Bare-handed, I hand the combs.
The man in white smiles, bare-handed,
Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet,
The throats of our wrists brave lilies.
He and I

Have a thousand clean cells between us,
Eight combs of yellow cups,
And the hive itself a teacup,
White with pink flowers on it,
With excessive love I enameled it

Thinking 'Sweetness, sweetness.'
Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells
Terrify me, they seem so old.
What am I buying, wormy mahogany?
Is there any queen at all in it?

If there is, she is old,
Her wings torn shawls, her long body
Rubbed of its plush ----
Poor and bare and unqueenly and even shameful.
I stand in a column

Of winged, unmiraculous women,
Honey-drudgers.
I am no drudge
Though for years I have eaten dust
And dried plates with my dense hair.

And seen my strangeness evaporate,
Blue dew from dangerous skin.
Will they hate me,
These women who only scurry,
Whose news is the open cherry, the open clover?

It is almost over.
I am in control.
Here is my honey-machine,
It will work without thinking,
Opening, in spring, like an industrious ******

To scour the creaming crests
As the moon, for its ivory powders, scours the sea.
A third person is watching.
He has nothing to do with the bee-seller or with me.
Now he is gone

In eight great bounds, a great scapegoat.
Here is his slipper, here is another,
And here the square of white linen
He wore instead of a hat.
He was sweet,

The sweat of his efforts a rain
Tugging the world to fruit.
The bees found him out,
Molding onto his lips like lies,
Complicating his features.

They thought death was worth it, but I
Have a self to recover, a queen.
Is she dead, is she sleeping?
Where has she been,
With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?

Now she is flying
More terrible than she ever was, red
Scar in the sky, red comet
Over the engine that killed her ----
The mausoleum, the wax house.

I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”
There's A Wocket In My Pocket by Dr. Seuss

Drowning inside hands.
A fluorescent chime.
Skin scrubbed radiation.
Force-feeding plastic and sugar and flesh.
Pushing and pulling until tendons flail weathered
Up. And. Down.
Up and down upanddown until the store of powders, prints, nails tumble out carmine and is sobbing
gagging on a high chair.
The candied calculator like heart-shaped pupils and sticky soles.  
Opaque ID’s and strands of you abandoned in navy sheets.
Shoulder tassels taught on Adam’s apple.

Love stitches bedding and hollows bodies.
Love lights the West and lines waste baskets wet.
Love is a little girl vomiting into a lion’s den.

I am the raven,
I eat the dead,
I am the raven,
I remember all things,
I am the raven,
I build all,
I am the raven,
I know all things.

I am the otter,
In rivers and creeks I swim,
I am the otter,
I eat and I play,
I am the otter,
On slopes I slide,
Joy is mine,
In the mountain streams,
I own the rivers,
I feed on their fish.

I am the snake,
The serpent I am,
Between and through move I,
On belly I crawl,
Gold are my scales,
Glacier blue and silver,
All colours they change,
First one then the other,
I taste the air with my tongue,
Through my belly,
I listen to all,
Far craftier than all,
The beast of the field am I.

I am the fox,
The vixon am I,
Crafty and wise,
And hard to catch,
In the ground I live,
Cross the fields I race,
Quick and fast,
I take what I want,
Nothing is safe,
If it I desire,
A vixon am I,
Fleet foot and large tail,
Back and forth it moves,
Grace and escasy,
All come to me,
All I desire.

I am hawk,
I soar and I fly,
Above the plains,
All things I see,
None see what I see,
From up above,
Down I soar,
To **** and eat,
Still on a wire,
Or on a fence,
I know when to wait,
I know when it's time,
When prey is in sight,
Not a second to lose.

I am the vole,
Who lives in the field,
Down in the earth,
I burrow and dig,
Across the field,
All seeds are mine,
To eat and enjoy,
From dusk until dawn,
Timid and cautious,
I look to the sky,
I cannot fight,
I'm weak and I'm small,
But many am I,
And many more come,
And still we will be,
When all you are gone.

I am the owl,
Silent and still,
You know not I passed,
Only my wind,
Silent end deadly,
Queen of the night,
I will consume,
Whatever I catch.

I am the horse,
Across the plains do I run,
Swifter than all,
The one none can catch,
I run like the wind,
For we are one kind,
My mane and my tail,
Like banners and flags,
Nothing can stop us,
Nothing can try,
For we're always moving,
The fast wind and I.

I am the trout,
See how my scales glisten,
I am the trout,
At home in the water,
I swim and I breathe,
What causes others to drown,
I listen to the water,
The rivers, the creeks, the lakes,
The secrets I know,
No others can know.

I am the eagle,
High, high I soar,
Queen of the high places,
All others beneath,
What is not prey,
I care not at all,
I and I only,
See what I see.

But above all tonight,
The fox and vixon am I,
****** and sensual,
Grace and desire,
In the land where the sun sets,
This land that is dusk,
I am all ***,
The kiss of the dead,
The dusk sets like dust,
It powders my fur,
In the night do I hunt,
In the night do I *****,
My fur is desire,
My tail moves and calls,
I walk here as ***,
All come to my call.

~I Am the Fox by Lorekeeper, June 7, 2014

Colorful, tasty
Sticky swirls, canes, and powders
Make the tongue delight.

Ambulance, paramedics
Diabetic coma; sigh

There is pleasure's sigh, there is despair's sigh,
Adorned with a sweet smile or a sour cry,
Screaming both in the night with no reply,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

All places of Tokyo change at night,
Streets are flowing rivers of gleamy light,
Lit-neon signs glowing at every sight,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

More footsteps have been set in these lit-streets,
Than the words have been said in these lit-streets,
Or the numbers of debt in these lit-streets,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Glamorous in the busy night like pearls,
Hostess girls show to men a sight like pearls,
With smiles and teeth who're white like pearls,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Girls who're shining like jewels are adored,
Who quickly by empty wallets get bored,
By the men who these sweet gems can afford,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

As long as bars shine with signs of neon,
The crowds in this city are going on,
Until they are put out at times of dawn,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Lights are reflected as blurs in each pool,
Who distort the sights like the alcohol,
Who is served in passionate bars as cool,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Water's flowing in the water business,
Who's to the old days a reminiscences,
Where the thin rules of the night are boundless,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Unlike the tradition of the flower,
Here they paint faces to take a powder,
And then embrace the ones with much power,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

The alcohol is poured down like the rain.
How hide drunkenness from whiskey and champagne,
They put powders on the face to look plain,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Adored, desired and loved is every star,
Who strolls around or drinks in every bar,
By each man with a luxuriant car,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

Mâhî's still to Tokyo a stranger,
Both to its pleasure and to its danger,
Where the eyes at night only see a blur,
Under the glamorous buildings up high,
Who are standing under the blue night sky.

i can no longer understand how now,
this sleeplessness at night,
when the world is waking in other places
so far away from me,
to the ethereal powders of the breeze,
that paints the morning with its poetry,
as the phantom of the love i love,
causes me to awaken with a cry.

It's going to rain, rain, it's going to rain,
those sleek-silver drops will take me back again,
to those cobbled, winding streets,
the raucous, song-filled pubs,
and the green, the green, the red-brick,
granite and oh! the green,
the steaming Earl Grey tea,
of which i love with a yearning need,
waiting, waiting for me,
on that precious island on the sea.

Hark! Now everything is still,
The screech-owl and the whistler shrill,
Call upon our dame aloud,
And bid her quickly don her shroud!

Much you had of land and rent;
Your length in clay ’s now competent:
A long war disturb’d your mind;
Here your perfect peace is sign’d.

Of what is ‘t fools make such vain keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth weeping,
Their life a general mist of error,
Their death a hideous storm of terror.
Strew your hair with powders sweet,
Don clean linen, bathe your feet,

And—the foul fiend more to check—
A crucifix let bless your neck:
’Tis now full tide ‘tween night and day;
End your groan and come away.

I found a coven in the woods
Amongst an oaken forest glen.
There,
hidden behind a curtain of Spanish moss,
amongst fiddlehead ferns and fungi bloom,
two of Gaia's faithful maidens
Enchanted me unwittingly, and took possession of my gaze.

A Pair of Muses
One, of the forest
One, of the sea
Both wind and fire
Equally
In opposition and in sway

Their incantations softly chanted
In a tongue to me unknown
and I listened quietly entranced,
between them in the glow
Of their cauldron hearth fire
Embers burning low

She of the forest was enigma, playfully shy,
coyly toying with the strings all men share,
And in her den, among her herbs and powders and potions  
In preperation, and prepared.
She spoke in riddles and in parable,
Both with body and with stares.

Instantly she knew me
As I had never known;
As if Devined by a mysticism,
Ancient and pure,
So sublime it startles the soul.
In her eyes,
so sweet and sincere,
simplicity and innocence obscure
A strange and intoxicating knowledge
Of the rare and deepest old
Of the world and it's great secrets-
What its darkest reaches hold.

She of the sea
Was shimmering
A specter
Against the stars
Floating

She was Waves
Of aquamarine
Blue Green
Irridescent
Obscure and reticent
Behind her ever pulsing shade

Camaflouged by her surroundings
This piscian vision lingered in relief
Over a Gilded titan mother of pearl chariot;
The Persephone Throne.
She cast her stare upon me;
My hypnotized mind laid bare,
Wiped clean of anything I had seen.
No man could know her shrine of love
Nor the secrets that she keeps,
And none ever remember;
For one cannot resist her lair

An aquarian cavern,
A haven of calm,
Rest, respite and solitude.
It's lotus blossom lantern
Heart of glowing gold
Cast in shadow upon the ceiling
Glimmering radiant refractions
of the waning day

Her ocean sings soft and sweetly,
Casting mist into the air,
And a siren's song disrupts me
Ever suddenly
She washes over me,
Unaware

And though the seven signs they showed to me clearly
Still the stars I misread
through misted eyes,
and soon I fell to dreaming without sleeping
Or so I thought, though i shall never know

In their atmosphere I relinquished this mortal coil into the haze,
And disappeared completely
For an instant, just a moment,
perhaps it was hours.
Perhaps,
it was days.

And as abruptly as rushing water to the somnambulists face
I awoke,
As a dreamer awakes
from dreaming of waking,
alone and bleary-eyed,
dreary and confused
amid my own disheveled cave.
And where they've gone, I wish to go,
But where that is, I cannot know
For I would follow them until the days
Turned forever into nights amongst
The Forest and The Waves

The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read ****** poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints ...
So far, I've had no complaints.

I used to think that all of them were just bodies. She-figures, they came and went, facilitating infinite happiness and following with hellacious heartbreak, aorta explosions galore. They pass. I stay. She goes. I remain. We all take a trip, but she falls asleep while I follow the road, I sing the song, make the lyrics up as the 101 heads West, and I careen against the Pacific. I see silvery-white plumes of whale breaths spouting, they break the rocks of my rock and roll. When the levee breaks, we'll have no place to go- I'm going back to Chicago.

California. Line 5. Verse 1. She is born in Arkansas, in Denver, in New York City, in the back of a taxi cab, her parents waiting for a table at Earth Cafe, 1989. There are concerts, balconies, elevator shafts, and on benches. The gain rises, the volume up and up and up, I offer her a cigarette, I ask her if she likes my dress, I show up with two palms full of a flame, and I say hello. Browsing in high-definition, the water is warm, my feet are planted and I have everywhere to go. Classical emporium of light fill me with ease, greatness, and belief. She asks me if I'm gay. Every great confusion can be proven to be fortuitous with enough time on hand. I kiss in cars, in bathrooms, and barrooms, in hallways, on staircases, on beds, church steps, and legs. I touched a leg, ran my fingers through her hair, my thumbs curved to the height of two ears alongside a size B head. I love art *****. i burn candles, and I swirl the wax around until the walls wear masks of white. I check-in to a hotel. I stop to buy wild flowers on the side of the road, or to climb down a ravine, we open a page into an enormous patch of strawberries, wind-surfers, and the golden Palo Alto beaches. I am in Bronzeville, on my way to Bridgeport, I am riding the train, browsing magazines, and singing new songs in my head. My lips are wet with excitement and the musings of the Modern Art Museum and the gift of a first kiss; behind the statue on Balcony 2, near the drinking fountain, the Eames couch, and two lips meeting anew. Bravery in twos.

Chapter 1, Verse 2. The chorus is large and exciting. New plastic shining coats. Smocks patterned with the Random House children's stories that we played with as children. We didn't wear gloves, or hats, or pants, or our hearts on our sleeves. I was up to my knees in hormones and very persuasive. My fifth birthday was at the Nature Center, you chased me into the boys' bathroom and kissed me with your wet and four year old lips in the second stall from the door. I eased up maybe 2% since then. The speakers are a little bit fuzzy, it's like listening to the spit of someone's tongue cascade the roof of their mouth while they pronounce the British consonants of the 90s. Said and done and saving space.

I am saving up for Grace. A crush in the mid 2000s, black hair, long legs, and the only brunette for a decade before or after. We played doctor, with the electric scalpel we turned our noses red with Christmas time South American powders. A safe word for an enemy, the sun for an enemy too. You bolted out and took my early Jimi Hendrix Best Of compact disc case too. While we're at it, you took my Michael Jackson cassettes as well. I go mid-range, think Kiri Te Kanawa in the whispers of E.T.'s Elliot. Stuffed-animal closet party for seven minutes in heaven. Your family came with butlers while mine came with over-educated storage. A blue borage sky in the intestines of life, a splinter in the shanty-town of invincible daily struggles- both of us were born again in O'Hare Airport's Parking Level D. Too many nonsensical arguments in two-tone grayscale ripping open the packaging of a course about trysting in your twenties.

Your stomach's history is overpowering. It is temperamental, mettled by spirits and sleepless nights, borborygmus, wambles, and shades of nervousness you were never comfortable speaking openly about. The history of your ****** was privatized, in options and unedited films shot over and over candidly by a mini DV desk camera, nine months to read you wrong to weep in strong wintry walks back and forth from The Buckingham to the Dwight Lofts, Room 408 without a view. All of your secrets in a little miniature of a notebook, bright cerise red. You captured teardrops in medicinal jars meant for syringes. You tied strings to your fingers, named your field mouse Ginger, and introduced your mother as Lady Darling. Captain with stingray skin, the hide of Ferris Bueller with the coattails of James Bond, dusted with daisy pollen, and clearly weakness. You ate me like bitter herbs on Thursdays, and like every other woman I've ever met, on Tuesdays you always kept me waiting.

I have wings for everything. Yellow wings for a woman in a yellow dress, Red, White, and Green wings for Bernice from Mexico City, Purple wings for  Mrs. Doolittle the doctor who worked at Taco Bell, the Jamaican priestess who was traveling through Venice Italy- we smoked hash with the grandchild of James Joyce on the Northern pier against the aurulent statues of Apollo and Zeus, Cupids' collection of malevolent tricks, SleepingB Beauty's rebuttal in fending off GHB attackers, my two dear friends who were kidnapped in clothes, abandoned in the ****, and only remember eating chocolate donuts with sprinkles and the bruises and dirt on the insides of their thighs. Nothing clever. Nothing extraordinary. Everything sentimental, built to withstand soot, sourness, and early female bravado.

You know how to play the piano so you've said, but i only have the CD you gave me to prove it. I do have evidence of your addiction to men and *******. I have your collection of dresses with tags still on them (but every woman has some of those), there is the post office box in Kauai, the Halloween card from last November and the two videos I have stored on an external drive in a nightstand adjacent to the foot of my bed. You sleep atrociously, talk too quickly, and **** like your father abandoned you when you were five. Your talent for taking photographs is like your skill-set for playing the piano, but I don't have the CD to prove it. You don't believe in social media, social consistency, friendships, or hephalumps and woozels- with the exception of the classes we shared together in college, I've never seen you outside of the most glamorous of fashion. You hate flats, hats, and white wine, and for as sad as you can seem to be at times, I've only had you cry on me once. While we were on the phone, three days after your mother hung herself. That's when I last left California, and I haven't been back yet.

I love a Kristine, but once a Britni, a Brandi, a Joni, a Tina, Kristina, Kirsten, Kristen, and a Katherine and Kathryn too. I know rock stars who are my dearest friends, enemies who I share excellent taste in music with, and parents who've always had my back but show it in lashings of the tongue and of the belt. It's been two years and three states since I was two sizes smaller than I am now. I've never considered the possibility that I was the main character and not the supporting actor, but due to recent developments in antipathy and aesthete, reevaluation, and retrospective nostalgia. All of this is about to change.

I am me still evolving without my usually stolid and grim ****** features. i bare brevity to situations existing that would **** most or in the least paralyze a great many. There is one for every hour of every day, and one for every minute in every hour, second in every minute, and more than the minutes in every day. No one has a second chance, shares a different time, or works off a different clock. I have been called the master of the analog, king of the codependent, and rook to queenside knight. I share a parabola for every encounter, experience, and endeavor. I am three minutes from being a cadaver, one drink away from a drunk, and one thought away from being completely alone. I think upright, i sleep horizontally, and I love infinitely. I am the only finite constant i have ever known. I am the main character, the script, satire, sarcasm, and soundtrack are mine.

"I don’t care if you believe it. That’s the kind of house I live in. And I hope we never leave it.”

311

It sifts from Leaden Sieves—
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road—

It makes an Even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain—
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again—

It reaches to the Fence—
It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces—
It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack—and Stem—
A Summer’s empty Room—
Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them—

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen—
Then stills its Artisans—like Ghosts—
Denying they have been—

When she became the prom queen,
She was the prettiest thing they’d ever seen.
Soft gold curls spill over her back,
Bright green eyes, no sign of decay inside.
A spotlight shines down enhancing her cream-colored gown.
She beams as she accepts the crown.  

She kneels down and throws up blood.
Her head comes up in a white marble tiled bathroom,
Starting to stench.
Staring deep into the reflection in her mother’s mirror,
Slowly withering away.

Pills spill around the room
Sitting by the window
She stares into the sun.
Waiting for a crimson bouquet,
And a plastic tiara  

She powders her face,
Peachy pink cheeks on pale white skin.
She colors her lips and paints on a smile
Slips on a dress that flows to the floor.

They call out her name,
Lost in a daze she walks out on stage,
Stands all alone.
And when they crowned me the prom queen
I was the ugliest girl I’d ever seen.

-Inside on the Other side

The snowflake is castellated cold,
Of chill crenellations and turnings narrow.
Court of pie-powders and gray-skied brazier smoke,
Of inner mazework dimmed to ****** holes,
Or the hooded machicolations from tower spire
Of oily darkness and arrowslits of Greek fire.

—

The snowflake is Medieval reliquary,
The frozen skull of rain and blood clear of sin,
Wind-captive with its prayer of quiet
On quietest lips, close to wine and sacrament.
Or the chapel and its waxen paramours
Of incorrupt body and candlelight upon the moors.

—

The snowflake is the mighty frozen spark,
Fire-forged and ironwrought,
Under the eye of Hephaestus,
Blacksmith of sorrow’s wind.

Place silhouette pieces or outlines of my heart in thirty or more envelopes.
Paste each one with a new soft paintbrush which clean cream bristles. Push them into torn up fragments of clean new watercolour paper. The sharp edges feel through onto the wooden table leaving mistaken, accidental grooves. Glimmers of sawdust are ****** up into the pockets of your lungs, where they contaminated and will permanently sit.
It was a small heart, the colour of grey sky reflected on seas and carried in bloated raindrops. The texture of diamond. Carved up as easily as wax by a blunt butter knife.
The envelopes are neatly labelled with white tailors chalk powders.

days crawl by
and humidity stills the air.
the black flies are late this season,
though around here, most things are.
below the gnat line, girls like me
seldom get to die easily,
perfumed powders
masking the scent of illness,
flushed cheeks and damp foreheads donned
as our feeble bodies recline on fainting couches
to delicately languish away. we know that
there’s a certain beauty to decomposition,
to fungus gnats invading potted soil,
to fruit flies nesting in sink drains. we know that
rotting is a clock that never stops,
tallying each unflinching, humid second while the
days crawl by.

I didn’t knew you too was missing from me....
That you were my childhood fragrance...
How l lost you...
I don’t know...
I remember the times where I hated sweet smell of perfumes...
How the smell of flowers irritated me...
How it brings up a headache....
And you came back to me again after a long long time...
Thanks to my better half that he bought me your fragrance soap...
I didn’t realise it that then...
Suddenly I started to carve for your fragrance...
That I bought perfumes and powders of your fragrance....
Still I didn’t realise that you were with me before....
Only when my sis heard my pondering thoughts about you....
And told it’s bcoz you were used to it for years...
In your childhood days...
Made me remember you...
How I waited for my father to get your perfume on my dresses...
Don’t know when I stopped using you...
As it was still there in many more years...
Still I didn’t touched you...
And forgotten....
I don’t know whether to be happy that you came back...
Or sad and angry that I missed one more thing in my life...
May be I  can be both...
And I do hope you will be with me always...
The sweet fragrance of Lavender...

— Joanna Adam

Fingers dipped in purple powders
Fushia gold my makeup
Black skintight latex suit with neon circles
How my outfit is made up

Three rings around my waist
Intersecting, two vertical, one on the horizon
The circles glow with noble gases
Radioactive, after all, I'm an alien

Perfect spheres and concentric rings
Are trending, so I have read
I balance on stacked circles, my six inch latex heels
And floating circles surround the pair of buns on my head

My bones poke through my latex,
Anorexia won't stop my passions
I may not be the body type you want, but I'm the body type you have
And I still enjoy the fashions

Sundays
come in two flavors-
hallelujah
and goody powder

goody powders
go down easier
with flavored water

not the **** variety
but strawberry
or cherry

wall clock
goes ****
****
where's my ****

hallelujah-
FIRE

r ~ 9/7/14

Why is this world so pretentious
self-centered, building up your fences
Gotta take the prettiest picture
Photoshop for the best features
Your looks are all you care about
Your fake little words, and perfect pout
Well? are you happy now?
You seem to be, I wonder how?
Your powders and plastic
To me it's just tragic.
If this is the fate of the world
With saggy-pants and barbie-girls
I'd rather be six feet under
What will become of you, I wonder
When your looks fade
You've lost your trade
High school's bound to end
Will those shallow people remain your friend?

I think I was thirteen
when I shipped myself out
to the sea of solitude
since then I've tried rowing
back to shore but
currents of discontent
are hard to fight
inevitably I gave in
to the candy-coated
pills and powders
and the minty fresh breath
of men lurking in corners
almost as sweet as sanity
eventually I overdosed on emotions
but I was only trying
to rid myself of feeling
since I was never good
at walking on the tightrope
between wanting and reality
at this point I don't know
who to apologize to
since Hallmark doesn't have cards
for sincere self loathing

it's just that
some days it's really hard
to keep your voice even
when your mother asks
if you're slipping

Blink Blink...Where did it go?
The Time?
The Moment flies when we lack the material in which to fill it.
Empty spaces...A Lack of Bravery? To come forth with some creative
Self Fulfillment?
The wic must be lit in order to speed the rocket to blast...
The Rocket shoots the message, in our works, if we fill the right
Creative Powders to Blast from within it.
Can you blame another soul?
If you fail when you never stepped a foot forward and tried?
Through fear you sat in front of the TV with some "Kentucky Fried."
As your friends shake their heads and watched as you sat there and died.
Moments shall take from us just as they can add...
Parts to us if we never add them...The pieces to the puzzle...
That are lost are never placed in
The picture that was our life.
As we allowed ourselves to fade to sin.
The choices were clear as we made them.
Even with a huge sign to point the way, we ignored that still.
So, who's was that weak will?
Fear can never conquer or control us unless we give into it.
So jump up and rejoice as you regain bravery
and "get with it!"
A mind sparks to flame...Lights the powder of the rocket from where the true creativity came.
Not copies of a copy of an already thought up creation. No.
It was the fresh slice of the pie that earned us another penny.
Placed in the jar that is our thirst for "winning."
One,two,until it adds to A Million or more.
Due to our bravery....Our wills are free to score.
Now the moment arrives again. Where doubt weighs you down.
In front of the TV is where you are now seated
with that Bucket of "Kentucky Fried."
What is the path you seek to take?
That's it!
Off the couch, you turned off the Television.
Plopped down the delicious fatty, and  dream-killing snacks..
to the void...you are not headed.
You are now,braver. You put one foot in front of the other.
Now you are still winning my "Creative Brother."
Now you have the life, the change, and the jar from which it came.
For each of the moments that you carefully used up in your life...
A penny was earned...
The celebration cake shall now  be cut....
through the sharp blade..
of Success' Knife.


Where fear shall never,Freely
Roam Amuck.

The castle kitchens had big fireplaces, where the oxen and the meat
Were roasted on spits. The cookies were baking, roasting by using the heat.
The pantries were hung with birds, swans, pigeons, rabbits, mutton, ducks,
Venison and wild boar. Suddenly, the spring life became a luminous flux.

Everywhere on the tables, there were berries, nuts, and other fruits.
In the rooms, there were pottery, glass, fabrics, jackets, dress coats,  
Sweaters, bodices, pants, petticoats, silk, music, joy, pewter utensils,
Jewelry, purses, shoes, hats, ties, powders and eyebrow pencils.

‘The guests will arrive and the food is not ready, yet’, whispered Pauline.
'You can hurry a little’, said Frieda, ‘Guess, who's coming!’ ‘The queen!'
Anne tasted all the fresh food and drinks and found them well prepared.
'After you finish, open the windows, because the rooms are not aired.'

Queen hurried away, leaving behind a whiff of perfume and stress.
'Do you see her through the window? ‘What a splendid wedding dress!'
"Jezebel is beautiful. I heard that the marriage can change the doom.'
'Yes, the bad fortune of the bride can bring a bad fate for the groom.'
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

(At the monastery, Clara and Mary were preparing their luggage to go to the wedding.)

'I'm talking about this false teaching, which left me confused’, said Mary.
'No one is sinless perfect', said Clara, ‘we’re God's children. Be wary!'
'She hates her sisters; she walks in the darkness, while being so blind.'
'But God is Light, and the prayers have the power to change her mind.'

'She's not truly in fellowship with God, because she can't love her sister,
But I can't compare her with Surah, who is a real incurable blister.'
'Surah hates her sisters, she's a murderer, and doesn't need eternal life.
She's an ignorant, she needs power, and she lives only her life of strife.'

‘Is it true that whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we fight
To keep His commandments, while doing what is pleasing in His sight?'
'It's true.' ', I asked Him to save my niece, but I didn't receive any response.'
'You must teach Surah how to love, and she will destroy her magic sconce.'

(It was three o’clock in the morning, and Surah entered the passage of the cave.
She entered the castle, and climbed up the stairs to be in the room of the tower.
There, she put two goblets on the table containing a beverage used to induce a coma.
After that, she came down from the tower to enter the Jezebel’s room.)

'How is my sweet niece, who will be a bride?' ‘I’m a little scared.'
'Every bride is scared knowing that her feelings in bed must be shared.'
"How was your first moment in bed?' 'Well, I started with a little kiss;
I gave it to the loveliness I was wallowing in. I felt the radiance of bliss.
(Surah smiled being a little tender while looking at her niece.)

‘Let me show you my wedding gift. Let’s go into the tower to see it.'
'This is a joke!' Surah took her hand. 'I have the key.' 'Does this key fit?
My mom can hear us, and you know that you're not allowed to enter here.'
'She cannot wake up early in this morning. Did you forget that I'm a seer?'

(Surah and Jezebel climbed up the stairs of the tower. They entered the room of the tower. Jezebel sat on a chair to marvel at the beauty of the altar and at the golden spindle. Surah took out a medallion from her pocket and put it into the Jezebel's hands. The medallion had two miniature portraits. One of them was the portrait of Frederick, and the other one was the portrait of a very beautiful woman.)

'I want you to know that this portrait belonged to his former dead fiancée.
He had abandoned her for another one. His love was only a flight of fancy.'
'Give me something to drink, my dear aunt, I really don't feel quite well!'
"Sure', said Surah giving her to drink the beverage having an interesting smell.

Medusa and Lizzie stood at the edge of the tumbling tidal plunge.
“I guess I’ll be making me amends.” said Lizzie dolefully.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I was a scoundrel to you and your bunch. I deserve a good flogging.”
“Oh? Why didn’t you say so!”
Going to the ship and clambering up and inside Medusa returned wearing a short black leather cape and mask, carrying the twenty-foot twelve plait magical Leather Bullwhip.
“I say, ******,” said Perry sitting up on the grassy knoll. “What do you think is going on here?”
Hat over eyes, ****** mumbled something, not seeing Medusa taking Lizzie roughly by the arm and dragging her to the open clearing before them. ****** was snoring, fingers over his belly, Perry watching with rapt interest as Medusa pushed the woman to her scuffed knees and lashed her wrists. Lizzie lowering her head of long frizzy blonde hair bending forward to make her gritty sweat drenched back muscles the more pronounced under the precipitous waterfall’s crystal spray.
The cowboy heard the first crack of rawhide on splitting flesh but stayed asleep dreaming it was Medusa getting the beating when in reality it was Medusa lacerating the robust pirate who’d requested the treatment as proper discipline in accordance with the code of the high seas. Lizzie didn’t shriek at first; bearing up to the brutal lashing but as Medusa showed no sign of abating, the woman threw her head back howling and screaming in insensible agony. Her body numb with a feverish pain; Lizzie shook from head to foot and turned the color of blood even where she weren’t bleeding. At last collapsing on her face barely conscious, tears and perspiration clouding her reddened eyes.
“Up, *****,” ordered the Mistress. “Have you had enough?”
“No, ma’am” came the growling whimper. “I let meself be captured by those scurvy knaves. For thet I deserve at least three hundred more lashes.”
“So be it!”
“Mistress Medusa! Stop!” shouted Perry unable to take the sight any longer. Blood from Lizzie’s taut muscles had sprayed everywhere attracting crawling colonies of insects to the sweet nectar. “I can’t sit watching you beat a woman to death.”
“What have you been doing ‘til now?” scolded Medusa.
“I wanted to see how far you’d, oh, I should have known.”
“Relax, Periwinkle. She’s going to need a good cleaning up before she has any supper. Why don’t you take her over by the waterfall. Dawn will give you something to make the leathery old broad smell like a ton of roses.”
Confused by it all, Periwinkle helped Lizzie stagger to her feet leading her by the waist to the flowing waters there she sat up on a rock trying to stretch her limbs but they were shredded.
Dawn brought Perry a bottle of cooling salve. “Here you are, Mister Perry.”
“Thank you, Dawn. This will ease the pain I’m sure,” he said patting a *** of the wet cream into his hand stepping to the brawny pirate’s defined back to begin smoothing it over her rough skin.
“Perry,” she said, “Let’s get this sweat off me ‘fore ya go a-wastin’ that thar fine perfume what ya got there. Leave it be, lad, it’ll be there when we need it. Whyna join me under the spray an’ have a bit of it. I’m for the taking as is.”
Perry feeling the twitch in his ***** tore out of his vest and collar. “Get it all off, man, we’s not doing laundry.”
“Oh, right,” he said, tugging off sox and braces.
Naked as man and very large woman they dipped under the chilly waves. He was luxuriating at the sandy shoal enjoying the flowery wind blowing over the verdant mountainside.  “This is paradise,” said Perry laying in the rippling currents.
****** awoke to the smell of Dawn’s bubbling cauldron. He sat up hungry and ready to eat.
“Mister ******, you cannot eat ‘til you have bathed,” said the witchy gypsy.
“Bathed?”
Yes,” she said. “We cannot eat my mother’s grass soup until we have cleansed our inner light.”
“I don’t know,” he said catching himself mid sentence.
Leaving the boiling ***, her body well rounded and dusky olive Dawn trundled to the flowing mist her limbs bristling. Medusa scaly and filthy giving him a look he could never live down he pulled off his rumpled blue outfit.
“You look a whole lot different when you drop all that cowboy gear, you know that?”
“Uh, I reckon so. I don’t ‘member the last time I walked around buck naked like this. I’m sure liking this heat.” ****** without his chaps and hat and other duds was a surprise. He looked like something natural to the rainforest. Maybe an ancient panther god. Medusa meanwhile was shedding scales all over the place in the Amazonian heat. She was starting to turn so dark a shade of green she appeared brown, and her vipers, in her ultimately relaxed state of mind appeared to have transformed into long black curls that lay wryly down to the hollow above her ***. Taking his fingers like a child they walked hand in hand into the breaking waves.
After they’d eaten Medusa felt relaxed, like her bones had turned to water. The sound of the big river flowing nearby made her thighs vibrate and she opened her eyes to search out the man. He wasn’t far. This was new. It still felt like a surreal dream, everything since the huge sacrificial ceremony all those potions and powders and juices still made her head spin. The jungle heat made her center of gravity tilt so Southward she could barely walk upright. She was throbbing with a need she thought she had banished a thousand years ago. “**** this play-cowpoke, he got to me,” she thought, “Curse that white bandana, and his perfect ***. I gotta get over this,” she lectured herself; but not this second. She laughed out loud and tapped his shoulder as they sat by the fire. He jumped a little, but then granted her a new thing. A slowly sweet smile. And she rolled into his arms in a heated abandon of simply wanting to be held to his flesh, kissed, to feel his hips grating on hers, and then to sleep, nothing more.
This was a whole new world.
Perry and Lizzie taking a flaming torch and winding further up the mountainous path, stopped on a steep plateau where planting the flame, she playfully tackled him, pinning him to the ground. He was prepared as ever. Her groaning moans were pleasure mixed with pain from the severe beating Medusa had given her, not that Lizzie Quick, Queen of pirates hadn’t had worse at the hands of the Royal Navy. The chattering women were hairy and hunched; the naked ringleader of the bunch coming forward with her shaman husband.
“Remy!” cried Perry. “What are you doing here like this? What’s happening?”
“Arrgg me hearty. You be my prisoners now and me wife’s gotta thing about heads. She likes ‘em real small an’ yours is too big, Periwinkle.”
“Have you gone mad, man? You can’t shrink our heads!”
“Oh sure they can. They’ve got it down to a science. I even helped ‘em make a few improvements. Take ‘em away, grrrls!”

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty’s orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars ‘light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant ***** dies.

We rage
like hormones
like hyenas in heat
and ruin homes
(not on purpose, just on Fridays)
So grown up,
we're so grown up
with our mature parties
and relationship problems.
Look! I'm pregnant!
I'm oh so grown up!
We puke up jello shooters
and mama's meatloaf,
wipe the whithered corners of pale mouths,
smile
giggle
hazy glazy eyes
in smokey basements and tree houses.
Oh no,
I do not promote it
I only smoke it.
But what can we do?
I must be thin to be ****,
drunk to be interesting,
naked to be loved.
We need the skin contact
because God knows we can't communicate by words,
either by tweets
or  haphazard ******* in back seats.
We are so grown up
because we accept the filth,
the naughty,
the concepts that un-rad corporate burn outs can't comprehend.
Wisdom in destruction,
life in suicide.
So allow me to fill my nose with shaymen's powders,
so that I may regress
to the days that I was Daddy's ballerina,
and school yard games lacked dark ****** undertones.

.
"That there Is'belle's house stinks wunderful turr'ble,"croaked Emma Beiler at their quilting bee.
"Jah...vell," sighed Rosanna Yoder. "All them there katzes , ain't so?"
Accordingly the two ladies set out to pay Travis and Isabella Salter a visit, only to be politely told that they had were in the process of taking some cats to a local shelter.
Two weeks passed and to the Amish folks' disgust the odour had merely intensified.
"Them there Englisch are chust liars!" Potato Sam spat the words out along with a *** of chewing tobacco.
" Ach, vell," sighed  his wife Rosanna, unaware of her heavily sweating underarms. The Ordnung  strictly forbade deodorant as well as perfume. "Reckon I best  mosey over and see fur myself."
Travis opened the door with a tired sigh.
'Chust thought I'de ask vhat fur stinks yer house up so vonderful tur'ble...Izzy tells us youse gettin' rid of them but-"
A puzzled look crossed Travis weary face as he glanced toward the kitchen. Irritation gripped him, not lessened as Rosanna glowered at Tabby washing her face on the couch. Then a waft of a familiar scent, overpowering, drifted toward him from the kitchen. Brussel sprouts enhanced by -.
With all the stress, Isabelle was increasing her calming herbs, mixing the powders.... Valerian?
"Good evening, Mrs. Yoder." He motioned her toward the door, locking it firmly behind her. For a long time after she was gone he stood staring out the window.

You live at the bottom of a bottle,
your life supply not the air you breathe,
but the drugs you ingest.
The pills, the powders,
trapping you in a permanent haze.
You're stuck.
The alcohol your only friend.
When does it stop?
Is the pain too steep?
Agony seeps into your veins.
Malicious intent creeping through your daily turmoils.
Your future is bleak.
Inner pain ripping you to shreds.
You self medicate, but it'll never stop.
There is only one way out.
It was all too much.
Another life lost to the monsters in the closet.

African woman
She is the strongest woman
The cradle of all human

She tends softly her man
As well as all her children
She aint seeking for equity
She is seeking for prosperity
Growth, of all her generations
She knows well her traditions
Not to be in combatant competitions

Not to fight the physical equal wars
But to strengthen the spiritual-mental walls
And they call her in tough titles-submissive and foolish
All she does is, a sit-home mum, bear and then perish
But she knows well all she wants-her family to flourish
In the hearts of the matters there you will find her
Strong and willed to build and leave her legacy
Moral men and wise women-humans of substance
She is a pillar to her home

African woman
She is the strongest woman
The cradle of all human

She sits on her sack, in her arms
A giant club to clobber her farms-
Her fields fat yields of yams
And she beats their pulps till powders
They are all ground refined white dusts

Pu! Pu! Pu! Goes her game's rhythms
Pu! Pu! Pu! Shakes her shoulders
Pu! Pu! Pu! Her biceps fats dances with each fast beatings
Pu! Pu! Pu! Strong, on, urges her throbbing breast chest
Pu! Pu! Pu! Comes back the hard works echoes
Like her man in mines and farms and fields she, too, salty sweats

African woman
She is the strongest woman
The cradle of all human

On her back is a bundle of woods
On her head balanced, is a load of loads
On her back is a can of waters
On her back is a baggage of belongings
On her back is her children
On her bent back she is a farmer weeding her fields
All in a day’s daily work without complains
African woman, who stronger woman, than you?

She is the backbone of her family
She is the umbilical cord of her folks
She is their heart and soul and spirit
She doesn’t retire until she expires
Early she is up-late she is asleep, O Mama-African woman!  
Even with all gone, she still as a mother chicken them all broods
She still them all remembers as my dear little children
Mama, African woman! Mama, who there be like you?

African woman
You are the strongest woman
The cradle of all human

When they all walk naked-liberal
She has a wrapper for her *****
A cloak to guard her gold-her fertile groins
She knows, good honey is deeply hidden in hives
And inside these hidden hives are strong stings
Bad eyes are a sight for witches-evil ruins

Her petals plains she must by all means protect
Until right comes the most suitable honeybee
Until right comes the sweetest singing hummingbird
Until moral comes the most beautiful butterfly
Until then, her nectar is not for every eye-tongue
Gathered she covers her fine curves
For she is the most beautiful of the divines-African Woman!
The strongest woman-the cradle of all human!  

© Kìùra Kabiri. All rights reserved.

To tell the story of the nice-guy
is to tell a tale of unlost innocence.  

There is no complexity that circumstance can’t remedy.  There is no effort
to niceness; only a ****** world that blossoms
on genetically mutated ideology, growing larger than generations past.

Tomorrow, in Houston,

a butcher will wake up to slaughter a cow he may have named.  

There will no be no tears when he grills steak for the wife he wooed
and the children he prescribed himself.  

Three daughters,
from fifteen to twenty-two.  

Tiramisu for dessert.  

Ten guns in the cabinet beneath the stairs
and innocence buried behind the woodshed.

Pretend now, that you are forgiven.  

Mistakes fade like snow angels, regrets
float like chemtrails.

You love you as much as the world always did.  

You have not seen friends struck down by powders or lunacy,
you have only lived in the glow of their light.  Hearts remain full.  

The word swagger hasn’t been hijacked by hip hop
and bluejeans still mask imperfections.  Sunsets are memorable,

and so are first dates and last kisses.  

Sun won't blister fragile shoulders.  

Fields blossom just in time to suit your irregular taste buds,
satisfying sweet corn cravings on Christmas.

Forget your father’s words
or a stranger's hand.  

Forget improbability, impossibility,
impotence, importance,
impatience
and improper goodbyes.  

Forget the tears cried alone
into ***** filled sheets at midnight.  

Forget the effect but remember the cause,
camouflaged like a landmine of good ideas.  

Forget the fights and slow-turn walk-aways
that turned words flaccid.  

Forget friends ******* ex-girl friends
and amphetamines crashing into hallucinations.  

Nice-guys vanish like good ideas,
lost in the shuffle,
looking for pen and paper,

just like house cats die
on the forth of July,

and all that’s left are ashes
on a mantel
alongside fraudulent grins.