writhe

only moments will ever hold you,
only now we can haunt
the passages of your shame
and misery's sexy depths

should have known would have shown you
no endings in endless pockets
stuffed
overflowing,
dripping trails of
moaning static
from the eyes of
harlequin masks

armed with
projected rends
and grim future grins
never enough you save
against the moment that
swallows us whole
again

camp

the open field inlaid with my various little
shapes and knives
i've slept in for nights
freighted with shy cheeks
frosted
by unsold breaths breezing
the raging gray death
of a tired winter heaven's roll.

sweet wise lies to stay alive

moeru

more hearts slid through grids
picking lies from the cotton beds
built by honest jackasses breaking their backs
cultivating
the particles conjuring a dreamwoven nation,
or bring a smile to your town in
whole lives and quick quips breathed by
morning commuters
and the stations they've tuned into's sound
drumming the time blown 'way.

touched

i see you die for someone to know you
when your eyes flicker, newly guarded by clouds,
dim-lit and swallowed down into ether,
absorbed in daylight-- a suddenly spiraling recursive function,
wild and wet again, retreats into distances
misted by doubt.

your soft grin spreads when the waves
echo after you,
all gone lost in moments eternity holds onto,
gone again miles that slowly start replaying
and fixate upon the ghost of an image.

"she wears the cute dress,
cuts at the knee and neckline
heaving in the breeze,
with eyes that see and look like they believe.
she'd rather not smile, but
she can if she wants to--
and often does, when she's with me.
she has a blue jacket
and a scarf that she hides behind,
even though its only october.
i'd like the snowfall to hit hard
and fast,
just so i have an excuse to hold her."

this isn't healthy

suffering is the new wave
of a heroic masculinity,
becoming a disguise that,
conjured up from shards of daydreams
dead before nightfall,
repeats itself
repeating itself--
chewing on the slender hairless arms
that waste away, still wondering
on ambitions never known or sought,
shielded by colors and noise going off
in the dark, saturated with faces we
won't remember much.
there's that gentle eye i saw myself in and
broke myself to see again,
so submerged in another set of
waxing narratives
and buried with boiled questions about
these
written memories ahead of me
that drive my eyes across more depths of beauty and
sin than i should know.
but some ideas i can't let go of
until i've gotten more.

weight

all the structures of my soul
that i once saw as blocks of stone
now sift and shift under their weight
like sand dunes spreading under homes.

drifts

no more destinies where i haven't gone
lying with hearts unloved and sworn
like written dreams we burned for warmth.
and no more needing to be born
back in the home i used to know--
in bed with oil painted eyes
disagreeing on staying closed.
no more war for weakness waged;
the humbled guard now sings his pain
like children huddling in the rain,
who fiercely kiss before they're taken.
no more miles that roll and sway
like the ocean's wild waves,
wind flicking foam from gliding tips
and speeding from the lives she saves.
she draws black tears across her face
and whispers notes the current left.
her simple measures become the thoughts
that guide us to our thinning breath.
smoke rises like a beaten champion,
ducking straights to start awake.
it braves the shade behind bursting bulbs,
and follows blindly its mother's traces.

starved and fed

you used to get by
on winter nights indoors,
bordered by decorative banners
strewn with holly and mistletoe,
wasted and boiled:
the cost of the year for
the last of a
ruined breed,
whistling and splitting
in no age for purpose,
with the roar of a wet mile torn
black by pounded snow
for its only company.


the dinner theater storyline
lacks suspense down to
its posed broad questions with
the word "wrong" on your mind,
spit in time with a response.
proud to be loud, i know.
i know you too well for talk, lately.
your jaw sets like a stonemason
in good health, slipping
threats beneath chemical flowers
from your breath,
and banging morse code messages
with your thick, wooden fists
along the halls through fitful sleep
as if the next day
would be your deathbed.