sunlight,
sunlight,
sunlight.
beacon me home
like the smell of goodnight.
i’m always half-blind
& always in denial
that i’m half alive.
it wouldn’t hurt
to trade the coffins in my mind
for memories of your blonde streaks
& white fists for black lives
in coffee shops
around the corner.
why am i buying all of this free art,
anyways?
your nose is in the books,
your heart
in the
right place.
you’re the design left on the windowsill
after a whimsical,
impulsive,
condensation-initiated
doodling session.
– – –
timeless,
preserved,
and
limitless
in your reach.
in fractions of rotations,
it is filled with sun;
it is shrouded by clouds.
it is fleeting from my fingertips
like my former layers
of skin.
it is the meeting of the lips.
it is measured by minutes
& diastolic response
in this life,
by the depth of irises
& ocean currents
in the next.
a cracked slab of
concrete
knocked
on the front door.
“i ache of
tread and
winter
wind.”
it shuttered,
transformed a frigid purple
(by
winter
solstice),
and looked
at its watch.
(5:55 A.M.)
another repetition
of an engine revving.
another star
brilliantly,
silently,
waving
goodnight.
another coffee cup
becoming
hot
and then,
becoming
cold.
often in days where the sun,
in its highest hierarchy,
still refuses to warm my feet
(stubborn
&
engulfed in charcoal
),
the colorless kaleidoscope behind my eyes will become a photo album of the purple-red hue of waterfront nimbocumulus,
jade scrubs not yet bloodied,
and the tea kettle sweetly whistling,
a collective hymn only conjured by your
ambitious,
bashful
cheekbones-
an antidote comprised of scarlet tablecloth and ballroom reverie within the smallest bones of my wrist.
in this auspicious daydream inexplicably affixed to reality,
i watched a cackling crown absorb the ultraviolet in a stale, forgotten parking lot
—
as rainbow plumage replaced black,
i thought of your modest palms on my vacant chest,
immersing the colorless into the radiance,
adrift
and unafraid.
in previously dining with sultry, elegant fire*,
i was a gazelle with its neck bit to the bone-
breathing,
but not alive-
a fractured coffee table melted into a morbid pool of cheap, liquidized steel,
decimated via hazel iris communication and spilled wine.
my skin,
ablaze,
took the shape of your hip-bones,
outlined with red lace and childhood scurry-
a grey ghost changing weightless piano symphonies into expired canned goods,
dented to the severity of hairline fracture.
—
band aids eventually peel like browned, dampened leaves in the sorrowful days of autumn;
scar-ridden skin does not dance into the fading sun to never return,
but rather sits on skin like
wet newspaper
and whiskey breath;
it creeks a screech of attrition in your throat like an unhinged screen door,
the splinters down-pouring into esophageal tissue like ash.
re-dressing the wounds must not be a death sentence,
as the gauze is the clock-tower,
perched in the center of town,
striking noon.
it took far too many rotations around the axis to realize that a wounded, passionately bursting organ behind a protruded rib-cage was not an expiring hourglass,
but that third degree burns could be the infinite list of ambiguous maps i’ve yet to navigate.
—
with the passage of ambivalent and nebulous suns,
i can now unravel the bloodied, endlessly flawed fabric to the newly optimistic idea of
her favorite peppermint tea,
her January habits of leaning on the sizzling pellet stove with sweatpants slightly too thin,
her perseverance of the books like a Nobel Prize winner.
but so help me,
if your are one more to pour gasoline on my dinner plate,
i will light the match myself before i allow you to complete the unfinished canvas of my curious skin.
the world is not a stopwatch.
–
yet,
my gaudy lenses consists of entrapment between two copper hands,
one slightly more deprecating,
one slightly more omnipresent-
but we’re surrounded by curious skies,
not a dome comprised of the middle school locker room and the sundress that rainy Sundays begged you to twirl aimlessly in.
in these crevices of half life when I can undress the assembly line to its barren tremors,
i breathe in a light spanning counties worth of mountains and mom’s chicken enchiladas.
here,
there are no stifling, expendable hands.
there is the first sip of snowy December espresso.
there is my favorite fleece blanket resting on your ambivalent shoulders.
there are endless timelines of the homeless finding shelter and your roof softening the unyielding razors on my skin.
the copper will always find new ways to imbue itself,
but for now,
my breath will carry on for several spring meadows
and remember all of my forgotten names.
voluminous birdie,
color in the forgotten gray of my hand-me-down ventricles.
sing to me like mom after my wisdom teeth,
and sweetie after my knees forget how to meaningfully breathe.
your flight cannot guarantee a destination filled with rhythmic syllables of your brown-eyed reverie,
but the wind itself fuels thoughts of days colored rainbow when my eyelids grey the trees like losing jackets in the snow-covered weeks.
you cannot fill an upside-down jar.
you cannot crack a polymer designed to turn its back to the lukewarm winds.
you cannot convince the grounded child to climb mountains in light of fatter wallets and brighter pale ales.
for the only mechanism of my flight is a unreachable cove-
an unquestioned, unbreakable, unconditional love.
—
fly North,
fly North,
fly North
—
it is too cold here for your feathers to shine.
—
—
–
my words aimed down the scope as heated blankets feel more like frostbite when hurriedly fired.
what if benevolence is not an adequate source of heat when the power lines topple?
when these ideas run rampant, they are an uncontrollable current-
a social trend picking at gnarled vines of dead skin,
a pair of open eyelids constantly looking at the only two pictures of you still saved on the cloud-
the remnants of your sapphire eyelids cutting my brick femurs like passive ash.
what if my words immortalized your fluttering agility-
a glass universally unbreakable?
what if the punctuation composted your faith like fresh coffee grounds in a drought-stricken garden?
would you aim once more,
or would the circuit breaker gather dust?
i’m losing myself in your hazel portal.
:__:
fingernails, the endless target of fear, blunting the intensity of your golden-gate conscious,
bear enough of this weight to mortalize Atlas.
the pathetic, monotone static in my head is a train barreling towards an unfinished bridge,
my cynicism a pew destroyed by debris,
my outstretched hand a burning bible.
in my back-alley existence,
you are an ocean-wide coral reef of altruism and hope,
beaming with enough passionate hue to feed the starving.
i am twiddling my sprained, charcoal thumbs out of rhythm,
selfishly consuming your complexion like a leech
——————————————————————————————-
the lava-blended departure of the sun is not metaphysics,
but a pinpoint target into human hearts,
both empirical and whimsical,
both light out of my ultraviolet perspective and the asphalt hurricanes of my cortex
~
bursting to the window,
it BUCKLED.
she battled the nimbostratus with 7.4 billion souls on her solar-flaring side;
I sat idly by, desperately attempting to cool my tea and fight the demons on my shoulder.
The battle was a chainsaw pitted against a watermelon,
a senseless,
lopsided conflict.
(is the deck stacked or
are my shoulders only temporarily
disfigured?)
despite cinder block extremities,
my skin is still more mesh than concrete;
these summer nights were meant for picket signs
and bare feet.
as to perceive image without light,
I swam against a salty, magnificent current.
Speaking Out on the Unspeakable
The "Swiss Army Knife" of Publishing & Media
Words Arranged in Disorder. 