I’m out from under
a play rug of a road
crossing tracks
leading to some town
on the outskirts

The road u-turns
in the corners, but
rather than driving endlessly
I pull over by the back wall
of the waiting room
and let the meter run

Trees grow over the tracks
Petals are falling
like beds are being made

I lie down too
Leave my impression
just in case it matters
to mattresses
I let the meter run

A storm stumps the branches
There’s a hole in the trunk
A slow tuck dunk tank bump
like an eye letting in woodpeckers

I crumble the crayon
on the wall, snap a ruler
and look out the floor
to ceiling windows
with no oversight
or understanding

Dumbfounded paralysis
encroaches on the past
Spending memory
while lavish lava
spits the wake of a breath

Everything that lasts
is fast and was first

• to ignite the moon
  • to own reflection

Shaking hands
choke the roses
to clear a path and leave
a trail of bloody pricks

The good fight
lost a thought
in a cage
that it became
before it caved

But you don’t actually want
my thoughts on the page
And I don’t want
to pour out my soul
Besides, it’s a solid
or a gas
Either way

who knows
as the moment goes?

I.

New walls talk
if they’re smacked
with runny paint

Once every droplet
pools, dip my pointer
in the waste

Sniff it to sleep
soundly, weep
Close my eyes
to drown them

II.

Old walls whisper
when they crack
Paint an arch
and follow through

a corroded corridor
Framed by the crown
Molding

Open the windows
Open my mouth
Swallow the willow’s tears

Pain is not the needle in my eye.
Pain is not scars, not the knot
of my veins. Pain is not a petal
steeping in boiling rain
as wind mocks the shutters.
Pain is the firm of the ground.

Tears are not underground.
Tears are not in my eye
that doesn’t even shutter.
Tears are not pain. The knot
pulls tight wrings out rain
down the face of a petal.

Rest is not the failing petal
finally landing on the ground.
Rest is not inside when it rains.
Rest is not shutting my eyes.
Rest is the wind in a knot
unsettling the shutters.

Purpose doesn’t shudder
as it brushes off a petal.
Purpose isn’t the resting knot
nor is it tangled on the ground.
Purpose is the unscathed eye
in blurry rain.

Power is not looking at the rain
as if I could make it shudder
as it drops on my eye.
Power is the petal
hovering above the ground
with its stem in a knot.

Pain is not a powerful knot
nor is it the meteorite rain
breaking my ground
as the earth merely shudders.
Pain is the vein of a petal,
braining like the pupil of an eye.

Tears are not painful like shutters
on windows. Tears are the rain
from the wind in my eyes.

[Spell] M-A-G-I-C is combining letters into a word, but there’s nothing magical about that. For instance (in an instant) oops is nearly poops. And there’s nothing magical about arranging words into sentences: peaceful warlocks, although word-locking, are not the fire that forges, coddles the cauldron, they’re just stirring the content with a large wooden spoon and chanting big stick ideologies*. I won’t consent to spooning or an unprotected hex, but nonetheless, they’re force feeding me their entropy on a spoon that doesn’t fit in my mouth. It splits my cheeks like bat wings stapled on a chalkboard. Now that I can’t talk, I’m brainwashed by a brainstorm, flooded, in fact, I’m a reservoir on the mind map of subjectivity. If one sees their reflection in me, then they’ll dive in the deep for as long as they can hold their breath. My brain is on the bottom, beating like a heart and emanating waves in the cup of my hands.

*Big stick ideology refers to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy: “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Roosevelt described his style of foreign policy as “the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis.”

I’ll walk the wall without the fall at all.
Imagine that. I’m creeping in the lung
of ocean as it’s tonguing waves that ball
me up and spit me down. I’m that deep-

brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne.
My yellowed inside’s greyed by sky. Ocean
left it’s teeth, I’m shredded paper cuts. Can’t
bleed because the water’s pink and motions

cough. Light dives and scatters. Droplets cling,
crop the leaves and cry like dream-catching eyes.
Curve the glimmer and that’s a sparkling.
Then I felt like some watcher of the skies,

buried in the moss that only shadows
those who suck the bone and leave the marrow.

Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye,
the colors come, but then they go to rainbow
moatel taunting the toads that die like farts
anyway. Niko walks the plank and holds

his breath to death, that clutch of life that crunch
of Godly foot. Symmetries attacking
me like whirl—I could never draw a bunch
of circles. Rose born from the matchstick’s end

ignites the gas, finds it’s way to the toadlings ass
squashed like dried herbs drenched in steep,
the way the mountain climbs that fiery ice,
yet ‘tis a gentle luxury to weep

for toads that saw green in their reflection,
spent themselves like cash crop dusting diction.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
are bitter chunks of cradled caviar.
I play my music to open their ears
before I eat. High up lavender tree,

I perch on a fold out chair with spliffs,
thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
scrubbing rusted skin of steel, stealing whiffs
of acid. There’s no safer ways to rhyme.

How many principles of life are there?
μηδὲν ἄγαν. Painted swirls are in love,
but not with us. Knots in the canvas where
petals meet the stem of brush. Cement cove

awash with permanence. I’m setting sunstone.
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe.

Crows are the strangest wings. They beat my mind to take off out my skull. Now, it’s a rattled empty cage, but I’m still a Beacon: life’s a hologram behind bars of shadow, veiled by plastic windows: light-waves are what’s in view, collapsing into matter at the moment of observation as if everything I shine is truth. Invisible crows are prisms in a fishbowl, and I’ll trace their turbulence with a light box when the lights chill out—cool down what’s up, it’s the timer that’s baked, I’m just making cookies. They never burn because I tighten my belt to slow the world’s turn and pry the ocean—bucket of runoff—from it’s nail bed, hold the bucket over my head and spill watery blood through the nail holes for a shower. Blessed, but left with a bucket of guts and bone, I make do, carry the bucket on my head that’s pacing, barking, ‘Barfing scarfs! To be auctioned off!’ as they wrap around my neck to winterize, but I’m finally cleaning cage, repressing shattered stage as it’s jagged daggers find their selfless flesh, I’m the rat that’s running in the wheel with wings, never-ending pretending escaping an ending is possible.