Autumn is dead, just say it.
Even though the pattern
of the stars lie overhead,
pregnant for another season.
we have cut the wires
that connect to Autumns frail amber heart;
And maybe in time,
the leaves will disappear,
fall onto our plates
like grains of salt,
or perhaps be swept up
by some giant hungry machine.
Yet, who is it that knocks on time's door?
A bloody chill from the ocean's shore?
A sister, a cousin, a friend?
Autumn's white sheets are dampened in the snow
of tomorrow.
There, human foot-prints
pile upon each other,
and they pile
and pile
and pile.
Do come, winter, and drown
us all.

Nights are still settling
in this city covered
with the veins of tomorrow’s promise.
I do not recognize yesterday’s face,
or the fire of June’s breath.
Nights with you still are
underneath the yellow gaze
of these streets.
Love, we remain
a target for their crystallized
expressions of awe.
Cigarettes and candle-smoke
arise from the vapor of
the city’s lungs,
and so we inhale not only
the pulls of cancer, but
each other. These tears
only express that longing:
The distance frails me apart.

Contraction is a frightened fish, taking in the light from this pale beach,
a brush of the palm tree against my face from home;
from home, I smell the salt in your hair.
from home, I see the scales of your face glitter in the afternoon sun as you peel
away the velvet skin I adored.
Love gives brief relief, I have learned,
because now I do not know you.

This bench, this yellow beach.
A seagull says he is sorry through a crack on the pier,
the fish drift swiftly underneath my feet,
And I watch you touch her long brown hair,
and I watch you drowning under the stupidity of it all,
between the unjustified heat of July and the
calmness of the dead and forgotten harbor.

Speak of porcelain flowers; those understood by few.
They bleed nectar in the night
--the sleeping stems from the petal's torso--
like a kaleidoscope portrays images,
divine and bright; those understood by few.

Take this soil; its hazy grains,
breeding fragile life
(without the problem of this age)
resting upon itself; the martyr's bloom
They found pollen in the children's room.

Infinity is finite to the outside world.

Yesterday and tomorrow are incomprehensible. I gaze into my reflection; the present is like a scar stuck to the bottom of my jaw. It has been healed, but still it remains: distinct. I hear the perpetual bell’s of the future ringing, a song of uncertainty and change.

Nothing is ever quiet.
I lay my body across the stars and think the world’s voice has been shut off. Yet, there I am, alive. I inhibit a microcosm of joys, sorrows, feelings, and thoughts: I am a world within a world. Suddenly, my heartbeat is turned up. The pace of my breathing initiates my whole body to rumble. I see infinity now. Though I am constantly battling the passage of time, I see consistency. It is not in the stars or the area of some shape. It is in the slight drumbeat of my heart, and the faint music of my chest rising and falling like the moths above my head who quickly fly into the bulbs, drop, and continue to get closer to the light. The past, present, and future could be combined into a big messy pile of disorganized time stacked to the tip of the moon, and few things are permanent, not like God, but as we humans can understand. These things I know are ineffably true until the earth stops spinning within my microcosm. Then it does not matter. Then there are no more realms to explore.

Today

Today I stuck a flower in my throat,
swallowed whole the bulbous petals
innocuously, blackness spread its fingers
like canvas over autumn's frail heart
or like the way you
once held me and smiled.

Again I awake in this night
to observe my galaxy. It is absent of light.
The moon is just a fragment of a
cliche poem with white and empty words,
catering to the pupils, like bulbs of seeds in the wind.
It gives me no comfort.
I dreamt of you on the ocean's shores,
and now you are only a weary ghost
haunting the remnants of my rejected sinew.
So many years I will live apart from you.
So many days I thought your arms would hold me close,
but you, being pulled by the tides of human stillness,
evaporated before my eyes had time to shift.
Again I awake in this room
to pull down the shades and cradle the pieces '
of my brain that robbed our youth.
The letters are asleep.
I dreamt of the citrus colors
that used to adorn your name
and now they are faded against the backdrop of this silent life.
Faded like the visible heartbeat that pounds endlessly upon my shelf.