April Madness 2020

this town holds a mystery, written on its collar

the torn brochure mentioned a small metallic pendant,
ever shimmering to shield from prying eyes from looking
further inside, and swung off the throat of the mayor,
whose rites were sworn on ticking hearts and vintage
clocks that could only be wound once a day at midnight

(the name was never written across the bright pages of
the guide, which should have played a warning chime
in the back of your mind, but everyone was smiling at
you with warm embraces and slightly tinged-by-tea yellow
teeth and you wanted to stay, just for another minute)

the dirt-stained, crinkled-eyed citizens of this nameless
town convened in front of an old building (made of brick, as
if there was something to hide away) holding watches,
that reminded attendees that every secret had a time limit,

and when you strolled out of this town, your mind was newly
blank, unable to comprehend how pretty the green parks
looked, let alone the whispers at every corner of the street,
spoken by hidden figures and you can only capture a few words

(gray dripping down fingertips, clutching a warm, living, beating
object in your hand, encouraged to squeeze down harder so that
more liquid dribbled onto the washed out sidewalk, watering
the yellow dandelion weeds growing from cracks that you didn't
remember seeing, or stepping over, or even existing beforehand)

and that you couldn't wait to come back and visit (why don't
you remember the name? what was the name?) again next year,
waving farewell to the faces that you will soon forget and the
town that sparked a connection but soon dwindled into obscurity.

google search:
it’s been six weeks since i’ve seen my best friend
tell me—howdoilive, howdoigoonlikethis

google doesn’t have a
satisfactory response, but then again,
neither do i.

i try to fill the void with
words, (poems, letters, mumbled
phone calls) but there’s nothing
that quite fits the
shape of a hole
left by you.

another search:
why is it that in the moment
that i posses my own free heart

i want it to be
yours?

answer:
((i still love him))

darling, do not let the curl of your cowlick curve into question marks
about the dimpled wrinkles of thighs scarred with flowering femininity
as a god lays heavy hands gently on the plaster of your skin, his touch
a wandering whistle through pliable needles of tamarack trees; let him
soothe sorrowful what-ifs like a mother's womb, cradling you upwards
to rest on an alabaster pedestal in a museum of doppelgängers ogling
without pause for reflection on how they got here in the first place or
why they are poised on pedestals too, soft like the shapes of Phidias'
genius that bend & refract from this three-dimensional prison prism,
reminding you, darling, of the art of being a woman.

The gates of hell rise and fall
Flickering nebular glow just beneath the surface
As I step into the infernal ether.

The killer defiles the dog, same as the sun sets
And Lucifer is walking on a string, screaming
“666” in the yard at the top of his punctured lungs.
There are at least four dissimilar ways to die
I guess I thought at least one could be beautiful;
Carving a pentagram into my wrist
With only my fingernails is a daunting enough task,
Staining the whole world a pinkish hue.
The way you have been loved changes everything.

We are infinite, God is red. There’s a fire that lives
Eternal underground, and it hungers as I fall through
A beautiful body that burns.

tattoo golem

he moulds me
with liquid clay
Maharalian hands zinging skin
sharp erasure
of impurities invisible

needle & ink
fill spaces
between cloven vertebrae
crevassed & sore
slouched in a pyrrhic past

better remembered
on an organic canvas
where alephs are carved
in pretty disguise, grit wrinkled
in hues of tradition

red wet corporeal confetti
salute a battered body
revalued, ink-stitched
hailing solid resurrection
& whole love