the tentacles of darkness obey. the thumping chorus of blood and bone. empty elements. nameless wars. corners of the body twist and bend. only the edges are to be trusted. thin, grey pulpits ripe with fever and fetish.

the little man carrying the world in his pocket.

we measure in colors. we grieve in decimals. we live in fractions. the simplest disease is the deadliest.  we cut our mazes through the tendons and the flesh. blades and bridges the same. only one way across. soft skeletons bear the weight. of godless men. and their simple saviors.

deep pockets in the surface. the drama asserts its resonance. a coy predator. with all fangs spent. the cliched conundrum. of beautiful girls in ugly dresses. a dirty vaccine against the purest sickness.

spoiled by the words. indebted to the touch. all our desires are forfeit.

bland rage simmers. soft jelly consciousness in dense waves. warm and moist. flat empty, sight. wet, hollow hearing. what is gone except burnt paper fighting the darkness. telling tales of sweet monsters licked until they're only chalk. little ticks in each corner. blank streets suffocating in the throughtless wind. torn flowers in grey water. where no one comes to drink.

bald grief in yawning sockets. plump apathy both slack and taut. sallow, puckering silence flakes in the combustion of each breath. we are close, but each of us is enclosed in glass. stranded together at the bottom of a deep ocean.

looking for color where it's all gone. listening for words where there is only sound.

thinking that the walls are paper. that we can draw on them. be glimpsed, if not seen. helpless clouds wandering a vast atomosphere. but really, they are cinder blocks. the obese architecture of time. weighing us down. smothering. as we rejoirce in the delusion that the choices are ours.

together comes on crutches. and leaves us limping. it was never very far. until it was behind us. the end of the world in her back pocket. like chewing gum and bad poetry.

so much distance measured in small choices.

the bright colors and the terrible songs. the furious swallow of temptation. chokes us all.

she reasons with the drug. slopes in the darkness. trembling doorways.

it's everything. it's always been that. it's the whole world. in the sneeze of a butterfly. it's time. hydrogen atoms defying gravity. triangles doling out their limited degrees. it's the science of how. whispering loudly in a universe of ifs.

concrete fingers try to bend. to grasp. but only break. they keep what they've always had. but fail to gain anything new.

closed eyes save their sight. against the blinding of the eclipse. but miss the epiphany of overwhelming darkness. they're all just stories anyway. vibrating flesh caught in an emotional sieve.

there are no wars. there is no army. just people. trying on bits of weather and hunks of distance. there's just the void. talking to itself. in broken crayons and burnt matches.

there aren't names. we forfeit such privileges. there aren't friends. we have other definitions for those occasions.

she uses her time preparing the beginnings. and the ends. what's in between she leaves to chance. she wears the moon in drapes and syringes. a choke for the reluctant drug. a chaos of seams. in an ocean of thread.

the heavy colors refuse her. the round dials are impossible to grip. an epiphany of ignorance consumes her. as she waits in line for her lottery ticket.

folds in the hours. stern buckets boast their sand. the weight of the precipice. laughs as she loses her balance.

she's old now. she notices. she's weak too, she suspects. as those empty kisses brush her lips.

life is more machine than man. much more engine than it is skin. a trembling sieve. a flickering bulb. everything uncertain.

her stubborn ghosts. finally pause to listen. but there are no more words.

such is the child. such are the atoms. as divided as they've been. the yellow king. his crown all drenched in red.

the machine wheezes and weeps. choking on time. the monsters evolve. and we become them.
she closes her eyes. deep in flower petals and strangers. the weight of when. swaying like a pendulum. refusing to wait another minute.

the war teases its end. in fumbled kisses. and hollow dresses.

careless goodbyes. hungry pauses.

we perish everyday. in an apocalypse of skin. always repeating.

chalk in the rain. decimals in the math. dwindling remainders. as the sky turns to look at us. all wind and rain and gravity. the sober science of when. eventually betrays.

stealing a path from within the silence. the skeleton dances to the flesh's fading songs. free at last.
we like to pretend there are monsters to blame. but we're always alone in this.

the fervent axiom. shudders and roars. pale tempests with their hungry knots. the stage confesses. to knowing. every character. all the plots. a vacant sort of immunity. where life is discarded. and these empty skins wager against gravity.

the maps breathe. life is merely a series of circumstances. reluctantly evolving to accomodate the growing hunger within.

everything is time. that omnipotent and poisonous god. all our touches are minutes. all our words are seconds. and for so long we wait. expecting they will be counted.

even if it's only at the end.

the oblique angles. this suicide of when. becomes her. the furture erupts in small ripples. until oceans separate them.

scrape the cement. in butterfly sneezes and ticks of how. solve the edge with veins and vomit. commit to the destruction of all your bridges. cut off the tail. wait for it to regenerate. such is the monsters we are. dead things stranded in the gouges of time. pressing the creases. hoping the paper won't forget.

broken levers give chase. dull blades strain to listen. as the silence consumes.

a pandemonium of skin overwhelms her. and she drowns in the experience.

patterns and puzzles. the plastic wagers of trust. undo the knots that keep us.

the darkness exhales. arrogant monsters stretch the edges. of tired mountains and swollen missives. want is a stone. choice is a fist. everything else is glass.

that pause in the black that always seems to want us. that melting ice behind the veneer of her smile.

the intense rupture of the journey. as it spills into every footstep. an ongoing hemorrhage of moments. until, at last.

there is nothing left.

finding the end. in scrapes of how. and delusions of if. the edge of the world crisp and determined. their belted parables. their knotted heavens. like so many grendaes already spent.

the vagaries of causality. choices like stale bread. and memory in its usual hysteria. angles. portions of when. leave us hungry.

the asthma of time chokes us. a pale irony in broken colors. the edge grows louder. the distance grows deaf.

small buckets and their many leaks. all  the little lies that matter far too much.

the world ended years ago.

crippled ogres walk on the shoulder. as the trucks rumbled passed. corduroy fairy tales fuss with their zippers. as the moon bleeds low in the sky. just corners. nothing else. stark islands in a concrete ocean. the simple drowning. the aggressive science. of wanting.

shallow cuts. deep needles. like any respectable drug.

the world ended, yet life went on. churning in this incredulous void. all the people empty skins. all the moments dissolving paper. stranded in an endless rain.

wrong turns. right ones. all the same. just places. to go. no destination.

creases in the wind. wager their treasons. casual monsters circle the throne. paper dolls steal our skeletons. bone pirates.

the world ends in fits crayon and strangles of disappointment. a suicide of parenthetical phrases. the empty choices that perpetuate life.

the whispering words kick and stumble. their stingers stuck under the skin. venom spent.

the skewed temples resonate. the dance of insatiable molecules. and hungry atoms. her lips. an anxious geometry of places. curdling sighs and rotting kisses. a soft painting still wet with the colors of a careless promise.

she chases time. her soiled eraser determined. she faces the engine. the wheezing turbines of touch and connection that  pry these edges from the fists of gravity.

falling comes naturally.

the hours owed. the distance possessed. the soft scabs that negotiate the perimeter. the endless war the mirror wages. the quiet ends we come to accept.

love's weighted lavender. despair's flawless red.

all these colors louder than ever.

we get lost in these easy wars. of bone and flesh. the end always close behind.

the warm winters fool her. every time. a short gasp of faces. breath more distance than journey. soft footprints the wind always erases. leaving us lost. yet content to be.

the edges whisper and spark. the mad combination of fire and darkness. the edges scream. boulders breaking free from the mountain. stones defying the heavy chorus of gravity.

the cold winters come. eventually. in stark angles that proliferate shadows. spies in her heart. revealing rooms she never knew were empty. 

naming the corners. each wall another skin. the chaos of the structure. concealing the weakness of the skeleton. the merchant in her math. sells her one more chance. the seldom in her poetry. fumbles with the answers to the questions she's afraid to ask.

time flaunts its cliched cancers. blood boasts its pitiful cures.

always.

eventually.

all of us.

embrace the disease.

yellow chokes in the blueing panic. blunt daggers make their shallow incisions. the ladders wheeze and bend. like stale lies in the stubborn epiphany of regret. the seldom skin plays. like leaking buckets. heavy with too much nothing. the innocent poison of knowing them. trembling with cuts much deeper than intended.

the light left on. for the darkness to defend. the moment's blunt swords. make their creases. but fail to draw blood. it's the same old black all too familiar. it's the same one last puzzle pieces that always fails to complete the image.

the blossoming greys. the trembling reds. like some awful sunset/ this hollow prison we call flesh. the stubborn warden that is the skeleton.

the hours rage. small infernoes. flaunt the geometry of pleasure. in a watercolor of faces. the candy. scrapes out its path. in mealy apples and shouting pears.

the numbers strain to listen. as deaf gods pretend to hear.

the quiet alarms of lovers and addicts. swallow their thorns. and bleed their maps.