'I would promise you until always ends, but I want to live forever.'
cyanide poems
dripped off his thin lips.
wreathing water-ink.
something like saliva
and coughed-up calligraphy.
up-turned cheekbones:
a smile
dancing to the surface:
a parody of laughter--
pallid and festering.
'you're a stranger, so why should i care.'
albatross hands.
dragged out;
crashing again.
'you'll vanish today,'
fingers chilled
to sticks of flesh and bone.
'not for the first time, i hear--or the last.'
face floating:
a harsh white sky.
spume and spray
spread out
like a too-taunt sheet.
surrender reaching:
frozen
and
languid.
longing
i am running
with kites on runways;
slipping smiles into the breeze.
throwing paper airplanes
down terminals;
fluttering dreams in turbines.
i could've called anyone
there a liar--
but i only found me
inside my head.
and if i learned
that feathers
leave papercuts,
i might not
be here:
afraid of flying
with the feeling of
melting wax
between my fingers
'what are you scared of?'
she was too pale to be held against the sun: so she leans against it until you can't see her face.
her eyes were chalk-smudges on blackboards, blurred against a backdrop of white-washed walls. her outline was all fade-out and lace, as white as winter could be.
her words were quiet like stains are, clinging to a curtain in the window. just trying to blend into the pattern, or at least not become part of it.
and when she breathes her chest swells with see-through lungs--hoping that if you focus, you'll see right through her glass skin. after all, she's just a smudge of the wrong varnish in your eyes.
she shudders
god died today. or maybe it was tomorrow. i can't remember.
"ask anything."
static skies;
grizzled blue
sketching down
to sewer lines:
like a wish
on a dead star.
the feeling of gritted teeth
and fingers crossed
until they break.
shame tasted
like a scalpel
and a brick wall
against my throat.
and i was
chewing concrete
when i said,
"it's okay."
swallowing cinder blocks;
stuffing steel under skin.
sugar-sweet
on my cheek,
like book pages:
"where have you been?"
life slouches against the door
[i think i can hear it crying]
sickly grins lick my lips;
rub the undersides
of scream-sore throats
stained with the sweetest sort of bruise
every nerve--
a soft
atrium flow;
cutting
capillaries
screams all my own
swallowed in cotton lungs
pressure in my skull
fire in my veins
holding the skin i had
clinging tighter to fragility
and i just can't find
the strength to cry
anymore
the night stretches on for months
red.
red.
black.
i shake like a leaf