In Dreams

I had the most tedious dream last night

It was a nice break from the livid folks who usually squat in the abandoned, rotting lofts my

subconscious locks away

A nice break from the men and women who peel back layers of skin and thick, greasy

subcutaneous fat just to put it all back in place or insert unripe melons beneath their ass cheeks in some sort of rural plastic surgery

Before jackhammering at each other in an orgy of flapping tissues

It was a nice break from the stretching dusty road lined with countless emaciated people,
            each with a wooden box full of coin and trinkets, begging for food as my family and
            I pass them by,

Leading up to a great arabesque city, terrace upon terrace stacked with buildings looming
            out of the yellow desert atop a mountain of rock baked brown by the sun

In the off-level buildings of that city I watch generations of my family live and die, myself

amongst the first inheritors, turning into but an observer from a loft in the blue desert sky upon my passing

The only other spectator to the dwindling of the family tree as we bred ourselves down to

nothing was a dog gifted with longevity greater than our individual epochs

He saw as we passed the tablet down and amongst each other, squabbling over how to and
            who should use the cryptic gray thing

And you I saw, off to the side and ephemeral with a grace of lips and shock of hair that bely
            your hold on the entire situation

            * * * * *

In this dream, though, I had a whiteboard on which I’d drawn a simple figure’s outline in green

Then blue, then red— for each time I drew, the beginning faded by the time I reached the end

So I tried again with a different color every time, meticulously stroke by stroke

Just to find that I was always left with a whiteboard empty if I didn’t try to fill it again

A Storm

My vessel crashes thick upon these undulating waves

Gray and salty with tumultuous intent

I spy your lighthouse through the kaleidoscopic mess of my looking glass

The direction your beacon points scattered in the briny fog

My hands slip and crack on splintered wood and fraying rope

The prow of my vessel draws ever closer

To the jagged skerries beneath your lighthouse walls

Looming blue and white and beautiful with arabesques

I can still smell your perfume through this brackish haze

It mixes with the salt into some ambiguous alchemy, obscuring want

Thick upon a leaden compass skewed

By the precarious lodestone locked behind your eyes

The Lightning from Your Lips

I want to kiss the lightning from your lips

Feel the thunder of this storm crash into our abdomens

Leave a giant purple stain across my ego

In a shade more endearing than the gray before

Necrotic with the marks of countless fingernail regrets

Put to rest upon my wan moonlight bed

And slide fingers into the vortex of your pleasure

Pull the orgasm of your eyes down into your belly

Warm, soft, and supple as the stars it shines

My appendages cold and rough with calluses of want

With a pink afterglow I pull away and rest my head

Light with the airs of contentment thick upon my brow

As I slip upon you, a figure ivory, carved and marble

As soft as the finest Chinese silk brought across long roads

By the Sound of God

And this is the sound of god touching

The sky of your mind with his fists, cracking

“Who are you? Where did you come from? Where are you going?”

The synthesizer of your soul, detuned

Oscillating, faster, rapid back and forth till the tears

Questions every man is asked not only by himself

In the fabric wrapped gray and still around your head

Shrouded in a mystery of tobacco leaves and desiccated fish

There is a place the thunder will not touch

Beside your bed in the drawer where you keep

Your dull vibrator and bright pink dildo

But also by the Department of Homeland Security

The Poet

His face a mask, built for the theatre

Not the scarlet catharsis of the act

Yet any time he gazes upon you

The weight of his eyes pulls heavy

On the mask’s upturned lips a little more

Cracks spiderweb slowly day by day

A fine dance downward from the gaze

Of the iris to the force of his lips

The Taste of Blueberries

The violet stains of blueberries on your teeth

As true to their colors as the countless

“I love yous” and “I want to fuck yous”

Slipped off your tongue like so many

Raw eggs broken on the edge of the mixing bowl

Shell caught between my teeth, digging

Into yellow gums receding

Thoughts Ephemeral

A cold flame licks tepidly at my

thalamus and hazy, distended memories

Reflected on brittle glass statuary, its orange

shattering into countless facades

A fraying, tangled spool of thread tumbles from my

hands onto cracked and yellowed linoleum

It catches on a tightly coiled spring, so coated

in rust that it cannot budge without a tragedy

Fingernails coated with a fine layer of salt, an irritant

to my red, cracked cuticles and gums

A dry and brittle piece of driftwood sits discarded by

the empty shores adorning my backyard

In the distance rocky outcrops jut ominously from

the water and its endless tide receding

While fog cascades downwards from

the mountains of my birth, washing and obscuring