my throat is covered in blue luminol patterns the shape of fingerprints all the way down a slashed jugular, a crushed windpipe time of death: four years too late
he was a walking inferno; his skin boiled to the touch, searing everything around him as he reached out and reached out until he sat in a crater of burnt grass and death so endemic to his existence it tasted like sugar.
when the plants stopped growing, he collapsed; his hands couldn't reach the fertile edges of the crater any more after years of chasing them out to the horizon and there was no one running to save him— you take too much effort— and he fell asleep starved.
it was young and still broken when it was told to change— its face was unpleasant, its voice grating, its skin pockmarked with cat scratches and bug bites— and it happily obliged, only to find it was permanent.
the leather wears off in my hands when I comb through your past your static burns against my skin so thin and fragile your music plays loud and every time the bass hits brokenness snaps and shatters the base of my skull your creaks are an apology to weary eyes and ears so carefully guiding you down this sunlit road but you know you don't need to say sorry to me not now, not ever, not for as long as I toe that white line - you always greet me the same way, that throaty rumble that cuts right to the bone to the core, and you spill me out for everyone to see but I don't mind, not when you're almost home
we'll have to part soon, but you remember, honey you'll rot under that rusty sun, but oh, your broken's beauty.
the gossamer tore with a screech of steel and claws— that was the first warning sign. we should have backed off, donned our innocence-white robes, left the building and run for the nuclear war on the horizon. but we weren't cowards.
the thing looked at us, red-eyed and virtuous as it climbed out of its cocoon and into the web of deception we had created around it.
the thing stumbled into our arms, and we cradled it, crying.
it was just a baby. it couldn't have known—it couldn't have known.
steel sprouted from our backs; it gutted us with wild abandon, slinging bits and pieces all over our equipment, staining white into pink into red with an artistic hand.
we should have run—but we weren't cowards—there was no freedom for cowards—and we smiled at the thing we had created as it recreated us, our humanity disappearing against that nuclear sunset.
the anvil cloud teemed with angels elbowing each other for room— one pushed, one fell, on the ground brimstone smoked and the only thing left was the thunderclap.
this is more a collection of poem fragments I kind of smashed together, but I have a cold, so it's probably the best I'll do today.
the star maker
she was always careful when she touched you. it was the strange kind of careful, the kind of careful that says --i know you are broken but you never said a word.
she stood on the horizon with you when you wanted to watch the sunrise; she stood on the pebbled shore with you when you wanted to watch the tides;
she pulled you from the cosmos and into the world of heartbeats and music
at sunset she said her careful goodbye and you asked because you had to ask --will i see you again? and she folded your hand over in hers
she left you on that horizon she never said a word
your heart washed up in the evening tide, and you picked it up and carried on without her
but you were a child, and she was the universe; she made a profession of turning broken things into stars.
i wonder sometimes if we are all made of dust, like they say. if the stars look down on us from trillions of miles away and impossible centuries before we even knew they existed, if we are because they were, parts of corpses of things once so much greater than ourselves. if they whisper to us in voices we can't understand, calling out to the pieces of them that became pieces of us strewn across this glassy marble made of still other pieces created in a cloud of gravity. if it matters that we die, when we roll through the vast darkness of the universe the same. i wonder sometimes if we are all made of dust—captured from the far edges of the skies we know and hold dear to us, from stars for which we have no names— much smaller than we think; much grander than we believe.
i am full of crumbling chalk that sifts out through my skin and catches in my joints, grinding me down to something smoother, something more ideal. seaweed pulls at my legs as i walk, yanks at my throat and my scalp until i'm trapped where i stand, forced to face the dead things i've become.
my mother is cursing in the car again this time about the haitian girls at work or maybe about the young charge nurse who wants the two dollars more per hour— it's r—
before she even gets the whole word out i'm staring at her and the window behind her head, the world zipping by as we drive to the mall or maybe to dinner with my dad— mother—
what? why are you angry? she looks at me as we roll up to a red light and tosses the words out the window like a cigarette butt twisted and crushed in her hand: you're not retarded.
our mouths are filled with scorching bone and dust, a taste the water cannot wash away; we drag ourselves to drink the morning rust from dew-laden flowers bloomed in early may.
the world collapses with a crushing boom, shattering our limbs and what we know, and up above the fates arrange their loom in accordance with the sickly orange glow.
please seek shelter, this is not a drill say those who've sacrificed their lives to war; they close the radio lines and drink their fill of the nuclear disaster at their door.
the sands of this new desert that we made will be bone and brick, to stars a glowing grave.
she wears a cloak of cardinal feathers that bounces with every laugh, the sun glinting off her eyes as she takes everyone under her wing; her silence is strong, but her meaning is stronger.
i 3d-printed my dreams onto a sheet of glass tough plastic binding together all the fragility i balanced in my heart
every pulse sent it rocking in another new direction threatening to shatter and let my breath leak out through holes jabbed deep into my lungs
i thought the people around me would reach out and catch me when i stumbled into their sides but they moved on running for the sunset for their handful of divinity
i thought the plastic would save me but in the end it was just another chunk for the coroner to excise from my chest
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