I Could Live in Bathe

I Could Live in Bathe

Nothing stays whole. Everything splinters
into shards, fragments of ‘used to be’,
‘never was’, or ‘might have been’.
We work hard for simplicity.
Once gained, it seems meaningless,
as do our lives,
and each part of the world falls off,
or, so it seems to the untrained eye,
the disbeliever at Pompeii
who claims no harm, no foul,
even when magma turns his feet to stone,
or the unseeing, all-knowing
scholar of the ancient world who follows Copernicus,
proclaiming ‘oh yes, the sun revolves around the earth,
of course!’ and ‘That Galileo is a madman!’
Will we always be led by incompetent blunderers
happy to parrot the ideas of others
while letting their brains turn to ash?
What if Columbus, deterred by erroneous minds,
had conceded that he was wrong,
the earth was indeed flat,
allowing himself to be locked away while
his boats turned to moldy remnants, his
sailors disappearing over the edge of the world?
Can we be so easily mistaken for sheep,
or swine, or cattle even?
Do our feelings mean so little to our tiny brains that we
block them out, block ourselves out
of our enriched fantasy lives?
Can emotion run a country?
Can a smile really ruin your day?
Do lost souls find their way back eventually?
Or do they wander alone forever?
I’m not sure of that, just like
I’m not sure whether Pluto is aware
of the fact that it is no longer a planet.
Do planets have conscious minds like human beings?
Could we just communicate with them across space and time
and deep expanses of space?
No, we haven’t the technology.
Perhaps we never will.
We’re too busy debating about aborted fetuses,
various social anxieties and abnormalities,
when what we need to focus on
slips silently into oblivion.
Produce for the starving,
movement of tanks in far-off deserts,
are these all just far-flung hopes we’ll never see through?
When the time comes, I will gladly jump
from the highest precipice with you,
no questions asked. It will be great
to not exist for once, to n’existe pas with you
where wars are only things we read about in history books
or reenact with toy swords in our backyards.
Where calendar dates dissolve,
like plump hands now turned to bone,
we will not exist with fingers crossed and eyes wide shut.
“Fractions fit together never form the whole”,
therefore, whole is but a lie.
Parts long to touch but never align just right.
Every morning, we’ve less eyelashes, hair,
fingernails, thoughts. Are we nothing but imperfections?
Entropy seems so vast, yet
it cannot exist without loss of the whole –
which, in its nonexistence,
cancels out the universe.
I was lost once. But no longer.
A verbless noun still stands on its own.
The girl born four-fingered cannot knit,
she lacks opposable thumbs and therefore
cannot declare a thumb war.
I win by default.
We will live like kings when society lies in ruins.
We will fashion houses out of twigs,
and rejoice, even when our hair grows grey,
even if we set our souls afire
just to watch them burn.
And each part of the whole will fall,
like leaves in Autumn,
the sun rays in your eyes.
The world will revolve around your lips
and I will write you love sonnets.
Where there is no ink, I will use blood.
I shall be the new Shakespeare.
Our lives will join together,
like a bruise progressing backwards,
like your sweater unraveling into spools of thread.
What of when we will exist purely in soul?
When the moon ceases to reflect sunlight,
when our parachutes refuse to unfurl so
we plummet.
I’m ill-equipped for skydiving,
less so for rejection.
You hand me my words,
we’ll toast incongruity
like we’re defining wicked
(Shaken Baby Syndrome).
Ten feet under salt and sea,
yet still I attempt breathing as your fingers unlace
me, I’m a flower in bloom.
We’re no love out of convenience,
even if we are, forgive me, but
I’d rather cling to my vain, tortured semblance of romance.
I’d not give it up for my weight in gold.
I’d rather be useless and beautiful,
like a plastic fruit display in the heart of the Sahara,
then admit my whole existence exists purely in my own imagination.
I will savor our game of pretend,
played out amongst this meaningless war,
this corrupt society which we are forced to inhabit
until our veins cease to function,
heart’s slowing their rhythmic pump.
I hope my pale visage is the last thing you ever see.

Just Because

Just Because

Because life has no backspace option,
no eraser large enough
to rub you out,
I’m left to shred Polaroids
into my red metal wastebasket.
The walls, stripped bare
of frozen moments
seem to echo my thoughts,
so empty,
you could hear a pin drop.
Because you tire of this,
so quickly, your eyes black
as you delivered a speech
devoid of emotion –
“I don’t think we mesh well”
and “Let’s just be friends” –
because this existed,
I rip myself into pieces
to hand out like party favors.

Carousel

Carousel

Child’s eye sees everything
gigantic, never-ending.
Maybe it’s because we are so small
that even playground structures
seem skyscrapers in the sand.
I remember spinning around the Disney carousel,
horse the size of an elephant
ebbing and flowing underneath me,
Cinderella castle rising, magnificent and huge
in the background.
My vision blurred, I clung to reins,
the only tie retaining me on this earth.
It was, in a word, terrifying.

Dear B –

Dear B –

I will follow your rules
to a point, but then –
I will wait no longer.
I’m afraid my patience wears thin
very, very quickly, my dear.
Your hands are warm, in mine,
or on the small of my back,
but we’re afraid of each other’s reactions,
aren’t we now?
This fear turns my moments to awkward embraces.
Maybe we’re both just sending mixed signals,
confusing this maybe relationship to
almost beyond repair,
you stringing me along
like a yoyo on a broken string,
me repeating the same words
“but I can’t, I can’t”.

Heavy Metal: Goes with Silk

Heavy Metal: Goes with Silk

Your lips, my neck.
My entire existence wraps around you.
Can passion solve all the world’s troubles
or does it just cause them?
What did our ancestors know of love like this?
Their pretense, devoid of lust, sweet carnal desire.
Corseted, full-skirted women,
Gentlemanly handshakes, stern-faced chaperones.
Could they ever have imagined love like this?
Fevered, inspired, driven
almost to the point of madness,
to that point of sweet, spinning starlight,
the creation of universes,
the unbroken silence in the aftermath of our union.
Your lips, my neck.
You whisper words of devotion
and I am devoid of all conflict,
still and silent in your eyes.
You are the pull of the ocean,
making me content just to lie here
and let you crash over me all night.

No Details About Risk

No Details About Risk

Are you the unspoken link between Heaven and Hell?
Clasped hands, cold sweat,
you’re clinging to shreds of what was.
It is no longer, maybe it never has been.
Maybe it’s some half-cocked fantasy
dredged up from the wells of your fevered imagination.
I think I am, too.
Don’t you see how translucent we are?
Like panes of glass in an armored car
shattered by the sniper’s blow,
we’ll fall to pieces any moment
leaving blood on the stairs
for the police to find.
Shin bone, jaw bone,
jagged fracture here, due to high pressure,
no sign of a bullet wound,
or a struggle.

The Fourth Wall is Broken

The Fourth Wall is Broken

Let the blood seep.
It is only necessary to live,
why worry needlessly?
She is not afraid, so neither should you be.
The floodgate machinery is operational,
to say the least.
It won’t break down again, they say.
Although, we hired that Disney engineer
and God knows,
if we get stuck on “It’s a Small World” one more time,
I won’t hesitate to kill him off.
I’d rather tears.