the palm of the sky open like a flare

when the wine bottle reaches half mast, uncork the barrels.  in the waning light of autumn, the sea scrapes sharply these cliffs we are planted upon, but we will take razors to our roots, lay out our veins like roadmaps and point to the places where we watched the sliding grace of change break through our kneecaps, our beards, and our voices.  so hoist a glass, let the praises sing from your lips, cradle the pain you felt like a wounded bird for sculpting you more concretely, for heaven has emptied of its angels, there are feathers on your tongue, and by morning you will taste what it is to take flight.

by the end of this we all will bleed.

grind your dirt teeth as the rocks they curl themselves beneath your knees.  there is smoke in your lungs, a funeral pyre in your chest.  the bodies they stack ever higher and god is getting further and further away.  a gun sight never blinks.  a bullet has no conscience.  the dead don't complain.  those of us still alive, we are the minority.  open up the filing cabinets of your veins, store away the visions you will never be able to speak of.  deep in the nighttime they will come to you, swirling above your head, red like memory, purple laced with fear, a yellow the color of swallowing, there will not be words, but understanding will pervade, there is a sickness here, it infects all of us, we drip with it, it has burrowed down and bedded inside of us to the point that we no longer know what it is to be without it, to the point that we feel "normal", but something important has been forgotten and it is far too late to go back and remember now, so we stumble and reach, ever missing, and we do not cry as much as we should, and our bellies, they remain empty, and our hands, they will not wash clean, and the one wish we have above all others is to see each other at last.

he-man's manly thighs

consider me silent and manly.  a drop in an oceanliner.  a frog in a mess.  movement will be the death of me.  and you too.  i can hear the melodies in your dance.  i know somewhere deep down you are probably beautiful.  but the church is on fire.  the white house is sinking.  we are living in our own karmic filth.  and there is no way to speak of such things without losing someone's attention.  so fill up your gas tank with sea horses, rein in the sparrows, pull the drawstring for the sunset, and wait for the countdown.  part of me hopes that i'm just a pessimist.  because i'm worried there's not much time left for being hopeful.

the tea kettle is screaming something about hell

they took our portraits underwater and now we look like dead people, sitting in frames in a dining room that people politely walk through without saying anything controversial, always agreeing with everything.  the papers sit crying insane claims from inside their metal boxes on street corners, already looking like the bleak pointless catalogue they will be in twenty years when we look back and wonder what the hell happened, and find no answers there.  

streetlamps don't blink when you say 'i love you'

there is a slow rising, a bellowing from deep, tiny heartbeats, and a few balled fists.  while the first rain is still strong in your nostrils, i want to rest with you.  my grandmother was strong and crazy.  she is dead now.  i still feel the rasp in her voice, the stale cigarette smell of her car, the blue veins pressing out against the skin on the back of her hands, the way we spun and spun and how it seemed like we would never stop spinning when she ran that red light.  there was that incredible feeling of knowing no one is in control, of knowing death is standing right next to you, and then feeling it leave.  my sister was crying in the back seat.  my grandmother seemed confused.  i felt like i was supposed to speak for her.  like she wasn't really there.  i couldn't have been more than 9 or 10.  she was incoherent.  she complained of pain in her neck.  she thought it wasn't her fault.  the thing i can't help but wonder, is if your family history is filled with bad people, is there any way for you to turn out okay?

artificial wind blowing on artificial lovers making artificial love beneath an artificial tree

i do believe that violet is the color of your breathing and escape is the notion of your ribcage and the right three notes in succession will melt your tender body into a pool on the hardwood floor.  there are fists and broken things sitting and staring at each other inside fleabag apartments.  the trunks of cars are sitting glumly beside a highway, waiting to wrap metal arms around something.  and you, what are you waiting for my love?  is it the quilted death dangling beneath the soft skin of the forest?  or quiet love in a wooden bedroom with white curtains billowing?  we are warped creatures, you and i, we drag our claws along the concrete and breathe our moans like sea lions, we stitch up our chests with fishing line and burn good mahogany to cook scraps of rot, it is a junkyard pile of dust that we crave, to lie upon a soiled mattress beneath cities of trash, scrape our flesh clean and wear new costumes for a day, we are not bad, we human beasts, we are just lonely and we don't know how to show it.  we just want to dream a little, without being scolded for it.  

i believe in the existence of strawberries

there are ugly things here.  messy things.  things that drip and smell.  ugly the way no one wants to see, but everybody has felt.  it is not pretty.  (its ugly).  (i already said that).  (pay attention).