Rather than grab

Rather than grab
your hand
and let you lead the way
I would
bend and fend and wend and ...

never look back but for the need of salt
to pour on my wounds -- stuck in a circle, digging it down.

Poison in the betweens, those horrid and boring and giddy
things that clog the fist-filled gaps, blood leaping off smiles:

Mirror stares cookie-cut with emotion

curled up at the sides and open to interpretation

beached carcasses turning back into fleas and scurrying away.

This tunnel we are climbing
does not give way; keep clawing and clawing
whether the sun is shining or life is winking
out.

The End of the World

The truth hurts

Judgment Day ditty

It's the thirst that asks the question of the void, self-absorbed and unapologetic

and everything is breaking down outside: a gas-powered table shaver, beheaded hippopotamus high chair, bubbling wheelbarrow growths, yawning skyscrapers of rust, m ...

and we listen to overplayed jingles on the bottom step of life, cramming preservatives into our nanoparts -- and carve out new souls in the cellar and fill these with nails, caulk, cardboard, fur.

The kneeling
The sniffling
The preening
The growling

It's the void that stumbles upon itself and decides it needs an audience, mirror upon mirror

matetherial

Lunch crowd resale
oozing poison plastic smell
eyes are cameras are lives that nobody is paying attention

Monuments of compartments, clawing at the insides

edible longitude I pass you by
on the way to the air, de-veined from the mountain's gorge
a shadow departing spectacle

Darkness unarmed

The brief infinity, sucked in and sacked. A smile creeping on howls dipped in ink -- shaken, dried, numb now.

You would never know the storms, the flesh torn, the weight floating away in the air, the fear that bubbles up in firmly polished bullets and settles back into bone. There in crisp sleeves on the shelf, orderly as misery. Speechless. Unwritten. Hollow.

The never relief, the always at ease. Pockets of illumination deepening the trickery; every day the same, every dimension sliding away. You disappear. Your eyes slightly out of sight. Unfamiliar.

It's stirring again, a cloud of kisses. A hint.

Root task

Semblance of an idea
where recurring images are vandalized into symbols, which ripen as war fodder

You live in and out of these bright spots. Your frustration is a beacon, a warm embrace in the desert.

A silence that feeds into a whisper when the night clouds light up to underline a thought, a dream too heavy to stay asleep. Where the dead leaves are crushed underfoot, and crickets rub themselves and fluffy anvils float overhead. When you finally come to rest, when the grease congeals into simplicity, your life will be a series of tasks

You will tear apart your memories in shreds of apology.

The pain will blossom, and overflow