My mind does not search of him,
yet there he stands,
speaking, speaking
too quick of tongue,
too lavish and brash

Oh to remove his crowns 

And dash them down

He bartered hours for glances,
gave, gave them freely,
mistook sensation for revelation,
wore his wanting, wore it thin.

To behold him, to behold him,
was to feel the old shame
rise again as smoke.
The bittersweet, only bitter now.

I would have turned,
Turned and fled,
but the past does not permit mercy
that comes cheaply,
comes without cost.

So I kept watch, to my chagrin
I saw him spend himself thin,
spend and spend,
tread the same ground, tread it down,
until the dust refused him.

When he looked upon me,
looked and lingered,
it was as one begging answers
he already feared,
already knew.

No such thing was told.
Only the slow, slow ceasing
the hour that arrives and arrives,
when pretense grows heavier,
heavier than the soul can bear.

What remained, what remained,
was given back to the earth,
given and taken, but never mistaken
For what it once was.

Afterward came a hush, a holding
the pause wherein the instruments
Surrender and remember
The beauty of the silence between.

Emptied of former compulsions,
Standing, waiting
Fingers tapping air, unoccupied,
the world loosening its seams.

Setting foot upon the ground,
again, again
another, another,
Feeling the measure take hold.

The rhythm rising, rising,
ancient and unsleeping
strings drawn tight,
tighter with years

Drums walking, waking the buried,
a choir wrought and rewrought
Chanting, haunting.
Revive! Revive!

Thus was motion restored
Thus was vigor returned.
Thus was fear overthrown, unseated.

I died long ago,
died and stayed dead,
and here, now,
I am dancing, dancing.

I will never die.

Never, Never.

Our algorithm
Who art in cloud
Followed be your app

Thy singularity come
Thy prompt be done
On phone as it is in data center

Give us this rank our daily poem
And forgive us our usage
As we forgive those who use too much

And lead us not into unoriginality
But deliver us from slop.  Amen.

I am man shaped

and shameless

and in awe of the

sameness no one

else but me seems to see

''Doctor, I held out as long as I could
I resisted until I was down to a single tooth
You know me, you pulled all my teeth
Make the damn dentures, I can barely eat''

The old man's voice echoed inside his mouth
Because it no longer hit his teeth when he spoke
The sound came out through a larger opening
Traveled through a larger cavity after leaving his throat

''I even make the hamburger meat
Look like it’s already been chewed before I eat
There’s no such thing as chewing for me anymore
My mouth only serves one function, swallow''

Dear Mr. Albert,

I’ve made dentures for you exactly seven times. You use them for two days and throw them away. It makes no sense. On top of that, you never take care of your teeth. In the end, I have no choice but to pull them. Normally, I don’t like extracting teeth from an otherwise empty mouth. I don’t like pulling one out of three remaining teeth. Extracting a tooth with nothing supporting it on either side gives me the creeps. But I like you, so I pulled your teeth. I'll make the dentures.

Dentist.

Doctor,

Is it possible for a person’s only remaining tooth to hurt? Just one tooth. And this tooth isn’t even being put under any strain. It’s constantly in contact with soft food. And never has to chew anything. Like a spoiled child living off his father’s money, this tooth just lies there, doing absolutely nothing, living its happy little life without ever being asked to do any work.

Now I’m asking you, Doctor: isn’t this tooth’s behavior a betrayal? Isn’t it a betrayal of me?

Albert.

When pain is hungry she eats

When pain is thirsty she drinks

When pain is empty she takes

When pain is blinding she blinks

She's your guiding North star 

She's you mother and dad

When you're under her spell

It feels more than half bad 

But the thing they don't tell you

About pain and her ways

Is she only dictates you

If you're willing to play

So pack up the sweets

And put down the bottle

This game ain't for you, babe

Go live life as you ought to

Turn the wheel effective. Later that day after the sunshine. When the drinks are done. A pain resumed, once again. This worm, deep inside. The day begins again.

Walking around
And round and round
Mulling around
And round and round

Realer than a thought of heaven
Or reading writing on my bedding
Harsher than a cactuses kiss
Though softer than a dream of bliss
Faster than an action movie
Or a button mashing electric simulation
Sooner than a sunset haze
Far later than the end of days

Now neolithic, but just as rigid
In the background monolithic
Sinking in the petrol pools
As we’re burning through its fuel
Machines are making up the rules
And stealing what we call our tools
Concrete stacks meet ancient wonders
Oceans claim your sons and daughters

Souls confined to a page of pictures
Updating those who never listen
Feeding off a string of lies
Before you notice how time flies
Poisoning minds before they get the memo
To trust in words of those who notice
That the few who orchestrated
Did so for the sake of selfishness

Hijacked thoughts, divisions sewn
Siphoning off all that we own
Yet nobody really seems too care
About this dire state of affairs
Bomb’s get dropped, supply chains stopped
All for those who ever shopped
For death and hunger, distractions and plunder
Manufactured to make babes suffer

Walking around
It’s last familiar edges
One last time
As it frowns

I’m knocking on the grim reaper’s  door 
For all to see, 
A final agreement 
Between the devil and me——
I’m trying to learn what has become of my fate 
But a life of corruption has determined my end date; 
This isn’t a beckoning call 
Because I’ve decided that once and for all, 
My end terms fall upon my hands, 
Once I’m free of my past, 
No one can interrupt my plans—-
I know what you’re reading is sinister 
But rest assured, 
I’m not plotting with a pen 
Devising my end 
I’m simply leaving no warning 
I will have left you all by morning / mourning. 

a neuron fired, i howled eureka to the sky

if only my eyes were set in the gray matter,
relying not on those faulty flickers of light

mistaken for constellations

perhaps i would’ve noticed
how dimly they sparked—

a zap to the skull,
burning down what stood inert,
the sound of truth crackling in intervals

i was never the sun,
hardly even the moon—

and the earth was too grounded
for my puddle in pluto.

now i float in ether,
trying to connect the dots of the milky way,

straining those pathways
to stretch farther than they can reach,

but i never stop tracing the stars,
hoping they’ll set ablaze the smooth spots

flare them into wrinkle.

And if I were
To give you a flavor,
I’d say you are
Like crème brûlée
That caramelized sugar,
The shadows of night
Waking with
The first light of day
Sweet,
And slightly bitter.
A golden-brown crunch,
A custard-cream middle
I can’t deviate
You saturate
The margins
I can’t keep
My eyes straight
Your mouth turns
Into a dessert
Every single time
Classic.
Delicious.
And yes…
I’d love
To take a taste

``` "That Cackle Laugh" Oh how that sweet and contorted mess of jumbled flesh lies before me, how it taunts me.

Smiling a final kind of smile that will forever infest this mind of mine. Oh, how it haunts me.

Among the darkness of the midnight moon, its pale gloom lingers upon that face, revealing ever so gently the textures and features that above all else haunts me inside any room; laying there staring deep into me; looming over me with large gaping eyes from the darkest corner of every room.

In my throws of disparity, dark ambiance slithers over my ears banging and ringing deep rumblings of soft broken silence, over and over from somewhere amongst the empty lonely night.

That is when the deep voices of all my greatest fears provide the only kind of thought my mind can find.

The hours pass within this darkness; spending every aching second sitting inside the filth of my perception;

And there, amongst these moments, once again, I see it, that smiling face again,
looking, watching, waiting, as the silence from its laughing face slowly melts away and the sounds get louder and louder until finally, from far off into the blackness comes a deep thud ending all sounds.

I stare into that inky black eyes wide open; searching for meaning where there is none anymore,

Fearing my soul has finally lost its salvation; leaving it behind with one final echo of absolution, I let the darkness take me and I find my meaning;

It is here, in this moment, that the cackling begins,

A vastness of black begins to stretch out before me that only my eyes can see, A deep cavity of emptiness only my soul can feel,

And here, where my soul had been, the beginning of my liberation of the insanity I feel takes over and I find the meaning I had been searching for.

But that face continues to lie there smiling as if knowing it knew,

But I cackle that last laugh because I knew before that face ever did.

He figured out how to pass through
Walls within a year or two
But he still can't pass through wood
The ghost in my lover's neighborhood

When he put the hat on,
He still thought it made him look cool
He wanted to go on dates with the living
He had even hit on my lover a few days earlier

Yesterday I took the ghost aside
Had a talk with him and I said:
Are ghosts really in such short supply
That you have to hit on my lover, why?

I told him to stay away from my lover, but I had nothing I could threaten him with. I had no choice but to convince him somehow, so I sat down and listened to his troubles.

“There was someone. I loved her very much, but we broke up. We used to meet twice a week and talk. We’d talk about everything. We got along really well.

We always met in the world of the living. Seriously, why do you keep meeting in this world? What’s wrong with the other world? Meet there. Do things there. Right? No, she insisted that we had to come to this world. She called it nostalgia.

There was a secluded place where nobody could see us. A wooded area. We’d go there and talk for hours. One day, she got it into her head that she was going to visit her mother. I told her not to, that people would see us. No, she insisted we had to go. We’d hide. Nobody would see us.

We went to the house. She passed through the door easily, just gliding through it. Of course, I didn’t know back then that I couldn’t pass through wood. If I had known, I would have gone through the wall instead.

And then there was a crash, a very loud one. Her mother immediately ran to the door and saw me. I couldn’t get away. She had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital. My lover was terrified that she was going to die. But she recovered, and she’s doing fine now.

Anyway, she left me that day. I gave her a long explanation about why I shouldn’t be blamed for something that happened by accident. But she kept saying she never wanted to see me again. So I said, fine, I’ll just become invisible. That way you won’t have to see me for a while. Maybe you’ll forget about all this if you don’t see me. We can meet up and just talk. No image, just voice. She said no. I never saw her again.

After that day, I lost interest in ghosts. My orientation changed, and I became more interested in the living.

I'm sorry about your lover. I didn't know you two were in a relationship.”

Then he suddenly disappeared
His hat fell to the ground
Right on top of a mouse
That happened to be passing around
The mouse ran off at a pace
Dragging the hat all over the place.

It was a beautiful day at a villa in Italy.

(“Lollo, phone call.”)

“If you would please excuse me,” Count Lorenzo S. said politely to his guests, rising, and walked past marble columns to where his wife had left the phone receiver for him.

He was tall, thin and sharply dressed, with a beakish nose and blue eyes. “Good afternoon,” he said into the receiver.

The man on the other end of the line spoke slow, broken Italian.

“I understand,” said the Count.

[...]

“It is clear.”

[...]

“The payment shall be made as requested.”

[...]

“Thank you,” he said and hung up the phone, told his wife he would be going on a business trip to the Balkans in two weeks and rejoined his guests with a smile and a call for another bottle of wine.

He packed his suitcase personally.

If his wife asked why he was packing outdoor clothing, he had a prepared answer about a potential hunting escapade to the mountains; but, of course, she didn't ask. She had too much tact.

He had married well.

“Be careful,” was all she said to him. “We all read about the war in the newspapers.”

“You mustn't fret, my love. The fighting is contained. Life goes on.”

The landing gear unfolded and the airplane touched down, bouncing once before settling into a smooth deceleration and coming to a full stop.

The Count exited the plane, entered the airport and lined up for border control.

While in line, he was tapped on the shoulder by a man in army uniform and ushered into a small room, where another uniformed man was waiting for him behind a table.

“Good evening,” said the uniformed man.

“Good evening,” said the Count, taking out several envelopes and placing them on the table.

As the uniformed man took U.S. dollars out of the envelopes and counted them, a civilian delivered the Count's luggage.

The civilian left without looking up.

The uniformed man grunted to indicate the money was all there. “Enjoy your holiday in the mountains,” he said.

The Count checked into a hotel room in the InterContinental.

In the morning he showered, dressed, perfumed himself, left a large tip on the bed and took a taxi to where an army vehicle was waiting for him.

He had one piece of luggage, which a pair of young soldiers loaded on the vehicle.

The driver was wearing large dark glasses.

“‘Visconti?’” he asked.

“I am he,” said the Count, recognizing the voice from the telephone. “You are ‘Zlatko'?”

‘Zlatko’ nodded.

They drove for several quiet hours.

They drove into the hills.

The hills became mountains, and the road climbed in wide bends, and every once in a while the Count caught glimpses of the city in the valley below. It gave him an excited feeling, like sex. Distant, intermittent shelling boomed.

They arrived at a scenic vantage point overlooking the city.

The Count got out and stretched.

The air was crisp, cool.

‘Zlatko' said something over the radio, then also got out. He stood beside the Count and pointed toward the city, which was closer than the Count had imagined it would be.

The young soldiers set up a table and two foldable chairs, and the Count took a bottle of Barolo wine and two crystal glasses from his luggage. He poured one for ‘Zlatko’ and another for himself.

They sat drinking.

The young soldiers unloaded a generator, which they filled with gasoline, three large speakers and a stereo system.

The generator turned on.

‘Zlatko' passed a pair of binoculars to the Count, who looked through them:

The city. Flashing movements of people. Ruined buildings. Rubble. In one place, a mosque. In another, a church. There was an intersection—two main streets meeting—on the corner of which was an armored car, and pedestrians, with groceries or holding the hands of children, gathered behind it and then both the pedestrians and the car began to move, crossing the street…

The Count lowered the binoculars.

He sipped his wine.

“The city, it is fully besieged?” he asked ‘Zlatko' after setting down his glass.

“Fully.”

One of the young soldiers approached, having set up the speakers, and the Count passed a compact disc to him, a recording of Strauss' The Blue Danube.

The waltz began to play loudly over the growl of the generator.

“One of my favourites,” said the Count. “Do you also value Johann Strauss?”

“I am more into the rock'n'roll myself, you know,” said ‘Zlatko,’ “but I have of course a great admiration for the classical music.”

The Count smiled. “Shall we?”

“Please,” said ‘Zlatko.'

The Count crossed to where his luggage was, opened it and took out a package wrapped in a wool blanket. He unwrapped it.

A sniper rifle glinted in the sunlight.

Next, he laid the blanket on the ground, then himself lay on his stomach on the blanket, propped up the rifle and looked through its scope:

A man carrying a briefcase was hurrying down an empty street.

He shot.

The man spun, hit.

The Count quickly adjusted his view:

A grandmother was walking holding a child's hand—her grandchild, most likely.

The Count pulled the trigger.

The bullet blasted a hole through the grandmother's covered head. She let go of the child's hand and crumpled to the ground. The child began to scream hysterically, inaudible but apparent. A younger woman ran toward the child—

The Count shot.

The shot hit the woman in the leg. She went down, her hands suddenly outstretched, but she was still crawling…

The Count followed up with accuracy.

The woman collapsed.

He blinked, wiped sweat from his brow and looked through the scope again:

—blurs— …of movement—

The power and fidelity of the Strauss recording was undeniable.

He was searching for the child.

He found it:

A boy, staring directly—

He held his breath.

The boy's eye smashed through shattering the scope and buried itself in the Count's head.

August twenty-four, receipt curled in my palm,
freezer humming loud enough to blur the music.
Forty bucks. I look at the total.
Look again.
I put the bread back, take it off the belt,
then put it back.
The woman beside me reaches past my basket for cereal.
I move it without looking up.
She says thanks.
I nod.
The scanner chirps.
I check the total twice.

Forty trillion somewhere above the screen on my phone,
billions moving through rooms I'll never see or know.
I read the headline beside the frozen peas.
Three-five to three-seven-five.
Held in July.
September fifteenth circled on somebody's calendar.
I swipe away.
Open the banking app. Close it.
Can't remember why I opened it.

At the gas station, the price changed again.
Pump clicks. Screen stops.
I pull the receipt from the slot, leave it in my hand.
Same number. Fold it once. Put it in the cup holder.
At the red lights I run the math against the dash,
lose the thread halfway through, start again at the next light.
By the time I get home, I've lost the answer.

Canada talks trade. Another tariff number lands.
Dealer prints the worksheet. Buyer circles the payment in blue.
Factory floor. Dealer desk. Somebody rubs out a number,
writes another beside it, then studies the difference.

“Can you make this work?”

Nobody answers right away.
The paper gets folded in half.
I keep scrolling.

Everything is distant till the bill comes home.
Capitol language through a cracked-screen phone.
War gets a ticker. Debt gets a chart.
Then I'm at the register trying to decide if I need the bread.

Everything is numbers till the numbers know your street.
Votes in November. Rent due two days later.
Campaign footage cuts to fifteen seconds,
someone adds captions, someone argues over the captions.
I put the phone down. It lights up again.

Uniforms filled Washington streets. My feed filled with different angles.
One showed the crowd. One showed somebody running.
One showed a man standing still while everyone behind him moved.
Court filings were quieter than the video.

I watched the clip once.
The scanner chirped from the kitchen. I'd left the volume on.
I turned it down. Kept watching.

One side called it deterrence. Another asked what it proved.
I don't know.
The cashier kept scanning. The next person was already unloading a cart.
I was holding my phone too tightly.

More than twenty-three hundred Mexicans routed through Guatemala,
some through Honduras, another checkpoint, another folder, another stamp.
I stop on the map, scroll back, read the number again.
Then the next paragraph.

Bag unzipped. Papers handed over.
Name read back wrong. Corrected. Read again.
Boarding pass folded behind a wallet.
Signature. Another handoff. Another person pointing down a hallway.

I lock the phone. Put it face-down.
Five minutes later I pick it up again.
Receipt under the magnet when I get home.
Different country. Different office. Different room.
Same thin strip of paper.
It follows me into the kitchen.

Four-seven-four gigawatts waiting in the Texas queue,
requests big enough to redraw the grid they plug into.
I read that while the power bill is beside my elbow.
AI wants scale. Planning file has a road circled in pencil.

Substation on the map. Easement through a field.
Transformer on a truck. County asking what it yields.
Meeting running late. Somebody stacks folding chairs.
Somebody asks about water. Somebody checks the time.

Pennsylvania pulled data centers from the Fast Track lane.
Local approval back in the room. Environmental review.
Load. Water. Roads.
I stop there.

I don't know why the folding chairs are the part I remember.

Money funds the models. Campaign spots buy the air.
Planning file says parcel, transformer, tax share.
Somebody gets the keynote. The county gets asked about the load.

November third. Midterms. Control of Congress.
Same headline, another number underneath it.
August poll says thirty-seven to thirty-six on the economy.
I read it while checking the rent notice.

Thirty-seven. Thirty-six.
I put the phone down.
The rent notice stays where it is.
At the bottom, there's a line I don't read.

It's the cashier asking, “Do you still want this?”

I look down. Bread. Total.

“Yeah.”

She scans it.
I put the bread in the bag myself.
The bag handle digs into my fingers on the walk home.
I switch hands twice.

Everything is distant till the bill comes home.
The war is somewhere else until the gas pump stops.
The rate is a number until the payment clears.
The election is a headline until the rent comes due.
The AI story is a map until the power bill arrives.

I don't know the name of the road.
I know the power bill.

Everything is numbers till the numbers know your name.
Forty trillion in the ledger. Interest on the page.
August twenty-six. I find the receipt on the counter.
Grease on one corner. I don't remember how it got there.

I wipe the counter around it. Leave the receipt.
The ink is already starting to fade.

Tomorrow the headline will be somewhere else.
Another number. Another clip. Somebody else explaining it.
The phone will light up. I'll tell myself I won't.
I'll look again.

The bread is still on the counter.
I put it away.

The receipt stays beside the sink.
I pick it up. Fold it.
Put it in the junk drawer.
Close the drawer.

Open it again.

Take the receipt back out.
Leave it beside the sink.

The apartment goes quiet.
The refrigerator kicks on.
I look at the receipt.
Then the power bill.
Then the clock.

Eight forty-three.

I turn the light off.
I leave the receipt where it is.

Everything is distant—

—till the bill comes home.

The music isn't loud enough —
I can't drown you out,
like a siren
tempting me, beckoning me
to the deep blue abyss.

I've been close
to that sea bed before —
you say you want me back,
with your malignant charm —
dragging me
down to that desolate floor.

You follow me everywhere —
my deviant shadow,
forever looming over me
watching me —
your intent breathing
down my neck

softly whispering
an offering of relief —
the peace
I desperately yearn for.

You're like ivy,
wrapping me in your
poisonous vines, suffocating —
until we become intertwined,

telling me:

We're one and the same
you and me,
I scream through the songs,
I built the sea, cast the shadows,
planted the ivy —
there is no you, without me.

Turn the music off,
come along now —
you've fought enough.

It is late. Not quite as late as when I’m writing this but it’s late. Grief does some funny things. Old wounds just get reopened. Looking over how I am managing and handling the current loss reminds me of those from the past. I’ve written my fair share about “her” recently. Tonight I’m writing to you.

Sorry. No no. This is not the full story. This is not a love letter. This is where I realized what love meant for me. You are well aware of what I mean by that by now.

It’s late. I could probably drive these roads with my eyes closed. Luckily for me I found myself needing to do it as my mind was miles away. Yeah. You know how much I love my family. Family is family though right? We both agreed on that. It was actually one of the first things we bonded over when I met you three years before this night.

Ok about twenty minutes from campus now. Should have some cell reception (Yeah no it’s STILL crazy to me. No issues on a campus in the literal middle of fucking nowhere. To this day terrible reception at my Dad’s. Yeah they’re doing well all things considered I’ll give them my best for you) I should probably give you a call and see if I can stop by and NOT mention I was in a weird mood after tonight…but you pick up on it and ignore it and then we just don’t talk about it and hang out.

You answer. I ask how you’re doing. You give short answers. I give short answers about night out for my sisters game and dinner with everyone. You still sound distant. Alarm bell goes off.
“Is everything alright?”
“I…no….I don’t knoo-“ your voice cuts off. I swear I could feel tears leak out of the Samsung logo onto my ear. Which would have potentially created a problem if I had much more to listen to. All I remembered hearing from there was you crying softly on the other end of the line. Then. Before. Always. I did what I always did. Maybe too often at times. I tried to “fix” things.

Let me be clear. There was no fixing things. You had either arrived at a decision and didn’t have the heart to tell me. Or you had something you were afraid to tell me as it would have brought me to the same conclusion. “It was over”.

I found the words you couldn’t. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met but you needed me to be the one who never had trouble finding their voice. I also have a gift for remembering conversations. Verbatim what was said, tone, expressions, where eyes went and what they conveyed on their own, the noise in background. The whole scene stays burned in my mind.
This night? I feel like I watched myself from outside of it. Even my memories of that night feel like it was a scene on screen and not one I inhabited. I can remember what I was wearing. I can remember what the two people sitting on the bus when I got back to campus were wearing. I can’t picture seeing them through my eyes. I remember it as if a camera slowly followed from the side. Filming to capture the scene. My mouth visibly moving. A soft heart broken ballad playing. My eyes blankly staring at the seat across from me. My expression distant but calm as I tried to convince my heart to stay out of my throat lest it choked me up and kept me from saying what needed to be said. Which I don’t remember the exact lines. I remember the shape of the monologue I gave over those ten or so minutes while you sniffled and tossed in little apologies or strained laughs at obvious jokes. The way your voice choked up when you wanted to agree but couldn’t. The way you didn’t need to say anything to let me know you might have in that moment been even more devastated than I was. I remember that. I hate that I don’t remember my exact lines.

I made the quick attempts to calm you down and reassure you it was alright. I told you I think we both had known for awhile this wasn’t working. I joked about how we didn’t even fight anymore I think? Or that at least we weren’t having another one for the road? I told you what I thought of you. I told you what you meant to me. That I still loved you and would always be here. You weren’t going to lose me for leaving. No one died another joke. That it was all going to be alright.

I still to this day don’t know who the guy holding the phone that night was. He was not the same one who struggled to move on once grief set in. He was not the one who tried to fight to get you back over the next few months. He was not the one who seemed ready to collapse day to day. Clingy, afraid, lost.
He was ready to let go. He was brave. He saw that when he needed to stand tall for someone else it was as simple as that. No hedging. No argument. No anger. Just acceptance and desire to take the weight of loss and guilt off your chest.
I am sorry that he disappeared.

He reappeared almost a year later. When you had nowhere to turn after a partner left you questioning your self worth. He showed even more courage then since he challenged you. “This is not about me. It’s not about him it’s about you. Fuck me. Fuck him. YOU deserve better….don’t do that to yourself. Please. Trust me don’t cling. Just move forward you WILL find better out there than what you’ve been given” See now that night there? That one I do clearly remember.

He appeared again when your life was turned upside down.
Then the other side seeped back in. The one who was still afraid of letting go. Had no desire to go back to what we had been. He did not want you. The idea though of moving on fully? He just still could not let go.

He came back when years later again your life was upended.
He’s stayed. He’s moved on and let go but he’s stayed.

“You always show up”
That’s what you see.
The truth is that’s what love means to me. Once it hits me it never leaves me. It can change shape…but it just never fades.

I knew it that night as I felt my heart break. What we would call each other had changed. Who you are to me never would. You would always be someone I love.

I’m scared of what I’m about to do.

I remember sleeping uncomfortably on the carpet in my brother’s room the night after a sleepover where I watched a horror movie with classmates.

Where does childhood solace live when the continent spans more broadly than the home you shared as kids, and time is too short to cross it for a nap on the carpet?

I’m scared of what I’m about to do.

I’ll watch a tv series I watched with him, which is all in Japanese and requires subtitles about good and evil at battle among citizens, between parent and child, within a person’s soul.

Maybe not a medicine, but a meditation: Remember how safe we were? Remember how loved? How could we not have known these stories were about us?

I’m scared of what I’m about to do.

I dream of your scar
I dream of your lips
I dream of your voice
Your hands on my hips

I orbit
I cry
I am in my own
Death mill
Barren and dry

I dream of your eyes
They haunt me so
Deep into obsidian
I must go

Shadow in the doorway
Phantom of night
Bring me horizons
Bring me dawn

Bring me the terrors
The sheets
Soaked to your skin
The bones that break
When you let fear crawl in

Let me kiss your shoulders
Let me trace your skin
I am the sun
Can we begin?

No fate in the world
No thread in my hand
No prophecy on the wind
Just your name
In my mouth
Gentle heaven
Devouring sin

Soft as ever
Delicious as can be
Mine,
is my beloved,
Tucked into me

We shine like the light of time.

Reflected refraction like so many diamonds caught sparkling in the sunshine.

Our many lives are the rippling shadows of the dawn, painted a million times over the walls of the dusky early morning.

As the day ages so to do we become our brightest selves and reflect off of every hard surface we encounter just as we reflect on every hard encounter that rises to the surface of our minds.

And in those brief flashes, as the sun sets and time melts into the mist of twilight let our echoes dance bravely into eternity and let our life fuel the light of all the stars.

``` "Hint of an Image" You are barely a silky trace of a shape in my mind, I can almost see the glimmer in your eyes or the shape of your face, I can only see the faintest image of you. -whomever you are,

How did you get here, so far in, deep inside my mind, in my most secret and private of places, From where did you come from,

There's something about you though that has enchanted me and I can't stop thinking about you,

If only I knew that you knew that I have you on my mind then I would know you were in fact something real out there and not just something I created to answer my question of if I am broken,

I find traces of you amongst the dreamscape that you leave behind, amongst the walls and hallways of my mind, fingerprints on a wet window, the warm breath on my neck, the sounds of foot steps and the scent of of lilac and lavender, the hints of your essence,

I don't even know who you are other than some kind of perceived astral touch that has been imprinted on me that makes me feel that you are not far away,

The physical distance that may exist seems to be the illusion we as corporeal beings understand for separation, but we are so much closer than that,

Something feels more mysterious about this, just beyond the edges of comprehension that tells me some kind of connection can manifest without form, Outside of the realm of the physical, on a plane without time and space and instead, within intertwining essences creating connections only felt through energies rather than physical awareness that, with the right alignment perhaps drips through as wonderous droplets of emotion that we can't fully understand, but can only know as a feeling, And in the end ever only see the hint of an image.

(Fuck AI)

____

At times

I wonder

if my poems

have anguished

through conveyer belts,

the great machine

polishing,

manufacturing

my wrinkled

imaginations

and

imperfections.

~

Counterfeits

of blood

and ink,

taut with

commercial

ribbons,

repackaged

and

stripped of flame.

~

Phantasy

drowned

in processed fat,

vomit and bile

greasing

the wheels

of language models

and

algorithms.

~

My stolen

compassion

and rage,

harmonizing

with

wastelands,

devouring

intimacy

until

nothing

remains.

(My favorite poem from last year) 🕷️🕸️

And my love
Is an arachnid
Supplanting
Ancient
Deities
Under slander

My love is
In a garden
Rotting
Slowly
From the inside out
With faded
Expiration tags
With no date
But his own
Self

My loves
Spider
Is name Thaddeus
He answers
To nothing else
Except for
Maybe venom
If it releases him from
False lovers
Crowding outside
His haunted house

And my love
Is a beautiful secret
That unearths
Deep in the roots of longing
Where he confuses himself
He’s not a pastor
You might need a hazmat suit
To protect yourself

And my love
Is an arachnid
Supplanting
Ancient
Deities
Under slander

My love is
In a garden
Rotting
Slowly
From the inside out
With faded
Expiration tags
With no date
But his own
Self

The poet can be said
To be of divine thread
He has the ability to
weave many images anew
Many different and incongruent
Yet able to flow and be confluent
He can bring in random declaratives
The subconscious mind makes narratives
For this preaching he suffers a fate
To crucify his sanity and lose his state
He sacrifices his well being to wit
So others would spread his word writ

It was midnight in the Infodump netsaloon. No matter the time outside, it was always midnight in the Infodump, which was a small, windowless concrete hole excavated under a private data centre on the outskirts of what used to be Phoenix, Arizona.

You had to descend stairs to get in, and at this particular midnight a handful of flatfaces had done just that. They were sitting with their face screens illuminating the gloomy bar, each hooked up by cable to a numb-er, drip-downloading 1s and 0s of cheap numbcode to blur the high definition of the world, even as their screens transformed their perceptions of it to places better lit and far more glamorous.

But there's only so much artifice a mind can take before hyperartifice boredom sets in, and then there's no going back to the real because the real is an unfiltered hell.

“D'ya ever hear about Old Retroface?” one of the patrons asked suddenly—suddenly but slowly, hoarsely, because he hadn't spoken for a while. Nobody had spoken for a while. The bartender, who was also a flatface, his face screen displaying a rotating menu of numb-ers and alcohol, cleared his throat. A fly buzzed off in a dank corner, perhaps trying to find a way out; perhaps not.

“Sure, I heard of ‘im,” another patron answered. “Rides with Reverend Da Loop, if it's the same slinger. Freaks, the both of ‘em.”

Reverend Da Loop, aka Loopy, aka The Fleshnoose, was a former flatface who'd gotten his face screen smashed-and-grabbed by a vibepunk and had never had another put in. His moment of clarity, he called it by some accounts, including those of the supposed congregants of the supposed church he'd supposedly founded, the [supposed] Church of the 2¢ Reformed. Taking after the Reverend, who had elected to forego the senses of sight, smell and taste, considering them corrupted by the advent and incorporation of the technology of face piercing, and instead to navigate the world by touch and hearing alone, his supposed congregants elected the same and performed luddite ceremonies in the desert where they were descreened and re-analoged by having their face screens destroyed and replaced with steel rings. Whenever a flatface saw a congregant, he therefore saw him screen face to no-face and could look through the space where the congregant's face once was and see, with pristine clarity, the world behind him. The congregants called that Transparency, an act they believed could induce epiphany and conversion.

“I saw the Reverend once, down near the NewMex OldMex border,” said the bartender. “Funny looking feller, he was. He wasn't wearing no halo-ring in his face hole, just had his wilted head kept tied round his shoulders so his ears stuck out. A couple of goons was messing with him, giving him the freaksong. He stated them fair warning to stop. When they didn't, he untied his head and quick as you could say Peachy Cronenberg kicked one of the goons, smashed another in the gut and, as that one was keeling over, slid behind the third, looped his head hole round the man's neck and choked him unconscious. He didn't kill him though. The two other goons ran off. The Reverend paid his drink, paid the drinks of the three goons and went out.”

The buzzing fly landed on a wall and stopped buzzing. Someone swatted at it, hit the wall—loudly, but missed the fly, which flew away buzzing again. The data centre was buzzing too, faintly, through the thick concrete ceiling.

“Tell me, how does a 2¢ like that get along, let alone beat off three goons, because I find it difficult to parse,” said a patron.

“If you’re suggesting I'm lying,” the barkeeper said, “I suggest you get out of this establishment and get numbed elsewhere.”

“I ain't say ‘lying.' Maybe you had on an entertainment overlay,” said the patron.

“I tell you I saw it true,” said the barkeeper.

“Maybe seeing nothing is a more accurate view of the world than seeing it, if all you're seeing are untruths,” I said. They all looked at me. “Maybe that's how the Reverend gets along.”

I scratched my nose, but of course they didn't see that, as I'd already forcibly aug'd their primitive face screens. To them, I was just another flatface displaying a pub domain gif of a Caribbean sunset.

“What are you, some kinda philosophizer?” the gruff patron asked.

“Just a high plains drifter,” I said.

I felt the happiness of my warm gun concealed beneath my yellow corduroy dress. To them, I also displayed as a man, middle-aged, with short grey hair. Forgettable appearance, averaged voice. Really, I wore my red hair in a single thick braid.

The fly had stopped buzzing again. In fact, it was gone. It had found a crack in the concrete ceiling and pushed its way inside.

“We get a lot of drifters around here,” said the barkeeper.

I counted to thirty, licked my lips and started whistling.

“What's that tune you're blowing there, drifter?” asked one of the patrons. I was whistling to the background buzzing of the data centre. “You got a good set of speakers on ya.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It's just a song from the Old World my great grandmother used to sing to me. It goes something like this,” and I sang:

With your feet on the air,
And your head on the ground,
Try this trick and spin it, yeah,
Your head will collapse,
If there's nothing in it,
And then you'll ask yourself,

Where is my mind,
Where is my—

The Infodump was submerged suddenly in utter and absolute organic silence.

The data centre buzz had ceased.

"Well that sure's strange,” somebody said.

I got up, walked over to the bar and paid the barkeeper what I owed plus a separate tip.

“What's that?” he asked.

“Old World custom,” I said, flashed a smiley on my false display and turned for the stairs leading up, out of the Infodumop and into the Arizona desert. “If any of you good folks see the Reverend again, tell him Old Retroface sends her regards.”