Lovesick and you've got the cure.
Got all these symptoms. You know what for.
Don't be afraid of this contagious disease,
Just take my requisition form.

I've made room for you in my atria and ventricle.
You're the capillary to my arteriole and venule.
You're the amniotic fluid to the child in my heart.
I find you even in the interstitial parts.

Treatment like uours is like a centrifugAl force.
So be the **** stasis my heart is longing for.
Some homeostasis is what we need.
We will make compromises to succeed.

Lay me supine and you in prone.
Sensory neurons fire
Exocrine glands make to pressure
Spark endocrine glands to hear you moan.

Without your heart I'd be anemic.
Withiutbyour arms I'd be half a paraplegic.
Your kisses give me air, without them I'm cyatonic.
You're the fibrin in my veins, to my pain an anesthetic.

I'm ready for some long-term care and affection.
Got a chronic condition that needs your attention.
I k now I'm concluded, parts of me sclerosed.
Don't wait post mortem to know that you're the most.

you're like lavender hills
and tropical skies
the words between my lips
and the warmth between my thighs

Happenstance to the melancholic gives leave the sin of pride.
Inbound reconnaissance tells not the bearer of influence.
Squeamish at first: a foreshadowing of calamitous bonding.

A space between the mark of corporeal and the ethereal; a stringent hiatus
That which rattles the concrete foundation of morality is scarcely a malleable recourse.
Regret stains the unfounded soul: an enigma of ephemeral perforations.

A separation of the unmitigated humanities; misandry topples the writhing snake.
Impact; a cleansing of the maker's flaws integrated solemnly.
Complacency arrests the administration of the abhorred; unbridled is the autonomy of a guru.  

Ambivalent giftedness burdens the reliant and haughty.
A flick of the tongue brings forth the cinema mortem.
Castaway: alone to wade in the sea of obscenities.

A temporal causality allows no mourning to abscond.
Negligence is not the enemy, but indulgent wrath.
Hesitant: a stroke of qualia begets the end of a maiden.

I'd been trying to write a poem
Just one ******* poem
But he said
Just **** around
Swallow down a bowl full of squares
Let’s play games with each other’s minds
Spend a night lost in a house of cards
Where the joker cackles despite your begging
A reminder of what I could do without
Shouting at the world from the white pavilion
You suckers!
With your skirts hitched up and tongues hanging out
Gagging on a lover’s loneliness
All I see is your undergarments crying for attention
With a liquor solace barely down your throat

Eighteen silver blades
Smile at me with their perfect teeth
One to mark each year that past
A nineteenth will not be necessary
Ready to drag
Like the man trailing his head on a string
Across the surgeon’s winking knife
Tapping their toes on the bathroom counter
Anxious to mingle with my flesh
I’ve already scrubbed in
The survival rate looks dismal
The cotton reel loosens and my halo slips
Down - the noose around my neck

He sat across the room in plaid
Remarked upon the crosshatch of red
That drew the crooked red grin on the white of my thigh
Like loops of raspberry liquorice
Seeping out sticky tears
He misses handling the vegetables
Who ordered cocktails in lurid colours
Well, I’ve a mélange of my own
A collection of prescriptions from the doctor’s office
Stored in a heart shaped box
To swallow down like jelly beans
I’m waiting for that deadly sugar rush

Death’s been dancing on my doorstep
Absent minded as I sit at the dinner table
Head in hand, foot in grave
There’ll be no morning migraine
Perhaps a little mourning in the peripheral vision
Swept up from beneath the climbing frame
Under a soil blanket with a tomb stone mattress
Coughing up the sand in my throat
That I emptied from the egg-timer
Those darling quadrilateral crystals
Blissful in their ignorance  
Disturbing my quiet complacency
Drowned in a glass of tomato juice
That I poured from my skull
Death holds my hand in the dark
And I whisper to pass on the message
Bury me with pyjama’s and a pillow

The Crickets cackle “crisp,”
With an only interruption, being I,
Atop dust, whisper and
Desert highway.
I’d tell you if I were running,
But I’m not quite sure, not yet,
Leaving the Coyote to eat,
Respite, and devoured,
The singing Crickets,
A’howl later,
To deliver answers unimpeded.

I have a faint memory –
A snake’s grip promised, via hand and
Crystal contingency,
“Wiser,” once bestowed, the mystic;
An epic complete, atop 17 years of thunder,
Steel stained crimson,
Street stained whimper
And forever remaining,
“Under-construction.”

Symbolic a more relevant scaffold,
½ bamboo and the other steel, the tower,
Note ‘fore me, it’s only purpose –
Elsewhere, and anonymous,
While I tap my belly to some
Melody we’d once enjoyed;
Maybe something by, “Coltrane,”
Or maybe not; but music we’d both
Recognize and reminisce too.

It’s an awkward alchemy of sorts,
As the Crickets, post-mortem,
Persist if only to chirp, and the Coyote mulls.
When the dust continues to cake.
When the whisper finds newer ears.
When interrupt’s abrupt, erupts,
Pacifies and interrupts again;
My precious distraction –
An amnesia loyal in away from, “then.”
Somewhere beyond, “there,”
And onward, “anew.”

Etymologically,
          paradise
is inherited from the Latin
          paradisus
and the Greek
          paradeisos
and ultimately an ancient Iranian root --
          pairi daêza.

In theory, paradise is a religious term. By that definition, paradise is a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless. It is conceptually a counter-image of the miseries of human civilization; in paradise, there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness.
It’s absurd, though, how we provide ourselves with such a convenient idea, a carrot for all mankind to share in our relentless drive towards death. It’s absurd that we must rely on such nonsensical ideals to inspire us to adhere to literal, arbitrarily-dictated morals. “Thou shalt not do things we say you probably shouldn’t.
Except sometimes.”
“Actually, whenever, as long as you feel bad about it and spend a moment kneeling quietly and thinking something along the lines of ‘So, like, sorry -- my bad. It won’t happen again, unless it does.’”
The fundamental mistake here is attempting to delineate the existence of Man with an old book and relentless propaganda and childhood indoctrination and threats of post-mortem punishment, but more on topic -- why can’t one just live the right way without this kind of artificial motivation? It’s a juvenile concept that we’ve taken much too far. It marginalizes the human race -- “listen, Man, if you eat all your broccoli, then you can have dessert.” But what happens in this situation, when the dessert isn’t real?
What I mean to say is that maybe you should eat your broccoli because it’s healthy, and because, besides what society has attempted to instill in you, it might actually be tasty if you give it a chance.
Live for now. Care about people now. Because you don’t get anything afterwards; however cynical it may be, dessert is just a cold grave or a flame designed for whole incineration of your being. Paradise is now.

On the day
her body burned
she asked the
winds to be
her friends
and they
picked her
up and poured
her through
the fingers of
their hands
like a river
without ending
that won't
be tied or
bound, until
every trace of
dust embraced
the freedom it
had found.

It is not my story to tell:
Languishing dreams in the midst of barbed wire fences,
Fearless laughter,
We add lemon, chile powder and salt to this border.

They carry these stories,
Heavy as a sack filled with indignities,
Weighty, like your grandmother’s advice,
Cumbersome, like this daily mental displacement.

I have not bought big things as of lately,
In my mind I plan my exits,
I constantly check my relocation fund,
“What if” is a constant in my lexicon.

I often break in tears at the sound of an immigrant story,
My emotions become gallons of water:
broken and splashed by the boots of immigration officers,
Little do they know, we are cacti:
Tough and our seeds also flourish post mortem.

I want to sing an immigrant song:
Less like butterflies who migrate,
But more like dislocated nations,
Collateral flesh, caught up in steel thorns.

Rest assured we will survive,
Like leaves of siempreviva,
Even after torn away from our stem,
We will grow our own roots:
Defiant, resilient, and with a stubborn willingness to belong.

We are you.

Did you read about the father
Who met the girl
With his daughter's eyes.
The gift of sight.
Post-mortem.

Then I read about the mother
Who gave her son a kidney.
The gift of ***.
Pre-mortem.

Finally, I met a girl
Forty years ago
Still using my heart.
The gift of love.
Eternal.

In flight, cloud pours winged ink,
feathered in atmospheric caption,
in and out, as a cursor blinks,
gliding portal-- ground casting.

a falling feather stroking air,
day's mind--now nigrescence,
torch waving in drip drop lair,
corvid "kaaw"--all sides pressing.

blackness: it is infinite cursive,
folded 'round a writer's eyes.
A hearse' undulating curtain,
the wings-- as the crow flies.
*
sound of the internal chasm,
shamen of post-mortem height,
feathered pen will spasm,
with morsel--writhing in and out of light.

Do not talk of the honey I pickled in your light bulbs

They do not have the map to help us reach The Alps

Just talk of the hungry flower growing on my lungs

At least they have the address to the hut on my palms

That’s drawn by the little girl who feasted on the chalks

The butterflies long ago planted along in their pulse.


Quick,  


Incinerate the 1800s post-mortem portraits

In black light's faked midnight perfumes

For you are my forlorn apostrophe high on gas

That might ask questions while telling us your tales

Or reluctantly whisper ****** things about Laqus

Who is wasting us to the wistful hell flowers.

I’ve whittled shelves into my body to try and bring an

order to things. All it did was make space.

So many shelves like staircases built in anger.

Winding forcefully

until they end right where I stand.


2. There are days I wash my face with vinegar

and soak my fists in horse *****. I use it to

conceal the musty smell of forgotten Bibles.


3. It’s while God is in my novels,

that I see my bedroom floor.

A junkyard of loose-leaf prayers,

my boots go out of their way to step on

dry crunchy ones.

I can hear the breaking, and it’s satisfying.

The acrid smell of fall

in my mouth,

I bite my lip just to feel the sting.


4. The phantom pain in my chest tastes like cotton

stuck to my teeth.


5. I am Leonid Rogozov in Antarctica, I’ve built my

staircase-shelves by cutting into myself,

only local-numbness needed.


6. No, my shelves are not staircases.

Shelves never extend forward. Just, upward.

A little too much like trees,

not permanent enough in the ground.


7. It all reduces to sawdust anyway, collected

on the bedroom floor.

I’ve been sweeping it up for 40 days now,

each day, a little more.

One day, the floor will be clean.


8. You say, “You are made of blessings.” I say, “No, I’m made of blood

and skeleton bones.”


9. I love You. You say you love me.

Some days, that’s enough.


10. Today, Just yellow-

brown pages and

nothing resembling gospels.


11. I wasn’t born, I just walked in

one quiet evening and started living


12. After every shelf I whittle I still ask,

What is numbered in my life?


13. Things will change, things will change.

Things will change.


14. I have layers and layers of papier-mâché skins you can thumb

through like pages.

You’ve peeled them away,

each becoming more raw and permanent.

The cleanliness worries me.


15. There are 17 different kinds of fractures:

non-displaced, complete, oblique, transverse, comminuted, greenstick,

simple, linear, incomplete, compound, compacted, avulsion,

compression, stress, impacted, displaced, spiral and fatigue.

Believing in You makes me tired.


16. ‘Post mortem nihil, ipsaque mors nihil’

Death built its own shelves

After My body was felled.


17. When it’s you resting on my tree-shelves,

I begin to see an end.

Books are the most efficient weapons in the world.

You are
every fallen piece of skin
and strand of hair you
left behind, along with
the perfume that
I can't seem to wash
from my pillow.

I spilled your love into my
sink and tried to wash it with
formaldehyde,
I bartered your words away to
the 90% of the grey matter
I don't use,
I taught myself to pretend
every emotion in your eyes
were just a mirror of mine-
but, despite all of this,
I can never coax my
memories to reject you.

This body was never your temple.
It was never your kingdom.
It was your carpet,
which you burned with each
steely gaze and flaming word,
and which you trampled upon after
every storm.

You were every broken stone I
painted bone-white
after you hurled them into the heavens
only to watch them fall
again-
onto me.

Carving your name into my ribs,
you taught me to
sigh you into existence
each post-mortem night,
and I haven't found a room yet
where I can breathe without
inhaling you in
again.

husks of albino spiders crumbling
deep within the bowels of icy caves.

shells of those speckled black and brown,
rolling like tumbleweed across dead plains.

orange fangs slimed with millenniums of muck,
drowning deeper into the bogs, each inch worth a thousand years.

glossy black  carcasses entwined in their own webs,
swollen abdomen draining, but growing heavy with dust and gnats.

People of Wal-Mart:
what the **** is wrong with you?
You are reducing our lives
and prices in unison...

Today, in passing, i saw on T.V.
a special report:  a year
after super-storm Sandy, New Jersey
still hasn't gotten its
sand dunes back.

This is news?

It took 5 years for the
Gulf Coast to begin recovering
from Hurricane Opal.
No national headlines about
Okaloosa Island a year later.
It was flat.  It didn't
used to be.

A year after Hurricane  Katrina,
all i heard was that Kanye West
thought President Bush didn't
care about black people.  But
Wal-Mart helped with logistics
deliveries.  Because Bush asked (kind of).
We  basically lost a major city
that time.

Where was our airborne toxic event?
Our 15 minutes post mortem?

Thanks for helping, Wal-Mart.
But this is all your fault.

Because without cheaper stuff,
the People of Wal-Mart
would still be able to think.
They would know that
consumerism is great, but also
that it is an identity crisis.
A buzz in their heads.
Our nation fights wars
for capitalism,
but our soldiers fight
for their lives.

So i will see you on
Black Friday, Wal-Mart.

We are dying here in the
South, we have to save
a penny where ever we can.

And, People of Wal-Mart, don't forget:
No president cares about any individual.
The greater good prevails.
And **** your sand dunes, New Jersey.

I need to write a poem about a ***** cell
something that illustrates
the magnitude
of existence, specifically
.5 our origin.
This poem should pluck heart strings,
our strum like violin (redundant?)
as that’s what good poems do,
and we are emotionally wired
from birth to death.
During conception
our parents were not thinking about us (though
God was, and his warmth
is warmer than the womb
or Sun) and that brings us to the pleasure
the stimuli integrated
within the net
mesh pocket of living organisms.
What strokes a heart? Not a violin,
no, empathy, understanding, the saliva
of love and lust and passion, so much to
discuss, so many images
to muster into paper.
Do you see the futility in this?
**** this poem,
this poem is not important.
You are the individual that rocked the chances of time and genetics!
You are the individual that mastered death with breath!
You are known before birth and post mortem,
as there is transcendence beyond
that ancient brain of yours, dear reader.
There were billions of potential combinations
of ***** and egg, and you
are the ***** fish caught,
and you
are the one bathed
and you
are one of ***** suds.

Your rituals of wallets and currency,
your miss-personifications of love,
all irrelevant.
You are only known whole-ly by God

What do you know about silence?
Silence on the other end of the phone.
No breathing.
No laughing.
No crying.
Silence.
The white noise of fear.

What do you know about helplessness?
Helplessness in your own eyes.
Nothing you can do.
Nothing you can say
Nothing but watching
Helplessness
The catylyst of fear

What do you know about loss?
Loss of you mind, your friend.
It's too late he's gone
It's too late he's forgotten
It's too late you're crying
The post-mortem of fear

What do you know about me?
Me and my tired eyes.
Numb is my mind
Numb are my fingers
Numb everywhere
The desolation of fear

*The Suicide Diaries

Aries: We are walking in the forest. You are slightly in front of me and talking about your favorite tv show. You ask a question, I can tell because the end of your sentence raises. I apologize for not paying attention, you say it doesn’t matter and that it was a dumb question to begin with. I know you’re upset, but then again, we are breaking each other’s heart while trying to keep the other one alive. Our heart beats sync into one and I wonder if this is heaven on earth.

Taurus: It is nearly October and although the leaves have not all fallen, we are playing in piles of orange and brown. You are laughing about a distant memory of your dad that has somehow made you forget all the bad he has caused. I grab your hand, which makes you stop mid-sentence. You start rubbing my palm with your thumb, you draw a heart then close my hand. We were never the type to have completely comfortable silence, but at that moment I believe silence is the only thing that feels right.

Gemini: I am ringing your doorbell on a spring day during grade 12. You told me to come over before you left to go back west. I love seeing you smile and it is the first time it has been genuine in years. You finally answer the door and greet me with a hug that felt like it could take away all my problems. I have often wondered what it would be like to be yours but then again, you have always been mine.

Cancer: We are talking about a future neither of us are well enough to live until. I often hope you will outlive me, because it will be hard to explain to everyone why my happiness fled post-mortem. The sun is almost rising and it is now that we realize how much we will miss the other. There are still broken plates from the night before and we try to sweep them up as well as our half eaten hearts or maybe bagels. We have each other but that does not always mean we are there for each other.

Leo: Christmas was never either of our favorite holidays, which gives our families another reason to call us the black sheep. We are driving down a wooded road and your hand is on my knee. I turn down the radio where some classic rock song is playing a guitar riff that reminds me of your dad. I open my mouth to say something about how much I wish we were happier but then I remember that bringing those things up will only make you more upset. Maybe this is the year that Christmas is no longer blue.

Virgo: We are sitting across the table in your dad’s condo while drinking some form of mixed drink we didn’t bother to name. It is super bowl Sunday and your father is making himself a sandwich. He’s been living alone for quite some time now and I can tell it hurts you to see him lonely. I am watching you, watch him and it makes me smile. I realize that although we are alone, we are alone together.

Libra: We are sitting in your childhood treehouse when it starts to rain. I am tugging at my own sleeves wondering if I am still able to feel my own body warmth. It is Thanksgiving break and our hometown seems like something out of a young adult novel that became a movie. I want to tell you that I missed you but soon the drugs will take effect and then I’ll be able to blame my feelings on that. Our high makes our heads fall on each other which causes you to fall asleep. Your breaths slow and you start making sleep noises that remind me of Saturday morning cartoons. Your hair tickles my neck and it is then that I realize, this is love.

Scorpio: There are raindrops on your shirt as you walk in our favorite coffee shop to meet me. You’re wearing a slouchy beanie that makes you look like an indie rock musician. I smile and wave from across the room, hoping you won’t notice my tear stained cheeks. You take a seat across from me and I start wondering if you are running late on purpose or if you really did lose track of time. You ask me how I have been and I the same, but it is different. Not forced, per say, but more so it seems like having small talk with me has become a chore. I look back at my overdue essay, the cursor is taunting me and you alike. We spend the rest of our date in silence, minus the occasional sips of Chai and keyboard clicks.

Sagittarius: You call me well before sunrise yet it is still late. You are sobbing quietly and of course I ask what happened. You explain to me how life does not seem worth living more than usual tonight and how better off everyone would be without you. We continue to talk up to sunrise and it is then that we can finally say goodnight or I guess good morning. I let you hang up first because I know how easily your heart gets broken. I want to tell you how I wish I could’ve held you or even held you longer but it is too late. We are across the country in apartments so similar it’s scary. I wish knowing people loved you from 2000 miles away was enough for you to stay alive, but we were never that black and white.

Capricorn: We are driving down a country road where your grandfather used to take you. You take a turn too fast and dirt spirals up, blocking my line of vision. You laugh as though death was on either of agendas. I have always loved your laugh and nothing, not even the fact that you are leaving in two weeks, could take that away. I want to tell you about my classes and new friends but I know that will cause the weird jealousy that overtakes you during the fall months. You have always been my favorite color and I am terrified of running out of paint because you are so rare. I love the freckles in your eyes and the way you sometimes elongate my name as if in tune to a nursery rhyme. As the sun sets I am reminded that this was never a reality just a more truthful fallacy.

Aquarius: It is a rainy April night and we are listening to cars pass over the wet street, both of our favorite soundtracks. You are watching a cat run into the alleyway across from your apartment. I get up off the grey ottoman that separates the living room and kitchen. When you first moved here, you were scared of the vastness that a loft provides but you said with me there it felt more like a home. I am reminded of this everytime I see you with someone new, which seems unfair to you but then again it is me that you are hurting. I put on another kettle to make more tea although neither of us enjoy the taste. You are watching me now and I can tell you want to say something but decide against it last minute. I want to ask you what you’re thinking but I already know the answer. After half drank tea cups dictate your coffee table, we reside to our respected places in your unmade bed. You take my hand in yours and place it on your heart; it is then that I realize you were made for me yet I was not for you.

Pisces: I am drawing shapes on your back as you drift off into light sleep, only waking up to describe new ideas for movies neither of us are motivated enough to make. You sit up abruptly and run your fingers through your unwashed hair. You check the time and say we should get going. We are meeting your family for a dinner, most likely with a discussion we won’t be prepared to have. I fix your tie, it’s the one your father let you borrow for your great uncle’s funeral last fall. You give yourself a thumbs up in the bathroom mirror which makes me laugh. I can tell you are nervous by the way you’re chewing your bottom lip. Taking your hand, I reassure you that we are real and this is real. On our way to your childhood home, I can’t help but think we are each other’s missing piece.

Does this make me look
Deeper, more intellectual
Perhaps I'm a Sylvia Plath
Poems emerging out of me due
To the pigsty of a brain I've obtained
Or even I'm Emily Dickinson
I'll lock these god forsaken poems up
Only to be discovered after
I have died.
Having once again the chance to
Become immortal, post mortem
All due to the poems I thought
Were ****.
I'll just keep writing.
I won't write for the sake of calling
Myself a Writer
But because I can forever exist, to forever be.
All of the personal pronouns constantly
Utilized in these writings evoke a
Feeling of self-hatred out of
My own narcissism,
What else did Emily Dickinson accomplish
That was impressive, before dying?
Simply she died, writing with until her old wrinkled hands
gave out
the pen fell.