venus alone

only you hold blame

for failing to love me.

only courage consoles the lonely

(love only)

while i fall over and again

into loving myself

drought

without her tears

she didn't know to mourn the loss

she only knew something faintly gone

a time in life

i am the witness

i bear this union

sapphire pearl

rolex of the cosmos,

sapphire pearl.

bugs to count the seconds

trees to keep the minutes

rivers to wind the time

(i’ve slipped myself between the gears:

i adorn the wrist of god)

garden

if you take a breath to look closely

you can see the small shaping

the beginning of something beautiful

demicausal

as an offspring of the unintended

she finds the most freedom

from love affairs with the divine.

equity in the unexpected

gives her that right

twelve o’clock somewhere

i ask the bartender for a limerick of metaphors. she’s a bit shocked given i’m alone and it’s 3 p.m. but asks me how i take them. literally, i tell her

i quietly knock them back then turn to my laptop. the page is blank but after my fourth and fifth drink i could start making out a few figures

“can i get another?” she looks at me, “tabs aren’t infinite you know.” i look up at her and she can see i’m confused, “fine, but i hope you don’t expect to find any meaning in there.” she pours out the spirit

i look back at my computer. that one (i point to a cloud far to the right) most definitely looks like an ox. i take note of a few of the other shapes i find and write them down. the sky is clearly endless, i write in the margin, but i wonder if there are endless clouds to fill it

after a while i sit up, pat off my hands and brush the dirt off my head. i suppose it’s time. raising my hands over my eyes, i turn towards the sun. hoping to catch it within the next two hours or so, no time to loiter

i can’t let it get too late

reciprocity

i imagine a mirror you could touch—

a reflection of sensation,

would feel a bit like you.

(but is that a good thing?)

nightmare

i make a panicked gasp for air

my body’s last instinct to survive

trembling at the vision of death before my eyes.

the sweat beading from my face,

evidence of the fear that submerges me.

a moment of pure emotion, uninfluenced by any other thought or feeling, no sense of self or name or day or meaning. pure and concentrated. a thing that can only exist in the place between dreams

mold, cast

when you will to shape the world,

tend the form within

but when the world wills to shape,

the weak begin to bend