There are too many summer stars to count
in the black cradle of night
but still, I try to number them
like the reasons I’m enchanted
and eschew the old constellations
for new creations
of my own imagination

It used to feel romantic,
the rain in warm sheets around me,
legs crossed
and a deep desire to ground me

but as I let it surround me
it consumed me
as quickly as it had found me

so that the hopes I’d planted
rotted and were altered profoundly,
left maladapted,
pedantic and confounding

I hear it in the silences between the daylight
felt in the jagged vibration of the speakers
rattling like coins in my pockets

So I take some memories
and scatter them on the ground
falling behind me
like apple seeds

just to say
you don’t know what I smoke about

Curling up in the air,
smoldering nothingness

I never count their growth

as the sound still followed me
and the silence rattled me,

it was better not to look back,
for fear
you’d still be here

1.

You were tricked into believing
the key to your literal survival is to sympathize
and “make” him happy

If I could get back everything I gave away,
I’d cherish it more
and move more deliberately
I would lie in the grass and read
as many books as I could,
absorb a universe of knowledge

Unfocus my eyes,
learn to hear colors,
like a Mendelssohn octet
in paint-by-number horses
and watermelon wallpaper

Deny anyone access
and dwell with the mountains
with a vow to escape
to a world of my own

2.

The intermittent “good times” were a key part of how it worked

Here lately each morning is a triumph:
I seized a chariot and chased joy across the sky.
Four flaming horses
cantered with a throaty cry.

I don’t really speak about it
but for so long I was petrified,
weeping through the dark, dark nights
tortured by awful buzzing
and flashing purple lights

And I used to care about such unimportant things:
what so-and-so said or thinks
or how slow time seemed to be,
which was very
very
short-sighted of me

3.

It’s like malware on a computer, running in the background
without any awareness or conscious decision on your end

When I sleep at night
I connect to my visions,
so I try not to sleep at night

4.

You can love him with everything you’ve got,
but if you stay,
you will sacrifice your life for no reason