Terminals

Nix

The wind

melancholy tufts

of hair shifting

like a down

pillowcase torn open, tied

with a visceral tourniquet

to his starving artist's mind.

And in the dusking gloam

his shadow struggles to breathe; gasps

a gasp such as would swallow

The whole of humanity, every beautiful drop

, distill its essence to a fractured thought

, slither through his veins, kissing every fear clean

, until his soul is as silk, so smooth

and fragile that the veil of heaven itself cannot

sieve away the darkness half so well. Thus pondering

, he feels the hollow steel slide into a blackened vein

and there upon the precipice, melts away, oblivious, all alone.

Nirvana.




Infanticide.

Angels dance

on pinheads

punctured through invisible

crepe paper universes

. Stars, glittering, iridescent, shine

like scarab eyes, and

burn through every layer of

her piecemeal heart, which in

some distant memory, some stupid child's

affection, burns still with an innocence

once found in life--now in eyelid

, downcast, enlashed, averting from those distant eyes

, those stars and faux celestial bodies that sear

and vitrify, as melted quartz, her every defense

. Jeweled excuses, mute figurines, translucent memories as clear as

amber revealing a parasite, the horror, caterwauling then still,

empty and soundless as all her nightmares, her pretty distractions

,useless now as the child in the wet, cloying mud.


Daydreaming...




Stricken

Gray sleet

in iris

patches collects, ricocheting

in starbust explosions

,the way her heart

feels--empty and obscured

by a colorless wraith of

Concrete, of Solid, of Common.

And yet now, at this brush

of her lashes, she paints watercolor

fireworks with the tremolo of a heartbeat

, and her breath, her blood, every trembling

fiber of self seems to sense a sympathy

in the still Chicago air. Though it burns

no more than a flash in the pan, still

her lungs climb high in her breasts to scream

while her insides claw up her throat, desperate to escape

And become entangled within the silhouette of her daydream lover.

Incendiary.



Grail

The moon

Exhales its

Icy whispers upon

A pale skinned

Ghost of a man.

He pauses to rest

His legs, his aching heart,

And debates the one remedy,

The silver balloon in his hand

. Yet this, too, is a figment

Of the moon's imagination. Of another self's

Longing for self in the form of

A dream.  That in this miserable shadow of

A sleepless life, may come a salve, nepenthe

,  to awaken his gentler body, safe inside a plastic

Cylinder, hermetically sealed like a soul preserved in counterfeit

; white like old innocence beneath a lunar glow.  He whispers

Back to the moon, breath as icy as its own,

"goodnight."




Striving

Live in

mothers of

deadbeats like blankets

stifling the vibrant

color of your blood

controlling its course, diverting

shielding from what life awaits

like a glass penumbra, transparent

Unforeseen and invisible. Cling to anything

,cast tendrils to graft upon a

quilted pattern of skin, of cardboard homes,

those Potemkin villages of childhood, that yet

comfortable in myth, serve now to destroy you.

Nevertheless, this coffin, though confining, is paper only

Live in others, in dreams, in memories, Lose your

mind to gain it back again, unveiling the crisp

unyielding soul. Live chained to the warm affection of others

for therein lies your true reflection, like a mirrored star.

Mantra.



Ghostlights.

Wedged between

two worlds

as he lies

in an unknown

alleyway, shivering, uncertain whether

a dream can ever

graft a being unto his

crumbling shell of existance. Love

, elusive as an argent minnow flickering

in eyelash streams in morning's light

, becomes as much a craving as the

Need to breathe--or for sun to

illuminate the earth. He feels erased, partial; why

reassemble oneself when it's so easy to disappear?

And so he hugs his fractured mass to the

greasy steps of the terminal, yellow lamplight dripping from

the awnings like the tallow off a defunct candle, just

the static reminder of warmth touching this cold city pavement.

Embers.