We live in a world of infinite possibilities

and gods now seem mundane,

where my words have history holding

their backs as bastions of echoed time.

Where your body holds the image of literally 

every pleasure held before you.

Such an immaculate, divine shriek of the tear

in the fabric of fiction that birthed everything.

If your legs grow numb, focus on the floods of pleasure

between them in the negative space

accentuated by my fingers, tongue, and obelisk.

If your chest burns, embrace the fires of Rome

and let me incite them further with a thunderstorm

of unmitigated, unabated touching, kissing, licking.

If your head beats, dance to that kick snare and clap your

hands together around my obsidian back as I plummet into you.

We make love like phoenixes.

We argue like the blind, weak, pitiful bastards 

of the willowing alleys. 

But when we hear each other’s voices they took from us

we blare the bells and clarion calls and weep until we seep

into the melted stardust of our skins.

Drown me with your years.

Chip away at me until only death can grasp my image.

Dig your nails into my skin until I release the sin inside of you.

Let us watch humanity evolve like never before

but in complete boredom, unimpressed with their late progress

to a regal rise we have known since we knotted together.

I could have been born among artists and humanists in the renaissance

but my life would be short

and my multitude of questions gone unheeded;

my love, an addiction to Venetian maidens.

I could have been born under the tip

of your last name, and not have known it

— Caesar leading Rome with one foot on a

pedestal he built higher and denser than clouds,

then dropping out every ounce of himself once in a while

to write poetry for his dear love and goddess

The work of peasants and tyrants is the same. 

The food for merely different guts they starve for. Burning veins

fueled with the same longing desires, wild ideas of pride or shame

spreading through their brain and climbing down their bodies

like infested moss or poisoned roots

as they struggle to balance the rocks they carry.

But gunpowder rubbed softly on seeds

helps keep insects and toxic substances from being

soaked into a plant, subsequently. My tree, my lovely forest,

I am obviously, or want to be, your gunpowder.

I could have been born in the Industrial Revolution. 

But my only memories would be trying to connect

to women in shallow port cities 

over our book tastes. Instead,

my mass of stupidity, curiosity, anger

and immaturity found you.

And my humanist art of literature

spreads like a bold, black eagle; it’s cogs and gears

grind while the wings flap wildly to life. For you.

I could have been born 

under the Roman eagle, glorious

and powerful — E pluribus unum. 

One out of many is more like my one and only:

I owe you the world.

From the Northern lights to the Southern Cross.

The Wild West and Holy East. The depths of history

basing back to the birth of the universe,

showing you how insignificantly significant you are,

that you are made of stardust, and are a miracle to say the least.

I will not stop until I give back what you give me

My bright center of creation and creativity,

your presence is the present that keeps 

on giving, infinitely.

The palm trees

play games with me

I turn my head one way, then

another

And they flap their fronds like

wings

When walking, my feet

grow wide as a scuba divers flippers

The path becomes 

long

Like being delved into 30 ft deep

water

When my air suddenly

stops working

My heart does not beat

on time, my head is no buoy

The mask I have worn

since I first claimed 

existential discovery

now does not emit my 

recovery but

Rather feigns disbelief

as it fills bubbling

My palm frond friends on

land still laughing

because they can’t really

fly to save me

It’s all a game anyway,

just keep swimming

The ice drops down the glass as

flames pour up a Venturi of steel

“Oh, look just behind the angel

on top of the cabinet

It’s there somewhere”

Stuck with the sense that nothing’s

ever where you left it

Fuel for the findings where a housewife’s coworkers 

would be: the drone bees that don’t work for the queen

but buzz inside vaccums

“Honey,

you really need to get back here and

clean up these dust-bunnies”

The space                       in between

them and this finely grained heap—

of animal hairs and textile fibers, light debris

and rubbish, minerals and human skin cells, all held

together by static and felt-like entanglement

—was somewhat of a precursor for planetary systems

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

But what about (Freddie) Mercury?

           HellOo, Earth to binary oppositions? 

“Please hold.”

While Mars is larger, Mercury is proven to have a higher density

This results in the two planets having a nearly identical

gravitational pull on the surface

Oh, ho, the contrast

but as it is contested

Mars learns to manipulate it’s surroundings

with considerable clout and stout 

and reevaluate itself to a display of stoicism

as the god-like planets are subject to

being situated so far from the sun 

While on the other side of the spectrum,

the highest reactivity and intensity combinations

constrain themselves to calm down, and learn to present themselves 

as objects to be viewed and underestimated; as only right

when others follow the light of the Morning Star to find their way

               ”Yes, hi, thank you especially for putting me on hold so long. I’d just like to ask if you’ve ever considered switching your theory out with binary stars instead?”

Frankly, Mother Nature, Father Time, and I

prefer the Laws of Physics to Structuralism 

And by the sudden reignition of nuclear fusion

in a degenerate star such as myself, 

I will compound with my symbiotic nova companions

and we will collapse into each other to the point

that gravity will prevent anything, including light, from escaping

My blotchy appearance

catches peoples eye

but my deep, coagulating, red hue

scares them off instantly.

Little uniform diamonds sit on top of me

from the steps of teenage spirits.

My texture is like pavement:

cold, hard, and jagged.

I spread across the ground; I am cancerous

Give me wind, rain, dew or sugar

and I grow like a tumor

without treatment.

As the soulless metal of machines,

doors, and trash compactors becomes ancient,

I plant myself into their systems

conquering the sleek look that the metal no longer has.

I will erode them —

I take no one for granted;

nothing is safe.

Your words: a swamp

-inundated, burdened, shallow

The hands of Life drench and submerge me

to render helpless

The ring around my finger, ring around my eyes, ring around my neck

where the skin rubbed dry

The skyscrapers amber-lit windows are beads on a vertical abacus

reckoning the city’s insomnia, toting like photons up its sins

Holes in the dark architecture, the faintest light peaks through,

it is worn to the brim and tainted just for me to

Circumnavigate

the city for hours, recalling the scarecrow in the meadow

someone mistook for a crucifix

As my foot mindlessly obeys-slow for yellow, stop for red

color is the babel of the eyes

They’ve said

there is a verb tense for what was going to happen but didn’t

-when you’re the slightest bit late for your meeting with the pathogens

and someone takes your place

A space

for an enzyme, your brain relinquishes a memory

A peculiarity

distinguishing comprehensive and vigor from mortality

An excuse

for the time you missed your flight because you were ravingly imbued

to fetter and fight

Then the light

goes green, and you drive on without notice

The city hides it’s horizon, conceals it’s vanishing point

fractal of a planet you cannot fall off of

One of my wisdom teeth has never come to terms with growing up until now

Now that it does, it has the proclivity to not being straight, like me

and clashes against all other teeth unintentionally

knocks them into one another

makes them feel as hurt and crooked as it does

My body is a cavity;

how hollow and lachrymose, the half of me

that fervently chomps down buildings, glass windows and all

that hums for the taste of enshrouded sweets

as I myself am already artificial

Swishing back and forth every memoir I’ve ever swallowed

while my mother washes out with her antiseptic alcohol

My father, not stopping to brush his teeth, much less think 

on autopilot, discerning the dawn in a dream

My sister, that picture perfect smile you see on TV

as she belongs behind a screen of complacency

brushing her teeth as a past-time, instead of routine

My brother, caustic and scathing

as a sharp bite into the tongue

motives impalpable and overall unhygienic 

as a self-indulgent infant

spoon-fed pleasure invariably, without recognition

All coming back around to the gum-looking fixation 

stuck in all our heads

filling and spilling out all sensation, perception, emotion

a million chain reactions going off at once

that we’re not even aware of. I now know things

that would have never passed my mind

around this time a year ago

My mouth is shut more often, though I am more open

when something does come out

My body is a cavity, but my wisdom teeth are growing in

The man who never wears a shirt

sits on his second story porch smoking Arturo Fuentes

and tries to drop them on my head as I pass

The woman two doors down

never resists the urge

to pick up every leaf that falls to the ground

The whole neighborhood knows about

the family who keeps their monkey in the garage

the college kids who grow pot in their backyard

but probably not about the devoted father

who beats his children senseless

each night he gets home 

or the nurse mother with a substance abuse problem

who’s absence and inattention prompts the man next door 

always working on his house or garden

to deconstruct and deflower her little girl after school

High school history teacher and long time scholar Mr. Wells 

has a problem when he can’t help but scream out 

in the middle of class because the Austrian government is after him

As well as the good ole inured principal, former lieutenant  

who’s flash back memories not only erode him

but more than often compel him

to conduct himself over the intercom as he would in combat

or regard a student as the enemy

who goes running to their guidance counselor or mother

that assures them every time they’re just mean and crazy

-disorder and disfunction

patterns, anomalies

birthed from distress or disability

raised in the dark dormitories 

where something went wrong in their brain chemistry

If you open the door and wait, you’ll see

the madness creaks out of you too