaced within her very bloodstream;

her warmth,
  her breath.

And though no oils ever blended,
though the ache of touch
remains untouched,
what entered her did not stay foreign.
The body, wise and unwilling to harbor illusion,
took what was true--

what carried intent and Light
and made it her own

..   ..   ..   ..  

Mitochondria hum..
tiny engines in the blood’s dark river;
taking each atom,
each trembling particle,
and rewriting the story within.
From raw material,
she builds warmth.
From fractured fragments,
she crafts clarity;
The light no longer arrives—
it begins to rise from within.

And the space once reserved
for mingled oils,
for skin-on-skin confession,
becomes something greater:
a fusion untouched by friction,
unfading,

   unmistakably Real.

This is no whispered counterfeit.
No shallow poem dressed in longing.
This is breath earned through fire.
This is love refined to its smallest form,
offered whole,
received wholly,

and written quietly

into every hidden corner
of her being.

I.
I breathed in each toxic
story of relatives
departed or deported
that left you with nothing
but gerbera daisies
next to gravestones.

II.
I tried to diffuse
my scholarly ambitions,
to fill in the blanks
on your applications,
to change your histology
to help you evolve.

III.
My body rejected you.
My alveoli ached
to be free and breathe.
My chordae tendinae
were pulled too taut
and tore.

IV.
I caved into myself
with no other choice
but to detoxify.


*November 13, 2014
10:27:16 PM

there is black at the end of every miracle
and the base of every rainbow where the colors drip
and mix in the sickest sort of chorus.
color and rain and atmospheric moisture,
you kneeled under a rainbow and prayed;
water in your alveoli paint in your bronchi,
you inhaled all your art
to make yourself prettier on the inside -
{but that doesn't work when everything you paint
is uglier than anything else:
broken ***** girls
and rusted knives and rotten fruit -
how can you expect to be beautiful with a rotting apple
for a heart?
you're an abandoned orchard,
falling to seed when you once fed a nation,
dry earth dead trees rotten rotten fruit
remember your glory days and cry}
you were a blackbird but time plucked all your feathers
you were a blackbird but now, oh,
with all your yellow blood,
canary in a coal mine you knew it was too late.
you were the first to be tragic.
the first to choke on coaldust -
the road to el dorado is paved in coal
and all the gold is smudged in black from the men who sought riches
but brought with them misery.
canary in a coal mine you died in el dorado,
canary in a coal mine you died in a city
of your blood.
there is black at the end of every miracle and the beginning of every tragedy
but if all goes well it'll be all
blues and reds
by the end of the story.
drowned and bled,
primary colors for your finale.
you knew these colors would be your end, blue and red blue and red
and you sought out yellow,
canary in a coal mine, ***** el dorado,
yellow hope yellow fear
primary colors like building blocks,
carbon the base of the universe
blueredyellow the base of the paintings you inhaled,
blueredyellow and carbon coal.
you were a blackbird and blueredyellow in the reflections of your wings,
oily rainbows on your back
primary colors in your lungs,
and all your gaunt thoughts envelop you you never should have tried
to be beautiful -
a tragic hero can only do so much before falling apart
a tragedy can only go so far before it becomes comedy.
you inhaled all your paintings and they live in your lungs
live and rot and cry because you never painted happiness
{it's hard to paint something that doesn't exist,
it's hard to paint something you've never known -
abandoned orchard you rot beside the highway and cry.
tell yourself happiness doesn't exist,
cause that's better than knowing
it's there
but you're just
not
worthy}
blackbird canary-blood apple-heart
do you even know who you are anymore?
all the broken ***** girls in your lungs
and the crying boys in your mind -
you never knew who you were,
fragmented as you are -
all your masks are just
sick echoes of the parts of you that wouldn't burn,
all your paintings are just sick echoes of the parts of you
scattered over el dorado.
gather yourself up,
knit yourself back together -
make your nest in a flak suit and sleep dreaming of you.
the coal burns around you and you don't stop singing
you will not be the only tragedy in this mine.

In the morgue, the aseptic light
Was flickering upon it;
The livid, bruised, black and blue
Lying body of Love.

-Honey, It's dead, you see!
-Yes, sweetheart, but how did we
Come to this?
-Pass me the lancet and
Then we'll see.

A sharp cut was made on
The right temporal lobe of the brain;
The synaptic membranes were
Damaged, the reciprocal nerve-racking
Jealousy had made the brain collapse.

A big incision was made upon
The ribs: into the lungs no more
The vital breath of Love, only water
And mud were clogging the alveoli.
Love had drowned in the sea of adultery.

The last deep cut was made upon
The heart: the still valves and
Ventricles hadn't pumped
Blood and passion for long.
So, there's nothing else to do,
My dead love!

you are a fractal

in a sea of branches
you are the air between

the dust that spirals in the sun streams


the decimal point in the equation

the dividing line between oblivion and infinity

you are a loose end
fraying
made of left over dry skin








you are the chemical

you poison my drinking water

you are

the secret ingredient
the last place they'd ever look

you are

the dark matter
the imaginary number I can't wrap my head around

you cure my melancholy






we are

alveoli

we breathe fire

seen through telescopes
we believe we are alone

we'll believe anything they tell us




they won't love you
they can't see you

you are too much
they'd never understand


you don't give
what you don't receive

you give life
as you breathe through me



I see you when my eyes close
I trace your shape on frosted windows





you spark the fire that hijacks my biology



you draw upon my skin with ***** fingernails

your handwriting is embedded in my DNA




your name echoes still
unfamiliar voices without faces


your secret's safe with me



hidden in massive outer space places
untraceable
mastermind configuration
takes ages just to give up out of frustration

“How can I get you to go down on me,”
he asked, without preamble.
His voice, nervous,
laced with strength
hums through her form,
summoning
a tatting of ***.

She moves her entire form
Across the room
pushing solar plexus
With index finger
The wingback chair collecting
His form – assuaging her intent.

Retreating nine steps
To gather
Her acumen in dripping her clothes off
Adroit pivot
portent gaze
locked
exteroception - engaged

His exhale
executed succinctly in shallow lung
puckered alveoli - clenched
resonates as her own.

Pearls scooped catatonic
atop lingering breast ascension - alone
Remain –
Summoning brine.

She tastes his pulse
Derma puckering sweat globules
Redolent aeriform vapor corpuscles
declaring his need.

Fingers supporting her upper weight
she glides - crawling
pressing half inch spurs into the carpet

Lackadaisical dactyl dance
Seizes
muscle calf to thigh
Invoking listless leg drape

Pausing
Warm breath – rendered
Upon knee cap parallel
Framing shoulders

Engorging - in aching silence
Pulse thick, wrought in shaft

Kneeling
Primed
Proud

She flicks the button
From slit fabric recess
Cupping palms under thigh,
She renders garment to puddle

half-in – half-out
whole
chthonic shaft to palette

Sliding exhale
to mound
lax jaw
focus
Iris entreats -
narrowed corneal withdrawal

Oblong lip array surrounds
Supping the creamy, coppery,
Smoky, saline inoculation.

Latent dribble invokes tongue
Furl about lip cusp
Absorbing globule
Into slaked smile.

faint voices crackled, fourty-five minutes *******,
I had heard the radio with windows open,
the words melting through copper alloys,
                  the dreams all turning to dust,
left these thoughts until last, dusk eyelid flicker, and...

                          and now I'm all spent

and can't keep these lines of narrow survival held up anymore,
and everyone's apologising,
and the rain, just waiting to fall, hangs on stagnant breeze.
                                       so, we could wait around, or get up and run right now:
                                                 full eyes drinking the harvest moon's glow,
                                                            secondhand stories told poorly at best,

                                                                       killing time until
                                                     intoxication
                                     burns old ghosts,
and I'm still burning down with each breath of wind,
each charcoal fragment snaking into alveoli,
each compromised lie, illumination,
reaches so far within,
dragging out moments between heartbeats, just like you.

*just
like
you

When I look at you,
I can feel the Nile river gushing from
my arteries and separating into
the most delicate of tributaries.

When I look at you,
my bone marrow jolts my body forward
because you’re east and i’m west but
if we followed the lines of longitude
it’s impossible for us not to meet again.

When I look at you,
I smell bleach and roses
both burning the back of my throat,
one covering and the other cleaning.

When I look at you,
I feel warmth
but the real kind
not the the heat from a couple shots of absinthe.

When I look at you
my heart flys up and squeezes into
the delicate space between the two hemispheres of my brain
and suddenly you consume
me.

So when you left

I stopped looking at you,
looking for you,
looking for your hands on my ribs
or the hair of your leg brushing the back of my calf.

I tried to stop longing for the proclamations of love that you
whispered directly into my ear so
the wind couldn't ****** the seven letters before I got to hold them.

When I had looked at you
I did not want to admit that the red strings
that tied our calloused fingertips together
had begun to fray and snap.

When your presence became to fragile for my fingers to touch
and the ashes of burned rose petals
would fall into my palms.

I would swallow them
and try to remind myself of their-your
your once velvet beauty.

But charcoal is only used to extract poison from a bloodstream.

I refused to believe that you were the poison and I would open bottle
after bottle after bottle of red wine because
it was my-our-your favorite type of drink.
My red stained lips would get trapped on the neck of the bottle
until neither alcohol nor oxygen remained inside
and only shattered glass and ****** knuckles.

I tried to leave hickeys on the walls and pretend
it was your neck but my lungs were too empty from my screaming.

When they burned from your absence
I ate the charred alveoli
and hoped it would absorb a little bit of the pain.

I could pick you and
pull the pretty petals of your lies
to my lips

I could have your stain

I could inhale you
and feel the alveoli burst
tissue melting away

I could have your breath

I could look at you
and believe that your eyes say 'love'
when they look back into mine

I could have you...

“Swallowing Pearls and Lace”
“How can I get you to go down on me,”
he asked, without preamble.
His voice, nervous,
laced with strength
hums through her form,
summoning
a tatting of ***.

I moved my entire form
Across the room
Pushing his solar plexus
With index finger
The wingback chair collecting
His form – assuaging my intent.

Retreating nine steps
To gather
my acumen in dripping my clothes off
Adroit pivot
portent gaze
locked
exteroception - engaged

His exhale
executed succinctly in shallow lung
puckered alveoli –
Clenched -
resonates as my own.

Pearls scooped catatonic
atop lingering breast ascension - alone
Remain –
Summoning brine.

I taste his pulse
Derma puckering sweat
Redolent vapor
Knotting between each pore – skin taut
declaring his need.

Fingers supporting my upper weight
I glide - crawling
pressing half inch spurs into the carpet

Lackadaisical dactyl dance
Seizes
muscle calf to thigh
Invoking listless leg drape

Pausing
Warm breath – rendered
Upon knee cap parallel
Framing shoulders

Engorging - in aching silence
Pulse thick, wrought in shaft

Kneeling
Primed
Proud

I flick the button
From slit fabric recess
Cupping palms under thigh,
rendering garment to puddle

half-in – half-out
whole
chthonic shaft to palette

Sliding exhale
to mound
lax jaw
focus
His iris entreats -
narrowed corneal withdrawal

Oblong lip array surrounds
Supping the creamy, coppery,
Smoky, saline

Latent dribble invokes my tongue
Furl about lip cusp
Absorbing globule
Into slaked smile.

I want you to rip open your chest and drag my body from your heart to your mind. Push my head into the deepest parts of you. Grab a fistful of my hair and keep my head down.
I'll start to gasp for air,
Unintentionally swallowing parts of you,
feeling the air in
every
alveoli
sac
get replaced by your fears,
Your dreams,
and all your favorite things.
The lyrics from your favorite songs, quotes from your favorite books, and every word from your favorite quotes.
Every sac would be filled with every time you've apologized to someone that wasn't worth it,
The thoughts you have at night when you lay in bed unable to sleep by the loud thoughts in your head.
And what you think happens to us when we die.

I then want you to pull me out.
See if I gasp for oxygen.
If I do, push me back in again.
Deeper this time.

Replace every sac that has been filled with your irrational fears, with every incident you've had that made your legs ******* and teeth chatter from the terror you've felt.
Replace every sac filled with the dreams that you have now, with every dream that you've had before. Tell me about your broken dreams, the dreams you decided that you didn't want anymore, and the dreams that didn't want you.
Replace every story about your past lovers with what you think about your first kiss. And if you think a first kiss is with whoever pressed their lips against yours, or if 'first kiss' is just another word for "the first kiss that felt like two stampedes crashing into each other, exploding into a full spectrum of feelings".

Now pull me out again.
See if I scream your name like it was the Exit door and I was in a burning room.
If I do, if I call out your name instead of gasping for oxygen, know that you've successfully replaced my air with you.
You did it.

There is a quiet blood that seeps
from the corners of my atria that
you are missing from.

I had four chambers wide yet
i could not hold you in one
you wanted to erase the line of your lips
from mine.

Torn from you it's a wonder
how these alveoli still do move
in not moving with the rhythm
of your breath (it wasn't enough--)

inhibition kept my lips sealed
but now i cry out for your touch
expectations had me reeled
but now have left me dry.

Do you think of me? I
am terrified it's not so
are you happier, are you
better off without me?

Please say no, no, (no!)
I never knew how much
I'd need you (I  need you),
the caress of your finger prints

against the walls we call
skin that I hide within.
You consume my mind in this
wonderful tsunami I'm ravaged in

yet you left me to drown
but my words had all left
and I am far gone, so silent
I am in a thousand mile aperture

that took me away from you.

Spirit sleeps in the stone,
Awakens in the animal, and
Dreams in the plant.
Inside of every seed
Lies the blueprints for
A blooming tree
That, once born into the air,
Will dream its wild dream.

I sit at the base of an ash,
Its roots move around the rocks,
Rarely do they clash.
The spark behind this choice
Is the same spark in me;
Intelligence born from discord
To create harmony.

The dormant seed is the lead
Of the alchemist’s soul,
With attention, love and care
It will transform into gold.
A vibrant being that fruits,
Abundance of energy abounds
To fill the stomachs of beasts
And let happiness resound.
For an empty tummy begets a selfish mind
And this weary old world of ours
Is running short on time.
What better way is there
To lay aside our differences
Then by feeding one another,
Sharing with our brother,
And nurturing our Mother
So that the Mother
May nurture us.

It’s time to join the Omnibus,
The infinite works of the Universe,
To respect plants as the Earth’s lungs
And we humans as the nervous system.
The Earth is just a person
Rolled up into a ball,
Not be controlled by few
But to be shared by all.
If your kidneys cut down the alveoli
In the forest of your lungs
So they could build a city,
It wouldn’t be long before you were gone.

With Spirit awake in us,
We must take care of our Dreamers.
Mine is not a generation of the greedy,
We are the world’s cleaners.

lifetimes of frequencies vibrating in the sky
the endless bliss we tried to deny
limestone pyramids with capstones awry
we projected our shadows onto a wall
some were short and others tall
you purchased a flute from a gypsy’s supply
our breath is bubbling beneath the surface of alveoli
landscapes quake and we shake in our shadows
dry are the plains after your isolation
i came wandering just to look into your crystal eyes
and stand as tall as the rainbow is high
from one fountain we drank away our emptiness
lest we forget our pain and be done with it
these incorporeal corporations cradle our consciousness
as we sat straddling our ambivalence
the ambiguity too perplexing
it was all relatively deafening
and now i ease my way out into the street
to greet the knot-tyer in the midst
of mid-summer’s rising tidal wave of heat

You said "Pull, and don't stop pulling until I tell you to."
I knew this was where my training as a wind breather was going to pay off.
I expelled all nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and oxygen from my alveoli
And pulled.

I pulled and I looked at you,
Staring at me.
I deconstructed your face, your hair, your teeth, your eyes, your clothes, your life.
I deconstructed your Mexico and what you did to my friend.
I deconstructed the cigarettes you and your brother bummed off of me.
I tore you apart.
Organism, *****, tissue, cell, organelle, molecule, atom, electrons protons and neutrons.

I couldn't pull any longer.
I don't know if you knew I couldn't,
Or simply determined I was set.
"Okay, stop."

I couldn't breathe out. I couldn't breathe in.
I was suffocating.
She put poison in my lungs and my body is dying.
Water.
Water.
It stops.
I can breathe.

My lungs recoil and I can see straight.

She poisoned me but I love her.

Shush, stop replaying echos of the past
they have been blown by the east winds
right to the cliffs of the angelic twists
and I stare at the window, as everything moves
like the sun never rose
and the moon never shone
never surrender to their voices
as the hollowed beats of their soul
is an empty sack of sarcastic laughter
founded by the foundlings of St Elizabeth
who litter the Aspire asylum with loathe
and the troops of their dusty bags vent
to the charcoaled hues of the ceiling
Where the castaways truly hide inspired
as emptiness get inhaled in the alveoli
to the dense of the unpenetrated amoeba
and they all get sick, in a dread of a century
Let’s run.....It’s the borbounic plague taking its toil

My voice shrank and my entire body sclerosed to stone
when you lifted a hand because I was never sure
if this time would be the time
you took it too far.

The air left my alveoli, travelled through my bronchioles, trachea,
and out through my clenched teeth as you walked out the door,
safe to escape from my lungs because fear
had paralyzed my diaphragm and
overstimulated my amygdala.

It was always a vicious cycle:
My limbic system remembered the monster that escaped your ribcage
when the rage inside that was instilled in you to win wars
that was never fully extinguished came through
yet the same system processed the love I felt
when you played peek-a-boo with my niece on the grass;
even my brain wasn’t sure what we wanted.

Four weeks had passed since:
I said goodbye to our cat because he was yours now,
I took the trinkets I had scattered to make it our home
rather than your place where I stayed,
I erased sloppy alcohol-kissed love notes from the whiteboard
where I wrote the therapy reminders you ignored.

My mailbox filled with emails riddled with depression and  
post-traumatic stress and worry manifested as a knot in my throat
that made it impossible to breathe so I searched for any spare key
and drove the twenty-seven miles to ensure your safety.  

I grasped the doorknob hard enough to trigger Pacinian corpuscles
throughout my skin, terrified of what was just beyond the threshold.

Away from my lungs I think it's good
that I haven't cried in front of my mom
and have had no time to shed tears for men.
Away from alveoli my blood just can't
take me anymore I breathe and it feels
different from what it's supposed to be.
I remember about everything and decide
to close it forever away from words and images
I think it's good that I can't talk anymore.
This throat is happy enough I'm not
trying to spoil the joy but I want truth
and at the same time lies.
Away from memories and thoughts I think
this is better than drowning even though
I used to be a deep sea creature.

A stiff breeze coincides with a passing jet
As I sit on my stoop watching dead leaves
Dance around the manhole in the street.

It's 15 degrees outside,
Yet I persist with this disgustingly pleasurable vice
That's sure to **** me... eventually.
Fingertips numb as carcinogens fill my lungs
To shake hands and broker death deals with my alveoli.

I ponder...

The previous chapter in my life has come to a close.
Awareness of the changes setting in
Allows for a free hand to grasp the wheel,
If only with few fingers...
It's a start.

Sleep can't help me now. Nothing can help
me now. As many people care, and as sure as I am that the number of people that do care is less than or equal to zero, I still regret waking up every day. How hard is it to feel

When do the days grow into hours grow into grow in grow to the
     top of the forest where the environment sways back and forth
          on unstable ground where everything is constantly shifting
and sinking deeper and
                           deeper and
                                d
                           ­      e
                                  e
                           ­        p
                                    e
                         ­            r, to the point where nothing even matters anymore and the only sounds anybody hears are just the bittersweet echoes of whatever ounce of sadness you still have saved for a special occasion. Represent the resentment that resides in the recesses of your wretched receptacle that reaches for any affection afflicted amorously to our attached arteries and alveoli and attend to any of our other needs. Remember not to cast asunder others or to deprecate mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers who should love one another for each other as well as the lovers who quiver and shudder at affection and attention reflected at their functioning conjunction of otherworldly love for one another. Know what you want and need and see to it that you get to be the best you could be and tell yourself to be free! Scream to your creators and scream to yourself that I, yes I can be whatever I want to be and whatever social constructions will not let me see, then I wish to be freed and I get down on both knees and pray to whomever will hear my dreams.

Know that there is no being more powerful in your life than you. You are the Alpha and Omega, the Logos and the Pathos, the Shakespeare and the Limp Bizkit. Everything that you ever want is an achievable aspiration, and all you need to do is know. Know. Know. Know. Know. Know that when you grow old and frail and brittle that your body will ache with the experience of a person who has been to hell and back and maybe back to hell one more time because you were young and never learned. So play games, jump and run, dance and sing, do something you'd never do normally, try out for the play, play sports, write a poem, write a song, write anything at all, talk to people, talk to strangers, sleep for 4 hours instead of 8, sleep for 12 hours instead of 4, think and think and think until it drives you to drink and think some more. Know that you wish and wish to know that everything you want and need is obtainable and in your reach. Life is alive and wants you to live, so show Life respect and do what it wants you to do: Go.

let the water
trickle past your fingers,
like memory,
falling through the holes in your
head, cloudy, tattered.
let your head,
as fluffy as clouds,
brush up against stars,
constellations of
legends, of sodium
and potassium hallucinations.
sometimes people lie.
let the air
brush each
and every alveoli of your lungs,
each gyri and
sulci of your brain.
taste the salt --
sweat, the sea, your blood.
let the iron,
stable, sunbright
iron, carry itself
with the poise of
a red giant --
both radient,
striking, bleeding vermillion
and crimson.
stable, like a mountain,
letting rain run
itself over with the gentle
caress of an old lover,
who knows the contours and the
dips of the body,
and yet is getting --
reacquainted with it,
after a long time away.
the sweat of the
maker sticks to
the threads that
weave to make the library that makes
you, that
holds information, holds itself
in letters,
quartets, spirals.
taste the salt.
the wind sounds like the sea,
outside my bedroom window,
when it's too late
for my eyes to have
not made
their coupling of
the night.
imagine the salt-mist,
bright and cold on your
face, like the
splatter of blood,
leaking out of a nose;
like a river flowing
from precipitation, mist,
downstea, rejoining where it once
came from, where it was
always going to end up.
fate is a funny thing.
they say that every cell
of yours gets replaced
every seven years.
i wonder how long it takes salt,
iron --
to rise and to
fall,
like the eight minutes
the light of the
sun follows to get
here, to our
little pinprick eyes,
to our dopamine
and norepinephrine,
the spikes and
dips of neurons, firing.
how many heartbeats, breaths?
how many crashes of waves?

your acumen in ripping my clothes off
your exhale
executed succinctly in shallow lung
puckered alveoli - clenched
resonates as my own

Lungs are His cathedrals, on this night A
Boeing 737-7 cuts a spotlight
between twilight and dream
Gods breath carving alveoli with a 10:35 flight across rib bone
and destiny
It is the curse of existence, trajectory
Neither sleep nor sunrise will stabilize me.

Foxfire you burn holes in my heart and fill them just the same,
covering my veins with glitter-dust and Ashes,
These ashes rebirth into something bigger,
Warming quilt of feather, Phoenix rising
Rising storm,
This thunder fills my lungs and fills my throat I want to sing. Bring.
I want to sing out the tar from my lungs
I want to paint this concrete with my love.

My lungs love
Doves to red and dug in deeper, Gold.

Accomplishing nothing just minor goals.
This coal can be painted with gold.

Coral reef, alveoli
These cables fill holes in me.

Rebar, concrete.
These fables fill my holes with gold.

Doves fill my heart's holes.
**Love
     Is
          Gold.