i used to lie awake
smitten. enamored. giddy.
itemizing your sweet details
fondly reminiscing
the thought of you was too delectable to trade for sleep.

sleep is still elusive
you are still the cause
but the thought of you is sour to taste.
you unfailingly pervade my thoughts.
memories are tainted
exacerbated by the comparative sweetness they (you) once promised

i wish i could just collar you and make you hear all the things i tell myself i'd say.
until then, insomnia's got me clutched in its pitiless talons.

this spider wraps its acquaintances
into easy packages
constructing webs around observation

its foundation catches prey
automatically
it bites the heads
off its mates

but it loves most
those who defy these expectations
cannot be contained
or predicted

at first they're an adversary
but that maintains a purpose
which this spider chooses to uphold

what truly engages this spider challenges its livelihood
escapes its method
not for strength or validation
but to reveal its routine was not purposeful at all

Then his wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity?
Curse God, and die.”
— Job 2:9

Job was a rich man
who, in a trial of divine justice,
was dismantled of all he owned
by a fire that fell from heaven.
Sick and God-blinded, he repented.

But who speaks of his wife’s suffering?
Perhaps she was a woman who took great joy
in things and possessions and luxuries.
Perhaps she sat on heaps of soot,
itemizing the absolute sum of her loss,
calling out to God in argument, crying:

“In whom can I have faith
when the Giver takes that which is given?
And when the love of that
which is loved, and given, and taken,
is instilled in me by the Lover,
the Giver, the Taker?

“Now, I live for nothing.
I long for death, but it does not come.
And yet You have ensured
I survived to tell You this.”

Apple blossom
Gutter rhyme
Misplaced memory
Loving pine

Another time
A quick dime
Recipes for two
Mistook me for you

I'm alone here
There it is
Pressed' sun
Hanging moon

An outcasts eye
Fresh shepherds pie
Gain share logic
No money in my pocket

Locket lost
Sea farers woes
A little in lace
Distracted pace

Hunter blitz
Lover's kiss
Spellbound in time
A witches cry

Un-absolute love
Cold bed sheets
Milky white sky
Scarlet tied lie

Beer in the morning
Beer in the afternoon
A lover's quarrel
A single man croons

Six pillows in the month of July
Fraternity politics
A shaping of a coup
Take the tooth

Breast feeding young
Red swollen tongue
Naked rings on frail fingers
Death doth linger

Marshmallow hiccups
Grass fed nightmares
Grandma was forgotten
The lights must be turned off

Ice on the walls
Earth on the move
People here
People everywhere

Sin in sentences
Breathtaking passages
History hovers over us
Grave are always

Too large

Itemizing life
Cataloguing it all
One more prize
Before the great fall

Sequence of smiles
Remedy my memory
Pluck my eyelids
Take away my pride

Quieted down
Sleeping through the day
Seeing the future
She can't stay

In tune
Harmony
Of
Three

What else is
There
To do but
Be?