Illuxion

I found a lucky penny

yesterday

from 1982.

It was heads up

facedown

outside of a gas station

that sells liquid cocaine.

I clenched my teeth

whilst staring down

listening to the sound

of rushing water

behind my eyes.

All the things

I’d say face to face

came in parabolic waves

of repetition

and OCD.

I reached down

to pick up the penny

but a black cat

emerging from the shadows

crossed my path

and ran off with

the damned thing.

Favorite Part of Letter Go

The woman from Norway

delicately broke my ribs

one by one in the dark

hyperextending

my sentimentality.

I thought about you

in the darker

how novelties from May

wore off faster

than your mascara

on a rainy night.

How the hours since August

have been mocking me

and the one that follows

is a bullet:

how I can’t stop time

from reaching my eyes.

I thought about us

in the darkest

but it’s goofy thinking

that led us here

and goofy thinking

that can reverse

these fractures.

Bone Flour

But my arsenal

is depleted

and you’re so far

away.

The sky cast

an autumn apparition

before summer started

it’s tyranny –

when you became

so cool

with your cast-iron

codependency.

And in the scraping night

we’re killing ourselves

with plastic thoughts

while the delirious massacre

occurs in the still dead
still.

Friday the 13th

The first whisper

of a breath of fall

coming in

through the cracks

of the window.

Your head rested

comfortably against my dreams.

My failings still stirring

on the pillow –

my eyes

not adjusting to light;

I will never go

back

to sleep

pinned perfectly

between your arms.

This bed spells

death

when 1 a.m. is always

rising to the surface of the sun.

It’s hard to know

which chair in the corner

will help me

stand

these dreams

are going 

away

faster than how you left;

those nights

when we stayed

home.

To Little; To Late (An Ode)

When she called

over a year ago

from a hotel room

in Chicago

and say no more.

She had hips,

          not too much;

incandescent.

She was the acme

of smooth

delicate traces.

She stared

at a foreign headboard

and I withheld

the true depth

of an engrossing sentiment.

Say no more –

shades of green.

The People v. Existence

She sleeps

beside me

but I have no idea

who she is.

I knew her once

very well

some time ago.

Maybe a week

or 10 years

have passed –

I don’t sleep anymore.

As a shadow

of my former self

she is merely

an apparition

and as real

as this night

falls upon the crooked earth

in a gold car

with the windows up

she sleeps beside me

but neither of us

are really present

here.

The Doomsayer

He stands with the sign

the one that says:

the end is near.

He knows every fear

and every moment

every moment

every moment.

He took a temporary leave

a little over a year ago.

When the sun came out

in the bleak of winter.

Biding his time,

he broke a shadow

and found his old sign:

the end is near.

A grueling pace

for a now dying summer;

a snail’s pace

for the new face of humidity.

And the dreams here

repeat

repeat

repeat

repeat.

The sign’s color is faded

and dusty:

the end is near.

You cried once,

and only once

on a gorgeous summer morning.

Unseasonably cool,

and the last day

before the world stopped turning.

the nightmares here

repeat

repeat

repent

repeat.

The sky holds its breath

and the furthest you can get

is dead where you stand.

The sign is your only forefront:

the end is near.

We lost everything.

Well one of us did;

scrambling to collapse

at least until the plague has passed.

But the death is all around us,

and he speaks in confident whispers

before a world upside-down.

He knew before it was gone.

He has reprinted a new sign:

the end is here.