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01

a sealed deal waiting to remain unbroken
a marginalized Armageddon in each deadened pulse
a tincture of rouge in their raucous laughter
you are a war general
and your virtues your infantry
but for all your valor and grim tears
your derelict fingers that have forgotten touch
your skittish breaths that resemble agitated electrons
you've fought your battles,
lost and won
-what next?

02

it's the precise moment
you become inured to the cold.
with the exception of
the shudder in your palms
those alabaster, quaking fists
The acute incision of nails on skin
etching pleas into your fate lines
and loathing yourself evermore.

03

What is there to lose in a game of cards?
They speak of upping the ante
but their pockets are empty
and their smiles survive, brimful of bluff.
You are not origami.
If you fold,
you will not crease
into something beauteous.
If you fold,
you will shatter.
That heaving thing on the table
that Pandora's box you've bet
you have your heart to lose, my friend.

04

Idle chatter makes for dazed chuckles
an unpleasant comfort that denies itself nothing
nothing essential, anyhow.
When man was too at ease to extricate himself from his life
he built a machine to live it for him.

05

Not every yin has a yang.
Do you see it now?
A new platitude begins where another ends.
But you're right—
no matter where we go
we walk in circles
talk in rhymes
sing in verse
cry in hiccups.
What's a humanitarian, without depravity?
What are values, without zero?
What's justice, without crime?
They burn the martyrs slowly
flames cavorting over flesh:
truth fell on deaf ears.
Self-abnegation is the exception,
not the rule.

06

And yet, this 'order', denoted as law
(unheeded as miserly formality)
is the language of applause.
The will to power, as Nietzsche put it
Power: the lonesome pillars of riches
so desperately counted by old man Scrooge
and his dour grimace.
But really, none of it counted.

07

Expectation is innately contrived.
The words died on her lips
but ghosted across her eyes
and she saw not her child
but a transgressed mirror of her principles
an apparition of her own blood— but foreign
left to the wanton devices of nature
estranged, nettled, and remote.
Whatever happened to those dreams, mama?
Enrapt children are hushed by happiness
which, once questioned,
is a tiresome reality
though more so for the storytellers.

08

Anyway, when you
were born
there was a name
you grew into the mold of.

09

So perhaps
one learns more by first
forgetting.

10

The afternoon fog
ascends the leafy loam
into the kingdom of clouds
Goliaths of vapor with innocuous smiles
and thunderous laughter
rumbling in your belly
splitting the air.
Drawn to a volatile candor,
a big, friendly giant.
Vagabonds guard a secret
if you promise not to tell:
the key to not drowning
is to never freeze in place.
In his dreams,
he is running, running, running.

11

The gods have pity, the heroes have gavels.
Repelled by inadequacies, by have-nots
we shred Lucifer's wings
as misery loves company.
"One man's pain is another man's delight"-
something like that.
I wonder if they ever fear
waking one morning
and not knowing who they are.
Who am I?
Adjectives, apparently.

12

It is curious, then
that in a word, entire worlds were birthed
truth—
and the pursuit of such.
Chance is a meadow swaying in the breeze,
bumblebees that charm and sting,
a paper certainty that crumples and burns.
Perfection is such folly.

13

Stellar blooms in far off nebulae
Fanfares of the unprecedented
glimpsed through twin orbs;
the miraculous singularity of vision
a sight that lacks insight.
What good is normality?
Humans do tire so easily.
The mind struggles in vain— so struggle anew!
Micro and macrocosms— the extremes that garner awe
the momentum of a heavy pendulum
at its zenith, in its most far-flung, free-spirited state
We covet this weightless flight
but withdraw in preached security.

14

Do you remember yourself from yesterday?
Do you remember what you forgot to remember?
Do you remember your stardust consciousness
strolling the earth as it came to be?
Haven't you heard?
We're specks, we are
not made to stagnate—
or so a little bird told me.