if knowing me is

a fantasy, then you're just

a page in the book.

Panic

And it's suddenly struck home once again--

The arrow into the heel of Achilles.

I'm violable, I'm nothing special, I'm real.

Thud.

Amphibian arrowheads sinking into my softest skin

Pry open my thief-knotted secrets,

Rendering me as pale and unarmored as the fabled beloved

shining, suddenly, with no Hephaestus to hide behind;

My glass wall is spear-shattered and my mind is left staggering

Across bedspreads and library stairs,

Miming the spastic flight-dance of a turtle with no shell.

It's too far to the sea.

Lying in the field I'm waiting for the gulls,

Welcoming coyotes,

Gathering sand.

Sapphic Fragment 3

always, I yearn to give

wings to words, yet of the glorious

resounding cries, of the beautiful and good, you

force me into a shamed silence of pain, stifling me

with fear, blame, regret[?]

for your swollen

[fingers?] as I let you take your fill. for though my thinking

arose all self-condemning, it was not thus

as you accused; nothing is arranged

erratically, nor erotically, though

all night long, l[a]ying anxious, I am aware

of your allegations of evildoing;

but I, in my desire-choked silence, my willful blindness,

lay blame on other souls, all those deluded minds,

those cursed, those blessed ones,

all around whom you spread your downy wings,

all whom you loved,

all whom you destroyed

unknowingly?

I reject that you'd willingly break us,

and yet

the truth lies naked.

have you no temperance, no shame?

--

Creative reconstruction; bold words are the original fragment.

Chased

Dissipating, dissolving, condensing, coalescing,

I stand swaying,

cymbals crashing betwixt my ears

smashing into nothing,

atomizing silence.

As I stand dead-in-the-eyes and slowly cracking

and my body collapses into paperdust and coffee bones,

I can feel my mind leaking.

Hard as I try, I haven't the fingers

to overpower this entropic exploration.

A shadow slithers accusingly up the moonlit page

as busking crickets resuscitate the landscape

and I shake myself to clarity, shiver the machine to life.

With my aluminum lungs and pewter heart

I'll go swimming in your slipstream

in a mist of safety glass,

a fog of shattered taillights and adrenaline.

Racing, racing, cogs and flywheels burning,

never consuming quickly enough to catch your tragedy.

Always, I'm one revolution belated:

just close enough to pick up the pieces,

never far enough to rebuild.

WWP4: Passive

(buttercupfestival.com)

Sometimes it strikes me suddenly, the static.

Like the trees and the grass I am grounded,

Rooted deep in the fertile loam

Reaching down to unyielding bedrock

Sitting motionless,

Day by day

Waiting

Always waiting

For someone with the gift of freedom

Of motion

Of flight...

For someone to bring me news of elsewhere

To tell me fantastic tales of that which my eyes will never see

Someone to fly back to me and sing of the sky

Lying upon the world like heavy wet cotton

Wrinkled and lazy and blue.

Travel

We're on a train in the night,
accelerating with such a solid relentlessness
it sometimes seems we'll never be able to stop,
we'll just barrel on through the coaldust darkness forever,
ghosting through the skeletons of ironworks
and the shuddering bones of dying industry,
watching civilization level and smother the landscape,
watching flora and fauna slowly but inexorably claim it back,
watching the atmosphere oxidize the shining lines of the city's arteries,
watching each capillary turn to rust,
watching the blood rattle tiredly on.
Bleed it out, bleed it out, bleed it out.

Two

sunbaked and wasted
the beach holds all my secrets
digging fingers reveal all

--

pull me in, hide me
kiss my lips, my sanguine hips
clothed in thistledown

It's been too long since I've written haiku

the smell of the night
makes me want to run until
I can't get back home

--

you are embarrassed
and I'm just amusing, so
why try to hide it?

--

funny how sleeping
makes everything go numb
and fade to fiction

--

it's an eraser
or an ice storm, blurring to
surreality

--

I'm fading, aching
leaning, with lights flickering
I sink into you

--

I miss your music
even though now it only
makes me all empty

--

exhaustion, you see
is the most addictive type
of psychotropic

AP Portfolio Concentration

[To be read sequentially. Click a photo to enlarge.]

Winter

I'm getting lost in static snowdrifts
Waiting, wandering, shivering
Straining my tired eyes, trying
Trying to see through the miasmatic flurries
The frozen fury.
I can't feel my toes
Can't bend my knees, anymore
As roots creep down, twining
Out of my hips, my shoulders
Sinking into the ice, into the asphalt, bulging, twisting
So
Very
Slowly.
Lethargic nostalgic squeezing
Unnoticed, unconcerned.
Undiscovered.
Steadfast and wondering, I wait
Beneath the clandestine streetlamp
With my back to the night and my face to the wind.
Squinting, tensing, waiting
But you're never coming, are you?

Acres

everyone lives trapped in a revolving industrial garage with five-ton caution-striped hydraulic doors.

--

there's a black hole in the rearview mirror
as we drive out of nothing, into nothing
the world materializing fifty feet ahead
and dissolving as we pass.
we exist in a circle of definition
going nowhere at fifty-seven miles per hour.

--

We walk along fallow fields, jumping marshes and wading through reeds. We walk along the hedgerows under a leaden sky, into tangled apple trees whose withered fruits lie bleeding and frozen in the mud. All the trees have claws, here. Fingers reach across the pond, eating its icy casing, dyeing it aquamarine, dyeing it blackish and brackish as it starts to rain, and the pool becomes a drumskin, every drop a ring of sound, rippling into our eyes and our ears. We follow the memory of deer up the hill, into true woods. The moss and the ferns are rebels, survivors, verdantly alive in the monochrome scene. Our boots crunch down the slope, over stream and through brambles that tear our skin and clutch at our hair, onto a landscape laid belly up, open to the mercy of the sky... I wander in a daze toward a fallen cloud, a bit of still-frozen snow...? Through someone else's eyes I see the dead goose, its saline feathers sooty and rubied, strewn across the clover. Ornithinian ribs tear at the leaking sky, the ruined head tucked under one mangled, outflung wing. I sing a lament as I walk. I can hear the hunter in the woods; I am dressed all in brown. I sing as I capture the tiny hooves, scattered limbs, the pile of skin, the empty shell, the head, still erect. I sing in the sunlight to the open sky, to the strewn feathers and whitest down, the tangled intestines, the empty eyes and crushed beak, the crumpled feet. The shots ring, ever nearer, and I flinch; I wander, stagger, and weave; I scatter.

Condensation

words forced out
are spectres in the air
hanging.
they crown your head
circling like vultures
eat me eat me eat me.
feathers twitch in the cacophony of silence
as you give up
and lay your head on mine.
we are a city
a picnic-blanket landscape
strewn with cherry stems and eggshells.
we are checked--
red-and-white
back-and-forth
black-and-blue.
swing swing swing push.
there you go, now just hang
until your arms give out.
I'll catch you!
I promise.
sort of.
it's reciprocation, after all.
give-and-get.
I lost every receipt, love
so now we're just jumbled
piled between the bricks
of frustration, of desire.
...wait, what?
but you said...
damnit.
no.
collapse into our blanket cocoon
our pillow canoe
our net of limbs
our net of lies.
tumble back into the haze
of tiny bubbles
of criss-crossed crystal
of amber energy.
melt me.
yes, I am a puddle of mush.
sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiding.
let's make it a shindig
we'll be slush in the streets
dissolve in the heat
of tumbling truths
that haunt your mouth.
there are ghosts in the air
spirits on the windows.
every apparition staring me down
with their empty accusing eyes.
it was a failed exorcism
that only forced your spectres
into my ears, instead.

Drift

a magnet with no opposing poles
pushing closer and pulling away
caught in a tangle of electricity
spinning, spinning
with no direction at all.
a ship sails a cerulean sea
I watch an island through a spyglass.
stranded, not for lack of canvas
but the wind, listless
spirals out and down
and carries me nowhere.
bruised by crystal and brass
the compass never rests, these days.
as sable spreads outward
from lids heavy with thought
dripping with apology
drenched in regret.
lashes whip the room
freezing to stillframe
every smile
every kiss.
stomachs acidify
my basest thoughts
so I can stand here, neutral.
yes, I can look you in the eyes
and not even blink.

Wandering/Wavering

the highway is beautiful at night
a ribbon of flowing lights
mesmerizing
and I lose myself in the drumbeat
drowning in the bassline
pretending it's your heartbeat.
consciousness flowing through
the empty passenger seat
dissipating out into the air.
it is twenty eight degrees outside
and I hardly notice.
I'm eighteen miles ahead
and seven months behind
walking the razor edge of ambivalence
as you slip in and out of focus
flying past
lingering, maybe
but only for one grasping moment
so I'm left again with only air to hold.
you're my cloud
but I haven't found the sun yet
what is it that burns you away?
I'm sorry that I can't feel your vapor
waiting for the rain
or another sunny day
I'm assaulted by mist and fog.
she twines her hand in mine
and I...
twitch.
what is this silence?
I patch your holes with scraps of plaid
but you're wearing so thin
and I'm almost out of thread.
weave me tartan from your hair, love
it's brazen, oceanic
just the thing for mending this
unless I'm illiterate
unless I'm deluding myself
into thinking I could read the words
you traced upon my arms
so I'll sit here calmly erasing you.
I know you didn't mean to kill my balance
but I'm tumbling.
if she catches me
does that make her mine?
alternately pushing and pulling
it's go limp or tear apart.
I stare out my spiderwebbed pane
with mendacious clarity
hoping the shards hold
always just a few more weeks.

Three

exorbitant speed
pulls me apart, rips my seams
blurs all my edges

--

mesmerizing dust
coats our hands and our faces
we turn to the sky.

--

you walk down alone
trailing a shadow of thought
into a streetlamp.

Attraction

if you wanted this
you should have picked me up before I melted into the sidewalk
it pulled me in
as I swirled my fingers through the cracks
they pulled me under
my nerves tangling with the roots of the weeds
I reached in
the clay soft, quiet, choking
I sank down
floating gently in the silent world of tiny worms
suspended
dark behemoths rising beneath me
I fell towards the sky
as the cracks widened with every step
you pulled
viscous resistance, apathetic limpness
pulled me out
the sun was blinding, but you were there
holding me
closer than ever, after it burned
I pushed you away
cold and dripping, caked in concrete
don't want this
let me sink back into the sidewalk
I'll hear you
the echo of your boots on the grey cement
reverberates
I'll know when you're near me
but please, just let me go

These are old

oh, sweet apathy!
why hast thou abandoned me?
it's too much, too much.

--

exhaustion's stolen
everything you thought you had...
my body, my mind.

--

you're delusional,
don't think it's all behind us....
open your damn eyes.

--

you are my caffeine
I am giddy, ecstatic
and crash-- empty, low.

Spin

Floating in an effervescent sea of thistledown
Rocked by your infectious, fevered pulse
Washed by waves of black ribbon
That extract all thought
All emotion
All sense of being
Leaving only a body
In an ecstasy of pain
Reaching, reaching, reaching
Never quite enough.
Jumping, always waiting
For you to catch me in your brittle arms.
You never will, will you?
Not until I've already splintered on the smoking ground.
Twist me out from your spindled tongue
Or send me shooting up your spidered veins
Make me a part of something beautiful
Anything that isn't me.

Two More

reality is
nothing more than the fluid
trapped between our bones.

--

everything I am
is beginning to dissolve.
I'm not resisting.

I am addicted to haiku

When the glass shatters
don't you worry, love, it will
all have been my fault.

--

I want to get lost
In lonesome woods, burning leaves
please don't follow me.

--

remember my feet.
I will forget, but they've got
so many stories.

--

eloquently, I
have nothing at all to say,
yet I just can't stop.

--

I swear to you I
wanted to, I wanted to...
I just never knew.

--

stars get stuck sometimes,
hang above us, and we wait,
evaporating.