I'm living in squalor.
It'll be summer again soon,
And I wish that I could call her,
But I've gone from prince to pauper.
With every silently warm night,
Her memory fades red,
Like a doppler.

I can't write poetry anymore.
I'm not much pride to swallow.
I'm a mended heart gone sour,
A paper maché shell, now hollow.

She can't really be blamed.
Lovelessly alone with my bones,
Blood long gone, long drained,
That fault is my own.

I can't really be blamed.
Now she's all alone,
With our bones.
That fault is her own.

Your constructive corruption,
Wrapped me in, like a soft cocoon.
And with every day without prosper,
Your memory grows blue,
Like a doppler.

It's half past four and the Red Rose
is Doppler dashing across
bullying slow fourth class hikers bikers
who dare to share the bridge walkway.

Puffing pumping its steam sweat smoke
straining through the shielding lattice
smogging choking foot folk
who snort its sulphur scented smuts.

Memories can become blurry, over time,
like underdeveloped photographs,
or incomplete, like sunlight through blinds.

Our lives move ever forward,
like the inflexible patterns of stars.

Once fevered and immediate events
recede, with frightening, doppler effect,
as remembered yesterdays,
become forgotten yesterdays.

New Haven was abuzz. The hotels were booked and moving trucks had taken every free parking space for miles. Last Sunday was freshmen move-in day and 1,554 freshmen moved into their Yale residences. It’s one of our favorite days of the year. The hubbub of freshmen moving, lunching, shopping and later, seeing off their departing parents, created a delicious emotional chaos that we watched unfold, like a Greek chorus.

The movie ‘Love Actually’ begins and ends with montages of people greeting friends, family and loved ones at Heathrow airport - it’s emotional and heartwarming. Move-in days are a lot like that - with their gordian knots of beginnings and endings. My parents were nervous and emotional on my freshman move-in day - as was I - but we all tried, desperately, not to show it.

Welcome to New Haven freshmen, everything’s beautiful, but you’ll get too busy to enjoy it much.

We upperclassmen move in tomorrow.

I love spending nights on the lake.
Once the oven-like sun disappears,
things get suddenly quiet, except for
the occasional hoot of an owl, crickets, frogs
and the soft lapping of the lake on the boat.

When the moon rises above the pines
the sky lights up, like a fireworks bloom,
its reflection is brushed, in scatters on the lake,
giving insubstantial moonlight a sharp substance
not unlike a fractured, undulating, glittery lace.

This evening, there’s a rumble, stage left, off to the west,
and a thunderstorm’s growl, like a wolf on the prowl.
The wind was picking up, so we began battening down,
stowing things in the galley and taking in the flag. The wind,
had become almost solid with its insistent and restless energy.

The question, with these daily, southern, summer thunderstorms
is whether you’re going to catch the edge of it or get the full onslaught. The doppler radar, of my iPad weather app indicated the monster was headed right for us.

Just as our phones, watches and iPads began chirping
with National Weather Service, “Severe Weather Alerts,”
Charles asked, “You two still want to stay?” His voice fighting
against the stiff wind as he watched the tall pine-tree tops bob,
like boxers, afraid of the far off lightning flashes in the sky.

“Of course!” I chimed in, wearing a grin, I LOVE boat storms!
“Lisa, there’s a storm on the way but we’ll stay on the boat, ok?” I asked, trying to English the question with both a sense of adventure and nonchalance. Lisa, of course, followed my lead, saying, “Sure.”
“It’ll be ill,” I assured her.

Charles nodded and leapt to the dock, replacing the gunwale rope lines with longer dock rods to distance and secure the boat (lowering front and back anchors too).

“We’re staying,” Charles walkie-talkie’d Carol (his wife) below in the staterooms where she was probably making the beds. “10-4” she replied.
I love her, she’s so game for anything. While Charles worked, Lisa and I sealed the upper deck from cockpit (helm) to transom, putting up sturdy plexiglass windows and closing the transom doors.

Charles came aboard just as we turned up the air conditioning and thick raindrops started falling. Having finished our work, we looked up and the moon was gone, hidden by dark clouds that writhed like some angry, mythical, steel wool animal.

The rain went from a delicate pitter-patter to a generous applause and finally, a steady torrent. We felt it initially pass over us from port (left) to starboard (right). The wind whistled, like a giant’s breath, rocking the boat, alternately, in two directions. It was wonderful.

The far-off thunder had become intimate, bomb-like and personal, with its Crack-k-KA-BOOM! Every time such a concussion rocked the air, the boat and our teeth, I cackled, with joy, like Poe’s Madeline Usher, the madwoman in the attic.

“HOW DO YOU LIKE IT!?” I yelled to Lisa, but she made an ‘I can’t hear you,’ sign. Carol, who’d been working the galley, produced yummy tuna-fish sandwiches, potato chips and milk. We played a dominoes game called ‘Mexican Train’ until the rain stopped, then we watched ‘Jaws’ on the fold-down TV. Lisa had never seen it!

The boat had rocked, lightning had flashed, the cutting wind howled and the thunder boomed, but it was the clawing rain, like a tiger trying to break into the boat, that made it an unforgettable night on the lake.

The back up with
A crooked neck bent
   Towards Hell
While his lips tightened sternly
   as a Victorian urn.

His face barely recognizeable
   ever since the penny-doppler showered
A wandering click
   that skipped
      no birds on his fence.

In a glass paned massacre, forever fossilized
between childhood bullies and prom-night feel-ups,
there was a consciousness that feigned
once a week, cockled in creationism and the Eucharist.

His passions -- clam shells flanked by the ripping tide.
His intellect -- a solitary warble amid ***** blue notes.

Their love created a paradox
Like Schrondiger's cat of uncertainty
Great in theory, but not in practice

Unspoken words reverberates like the Doppler effect
A product of her own creation with undesirable outcome
****** if she do and ****** if she doesn't

Do the tiny footsteps of ants make a sound?
When we concave their hills I can’t hear a sound.

Hands, wrapped around your fingers. Eyes
closed. A baby’s first cry is a sound

Never forgotten. Like the silhouettes of bodies
burned. Does the bomb still make a sound?

Take two waves, equal in frequency, opposite
in amplitude. Silence can be created from a sound.

Sometimes I forget I’m speaking in another language.
To me, my thoughts always make the same sound.

Shuffling papers, typed words on pages
even when never spoken, they still make a sound.

That was then, this is now
Who was where when what was how?
Hear them take their last breath as they're shot down
I scream
Floating in the gene pool, expecting the man who can walk on water to arrive
Sell outs and everyone who has had a bad week even though it's only Monday

Whippersnappers hang their heads in shame
I am one of twelve
So expendable
We live in gluttony
Lineleaders, math teachers, bottom-feeders have no idea
Watch them fall and be forced to crawl on their bellies
We laugh
Lewandowsky-Lutz dysplasia, getting back to your roots
Progeric clock-makers, lying dead on The Yellow Brick Road
Thin-skinned Transsexuals putting bricks in their purses
We live by eight
We die from our weight
And go unbloomed
       -Tommy Johnson
Standing in a nuclear reactor somewhere in Chernobyl looking for the truth
It might be in my contaminated endoplasmic reticulum
I am a radiant
Doppler radar
Monopoly dollar

Singing in the shower, amateur hour
Projecting sour notes
Pouring out their hearts and souls, hear them
Trying

Moo-juice nectar, spilling off The Round Table
Blondes in red bracelets, Kabbalah saves them
Henry pays no tax, John Berryman's bats tell us
You are the lunatic
We are the two quarters of a half-wit
This whole thing is insane

       -Tommy Johnson

I.
Identity?
For so long, I've felt like I had none.
I am a piece of college-ruled paper
ripped, torn, taped to a back alley wall
with names and dates and places
all written in a rainbow of Sharpies
by people with faces I cannot remember;
my handwriting with the cursive "f"s
nowhere to be seen,
words I'd written so long ago
buried beneath the influence of everyone else.

Who are you, when you're no one
except everyone?

II.
I'm sick.
I am years of not getting out of bed.
I am missed school days, late-passes,
a truant.
I am doctor's notes.
I am a pile of handwritten prescriptions.
I am one white
two orange
one pink
and two multi-vitamins.
Misdiagnoses,
tests,
exams.

My feet melt into the blue and grey carpeting,
my arms turn brown like the worn-down stain of the armrests,
the receptionist knew me by name
until "next week's appointment" slipped off the calendar.

I am episodes of crying in crowds
or crying alone.
I'm haunted by mistakes remembered only by me.
I am up or I'm down
without knowing what's between.
My brain leaves my body and I can't feel my hands
so the bottle of Advil moves up one more shelf.

I am told to lie on my medical forms
so I won't be held at arms length,
or treated like someone who's different or strange;
but that's just how I'm treated at home.

III.
I am nothing more
than the result of years of torture.
Two bra sizes too small.
Four dress sizes too big.

I am nothing more than a waistline,
which would be fine
if I had one.

I am not pretty enough.
I am not beautiful enough.
I am not good enough.

And I will not be joining you for dinner.

IV.
I push people away
but long for them to come closer.
I run, keep my distance
but, when you're not looking, lean in a bit closer.

I text boys 300 miles away
but pretend he's right there beside me.

I'm gullible, I'm weak.
I fall for anything, I fall for everything.
I forgive too quickly and I love too much,
I set myself up for the fall.

V.
I'm a disappointment.
I'm wrong.
I'm wrong.
I'm wrong.

I forget my chores.
I forget responsibilities.
I forget rules, I forget deadlines, I forget lines in the play.

I forget numbers and facts and formulas.
And when the grades come back
I remember
what a parents' giving up looks like.

VI.
I'm difficult.
I'm needy.
I can't drive,
can't make my own appointments.
Can't sign my own papers, can't run my own errands,
can't buy my own dinner,
can't call my own shots.
I'm difficult.
I hear myself say that I don't have a choice
But the sigh in reply says,
I'm difficult.

VII.
I love the wrong gender.
I swing the wrong way.
"I always imagined my daughter walking down the aisle
with a man who reminded her of her father," he says.
"I'm just disappointed," he says.
So I bring home a boy
and Mom says,
"Thank you -
I promise, it's easier this way."

Some girls tell their families when they find their first love,
but mine will stay hidden
in the box with the K
filled with letters and gifts and "thinking of you"'s
collecting dust between the wall and my bed.

VIII.
I am numbers, and numbers, and numbers.
Weights, heights, exes, mistakes -
too high.
Grades, standardized tests, word counts and successes -
too low.

IX.
I'm deluded.
Always telling myself that if Mom really loved me
she'd put me before the glass of wine.
Convincing myself that it's my fault
and that I'm selfish, petty, judgmental.
I'm hurt.

I'm hopeful.
Waking up to the overhead light in my room at 10
when Dad comes home from work -
asking me how my day went
and closing the door before I can reply.
I'm silent.

I'm lonely.
Clinging to the siblings of friends and partners
desperately wanting a family.
Constantly jumping from partner to partner
desperately needing a hug.
I'm alone.

X.
With all my shortcomings
with all I do wrong
it's hard for me to find when I do something right.

But of all the things I'll never know,
I know how to feel, I know how to care.

I'll show you passion like you've never seen passion before.
I've seen gods in mortals and mortals in gods,
I've felt fire inside me when it's icy around me,
I've painted the Sistine Chapel with the notes of F. Doppler,
I've sculpted the moon and the stars and the sun with my heart,
I've loved with the urgency of the wind of a hurricane
and I've forgiven like the sand did the Atlantic high tide.

XI.
I forget so much,
but there's so much more to remember.

I'll remember your dreams, your hopes, your ambitions,
I'll remember your tears on the sleeve of my shirt.
I'll remember the days of the sweet uncertainties,
bus rides and text messages and scarves and "good morning"s.
I'll remember the day my heart fell for yours
(ticking, ticking, like the bomb in the birdcage).

I'll remember the album with the songs named after planets,
and I'll remember when you couldn't meet my eyes to the lyrics.
I'll remember the confessions from the football field bleachers,
even next year, when there's an empty chair in the orchestra.

I'll forget all our fights, even the ones you never will,
and I might lose some of our laughs,
but I'll never forget passion at 4 in the morning,
or slow-dancing like middle schoolers at high-school dances,
or your body against mine to old SNL re-runs.
I'll always remember the times you let me in
and I'll be here in silence for the times you still can't.

I'll remember our promises
of dreams and forever -
plantations in Greece, Italy, Spain.
Love letters and presents hidden around our camp cabins,
four years of love, friendship, promises
dissolved in a haze of disdain.

I may not remember the quadratic formula,
I may not remember Newton's third law,
but I'll never forget how you make my heart hammer,
even when you forget me.

XII.
I am
forgettable, only wishing to be remembered by someone, someday,
sad, looking for joy in things big and small.
A hypocrite, begging for proximity then crawling far, far away.
I am miserable, but passionate.
I am identical, but a glaring mistake.
I am what-if's, maybe's, and might-have-been's.
I am quoting Jethro Tull songs in my confessions.
I am words in my head that will never escape my lips,
I am words on my lips that should never have escaped my head.
I am things I'll never say and stories I'll never write,
I am singing in the shower, dancing in the halls,
I am running across busy streets in April
and sleeping in screened-in porches in June.

XIII.
And every time I wake up alone,
I'll stand in the yard, look up to the sky
and remind myself that the sun, too, is alone
but can still warm the earth with its love.

In you, there must be empathy,
For my madness, I've become.
No other names to call me by,
I am Mr. Numb.
The pain of the daily tastelessness,
Seems to lose itself in obscurity.
In the abstraction of shape and form,
I care to question me.

In you there must be hope,
For my mirror, you've become.
You will be my clarity,
I will not be numb.
The moment that we met,
Was ingrained within my mind,
But as the hours turned to days,
In the darkness, I now find...

Abstractions, you and tastelessness,
I'm found, obscured in loss.
My mind is the universe you reside within,
And emotion remains the boss,
As hours, weeks and years pass,
A moment becomes them all.
In the way a seed becomes a tree,
As we watch it slowly fall.

The moon woke me up for the third time this week. The white light always looked pleasant on our white comforter surrounded by the dark sky and empty room. As badly as I know we need curtains, I can’t stand the idea of buying new curtains for an apartment that couldn’t be more run down.  I turned over and watched your chest rise and fall as your body remained in its C shape.
I know your skin. I know every inch of it, the feeling of your five o’clock shadow, hidden birthmarks with freckles due east and west, the scars, and the stories that go along with each one.
I tiptoed over to the linen closet, hitting creaking floorboards between every honking taxicab on the avenue below. When I grabbed the accordion door handle, I could hear you rustling in the low thread count sheets.
“Come back to bed.” you said while yawning away last night.  
“Go back to sleep.” I let out some anxiety filled air with my words.
An ambulance and the Doppler Effect ran past our building, numbing my senses with the moment we were parallel.
“Why is every day a melodrama with you?” you sat up.
“Just please, please go back to bed” you were right, but I didn’t feel much like talking.
“I just can’t stand this much longer Natasha, I can’t stand living with someone who won’t talk to me.” Your voice faded and you stared into the moon’s beam of white light. I wanted to hate you for everything thing you were saying, for propelling me into his bed that night, for you changing and losing your luster, because we aren’t, and haven’t been what we used to be.  
“Just close your eyes, and just fall back asleep, it is really just that simple” I said firmly, hoping it would put our communication to an end. I stood at the linen closet for five minutes, pretending to look for a blanket that wasn’t there. I tiptoed back to our bed. Your body was as flat as a plank with your chest to the ceiling and your hands by your sides. Your eyes were open, and your skin hadn’t changed but I couldn’t match your eyes to my memory.

Freedom is existence, growth and persistence enacted through nonviolence such as passive resistance.

Freedom is expansion, past the bounds of your mind's mansion, to evolve with the environment like verses without scansion.

To revel in the expansion of your own spatial existence is like how treble leaves you dancing as the bass is Doppler shifting.

To enjoy the state of living in your temporal position is the very definition of the joy of manumission.

Now, there's no reason these nights can't
   dissemble our daytime woes.
With bottles uncorked, we'll paint
   friendly faces on daylight foes.

                     The ground's not shaking.
                     Your breath's just ragged.
                     Faces shine and cities glow...

but, come sunrise, we're flying blind,
            while keeping our heads low.

Still I remember the time that
   we chucked that radio
from that rooftop sinking to
   street level, speakers played Manilow

                     Transistors scattered
                     Our footsteps clattered
                     Down the fire escape we'd go

laughing hard, police up in arms
          alleyways lead us home

                        We wanted
                         to up and ******* leave

                         But we're tethered
                         to this place by our heartstrings

                         So we're always
                         celebrating our defeats

                         We wanted
                          to up and ******* leave

I'm off and running in circles
   around my own lasting fears
You're off the wagon and just
   rolling dice hung on rearview mirrors

                           We're contemplating
                            on relocating
                            back to those familiar years

but sunrise comes, we're twiddling thumbs
   and hoping stormclouds clear.

When I say everything is crashing to pieces,
Falling apart before my very unadulterated eyes,
I don't mean it as a metaphor.
No. I mean things are literally breaking to bits.

When I say everything is crashing to pieces, I mean
With every step I take across this suspension bridge, I can feel the ground give way to my weight and endlessly tumble and twist toward its impending demise to the unsuspecting ground below. (Albeit, it has yet to have trouble with the racing automobiles wizzing past me with a taunting doppler)

When I say everything is crashing to pieces, I mean
I have the Midas touch.
Only, when things come in brief contact with my fare skin, they need not turn into gold but rather chaos.

When I say everything is crashing to pieces, I mean
With every flip of the switch comes an explosion of glass bits and fiery yellow sparks shooting awry (give my thanks to the short fuse)

When I say everything is crashing to pieces, I mean
I attempt to live out my usual ordinary uneventful lifestyle, and I leave a wake of destruction in my route to the corner store! (Remind me to apologize to the florist- I'll have to get him some newly birthed petunias)

When I say everything is crahsing to pieces, I mean
I fear cutting onions lest the knife get fed up with being dulled by various vegitables and find its way to my throat, holding me hostage in the kitchen via blade tip to jugular

When I say everything is crashing to pieces, I mean
I would be far from surprised if the monsters under the bed had a mutiny and overthrew their sane captain who keeps them from overturning my mattress every night, bless him

When I say everything is crashing to pieces,
Falling apart before my very mundane eyes, I don't mean it figuratively.
No. Things are literally breaking into tiny wooden splinters.
But don't you for a second dilute your mind into thinking this bothers me in any way.
I've learned to just let the pieces fall where they may

I remember that first taste
of that first sweet college poetry class,
how much I wanted to learn,
how much I learned,
how much I didn't learn.
I remember that moment
when I realized that
    drone
is an onomatopoeia too,
not a comforting
blatting
wah-wah-waaah
of Sally Brown's first grade teacher,
or the baritone perfumed bath
of the religion teacher I hadn't yet had,
but the droning
in slow motion
or a drone
in slow motion,
buzzing, humming, droning by
in slow motion
too slow for the doppler effect
to dopple effectively.
I remember that first smell
of fear hanging in the air,
sharing in that cabaret of pain,
wearing hearts on ripped and bloodied sleeves,
baring our souls to demons who ate them for snacks,
understanding that the stacks of bodies
and broken minds
littering the halls
were the real lessons,
not the importance of breathing
or knowing Linklater from Viewpoints from
Organic Synergy from
how to get up when
a fat rock and a catwalk
in slow motion
pin you
in slow motion
to the north lawn
in slow motion
too slow for the doppler effect
to dopple effectively.

It will not have been a long time
that my parents sent someone with me
when I went to see the trains
after school and at the weekend

Far too often, they thought, but
I liked to be there, on the bridge
at the station, especially in this town
you could see old models pass

I know them blind, by their sound
the vibration of the viaduct
their smell if it doesn't blow too much
and the Doppler effect

It is mainly freight transport
yet the town is connected
to the big world
and still there are children

on their toes
to look over the wall
and I never saw a daredevil
scrambling on top of it

Quantify

We will ease into this twisted or rebellious look at what experts say is the top trend
For 2012 this quantifying was first done in ancient abbeys but they did it on the front end you were
Told how long to meditate, pray, copy older manuscripts but now technology is going to do it at the end
And it is called the quantified self a top magazine that writes about these things says there are already
Three big hitters geared and going already their data bases are going to record practically every human
Action then it will give you a read out numerically where you can strategies a perfect day even the writer
Knows how much he wrote last year how much the better writers wrote and with less words they
Received better results on hits or they will tell you how many steps how many calories they have a
Sleep machine that will use Doppler radar and it will tell you when you’re in deep sleep track your sleep
Cycle show when it is best to get up yes it has all positives cut down on wasted expenditure of energy
Come out ahead for the day in less time but it will mean you have to be self driven I never respond well
To the whip I don’t care who’s holding it and if they have sleep machines not far behind will be intimacy
Meters all of a sudden the geeks and nerds will be gods the woman turns on the **** his eyes light up
Like a plane ready to taxi and his bow tie will start to twirl like a propeller but listen to two regular guys
Man I can’t take it I use to beg like a dog now she smiles real big then she takes the only key turns the
Lousy thing on turns the **** to the slowest point you can’t even ride a bike at that speed you just fall
Over you think you have it bad my wife almost twist the **** off I feel like a greyhound at the track but
I’m the only one in the pack that knows the rabbit isn’t real who wants to chase a sock on mechanized
Rod you go twenty five it goes twenty six well you know who is going to have a career resurgence Kirk
Douglass all of this whooped up speed nonsense all he will have to do on screen is ride down the street
Top down doing ten miles an hour hey Kirk you’re my hero the one per centers will scream what’s with
That ole **** the new rebel will be the day dreamer standing idle watching a cloud pass slowly over head
I can just see all the animals going bald from the stress some jack rabbit wanting them to eat faster sleep
Less forget the flees one guy said he tried to shoot himself but the ammo is so out dated and slow he
Kept missing his head Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn will not only be classics but new best sellers and all a
Painter will to paint is a bare foot kid with a straw hat and a fishing pole they will sell like hot cakes to
Frazzled out over achievers we had a New Yorker move into our Midwestern town and take a job at the local
Factory that’s the way it will be he looked like he was on video tape being fast forwarded and we were
On regular speed and when he talked it was like the old LP records when you put it on the wrong speed
He was talking a mile a minute and sounded like Alvin the chipmunk where we were on the slow speed
And we fell in a vat of molasses turtles that talk my final word I miss the good old day

red green blue
converge to white
reveal what's true
ever of spite

yellow red blue
diverge from white
expressed in color
received in grey
or the other way

yellow red blue
converge to black
yellow cyan magenta
follow suit

reflection refraction
doppler shift

wave and photon
linger the grift

By the end of this poem, those once vibrant
shall slough off in horizons of necrosis.
As I tap out completion,
their summer cedes to countless performances;
actors bow before the closing curtain of Autumn.

The maelstrom of summer-lovers lulls to a murmur
And the great Mevlana’s couplets and Khayyam’s quatrains
Float away on the formations of down-bound geese.
You’ll hear the Doppler shift of devotion’s goodbye
On the whines of the locomotive’s whistle.

By the end of this poem, the thistle fades
from heliotrope to gun metal gray.
The clandestine scent of “once-whens”
Wafts into a future of “now-agains.”
Yet, this new Fall is bittersweet.
Before another ******* of trees,
a red rose blushes in reminiscence.

By this poems end, I’ll be in love
with the chill of an approaching season
wearing the brightest flower in my garden of poetry
One last choke on the rising smoke
as the last painful stanza goes
Into the solemn procession
toward the sacred pyre of leaves.

i sit across her
on the round table

i see her delicate hands
twirling on the spoon
on this ethereal summer noon
when she looks incredibly pretty
beneath the cobwebbed ceiling
amid the Doppler noise of the city
her eyes on the coffee
and mine on her.

Hidden behind a myriad of
guises and castings of a
thousand projected distortions,
he brought himself
     suspended like a pendant
        
          detached
                 &
                    objective.

I bequeathed a
tumult of love,
tumbled down
the scope of
archaic collective conflict
that shook with a spiral quake like
the wakening of my
hallowed   g  a     s           p -
the corridor echoing of the first gallop.

Lifted the skirted veils of
celestial taffeta,
surrendered to the
feats and enchantments of
The Rider
who arrived on a
rogue wave,
crest and trough and
splendorous swells of
blue and white,
reverberating from
essence centre
like Doppler
outward my firmament fingertips,
cascading around the sphere
in astral star fall,
an overflowing cup of Milky Way
and melting atoms
into grains of sand
between the blended confines of
here and                                there,
escaped to the ever expansive space,
Empyrean emptiness.

I cannot do this.
I fear.
I fear repetition.
Repetition that I crave, yet also repulses me at the same time.
An internal battle between neurons and ventricles and atriums.
My chest burst open today when I recognized the face
under that mocked brim and,
for two moments,
the Doppler effect was just something scientists invented to make themselves feel better.
But it all came crashing down without
the connection of soul windows.
Blue? Brown?
Who remembers.
Remember is such a simply complicated word.

I fear the anger
and the holes in the wall
and the murderous screams.
and ripping church out of ears and heart and mind.
cause that hurts.

I fear November.
My best and worst two days in heaven.
And how badly I would...do...want that to happen again.

Next I fear the eyeless,
lipstick,
lover of hands.
The shallow one with a faux deep soul.
The hypocrite.
Her acid words that burn through screens.
They rip away the moment they penetrate my skin and touch my heart.
I fear her disapproval.
because she will disapprove,
this I know.
Silver tongue like the snake.
Venom pointed at me, her sister.
Betrayed.
So she will disapprove and that means much.

Then I fear giving half of my heart,
that is his,
away.
Well, it wouldn't be half, because is it still dipped deep in love.
So a sixteenth of my heart-his heart- and that is still much.
For us.

It is just a crush. and that is it.
But isn't that how everything starts?
Tender pressings on your heart until they become the pulses and beats and poundings and crushing sensations.
Once.
Once.
Only once that has happened to me.
Still is.
And even if it is unrequited,
I fear losing that.
I fear fearing.
I fear rejection.
I fear losing the one thing that I care about.
and I fear not finding something.
Or finding it to only lose it in a few months time.

So I will refrain.

there is a shift
in light the universe
the curve of your face
call it Doppler shift
light changes color
in your grey irises
the way sound changes pitch
in your insistent breath

galaxies and their stars
like interlaced fingers
the galaxies farthest
are moving faster
away from the Milky Way
and your grey irises
galaxies run
bright blue
tremble in the void
caress sky lightly

space drifts and presses
on space
leaves behind
nothing but more space
the way
marble tile in a museum bathroom
echoes in your grey irises