Callous

In the lock box of sleep,
Anxiety rattles, a bullet
In a hollow panel, rough and stained,
Splinters like fiber, glass
Hastily swept into a filmy volume
Aching for the predawn

I scheme for a premature flight
Inside metal warped, commercialized
I feel the pinching of my disk
Nothing remains the same when
I'm alone
I see flesh on skin-
Never mind

My skull is woozy
I was turned over-easy
Unscrewed like a rotten egg
And surreptitiously scrapped
This life scampers parallel
Scribbling circles like years

I run without purpose
Even suckling life, I despair
A dirty kitchen for private tears
We twirl stupidly in place,
Casting a transparent line
Hope is a noun

As I observe waste and sloth and
In spite of myself, my cynicism
Becomes ingrained
I will train for endurance
Feminist that I am
For the primary purpose of validation

In silky sea salt
My eyes are feverish, loss-glazed
Full of rage and peering
Through uncelebrated expectation
We are carbon, emotion
And little else

Postcard

Camaraderie, fluid life, thoughts composed in this head and transcribed by orbs of intuition. Across the kitchen table, fruit laden, covered in sooty life they pass. I'm lucky, not only for gifts of mind and body, but for intrinsic need to throw caution to the wind.

Moan and squawk you cannot, voice oozing like syrup, and magic, out of lips of mauve. In a small package, wrapped traditionally in brown parchment and twine, you arrived on my icy stoop one night. You are an eraser, pink and squeaky, leaving a trail on my pages as you negate any foresight I, the disillusioned speaker, pretend to have.

I know one consequence of my behavior that will certainly result, but I dare not write it, make it real, for fear of flippance. What is love? I know, being human, but I have never participated, going through each motion like the shadows on the lake...

The moon tosses energy towards crystalline clouds, suspended like muslin above miles of gravity. Expanding like my heart- I might implode from the gratuitous repetition. But such a smile, such metallic mirth. A warped ceiling tin, I bow and pop. I'm flimsy.

Stunted Growth

Caress
me -
My heart is on the floor.
Sleeping infidelity is not a crime
I need not request acquittal
if the the act is not lucid.
I never say what I mean.

Lucidity, a quite strange concept
after our now complete twelve-hours journey.
Such strange words spoken without
transition and spliced like spare limbs
As curtains bleed, the gradient sky,
bright as day, is scarred
by cottonwood and fluorescence.
Your hands slowly played out
scale after natural scale.
I am far and away.

But only through a promise-
a terrifying yelp, can we be free.
In my spinning state, I read words
that light fire like flint.
Trying to cry, I gaze ahead
into prismatic faith.
Where does my insecurity reside?
If it lies within you
then I have yet to find it,
to find anything worth putting up with.
My integrity is fissured,
finely disintegrating,
beknownst only to me.

Even as my mouth objects,
my submerged desires surface
through seas of muffled cotton.
Had I the ability to merge realities,
sever ties, live in a world free
of obligation, possibility could solidify.
However, my heart is not
a sacrificial lamb for
the sake of my brain,
or at least it should not be.

In ten minutes, in steam and soap,
anxiety will be doused in a basic solution,
citrus and spice will fall away.
I can delve into the reasons
only when my filter is missing,
stolen by substances undefinable,
transferred from kiss to
kiss under a dark star.
Imprisoned.

In the stratosphere we hover
like forgotten dolls, with notions like
gauze in our porcelain heads.
You may choose to disengage,
but recall your frailty
in the womb and on the ground.
When presented with queries of the future,
all we have ever learned
shall fall gruesomely short.

Casualty

In the moment nothing is sacred, nothing secure.

The mind decays in neglect, rusting indeterminably in the heat of a forgotten noon. Amazing that feeling, even pain, is relief. We all feign amusement, she nothing but a mistress of slovenly tactics. Staring frozen and free, inside the cage that is her body, she clicks and cries aloud.

I know nothing but sickness. God, you could snap me like a twig.

We engage, pulling hair intoxicated. Ambushed by light and adrenaline, my body reacts independently of my mind. Panicky blue. My pipe dream is debilitated and spurred on simultaneously.

We swim in the shallows, we stashed our brains in the fertile riverbed. My hands are numb, my heart ablaze. I hang from the proverbial rafters, splintered and searching, further action pending further communication. Demonstrative as I am, my lips may be my final recourse. I urge you, contemplate my soul as it exits my mouth.
And then-

I am silence, eyes open unseeing.