I’ll build a cave below the ground.
Someday no one will be around
No sound
No sense
No reason in making friends
or asking you to attend.
But books could line my bed.
I’ll pretend
I’m Scipio turning red.
I know you better by a guess
it’s best
to confess
what you dreamt.

They all say they love me
and love seems so generic.
I’m starting to shrink
Will I make it?
I’m blue
I’m blue
I feel naked
I was mistaken

Why are they smiling?
Do they know my secret?
Have they seen my research?
Do they know I fake it?

You are the summer,
dewy and gold.
Your laugh rings like the Chinook.
On your brow,
the furrows of your spring are overgrown
by thick brown timothy. Somewhere I could sink
and sleep.

In this jungle
they had me entranced
by the sin of vanity,
of assumption
of belonging.
The ego
surrendering resilience
for security.
I prayed
as they showed me,
but nothing came to me.
For a moment I existed
inside of a bubble.
I gave up my white dress
to live with some purpose.
I thought it was best
or that I somehow deserved it.
He said “I know everything.
“Just try to surprise me.”
I had something boiling,
some kind of fantasy
where his honesty
was love for me.
Perhaps it was indeed.
I’ve done nothing worse
and quite a bit better,
so why can’t I get her
distaste from my head?
I wrote you a letter
with a solemn pledge,
but you gave her your hand instead.
Now in my past
are dozens of spirits
whose love I had gardened
with obsessive fire.
None of them last
or remember my passion.
Despite my fixation
she called me a liar.
Despite all the moments
in those days and these
when I think of her face
and struggle to breathe.
How we painted together.
How you danced in all weather.
The gold in your hair and your skin.
Your desire to be thin
and how much you needed him.
We decorated each other
and walked in the rain
espousing our pain. Why can’t it sustain?
Why then does anything begin?
Is the difference between love and abandonment
merely the “when”?
They tell me
all things come to an end.
They tell me
I am my only friend.
I am the only universal,
the only continuing thread.
And though tonight I’ll lie in your bed,
it’s like you
slipped
and
I slept in your stead.

I sealed blue ink
into your chest
where you kept
all the letters
that you had been sent,
a morning in May
when you were away
tucked nondescript
for another day.

Like the picture I wear over my face
Cocked grin frozen in its place
Tilt my head to one side
and ideas
slide
through my ear canal onto the floor.
Shake it, and you may find more
than a body or two
like a kiss at the zoo
or a blacklit vision
Baby, the light is getting so dim.
I’ve just been tumbling
toes to the ground
with a blue book clutched to my chest
where I write all my secrets
the only record that I exist
I wanted him to want it
But he never quite got it
And now I’ve gone and lost it

She calls me blue
They say I have a strange face
He tried to draw it and stacked the pictures by his bed
Efficacy
is paramount
to efficiency.
And efficiency is paramount
to saccharine
to poetic
stories
feelings
people
As each connection leaves I feel a relief
No longer tied to the sentimentality of childhood
And they may have guessed correctly
about my lack of remorse.

Sirius uprising
She’s the son of Orion
Somehow compelled across realms to
Well to

Can I see a twin star?
I don’t think I see that far.
Dwelling in the future
Oracle-style
Ask me who is
The one

My head keeps pounding. I can’t focus
my eyes are frosted.
I lack direction.
I crave connection.
But I have perspective.
I elected to respect it.
I’ll persevere
in fear
that if I don’t then I won’t be real;
repeat that mantra;
hide the Achilles heel.
“I can’t believe in you forever.”
Even though there most likely is no objective truth,
and though moral values and ethical principles alike are subjective, constructive,
we could pool our thought
to settle
on a mutable schematism
of shared public consciousness,
by which we will faithfully conduct ourselves
for the sake of the human condition.

So yes it is possible
that you know me,
but to assume
would be too much.
I seek your touch.
I need your time.
It’s not enough.
I want to hear it,
have it sketched
or do something;
etch
it into legend,
into sand,
into stone,
into bone.

I’m a venture.
Maybe a loss.

Straighten me out.
My bones are hurting.
My heart is stone.
You’re sand departing,
already blown.
My love is starting.
I’m coming home.