Give it away. Shed that old metal skin and grow new. Spinning wheels alive with the timbre of the road. As it takes me places. So many places I thought I'd already been. But now, they're all new again.

Siphoning power from the air. The wind. Driving. Dash by dash the measure of our distance. As we go home for the first time since. That given rubber chased the asphalt with its hungry grin.

Blackest when the lights are on. So alike I am. Humble as the faster it flees. So arrogant as it's forced to stop. Lose the backseats. We carry just one passenger. Often less.

Smooth face of glass. Elongated to show the panorama of traffic that is life. Chasing gears in absolute resolve. Until every gradation is mine. Fluttering nimbly through these streets as a butterfly alighting on slouching shoulders. Casual, yet meticulous. In movement and in form. In every gentle nudge that urges of toward our destination.

But regardless of where we may end up, the journey is always ours.

As I continue to drive my little black car.

Mileage is irrelevant.

We're here again.

Just us. The skull with its skin peeled down to the lips. Scapels everywhere cutting blind. Hearts still beating from inside open ribcages. As the monitor testifies. Preaches even. That what thoughts once were alive in there, do still exist.

If only I still had those old wings. If only people ever lived to become who they think they are.

Then all poets would be useless. And drugs no addiction at all. Just one more stripe of color in the sky as it decides when to rain next.

Like I always told you, we're not here to please each other. Nor ourselves. We're alive because we want something much harder to find.

I guess I should've given you up a long time ago. But I never could stand to think of you as alone.

Your kite without a string battling the current. Consenting to lose oneself I can abide. But not being stricken. Lost.

There are enough balloons for all who need them. Because your pain means nothing to me. It is spoken in a foreign language. I can feel it, but I don't understand what it's saying.

I never have.

I wonder what drug it would take to translate.

And what then they might say.

Do they have breath. Would they echo.

As I stand at the end of this corridor and wait for them to reach. Wherever it is they hope to go.

The pleasantries of humanity aside. It all seems so futile. Lost in ourselves. Looking to others for an exit.

I want to make it right, but it already is. Can't paste those fallen petals back on the stem. New ones have already taken their place.

Anxiously following every note. To see. To feel. Where next they'll go. Please don't turn me over. They'll never sound the same again.

I've been working for years on learning how to hear what can't be said. I know the smell. Dense and dank like grandma's basement. Full of memories unkempt. Moist feet and dusty hands as we'd examine the papers. The jewelry. The photographs. Every trinket time had poisoned us to forget.

There is no song I can sing. Nor instrument other than this. So I listen. As the music pierces the glass. Refracting. Colorizing the lament of the storm's passage.

It drains out. In a thoughtless stream. Into somewhere darker. These virulent machines that mimic the beat of dying hearts. Every pulse of sound as magnetic as it is artificial. Its synthetic drug pouring into my ears. Teasing this corpse with an illusion of life. Its mirrors embedded deep below my skin. Falsely animating the phantoms that dance over their graves.

All.

Everything.

Gasping like a lantern lost in the woods. The crackle of the fuel failing the only evidence of it struggle. As the light surrenders to its surroundings.

We.

Fail.

A thousands times.

With every heartbeat.

All we are is the struggle.

Life is a statutory rape of the sensibilities. All we have is consent.

When all these drugs finally fail us. We are what's left.

A symphony of yes's and no's. A broken violin scratching across a nervous bow. Every string stretched as far as it will go.

Making music even left untouched.

It waits.

Follows.

Those beaten angel's wings flailing to move the wind.

And failing.

Everything too quiet.

This is all that it is.

No braids in her hair anymore. Used up the last of those rubberbands. Silent pockets. I sit there so long and nothing changes. We grow old staring at one another.

What to say. Apologies too convenient.

I gather my courage. All of it and still have nothing. I try to remember how it was to know what I wanted. Just grab it. But that had to be the xanax talking.

Not me.

No color on her fingernails. Only that soft blush of pink so neatly capped by the white. Beautiful cubism on all ten fingers. As they touch everything about me.

I've lived a long time, but haven't lived that much.

Still life requires no label for me to know how strong the contents.

The ugly always knows what it looks like. It's the beauty that looks in the mirror and never sees itself.

I know it doesn't make much sense, but I feel the same as I did then. I want to plant the seeds. Watch them grow from a distance.

I know it sounds crazy, but I understand what I can't have.

My virtue is that I'm content even if all I did was let them go.

I don't possess these words for no reason. They belong to me because no one else can. I'm not a poet because of my pain. I'm a person in spite of it.

Love. With all its three way mirrors was never something I sought. Just some fun house assortment I'd marvel at. As it contorted every reflection until we knew not what we saw.

I don't know why it happened. Just that it did. And you are better now. Because you know how much you have.

I'd rather not define what it means to tear the blankets off that better and find the sheets too empty. I'd rather just think about when I liked the middle. How sleeping their made me feel so independent.

It's not that I drink because I have to, but more because I don't know what else to do. Watching them change and hoping it's right now. Watching them changes and not knowing if I went to far.

Watching it all and not knowing why I stay the same through it all.

One beer too many. One moment too few.

As we look back upon. Humbled by what happened to us. Looking for the wings they promised long after the air has decided we weigh too much.

measure my loyalty by all I haven't said.

I never had a reason to believe you. I just always did. Like I believe the light of the stars is real, though I know the ones that sent it to me are long dead. Like I believe in the words I type, though I know they prove nothing.

If it's a window I can understand it. The kiss of the glass as it chases my breathing. So hurried. With eyes like microscopes seeing the details, but never the image.

If it's pain I can grieve for it. Yours, mine or their. Sink into that dirty bath and feel safer because I've been below the surface. I believe in love only as it happens in my thoughts. The hummingbird standing still at a million miles an hour. To drink the flower.

Every t-shirt still fits so well. As I wear the fabric loose and lenient. They all want to win, but all I want is to watch. Cheer for them. Prove to these walls they are not all I see. Show the page I still know how to turn it.

Break the pencil and draw still. In color. In ink. Hearing the doorbell is more than enough. Delivery is irrelevant.

I don't want to receive. Only wanted to be accepted.

Leave the rabbits with all four feet. Leave the tortoises with their victories.

I never wanted to win. Just didn't want them to lose.

The lines were already there. All I did was follow them. Chasing unicorns I never believed were real. Punching the wind as if it could feel my fists.

Knowing it never would.

But it all seemed worthwhile. Because I had to know what you did.

The mechanical rabbit to my greyhound. It was quite a race we ran.

Round and round I go.

The distant rumble of fireworks as summer implodes. I responded because I remembered the way the stairs would creak as he walked behind me.

Up toward.

Because I remembered the bows bigger than their packages. And how a gift seemed the last thing I deserved from him then.

I can't talk or say. But I can always write. The truth my mistress as I explain their impact letter by letter. The kind of statements you can't retract. Smiles that never turn dark. The little bit of flesh I can offer them that won't ever decay should they wish to hang on to it.

I responded because though it's hard, I don't think it should matter what happened after. Then is who we were to each other. And after we are gone, those people we were aren't.

There are so many things I can't say. This is just one.

Life is full of moments I'd never change, but still wish had turned out different.

I responded because I never want you to think I regret the ones we created.

But I'm not who you remember. I'm not anyone's friend.

You're just an instinct for survival that never faded. A tantrum in the heart of evolution. While I admire the naivete that keeps you strong I can't respect the ignorance that makes it possible.

If you were a bird you'd jump right out of the nest. And when you hit the ground you'd climb back up and do it all over again. But I would stay there close to the earth evaluating what went wrong.

I'd watch you as you kept trying and make it my task to figure out how you could fly.

I like to pretend I am making choices when in reality I am letting things happen. The illusion of control I keep thinking will lead me to the act of. If they call and I don't answer I have won. A stale victory, but it's the only kind I know.

I don't think it's ever over. Just sometimes that there's nothing more we can do. I solve the problem when I'm capable. But take just as much pride in admitting when I'm unable.

She thinks it's her I've stopped caring about, but the truth is I don't care about anything anymore except her.

She can't stand it, I know. This cancer I've given myself. But she doesn't blame me, though she should. Instead she blames herself.

There are so many things I could change about my life. But not this.

The things I do, yes. But not why I do them. You can't stop being my mother. And I can't not be a poet.

She had said I should be. The worm inside her. Make my home in the dirt. Darkness my sight. She said she knew. Both the drain and the surge of the needle. As it stitches broken veins. Pretending to mend as it stiffens all those holes.

There is no hope to be found in this pale derivative. I encountered the genie. Flaunting its allotment of wishes. Three times I asked it, but it never gave me what I wanted. Only used my words against me. Turning my weaknesses into its bullets.

If you believe in a reason good for you. But I've spoken with them on several occasions. Salesmen. That's all they are. You are a quota. A product. A commission that won't see the sale.

Always thinking I have lived until it happens. Like picking fruit. Toting those heavy baskets. To pay for what otherwise would've fallen.

Noble departures are a thing of the past. Now there's only leaving.

The yellow t-shirt turning brown. As this armor petitions its shield. I feed the snake. Not because I am frightened of it. On the contrary, it's my pet.

The question never asks. It tells. Teeth marks on the floor where we bit too hard. Cloth on our lips. The purple look of time as it twists the blinds closed.

If the summer's long enough you never know where it starts. Or when it ends. It's just a car in a parking space. Engine always on. A flame as big as the lighter itself.

I listened so long I began to wonder if I could be heard at all. Had I a voice. Could it make sound. Had this language in my fingers been seized from my tongue.

I tried to catch his eyes as they danced around my stare. Deer in the woods running from the sound of snapping branches. I would've tried harder, but I've never enjoyed the hunt. No real satisfaction in taking something you'd hoped would be given. Hurts more than just letting it run.

We can't be anything we want. We can only be ourselves. Cope with what that means as it comes.

He said it's easy. You just take off your clothes and the rest is fate. These lips once my own now belonging to what broils underneath. We can lick the spoon. If we're quiet. We can taste the dough. But we'll never live to see it rise.

But aren't we always naked?
You never are so long as I'm alive.

Why don't I believe you even as with such conviction you say it.

Only because I know every truth is dependent upon how close we were to what we wanted. And we never even got close.

The paper dolls lay next to scissors. I know it's not my fault. Because they never worked in my hand. The mold facing the wrong direction.

The last laugh mine, but hardly satisfactory.

And there you are with your beard and all your times. Just like a real person.

Your hair telling lies your eyes contradict.

I wish you were better now. But I know you're not.

I fall. To learn the ladder again.

Not to go up, but to remember what down is.

Everything gone, but nothing is.

It's May again. And I am lost. So high on the lies I've come to believe.

If the trees had eyes I wonder what they would've remarked. Seeing what we'd done. That coy strategy of ours for happiness. To steal it from others. And if those same trees had ears I can't imagine what they would've heard. The selfish grunt of love tugging on the yarn it knits. Unraveling itself by the pull of its incessant weight.

I wish that was enough. Then. There. The moment caught in its own net. Flailing like a fish. Hook still through its mouth. I want to say it's over. Been done and need not ever be anew.

There we were. Too much what we wanted to be ourselves. There we dug until the soil refused. There was no treasure buried to be discovered. Just the one we had always been trying to lose.

At least it worked. It must have.

Cause there's nothing now.

Barren pine all around, but none so much as I.

Temporarily her. For the hour? As it implores the flesh to unbutton itself. Stern air frowns upon the wrinkles that mark these movements. Temporarily. Her. For the night? The entirety of execution from light to dark. Alive to dead. Still enough to examine sleeping beauties and croaking princes.

No fairy tale is complete without a damsel distressed.

Once upon a time. Once upon an absent dress. A child became a poet.

All the words would listen keenly as her fingers sung for them. So even alone she would know a friend. So even when everything else was over she could begin again. Or at least keep them after they were gone. Awkward totems on swaying poles. With their strange smiles looking down on her from under thickening clouds.

No fairy tale is complete without a villain.

Once upon a time. Once upon a silly dream she awoke compelled to live once more. Only to fail again. Strutted off into the world with only the ink trapped under her skin to clothe her. Once upon an open beer. A poet became an addict.

She took a few lovers, but was never taken.

Once upon a pushed up mini skirt on a couch made of itch. She swallowed him with her thighs and remembered how it felt to be alone.

No fairy tale is finished without a happy ending. This is mine.

Did he love me? Of course he did. Like frost on leaves until the sun decides. Did I care. Of course I did. This impotent suicide easily contrasted the life I almost lived.

In his arms.

That's what I hated. The dependecy. The soil required to grow the plant. The rabbit that limps to grant us our luck.

A mutual prison the closest we ever were to being together.

And now you've escaped.

I wish you luck. With the world outside. With all the demons not so obvious as pain.

As much as it hurts at least I know what it looks like. What it does.

There are only so many blankets you can shiver under before you realize the cold comes from within.

I'd ask you to take me home, but I don't know where that is.

Wearing our sunken castles we tend to believe the moats.

Praise the kitten. Kill the cat. It doesn't begin. It ends slowly. Chew the bullet from below the skin. Bite by bite I come to appreciate the taste of pain.

When nothing else is left to have this is what we are. In every instance. In every crayon color life melts down. Those papers are so unfair in the names they give us. So many words we could take to say how, but none of them will let us.

And you are the fool. Who dares to rob this empty safe. All locks undone still there is nothing you can take.

If you're someone else tonight I can understand. But shouldn't it pass. Jerk off that cloak and let me see again. Or at least cast the shadow. So that I may bathe in what once was.

Or what I believed to be the truth before we decided I was still too young.

And what of older anyway. Lay the boards. Build the floor. Still I can't walk on it.

The echo is just too loud.

I keep the bracelet in an M&M guy pouch. The necklace could be anywhere. Once the smoke is gone there's no telling where the fire once lived.

It's interesting the gifts we give to prove the things we never can. Even if they're true.

He had that new car smell again. Even though his car wasn't. It could've been his cologne, but I couldn't recall him ever having worn. That might've been just something old I'd forgotten the scent of.

Platitudes with all their rifles armed. Still every shell has its own signature. Unique point of entry. Unnamed abstract of splatter.

The only thing they all have in common is their proclivity toward the use of red.

As it wheedles the horizon into letting it show through again.

One button undone. And there I am. Shucking dead oysters for pearls long ago stolen.

If we could be what we want we'd be too perfect. And when we be just what we are the same results in an uglier package.

I know the rules. I have the ability. But this trophy is not what I want.

Every day is game seven. But all I want is to lose.

Why won't they let me?

I never did learn to apply myself. Never needed to. I grew up thinking all these tests are so easy and the rest of life would be similar. So much for a proper education.

I filled every bubble with the proper number two pencil. And every result said I was a success. So much for standardizing.

When you're young you think you're living. Maybe you even are. But life is something different.

Age throws its wet trenchcoat over me and tells me to walk. To where? Nevermind. Just keep walking. You'll know it when you get there.

My entire childhood was dedicated to learning and yet it taught me virtually nothing of what I needed to know.

Sharper curves. Isn't that an oxymoron? How can curves be sharp?

Still, somehow, they often are.

Everyone is the same. When the sheets come down on those yawning beds. When the lights go off you think you can see them. But when they come up again you're left with strangers.

It's bizarre to feel so much and have only this one way to express. Blunt syringe hunting scarred veins. For an entry point. Or an exit.

It goes in. If I try hard enough.

But out. The out is what I've always sought.

Lose the sheets from empty beds. Push out the drug the same way it went in. Smother the fire in the same way it kills us. One shoelace in a mental ward. One belt buckle closer to the end.

Confirming birth afforded me just this one privilege.

To decide.

I can't remember how it ended. Beyond the ribbons words would knot.

Can't say how it began. Except that it was sudden. Like the tip of a mechanical pencil gouging a fresh page.

And it drew. It drew so many pictures for as long as it was allowed to last.

The only right I've ever had is to decide.

If it mattered.

All people underneath are only paper skeletons.

Eager to be written upon. To read.

What they cannot hear.

Prove the needle goes in both directions.

With a reticent stare his eyes lashed through her thoughts. One blink at a time dusting the dirt from the remaining pieces of skeleton.

Fossils in their own time.

Frauds in faded t-shirts and gasping denim. Only the socks stay on. Before. During. After. Icing on burnt cakes. Broken doorbells.

You'll find that I'm hard to reach these days. Ever since. I realized that ladder goes nowhere.

Slowly.

Climbing's overrated. And falling has its charms.

One of the first things we ever discussed as lovers was that we couldn't change. Like the situation demanded we underline that fact. So no one could cry wolf later. Or fabricate a reason to hate.

It's not often so, but sometimes we don't learn anything from our mistakes. Because it's impossible for us to believe that's what they were.

If I believed in heaven I'd say it's not a place you can go. Only somewhere you can be taken.

Briefly.

Those thick gods with their trumpets made of stone. All thunder. No music.

Spare me.

These truths so vague. Digging graves with shovels full of holes.

Every corner is sharper than the one before it.

Batman in the bookstore. Velvet pages on the end of his belt. Words without blood seem pointless now. And blood without words a criminal silence.

Wonder Woman at the bar. Shirley Temple eyes. Gin and tonic stare. The ceiling is gone. And so is the floor. Lost in that cartoon pause between stepping off the cliff and actually falling off.

You never do start to drop until you look down and see that the ground is gone.

So If I never open my eyes. If I never look down. I can stay here.

Never have to hit bottom.

The brown on the wound. Thick patches sewn tightly.

Alarms not ready to wake me. Bashful second hands skate the perimeter.

As life hangs. Wet sheets pinned to the breeze. The smell of cleansing so abundant.

That we were ever that white. That we could ever be so again.

Or would want.

To say the clothes will not allow. As vehemently as to go naked instead. Feeling the bones in my ankle as the muscles frown. Tired of lifting those toes.

It's not a store though it resembles one. We buy everything. So why not this?

It's not an entry, but still it's guarded.

We'd be foolish otherwise.

As they borrow these words. Capes not flown. Anti-heros. All of us. In the reason and the why. In everything we confess to ourselves.

The denim in their smiles as they take off their clothes. So dense. The stretch in their skin as they fit themselves into a smaller size.

I must count the raindrops. So I will know.

How heavy this bucket is.

Where those holes go.

If I can still carry it.

I don't know where it goes or why it goes there. That endless chalkboard full of dust. Everything we once wrote there splintered into particles too small to ever understand again.

The only proof I have is that I'm still here.

Scribbles on the sidewalk. Sneakers on these paws. Hopscotching backward through the numbered squares in our hearts. One stone at a time.

Magnificent moments at every corner. One foot more than enough to balance upon. Willing. More than willing to fall. Forty-five degrees each. As it joins. So it parts.

No closer to being whole.

Follow the trickle of sweat as it dances down the bottle's shin. The promiscuous love that abuse affords us. Especially when there are no other options.

Of everything as a child I could've been, this still seems the most appropriate.

Every avenue closed. Ever fork bent back. No need to see the colors to know that they're forgotten. Were never really there.

Just shadows on the verge of combustion. As hope continued to connect speakers to amplifiers long dead.

So many sounds. So many songs to be discovered in the shatter of failing voices.

When we wake up and are suddenly different. We must know we were not changed by them. Only guided.

When the skin finally finds its place upon these bones again. I must remember where I left the zipper. And what fingerprints it has.

I get better only as this worsens.

As frail incumbents struggle to retain the choices made for them.

I wrote you a message. I don't know if you got it.

You're always there, but you never are.

I guess I should be broken, but crippled always suited me better. That way no one ever expects I should recover.

The listening is easy to do. It's the speaking I never quite mastered. But I know for certain, whatever it is you needed to hear is exactly what I've wanted to say to you.

But I've no cards left in my hand. Hope you'll forgive me for leaving the table.

I'd gamble it all on you if I had anything at all left to wager.

Summon the savior. Tell him he is lost.

Liberal as any truth can be in the arms of its debtor. What I owe you I can never repay. You gave me something I can't create on my own.

Open the valve. It's coming through. Like it or not. There are squares everywhere. And all the circles are gone.

Various. As the stars the night selects to display. There are so many out there, but it only shows us a fraction. They're all out there together. Crowded into the universe. Yet each alone.

Focusing on the altitude of my dying. So many plateaus. They scatter the reasons I've collected. Magazines stripped of all the shiny to their pages.

There's nothing to read now except these words I steal from failing fingers.

It always heals. That's true, but it's never better.

I've done everything I should. Still incomplete. I wonder will another come to try to save me. Arrant demigods wearing crowns plated in gold. The songs in constant turmoil providing the stability I need.

As they go. As they leave.

Just another season.

Over.

Snowmen defaulted to the sun. No funeral for deaths expected. No tears for dying ghosts. In their satin skins so shimmering with lies I'll never know. Bullets in the chamber sweating their targets.

There's just no way for us to be ourselves again. And so we waste. For the vacant stare that allow truth to intercept what we've always known.

The tennis ball on the roof. The frisbee on the patio. The grass that quietly forgets where we've run.

Time is a cold elevator. The floors observe. I don't have a patent on pain. I feel yours as well.

Sell me your copyright fib by fib. Until every hurt is published. I can't escape, but I can say those mountains exaggerate.

They're only as tall as we imagine. We're only ourvlesves. Everyone else comes after.

I always wonder how people wear makeup at a funeral.

And now I know.

I won't wake up from this.

He chased the cola to heaven until the cap came off. There we debated, but never decided how it should end.

I guess I was wrong about you. Wrong about myself.

I thought I knew her.

Her stealth bomber tragedy. Her vocabulary stunted by words she'd never never imagined she'd have to know.

Everything I never wanted to be I was. Because it seemed then the only way to ever be loved.

At least now I know.

Worn out teddy bear on pillows made of skin. There stared the drain into me as I asked it what it planned on stealing next.

Following the pipes. Chasing the trickle. Only sunk me deeper into the darkness.

It's a perpetual lie. Breathing for fear of what I wish to do. Living because I don't know how to die.

Nothing to regret except having been born. Having not tried harder to find a way to undo it.

No cancer high can lift me out of this obstinate stupor. No sclerosis forthcoming can quench this ire.

Baby's stare in the head of a man. I won't change your diaper.

A sudden apocalypse erupts from the sanity that holds me hostage.

In finding myself I feel at a disadvantage.

Sight the accuser. Don't you dare pretend to know what I see. You look into my eyes. Not out from. You are the witness, but I'm the one on trial.

Telling your stories. I hate being the third person. I hate the way their lips move when they talk about.

As if they found that zipper. Stopped looking in on and finally saw out.

You can have my flesh. I don't mind. It's nothing without its skeleton.

You can have my eyes, whatever color you think they are. I don't mind. Sight is a shallow cross. And all this skin I wear only means having to feel them.

I can prosecute the flesh until every jury forgives. Save the ideal. Discard the evidence. We never see. Eyes open. Only to feel.

Remember.

Weakness in controlled doses. Strength the only drug that's ever let me down.

I almost thought I knew them.

Or that I'd lost myself in letting it show.

Sober people. What do they know. Just the hour as it chokes on its own sense of self-righteousness. Infringing upon everything we want not to know.

Wearing my petticoat. Remiss in my short sleeves. Too much ink showing again.

It's so obvious, no?

Always on the outside. Behind the glass. The truth is only a reflection of what's happening out there.

Following the footsteps. In tremors and in gulps. You can drink, but you can't sip it. It'll swallow you if you let it. Like a big hug from someone who's leaving again.

The anger in its treetops. The sorrow in its bark. Tracing the horizon with a broken pen. You never see the tree growing, but it always is.

What did I know sober? Other than how much it hurts to hate myself. What did I know then? Other than the taste of my breath always fogging up the glass.

All those eye peering in and not seeing.

Give me my chisel. My hammer and nail. As I manufacture life one bottle at a time.

Move the background. Not the subject. Fool the eyes. Life's stale distillery. They tell the truth with so many lies.

Something beside me goes forward. Forcing me backward, though I'm not moving. The awkward seduction of isolation creates change where there is none.

Reading the names off. The roll call of memory. Sanctifying what is gone.

These temporary kingdoms leave us nothing but empty castles. Broken crowns. Diving down into the moat. In search of crocodiles.

The words were in my throat so long I got used to it. Learned to breathe around them. Saturday speaks, but Sunday is deaf. The lemon in your diet Pepsi, but the straw tells you the taste.

At the stop sign the clutch winces. The engine gulps. Another detour. The closer I get to, the longer the drive.

There is no there. Only the redundant journey of finding I am not.

Chasing the pistons. As they chase themselves.

Letters softly painted on the darkness. Cryptically they mirror my thoughts and I attempt to decipher. The x. The o. The period. An alphabet soup in my heart.

Knee to chin. Resting. Thinking. As though conclusions are waiting on my cue. To at last take the stage. Stifle us all with their Shakespearian monologue.

It's not a lie. It's what I wish were true. As the grass grows over and the mourners dwindle. The funeral is living. Never sure you'll ever want to again.

I tell myself I'm better now that I've gotten used to life without. And I want to believe it, but I don't think I ever will.

Letters scrape their shadows across my eyes in messages not unlike people.

To see. To feel.

But nothing to hold. Or hold you.

Just voices I'm only now realizing I never really heard.

The dumbfounded. The lost. Broad like an eagle's wings. It soars. Under the cloak of reason.

Forward momentum. Takes me higher. Pushing these sheltered limbs upward in the arc of their predecessors. Younger. Stronger. Less inclined to fall.

Don't I wake up exactly the same way. Hurried lids revealing a world that exceeds anything I can hope to be. So alive all the while I sleep. Painfully sober all the while I deeper dig this grave.

If I could know I wouldn't want. To choose between truth and bliss. Picking up that feather. Spoiling it with this ink. Words that attempt to mimic the flight as it passed over. As I watch the feathers fall and know not how to catch them.

The poets. The friends. The rivers strangely not leading to their sources. What can I keep other than these words. Nothing else is mine.

Drawing on each other until every speck of flesh is covered. And then we look for a new page. Person. Poet. Penis. Lover. Pussy. Friend.

Drawn on. Drawn in. Until myself stares back at me from inside them.. Drawn on. Can't you see yourself in me?

How hard I've worked to disguise it.

The stubborn. Contradictory illusions collide to form this truth I abide. Time. Gushes hours like semen. Sticky and ultimately useless in my world. No conception. Haggard lies reinventing my desires. No birth. Crippled dreams spilling from gaping holes.

Turn the dial. It's so easy. You're not my channel anymore. I know you. In the way I know everyone I can't remember. Stalled cigarette on its way to oblivion.

The other. Everywhere it grows. Weeds in the garden suffocating the seeds I'd planted. The denial. A love disfiguring. The pliers awash in my fingerprints.

So much I never asked to know. No questions.

It would be easy to care, but I don't think I will.

The tiger doesn't need its stripes. They need him. Cold patchwork trailing out from blood to clothes. Chase the look. Know the destination should it let.

Too much I long ago decided wasn't worth my knowing.

And now you offer it.

But are consistent. Still no need to ask.

Is the cloud grey. Is it blue. Is it about to rain again or has it been emptied.

All your windows are mirrors. You think you're looking out, but only see yourself.

Salient strangers all clad in friends' clothing.

There's so much to want I don't know where to begin.

Feed me the crust and I will imagine the bread. Because I do remember. I have tasted.

It was never mine, but the hungry have a right to steal. Don't they?

When everyone else is fed, we have the right to take what they've left on their plates.

Or so survival would argue in my defense.

No need to be prefect for a world that is so far from. I will justify my actions only after I am proven wrong.

It gave me the option. It didn't have to hurt, but I chose it. Because there's no temptation otherwise. No lure. The loss is the only thing that tells us we ever had what we wanted.

I need to know this.

However I can.

They go, but they don't leave.

Or I just got lucky this time. Well, I know I did.

So now what do we do with it?

I have your words there in my pocket. But the song they create as we walk I know is someone else's.

You want to save me, but I already know how to swim.

It's where to go that troubles me.

First we put together all the edges. These steadfast puzzles.

And only afterwards do to the middles begin to show.

You didn't hurt me.

You showed me I could still live.

Fulsome vandalism on display. Forgetful as these unions are. It still snows brightly in the tight-fisted gutters between these mountains.

When I look up and the sky is gone. Only an endless white dress in its place. I want to wear it, but I know it doesn't fit.

There goes my attitude again. Setting the timers on those bombs just shy of my escape. Blossoming like an angry flower. Spitting people pieces everywhere. I should've been crippled so many times, but instead, I just listen a little closer.

There's always an indication. But the siren isn't why we run. It's only after the pain sets in that we begin to make our way toward the antiseptic.

But I don't want to kill the disease. I want to nurture it.

Without it there'd be nothing left.

I remember the nothing. I see it in every goosebump as I contemplate where I can find to hide from it next.

This seldom sermon rings in my head. One long song that never lets me know.

Isn't it more a suicide just letting yourself live?

Like this.

I'm going to know when it's all over. It'll be easy. I'll see them all, but they won't see me.

I'll toss that coin into the air and it'll never come back down again.

Too much change to count it all.

I'll just wait a while.

Maybe longer.

For the difference to show itself.

The trigger not my friend anymore. I took the stones this afternoon and laid them in a row. Preparing to plant them. Allow the weight of the dragon to grow. The fire it used to breathe what I miss most.

Couldn't we be that stupid again. How easy it was to stifle the drumbeat of consequence. Just what I wanted. Nothing more.

Everything less.

As every turmoil made its cycle and we laughed at it like engines with accelerators permanently depressed.

We could've gone anywhere, but here is what chose us.

Such an even death it was. I almost thought I was being born again. A thoughtless sunrise teasing the mountain tops into thinking they can reach it.

Every hour warned that I was putting explosives into candy wrappers. But then, I've always been sweet on destruction.

He had a heart like an octopus. Arms everywhere. It felt so good to be held. I wanted to know, but couldn't remember why I'd not let it happen sooner.

So many keyholes. Looking in on what shouldn't be seen. So many exits pretending they would let me leave.

We went there. Never imagining it would go with us. Everything it gave took twice as much. But even so it seemed a fair trade.

Scaled the fish. Broke the shell. Lost fins everywhere. We watched as the empty tide continued to pinch the sand. And I tried to accept, but never really could that what we had taken from it was not going to be replenished.

What can I say except that it would've hurt so much more had I been myself when we met.

There's no better feeling than knowing love held a gun to your head and you let it pull the trigger.

It's just May. How much higher it rises than I can. Every year. In every way. Moreso when I remember how long it's been since.

We held those broken shells in our hands. And saw how each piece used to fit.

I'm too old tonight, but this morning I was young enough to know.

How much farther time intends to take us. How all those shards we have made come back together in different shapes.

You're just a bird in your nest. And I look on not understanding how those wings could ever be a convenience.

That they only ever let you fly such short distances seems a crueler fate than having never been that high.

The flush of reason as it fills my doubt with dread. Only my socks on and nothing else. Slightly lumpy stomach shyly rising and ebbing with my breath.

Sometimes when I'm undressed the eyes are there. Pins and needles over every inch. Drawing the colors of their stare in tattoos under my skin. While others I'm just a ghost they're seeing through.

Teasing the darkness with skin too pale. And fingers drunk on the touch of someone else's skin.

I know I'm here, but I don't know where here is.

Churning in this darkness until two tornadoes become one.

Plant me in this naked garden. Growth a drunken whisper at the edge of our ears. Chasing through this spandex mausoleum. So fitting the way they mistake it for my skin.

Onomatopoeia. His words sound just like what they mean. Especially when he tells me. Especially when he tells me he's not changing.

Not that I wanted him to. Maybe just a little bit. Never who he is. Only how he looked at me. Keys in broken locks. Lips without a mouth. Finders Keepers. His.

His every word always sounded just like what it meant. Every syllable a colder wind. He'd say he didn't know, but didn't want to is what I heard. He'd say he was hungry, but the skeleton had other opinions.

And the bone laid itself there between us. While we debated what shade of white is was. And the bone seemed most to want to be a weapon. But fighting seldom suited us. So we buried it there and waited for it to grow its roots.

Nothing ever took longer than when we had to dig it up. Growthless and barren.

Wisdom fashioning its heavy nooses.

It was hours after that it occurred to me the answer to our riddle.

Just that there was none.

No test. No proof. Only the weight of these questions as they threaten us with knowing.

The duchess in the courtyard. Dress all cinched tight. While the jasmine pushes its dark fragrance between her breasts. Where the map is drawn. Where the destination confounds. Disappearing into a separate heaven.

Hand out. Palm aside. Making change in the smallest increments. Counting the ridges that differentiate quarters and dimes. Whatever it's worth is not what they would offer me for it. Dead cows still chewing their cud while the bulls look for other distractions and the grass grows over all those swollen fields.

That's not really what I look like anymore. Some somber child wearing the eyes of the old. That's not really what I want anymore. Know them so well that they forget who I am. Attach them like an antenna to my heart so that I can listen to what is happening in the world.

The lion in the washing machine is softening his mane. Wearing t-shirts instead of fur. No hunt tonight. Just spinning as if clean is not a paradox.

The bear on the stoop picking at the grout in the concrete. With claws strong enough to kill every weed, but why not just, let them live. For a little while.

Take what never would take us and let it fill me like an empty page. Until the words concede and the world has patience enough for all the plagues I find a necessity.

Letting every cell swim in the virus. This muddy pond that gnaws at my thoughts. With stones to throw and dirty toes I know the surface. The light that blinds it is not where I belong.

Below.

A distant, calming thunder lures me home.

Fetch me my throat. So that I may devour every moment. All over again. And prove to myself we were together, though we were always alone.

Watching the swans fall. Rapt in the descent. Feathers in my throat. Wings in my chest. White and remembering how black it was. Orphans with their hats off. Matchsticks under their thumbs.

I don't ever want to be old enough to say that it never mattered. That there's no reason left to write about them.

Deal me. Every hand tilted toward. Turn me over. I am a face card. The value dependent upon the game you're playing.

Swallowing the last of what the window let through tonight. Pale daggers in the silence stab.

But there's no blood anywhere.

No pain left to be had.

Just rigor mortis setting in to corpses older than the graves we've dug for them.

I don't have an eye. Just these panes through which I see. The flattery of the moon tickles my shins as I rationalize the furrows count against the unplanted seeds.

Wearing his clown nose. Stepping out of the feet. I like seeing him red, but I can tell the tint has yet to own him.

There are no more tears at this point. Just words that mindlessly graze this sparse field. Every morning I wake up and greet her grey. She is colorless. One with the four walls she lives in.

I see the words they speak. Every wish their weak stomachs vomit up. But they still can't explain how if they've gone hungry so long they're not dead yet.

They can't say what I want to hear. Can't even imagine what it would be. They slide their doors. Follow those tracks. While all I want is to open the closet.

There's room enough in there.

We race down the highway. Obeying every line. Dreaming of dashes.

Thinking eventually they'll allow us to pass.

Oh, but they look back, and I'm not even there.

There's a different hue to his lips when he lies. A disjointed tempo in where the sound becomes language.

There's an angel on the dashboard. And a demon in the mirror. The tires sing against the pavement as we traverse the perimeter of nowhere. I prefer to drive myself, but occasionally I'll allow him to steer.

Everything has limits. Even this nothing. If only I could see them.

Frozen in the moment. Like icicles we slowly melt. Pointed, threatening and helpless. One drop becomes a puddle. And that puddle becomes a grave. Until there's nothing left of us.

Following the scent. Memory an angry bloodhound. Knows everywhere I've been. And am headed. Hunted by myself. And running from her.

He picked up his pants sliding into both legs at the same time. Wearing their denim like a temperate cast. Healing under the guise of self-destruction. Using other people as his medicine.

Should I not play the raven to his Lenore. Cryptic and uninvited. Haunting him with a black-winged nevermore.

Scouring the floor for pieces of their clothes. The ones they always had on, but never wore.

And here I am again the only one naked in my fool's utopia.

Brushes the forearm. Too much skin. Chase the wrist. Not enough blood. And there I stand wearing the image. Like some rerun that won't end. Every decision was so long ago. Now I am left with only the remains of what I chose.

They tell me I am beautiful, but how can I believe them when I know it's untrue. Everyone is a liar when they want what you possess.

Everyone is your friend when you know what they don't.

They'd buy you if they could, but when they can't, they'll just take you.

I'd worship the devil if I thought he was real. But since I don't I'm stuck with these ordinary demons. Sore benefactors of my grief.

I'd fly if only it didn't require wings. I'd live again if I thought for one second there was a reason.

Just turn over that mattress. Everything we need to know lies underneath.

We lay in our stolen skins and reminisce about the hunt. As if they belong to us now. But killing it won't make it ours. And neither will saving it.

We staged every bullet until dying had no meaning.

Some days my glasses just don't fit. I bend and pull and adjust and still nothing looks quite right. Until I take them off. Close my eyes and look at what vision neglects.

We were thirsty. So what? Anyone would've been. Faced with so much desert.

We were famished. Fuck it. We liked the taste more than we needed the nourishment. So what? We hurt no one other than ourselves.

Guilt is just a franchise of religion. They use to sell morality to the trendy. Fast food ethics save no one from starving.

Some days I never wake up. I tick off the alarm and brush the blankets aside, but I'm still there in that bed. Trying. Trying so hard not to be alive. Right next door to death and it won't let me inside.

I could try to please them. Be more like, but why would I?

I twist and turn my eyes to try to see better, but some days a blur is your best friend.

Seeing is easy. It's what comes after that makes these calm adjectives my enemy. Listening isn't supplication, but that's how some will see.

I wade through the catacombs of castles long perished thinking I know the arc of the moats. But stumbling is inevitable. Especially when your eyes don't fit.

And somehow I remain intact through all those encounters with the crocodiles.

I don't know why.

Don't want to.

It's not describing what happened. It IS what happened. The goat in the corner of the petting zoo. While all the others devour paper cups out of the hands of the captors.

A fetid smile wears his face. He put puts on his glasses to disguise. But now it's just a fetid smile wearing him and his glasses. Bigger eyes, but further away.

Worn by his moods. Worn by his memories. He's difficult to find under all those layers. And even after I've finished undressing him, still he's no closer to naked.

Self-made amputee. He cut everything off until only a helpless torso remained. Nothing on the inside and no means to reach out.

I want to crawl inside him and fill it all in. But I have nothing to give.

I want to take his fingers and bend them back until he cries. Prove he can feel.

That I'm the victim.

Crawl down his throat. Weave through his lungs. Find the belly. Identify his hunger. And force it up. Until it spills from his mouth. In chunks big enough to make him see what I always have.

We never choose alone. It holds us hostage.

I often confuse capture with surrender.