Today I thought of how

closely my hands resemble my grandmother’s,

and of how hers looked in the coffin.

At the funeral,

I was asked to take pictures for my uncle,

and I’m not going to say that it was my proudest moment

to witness the side-eye glances of black-clad neighbors

and still have to hear the click and see the flash

to forever-remember the floral arrangements

and the way my grandmother’s hands looked.

Why my uncle couldn’t operate

a disposable camera himself

was something I didn’t ask, and so

for hours I perched on ripped heels in a cemetary

clicking and flashing and thinking that

the obituary should have contained the footnote

that cemetaries are grass and pliable earth

so it’s best not to wear heels,

lest you sink in,

and join the best of them.

Some mornings,
I want to leap
from bed:

pluck the eyes
from anacondas,
beat monkey butts
with broken spoons,
and steal flowers
from cemetaries
to warm
the homeless.

But this
particular
morning,

I'd  much rather
stay in bed
with your warmth,
your deep kisses,
your long sighs

and let the anacondas,
monkeys and homeless
fend for themselves.
   ~mce

she resembled a graveyard
her body cemetaries
her eyes six feet too deep.
she claims she's not dead.
she mutters whispers barely audible
"i am not the corpse,
i am not the water that will drown you,
i am the noose tied too tight,
i am the trigger that is pulled,
the bottle of pills swallowed, the overdose.
she acts as if it's something to be proud of
something to be admired.
my hands too cold to be felt,
she is the thought that always crosses
the mind of a sad boy.
i am simply a skeleton with skin too big
for these weary bones.
i am the coffin and nothing more
than the dirt used to bury it.
the hourglass is coming to it's final stretch.
is this what it feels like to be alive?

it's impossible to be alive when you're already

                         dead.

It started when I asked her what she desired
She told me she wanted to understand why the world has not loved her back yet
So I wrote her a map of everything she is:

Her eyes sing like sparrows on a Sunday morning
Tongue so soft her words asked to be returned once spoken
There is a serenade in her hands each time she touches a pen and
A lullaby in her fingertips

Plush red lipsticks do not know who she is
Beauty has not met anyone like her
Long stalks of wild grass are playgrounds for her summertime sandals and
Singing songs that hadn’t been loved in 30 something years
Summer dresses with last year’s flip flops forming an eloquence around her

She speaks with a purpose and it is to make you listen
Only bards and poets know what to call her
Words do not speak to who she is

200 year old Willow trees bow to her like a queen who has ruled with grace
She strolls slowly and steadily to places which indefinitely await her
She is a statue already built and a book already written
Complete

Eyes follow her figure like a fire burns through a forest-
Steadfast, sudden and swift
unable to comprehend the complete creation of all that she is

Many hearts pulsate with a plethora of pronunciations and proclamations of love,
Her name runs through your veins like secrets that get buried in cemetaries
You will die before you can forget her

Cemetaries with graves more comforting than my own bed and bottles of wine in Parkinson's palms
Industrial factory lights at night that bewilder and leave wandering wants and wondering won'ts and wanderlust
Abandoned rodeos with the perfect pair of longitude and latitudinal lines for a sunset view and dance floors of dirt and footprints in spirals and you
And bowling alley parking lots and songs from my adolescence and secrets spilling from our mouths
And the fairground park swingset and sparklers and nostalgia looming just above the grassy horizon
The 10th floor of the casino parking garage and the water looks curious and inviting,
and it's a long way down.

And I'm a long way from home,
Until I'm in your arms.

can you believe the sand is so warm
so gritty beneath our toes
and
holds us up?
It's like concrete with
feeling, so far away from
the suburbs type
walkways streets paved everything,
It gives a little
shifts when your weight
goes from foot to foot,
striding , leaves a trace
unseen walking down
same home after home suburbs
streets the same subdivided parts of
living, plots lain out like
cemetaries do,
only missing the headstones,
facing east.
I get hot walking but
enjoy the beach.

A practice in diverting expectation,
the micrososm perseveres
over the macrocosm

(pale elevator magic)

Sand is not enough, nor the perennial heat, instead, I chase my green-eyed children,
 escaping a slow but forceful
 jewelled jaw, for birth
& secret kissing with the dawn

I act recklessly in
faith of foxgloves, harmonica valley
idlings/the sentence, in your own words/my sentence

The crescent court
decided I wait in Guangzhou for several hours, to compare my many lives with eachother, as I wonder what day it is, what my past-self is doing right now, if he's getting along fine, I'm a little sore

Druidic anthems/harbour &
hibiscus, fulfillment that feels strange to me, tea by my side, paying attention to "Idiot Wind" until it gets too dark to stay out

Surreal in experience,
passing winter castles
& carnivals on stilts, foreign cemetaries,
temperamental waters, Afric breeze/
Art Deco saccharine
pink

Now, to return
for an interval of Pacific Spring, an embrace of the howling shadow, banished by process

cultivating The Farther

(An ivory veil/withdrawn)