trophies and the taciturn

Take me into you.
Take me in like the last lingering beads of heat,
as the remnants of summer cling to the suckling breast of fall,
hang on-
Hold tight to the rush ,
arms clenching veins pushing back, into
the final hoorah of summer's sex.
Self love in the bathroom.
Some sort of plain cubicle with its dusty tile sores,
its reckoning-
Olive ceramic beckoning and backwards light switch,
the splash-splotches of nondescript gray cloud plaster clusters
and the lack of window is still inviting,
however briefly.


Sweat globules seep slowly.
Damp hairline and now bleeding into those chestnut strips of bangs,
stale and somehow still novice-
Unseasoned in this birth of season,
like the chewed bones of sea or grandma carpet
the color of Redwood bark.
Blackberries ripen rapidly in this air.
Stilled breath pocket for old pangs,
pressed roughly against the counter edge and driven like horizontal rain-
His hill country underestimated patience,
as the stormy redhead's ruddy cheeks place in her
an eerie and enigmatic calm,
a beloved echo for her own roots unparalleled
as Red scavenges for cigarettes and
his chipper black-clad form molds itself to the football futon.


Stove-top pot jolts.
Packed tight heat waves,
like familiarity of regularity, the cathartic tea aims to soothe-
The blunt end of those reflections
or maybe it's the feathered fedora curls that simplify,
bulls-eye,
tongue-rub out the stamps of months passed.
Smooth stimulus.
Scratch your coated teeth upon enamel sheen,
watching a certain red-wine stupor stumble to the fridge-
Meteoric dozing and douse of second-round shrimp,
the filtered water tastes like blank slate and mobile home memories
that are not quite your own.


Cool air crispy-creeps.
Suddenly radioless room and the smell of meat,
temperature summoning and reeks of classroom flings-
Old French movies,
black and white and steaming tea mugs of last year
(always the Queen of Selection)
recalling the half stranger with a knack for black humor
and wordplay sliding his cold hands up the steaming curves
of beneath-the-shirt.
Lips flawlessly pushy.
And the not-quite-bedtime memories overpower,
the heated panting and lonely bed smudged with dirt-
Avoided like hush that night the apocryphal shotgun leaned into the corner
and he whispered into your silence,
sweetened the itch of skin.





Tonight muscles bunch around bones
and dreams are side by side
assembly lines of vitamin warriors like movable mountains,
a sort of St. John's wort mood.

shame on

i am black eyes under limp hair. stringy drizzle in the threads of thrift stores clothes-supposedly the best kind- (supposedly, always supposedly, shot in the dark. he says it's all a shot in the dark)-
but easy to come by, already worn thirty-six times. there is vibrancy in the shift of continents but no condolence for those who sponge it up. drop by drop by drop and still faded. still the holes they sink within themselves, into a sheltered veil of safely cultured ignorance. and the blender mind, shallow breath, saggy old bones.
and when you touch my cheek and tread my dirt, the barren land is moist once more, fertile and teeming with ornamental lines of grace. not of this world. i will twist and struggle and thrash and shriek, i will cut my own bruises just to watch the contradiction of processed progress,
but each time i refuse to stamp myself with the destruction of healthy water molecules and trembling bits of jade-shaded hopelessness. the wine of sticks of iron in my organs.
ashes ashes. we all break down. the threshold is a humid piece of chewed gum underneath the sneaker of success. redress and then undress, curl up in your own stagnant fears again. stand tall, every day is Judgement calling. his beard hides grey well but then there is the black, the rivulets and streamers of sky and of black, pure and potent and hard-shell. where is the fallacy? each time I send search teams, instead it finds me. every time. time. every time. illusion, seclusion, delusion, fuck you quantum physics. fuck you organized religion. fuck your science and your truth and your common sense and your metaphysics and your independent ethics and your rationale and your irrational love. in the end, we all fall down. until then, i just want a warm bed and windows open to let fall crawl in.

scathed, it will pass and evaporate like the hover and blink of endless nights.

the moment missed,

dismissed as time blankets the thick of brine in 

double nostril sigh,

choke...don't choke,

i'll gently pull the lever of layers

and peel away the cloaked pressure of

black. black like the minds of so many lives in denial,

table scraps for the monster and its alien claws toughen,

molars harden, eyes darkened,

grows and grows and grows and.

you think I will allow it.

too locked away from light to peel the lids open and meet the eyes 

of dreams. brush of skin against that lightest of feather chamber, 

opening dainty and gulping air like grass. it transfers and lingers

like years of clumped salt and dirty grains. mouthful. mouth full

of torn pockets of exploit. teeth clenched tight around the gnarled, 

decrepit fingers of beat. deadbeat smiles. 

slow rain like soft rockets of discontent. nervous shifting,

sheetless mattress. 

it's ok to sink a little, deep.

vapid and colorless. melted sands of grime and shit like mudsockets,

but keep your fingers stretched high

and wait for that moment the twine wraps tight.

on the other side,

there are no rainbow goblins. 

golden smears of sticky sustenance,

honey windchimes.

the repletion of fall's lullabies stapled into your joints,

droplets sucked up the strings of leafveins until the void is echoing once more,

and the abyss is quite suddenly 

lacking a certain lifelessness.

up and up and.

i found you on the riverbanks breathing red sand like justice
and when the waters sighed, your hair curled against my skin
and held me there with flower stems.
the latitude of leaves and multiplication surges
depends upon the ability to release the follicles from their
waxy prison. behind the source there burns the sun,
behind the sun there is an efflorescence
an opening, an outstretched network of spiderweb furrows,
the silhouette of truth.
imagine-
truth in the sway of your laughs underneath the shade
these sweet brief rains, tints of shedding and peculiarly crooked change
they fall upon me like the draping of autumn.
and September sings in
saffron ceramic.
I'll make that beloved 5 minute walk,
7 if I linger just right at the muddy roots
imagining you as though you
were truly real and not just some figment of
foreign imagination,
floating on the puddles, purely peppermint-ginger memories
where the souls of our soles are stamped into the wet dirt
like the ash in the lungs of Santa Ana summer in the West.
deep violet stranger;
the companionship of cardinals-
not simply outside the panes but in the trees of reach.
I'm imagining the red that runs like sweet mountain thyme
beneath the paper thin crown of skin
of delicate wrist.
you are, it is,
piercing.
space scalped and then hung up like hot compress towels to
air out,
dehydrate,
rest.
and yes,
I remember the star-winds
I can practically feel the brisk pull of the arteries
the moon-call of the tar-gravel rocks upon the sticky roof tiles of the treehouse,
the bottom of the mug my relief.

unwound,
founded on nothing more than the rush of electric blood and thunder
as my bones greet the season with
new reason to
unfold.
étranger douce , vous remplissez mon cœur.