all the little numbers add up.

gravity clenches its fist.

as we run along the edge. daring it to trip us.

denominators in smeared lipstick. flirting with arrogant decimals.

we're sure. because what else can we be. as we pretend to know what we never can. 

we're thin. and taut. slender strings desperate to retain all that is moving away from us. 

we're atmosphere. and ozone. an inferno encapsulating the world. as if we can contain it. 

apostles of inertia. swinging on broken pendulums. counting zeroes. 

all the little lies. as the fractions bite down. 

the math is simple. 

as gravity exhales. 

everything depends 

on what is left. 

 the end approached slowly. both a beggar and a thief.

she counted out loud. chasing every decimal. as division lit its fuses.

change grinned as it untangled its chains. flaunting its empty cages.

he said there was time. that it was stalwart. even as everything else collapsed.

the end held its breath. as the truth slithered under her skin.

selling the tilted fractions of ravenous strangers. a curious commodity of lingering debts.

a caution of cracked buoys. adrift in the shallows of a deeper ocean.

time cinched its remaining threads. an efficient assassin. undeterred by slippery tongues.

through it all. she continued to keep count.

long after the math had given 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. 

we arrive. all burnt hair and singed voices. in the hollow economy of lust.

love is a special kind of violence. all small bites and delicate cuts.

we begin. as everything does. strident and stark. struggling for breath.

life is a curious puzzle. more missing pieces than anything else.

we learn. by bruises and by fractures. animals in human faces.

savage. because that is what the world has made us.

slivers of when scrape the veins.
in severed arms and borrowed skins.

we chew on the sky.
hungry for an adversary.

our plastic eyes
unable to see the obvious.

we pause the end.
and tuck it away in our pockets.

full of dirty coins
desperate to be spent.

we polish the mirrors.
betrayed by their reflections.

we plead guilty.
though we know not what our crime is.

the numbers ripen. the colors sour.
and we begin again.

convinced by curious atoms.
that the decay is magnificent.

shattered candies cutting
sweetly at love's moist lips.

the hours tie their knots.
as the truth hardens.

we chase the remainders
as the math peels away our skin.

love is just a fraction.
the common denominator is us.

 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.

the cold tells its stories in simple conceits and shattered skin.

a lonely metaphor of grief in a cacophony of narcissists.

all the buttons are made of why. all the zippers forged from when.

we press the needles through the fabric. but the holes are too deep.

the pillows wear their dented grins.

the sheets fumble with the stitches at the backs of our necks.

we solve each other with melted candy and rusted hammers.

looking for the truth in all the wrong places. 

forgotten strangers suckle at the scars on our wrists.

the crumbling skeletons of rancid memories.

time is a mysterious drug. growing more powerful the less that we have of it.

a dull blade that scrapes our skin despite our petulant defiance.

we were alive once. in the thimble of its hysteria. wild prey kicking at the hunt.

voices crushed under their words. puppets strangled in their strings.

feral beasts. destroyed by the simple arithmetic of touch.

solvent beggars shuffle their debts. time responds. the pale auditor of touch.

tense capacitors flirt with the skin. beholden to love's crumbling machine.

soft dolls lick their strained stitches. their tattered dresses stiff with shame.

their motionless faces dense with words they cannot speak.

the world approaches. in trampling footsteps and grinning wolves.

hysterical witches spend their candy on curious orphans.

soiled pockets fill with unused breadcrumbs. as they wander so deep into the forest.

that they forget that they are lost.

the wind is weight enough. as the road unfolds under my panic. there are no places. there are no sounds. as we slip out of these wasted skins.

the rain's simple song. the body's grave inflections. hope's deceitful epiphanies.

the cautions of thieves. all broken threads. the force of distance. a catapult of choices.

it's all knots. tiny nooses. blunt needles. caught in the holes.

our bodies spread like disease. touch is fatal. our lips betray. every word a treason.

the distance tells us. little stories of picnics and wolves. breadcrumbs and candy houses. to gut. to follow.

and big teeth. so many fangs. biting down.

moving out loud. worms in her skin. the path swallows hard. the cold bites down. on fading connections.

the clouds have their language. the wind has its songs. but distance is always mute.

we leave. because there are places to be. we go because the reason to stay has left.

the book fell open. a throbbing heart full of inked paper. the sunlight teasing it as it struggled to breathe. with lungs made of trembling adjectives.

the dust flirted with the window pane. her body more paper than skin.

the alarm sounded, but there was no rescue. just the same old thieves. taking what had always been theirs.

hate is its own medicine. in a cancerous world poison is worshipped. to kill the disease everything is wasted.

the scab whsipers its devotion as the flesh pushes it away.

she said she didn't know. never had. what it meant. that grave moment. when everything is perfectly focused.

she laughed. like it didn't hurt. to know. that it was over.

she traced the fractures in the bones. the art of weakness. wobbly ladders across deep crevices.

she negotiated gravity's tentative rule. changing its mind on more than one occasion.

she knew. the futility of choices. the stubborness of flesh..

as the future stumbled into itself. she stipulated to the heavy clarity of want. but deferred to the weightlessness of truth..

it's a sober laugh. the kind that remembers out loud the things we usually keep silent. it's a simple choice. or isn't it. the butterfly. the past. the ensuing catastrophe.

it's not what i wanted. because i never wanted anything. it's just the force of the moment. the blunt of the feeling.

i'm a poet. it's what i am. healing the words as if they are my disease. chasing the stumbles and the cuts. finding the beauty in the blood.

you're my everything. and my nothing. we drown in our want. laboring to love our assassins.

we turn in our circles. dizzy as we want to be. playing the songs. pressing the pauses. gnawing on the bones. seraching for the meat. letting the hunger have its feast.

it starts without warning. parameters of skin fluctuate. a consensual isotope. a vague bit of rain in a long pattern of thunderstorms. we are stranded. drawn like lazy needles from the monster's trembling arm. a fever of pathos working its sickness on simple gods.

he was missing. as he tended to be. a parable of indeterminate morality. he shot the tortoise and skinned the hare. trying desperately not to want to win.

old came and went. abandoned rest stops on an unkempt highway. the map made its own plans. places took him. like weak medicine. a paradox of sickness. as much cure as it is infection.

she wandered. as lost always suited her. she found everything. except herself. hopelessly tethered to the sun.

it's a pattern. the scope of how. the brittle of when. dispensing flesh in doses. collecting miles like medicine.

the practical apocalypse. in the smallest conditions.

she finds the end of the world. it's not far at all.

it's the end. the featureless void. temples in solvent ink. and the curious monsters who worship.

the trembling miles. dim switches in the shadows. crumble and bleed. time's lazy asssassins whet their blades.

the dirty switch. the struggling bulb. the torn path that chases us home again. empty chambers in the gun. the simple economics of everything lost.

the waning kingdom. tears in the skeleton. folds in the scars. the absolute cost. the future in card tricks and bus strops.

the angle hissed. the atom splits. nothing moves. the ladder trembles. the doorway whispers. we go on. it's the end of the world. and it isn't.

it breaks in the way that all fractions do. haughtily. distlled, cold against the deep bruise of gravity. pouting corners. nervous science. quivering bridges. though the water below is unmoved.

nothing drowns. nor floats. wrinkles in the moment color us in. thieves in top hats and pistols. preparing for the end of the world.

she whispers to the darkness. in words only it can understand. the moment erupts. full of claws and kisses. reticent monsters tying knots in the wind.

the end confesses. guilty for all the obvious reasons. flesh like wagers. and blood like sober. the world ends in little cuts. and lingering poisons.

the stifle of hope as it pretends to know us. little thieves in big boots. chasing expiring promises.

there are moments. some weaker than others. all desperate. pencil marks in the sober. deep woods and wandering children. a bouquet of breadcrumbs notwithstanding.

the flesh. a temperamental time machine. ripe with jagged puzzle pieces. and images struggling to focus. the  measures and the weights. small doors that spend her grief. like spoiled candy. the enviable curiosity of skin. like wet paper. giving away all that we put into it.

the frigid science. the cruel chase of flesh. weeping monsters in their judicious prisons.

no saviors. only thieves. in our trembling apocalypse. no archers. only the arrows that pierce. creating the wounds, the blood which drowns us.

quiet volcanoes tame the friction.

the interrupted circuit. the composite man. all echo and thumbs. in creases familiar, but unnatural. tepid goddesses in their unicorn robes. discovering everyting. finding no one.

the electricity knows. energy accelerates. matter is enhanced. the shapes coalesce. stubborn attractions spoil the expermient.

the word is driven. the flesh is spent. the sober chaos. the high zen. borrowed, bled and bankrupt.

small gods construct their paradise in wine and cigarettes. the simple mistakes that once made us  whole. like hunningbirds and plastic soldiers. left out in the sun.

the war pauses. anticipating our surrender.

we screan, though gravity is deaf. we break, though impact is limitless.

equations. the simple monsters that define us. unresolved.

patterns realize her. all sober devils and soiled napkins. the feast has no meat. no knives. only bare bones. empty flesh.  and the treachery of progress. as it romances isolation.

the broken colors. voices chase the high. brief fits of clarity spoil long winters of chaos.

the journey. gnawing at my mind. the destination lost. like melting ice.

time was counting, but not for us. we were orphans. all circles and squares. in a world without dimension.

close to the boundary. far from the edge. words wither like flower petals ripped from the stem.

no growth. only stale gardens. and time. ripe with stagnant pendulums.

soft stalks in the thick grass. tease the sun. assuming life is residual. or some form thereof. her bricks carry her. in stiff tongues and absent martyrs. life is small. smaller than we ever imagined.

shattered tiles  on the stairs. the impossible logic of trust. simmers and burns in its empty pot. the gentle paradox of deception. boasts its graves in fractions of the original math. there is no such thing as addiction of subtraction. only corners where the shadows relent.

this long walk forgets the obvious parables. the distance concerns itself only with the echo. the mind's beating drum. the simple rhythm of pulsating skin. stubborn electrons racing against entropy.

Wooden steps wear their beginnings in broad clouds and questionable loyalties. We continue our climb. Confident that the altitude is sufficient to offset foul weight of gravity.

life arrives in hammers. Exits in nails. an innocent tangle of freedom. an immense wall of choices. a tricky prison not without its weaknesses.