different words to say the same things. 

fingertips like broken arrows. lips like sand. 

time sleeps in gentle storms that go on too long. 

flesh. musty rooms with nothing inside. 

their voices. different thieves. same crime. 


the measure is a condition of the scale. 

gravity is a patient pendulum. 

choice fumbles. in the fever of want. 

the depth is a confession of the fall. 

different symptoms. same disease. 


the rope is soft. 

the knot is hard. 

everything else is noise. 


the doll has stiff fingers. 

her dress is stained. 

her cradle is soft. 

the sheets are red.

bridges collapse. in callous confessions. 

too often time decides who we are..

in a tumbling grin. 

in a jagged touch. 

the edge easily grabs us. and holds us over the abyss. 

roads lengthen. the distance yawns at our exhaustion. 

rooms shrink. until their walls become our skin. 

the math betrays. counting only what is lost. 

voices hum. curious intersections. where all our maps are useless. 

bridges burn. earnest protagonists with too many debts. 

time listens. a lazy antagonist. 

as our bridges disintegrate beneath our footsteps.

the names that choose us are fragile beasts. all corners and leverage snarling at gravity.

the skins that we wear seldom fit. broken templates. all rain and wind slouching toward crumbling horizons.

the distance that measures us is a frail conceit. all stones and mud arguing with the wind.

the equation isn't constant. we are victims of our own fickle arithmetic.

we touch each other through our decaying masks. caressing faces long since dead.

we move through the world in cages made of contrition. 

impotent thieves. constantly stealing what's being stolen from us.

 trace the numbers. scrape the bridge. negotiate the defiant exceptions.

there's a total. an accumulation. that is seldom counted.

stories told in bent voices and broken skin. 

the caustic arithmetic of trust. bleeding its equations all over our bruised knees. 

time is a patient dictator. a lazy machine. gnawing on its own gears.

no waiting, she huffs. everything is right now. or has already happened.

the road bites down. as we slouch toward the horizon. choking on our defiance.

the distance tastes the zippers we've let come undone.

we're exposed.

only to realize. we always were.

 the edges struck each other. no force. just interference. a tunnel through the lingering chaos.

her fingers stumbled over his skin. blunt needles searching for some way to deliver their message.

she didn't know whether it was poison or medicine.


time assembled its machines. a long series of suicides. calibrated just so. each one punctuated by a resurrection.

the numbers danced. in their vacant cloaks. measuring all the pieces she had broken. she listened to the sounds. as it kept counting backward from nothing.

she didn't know whether she was lost or had been found.


the shapes were fluid. the colors whispered in soft words. the distance shrugged off its grin. an empty noose swaying in the wind.

she didn't know whether it was the beginning or the end.

close enough it was. or had been. the difference negligible.

the world all fever and shivers. like neglected children.

the atoms slipped outside their equilibrium. heavy oars in a boat without an anchor.

told were the tales. spent was the skin. frail like paper. narrow like memory.


we gathered. our cotton eyes. and sunken fists. vehemently arguing with the math.

insisting upon the truth. even as it betrayed our every edge.

until only the textures remained. cold accusations. and sealed boxes.

heavy with both the living and the dead.


the light shone in too many places. 

daring us to see. 

how dark it is.

 time comes and goes. a tyrant in the folds of our skin. 

full of duplicitous fractions as the math solidifies between us.

our words convince us. the simple helix that connects all these empty spaces.

the rabbit collects her stories. in broken grass and vacant dens.

we wear our victims. in dirty knees and spoiled lips.

the distance swallows. quietly. a beggar in the creases of our trust.

overwhelmed by the simplicity of our wants.

a string. riddled with knots. dancing between disparate electrons. 

we tease the edge. arrogant curators of the void.  

waiting for gravity to catch up. 

 crippled thieves barter with the truth. 

a casual transaction of skin and shame. 

a wealth of deceit to settle a debt older than choice.

the windows watch with their transparent eyes. 

pitying the strays. 

the walls whisper with their wooden tongues. 

all the things we never said.

the distance tells its stories. 

an indifferent narrator to the follies of our lives.

time is our currency. 

as we fumble for purchase on life's treacherous slopes.

the friction of touch our only advantage. 

as we pursue the edge.

the miles overtake us. 

we swim in the embrace of the flood.. 

a chorus of silence. 

while we wait for the chance to breathe again. 

time she surmised had its own agenda.
a path meticulously situated between corruption and salvation.
sharp dice in the hands of strangers.
speckling every victory with someone else's blood.

choice she supposed had tried too hard.
a sunken variable.
stranded in a sseries of unsolved equations.

it continued to function,
though everything about it was wrong.
an arrogant parade of limping assassins.
all their precious bullets wasted on the dead.

time she assumed was deaf.
a student of all the words it couldn't hear.
the simple truth much more complicated
than she had anticipated. 

choice she noticed
was a fragile construct. 
its straw house being the first to collapse.
when the wolf  comes to call.

the broken shelf said nothing new. spun by the slender scratches in gravity's smile. 

worn by the edges. undressed by the distance. 

we chased the corners. charmed by time's delicate lies. 

the jagged road content to listen. as we shouted at the stones. 

we were simple thieves. with soft guns. frantically bargaining with shame's auditors 

for one more chance to prove. that in spite of everything we'd lost. we still had something left to lose. 

the dirty walls were ample consent. as the world tumbled in. 

touch the tortoise. consequence the hare. 

the dead were restless as we leaned into the curve. 

the remaining light burned her hand. as she began to count the empty rooms. 

the world was all studious conjunctions. and lazy adjectives.

exceptions came and went. in a tumultuous pantomime. little needles in deep veins. all their threads too nervous to believe.

the truth yawned. a rushed facimilie of our lives. all borrowed colors. and lingering grays. bored with our constant hysteria.

we spent each other in nickels and dimes. poorer with every touch. wasting our promises on flower petals and mud.

time was a generous assassin. as it slit our throats. carefully collecting each drop of blood.

knowing we might need it again someday. 

the time machine tramples its metaphor. stray cinema in the distribution of change. tomorrow threads its needle. absently mending the gap in inertia. 

the distance chokes on its last words. ambivalent confessions stumbling down broken staircases. 

the minute details color feverishly inside the lines. while dense amateurs attempt to edit their losses. 

how far becomes a reflection of how close it once was. 

againt the relentless momentum of conceit. 

the dismal corners tease their answers. stained pillows on beds where we can no longer rest. 

the time machine paces between now and then. a failed constant in the crippling perpetuity of flesh. 

the distance continues. a borrowed conjunction. too stubborn to care.

whether the quetsions it's asking can ever be answered. 

 

the numbers stopped counting too long ago to still taste.
jagged templates of skin layered like abandoned graves.

time is a solvent. that turns mercenaries into beggars.

the body is an equation. doomed to be reconciled only in death.

sometimes we cut slowly with worn blades that bend to easily.
the parable of our contentment stumbling over its choices.

eyeless dolls in sugar dresses. swaying to songs only they can hear.

sometimes we cut quickly with claws
that grow sharper the more that we use them.

angry kittens in a sinking basket.

time looks in our windows. with big eyes and clenched fists.

we pretend not notice as it chews on the glass. 

give me a name. let me wear it for a while.
as if i might be someone to be remembered.

let the ground bleed. as we sail upon its wound.
while time listens silently. too austere to grieve.

pull on the nails. rattle the chains.
dismantle our cages. though our prisons remain intact.

we spend our lives counting the intersections.
turning into the collisions.

time crawls inside our skins. a dubious advocate.
all snagged zippers and torn seams.

patently waiting for us to recognize the stranger within.

jack rabbit. jack rabbit. how heavy are your feet.

in the spoiled terrain of predators and thieves.

running too near to stories told with heavy sticks and crumbling stones.

wearing the world too loudly as you race against tomorrow.

the tunnel is long enough that the light is choked.

as you suffer in the stale capitulations of races already lost.

formulas and zeros conspire with gravity.

until every footstep becomes a noose.

the fable sheds its weighted robes.

a carnival of martyrs in temptation's soiled clothes.

run. run as fast as you can. while the world is disappearing at your back.

run. because the end is always in pursuit.

change is all cobwebs and kittens.
ugly tremors and broken fingers.

lingering games that no one wins.
heavy skins worn much better by anyone else.

bitten pieces of abandoned puzzles.
dubious stories written in someone else's words.

charm the distance with our remaining coins.
purchasing their vacant wishes.

digging for treasure swallows us whole.
quiet choices reconcile the math.

truth is a function of touch.
though we continue counting.

long after there is nothing left.

 curious machines bargain with their ends. conflating choice and consent. 

all these flawed maps of our own creation. mercilessly cutting through our paths. 

we linger in the sharp sober of our failed devotions.

skinless monsters in the beds of sleeping damsels. 

kneading our spent promises. condemned to the atropy of expectation. 

passengers in our own flesh. 

exchanging faces with strangers. 

gravity forgets us. once we've fallen too far.
a series of small cuts in time's wizened wrist.

serve as our map. as we navigate this expiring flesh.

we push closer to the center.
fragile monsters slouching on their crumbling horns.

choke on the ugly choices that have stranded them.

the distance pauses.
a slender rope suspending a weighted bridge.

we run. our feet made of dust and clay.

toward what we know not.
except away from where we are.

turning on the fickle parable of touch.
dutifully committed to love's brutal abattoir.

sometimes we are simple. others we are complex.

easily manipulated by the various creases in our skin.

we chew on the soiled pillows that cover our unmade beds.

twisting on the cusp of love's diluted poisons.

feral opportunists on epiphany's shrinking stage.

unaware that time is a promise that can't be kept.

i could almost say you loved me. but that simply can't be true.

can a thief love what he's stolen. can a predator love what he's killed.

sometimes the math lies to us. and pretends that there's something left.

 blunt needles prepare their doses of poison. our atoms thoughtlessly colliding.

all our tender lies calcifying. as we fumble to bandage the truth's deeper cuts.

time presses against the glass. an orchestra of discarded strays.

flesh keeps its ledgers. an ugly accumulation of our burgeoning debts.

lust invents its dubious medicines.

for diseases so profoundly rooted that we are nothing without them.

the lurch of wanting turns us inside out.

everything we are exposed.

we voraciously consume every touch.

stubbornly convinced that they are saving us.

even as we take our last breath.