2022

i'm not that rust on the grate

i'm not that rot

with or without, i'm never Never

well, never say never;

never for now

--

the slow rush of winter surprises all,

snaps

birds into place,

pins

the darkness down,

tilts

us farther from

--

sexual validation,

leveling up a video game character,

biases confirmed,

emotional vindication,

another glass,

another lie,

the softening emoji,

planning escape,

fantasies of

worthwhile fantasies,

constructing a ruin

to spec

--

the black year yawns to swallow

purpose in its death-like dreaming

and life flickers away on the breaths of

all who speak their truths

k2

hands roots, eyes sky, mind wide

a thousand miles an hour in naked neural halls
is threaded flesh as rainbow tumors undulating to 

eject and absorb itself recursively birthing more and more

white streams that refine and lash into stellar dust inside-behind my eyes

i'm lost then found by myselves, but am i mine?

before awakening before living before killing is over-begun

behind crystalline veneers of far off too close turning glass wire

artifices of slights, heights of golden white cream to green of 

circles cycling the gyre in an ever reversing spiral

form the singsong plea from selves to self, to not forget:

the game is a trick

the rules are a lie

cease this war

we'll never die

k1

injected, awaken

nonattachment visualized as

slithering neon burgundy walls of velvet
turning a mortal coil of pixelated emerald
that cradles, stretches, rotates
the body on a plane of lucid dream
peekaboo on both sides of the eggshell of reality,
a crocodile's unblinking eye

at the boundary of water and air
inward the self as yolk
outward the source
the expansive answer
the ease of existence
little dendritic deaths pulling life, anchoring cosmos

the secret made obvious

detached, release

lept in boiling lake

all that glitters is - up for grabs

and drowning us

all that's true is - up for debate

and eluding us

midas on the tire swing

midas on the 'gram

styrofoam scepter - grasped by cancer

jump, pussy jump

the followed follows

reality cleaves

the splash is posed

like a question

asked faultily, unanswered rightly

how will we ever get out

the cost rises in plumes

untotalled, mingling with acid

death and gifts lain out by hands that have never another shook

the drowning meets the drowned on the way home

---

outside the sphere of influence

and the diamond of violence

i gurgle, braindead.

a man in power authorizes

a windfall of fire

a man in power sleeps

in the manner i sleep

alike, both wide-eyed with

terror, in plush linen

terms

the cost of life is pain

the pain of love is gain

the gain of loss gets lost,

included in the cost.

Guilt Seeking

Memories were

Now they are

All the while

All lost 

Arc between

Pairs of

Cut up and

Thrown

Not caught

Still

Voyaging out

To

Lose

More

In the corner
On the sill

Under the blanket

At my feet

It's not there

In my right pupil

In my left

In the mirror

Outside

In the night

In the crowd

In the rain

In the flower bed

By the entrance

To the park

By the horses

By the trash can

In the pile of leaves

Among the rocks

Among the ash

Beside your after image

Within the looping nightmare

Beyond the void

Within our hearts

Nowhere can we find it

having fun

decomposing ridden with a hundred thousand cuts is pleasure

donning regal silver death fantasy is play

wielding the abyssal power of midnight imagination is easy

pain is a child's toy

and time flies