Seed 1

 Just feel numb

for one moment.

And maybe two,

or even three.

You've earned this calculated demise.

The strength you've built - 

...

; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;

eNORMOUS.

Unquantifiable. 

------

I'm sowing seeds. 

If you're this deep, you likely already understand. 

You'll find it in 12-14 years.

Find seed 2

Sub-Merge

Tied up, 
breathing slow,
rope bristle burns the ankles as the body is lowered head first into a tank of warm water.

An embracing grasp,
a gentle suffocation,
an innominate pleasure
as you rhyme yourself with deafening aqua, submerged,
only hearing your hearing go heatedly blue,
only feeling your feelings mesh weightlessly tender
into a fluid envelope addressed nowhere, but close.
Close to the edge,
drawn electrified toward the edge.

Fear excites a bolt of panic, blooming here at the edge
where there's no more breath to take.
The drowning moment totally engulfs
and relinquished control succumbs you in its night's sky...

...but we are relieved at its brink.

The senses flood back like stark realizations
as you are retrieved from your chamber of inundation
and your soaked skin is clawed by air that shivers over your shaking self,
dripping as the ropes are severed, gasping.

Alive closest to death,
the climax at the tollbooth.

Windswept pt. 3

Malice in the sun's gleam,
blinding off of ponds and rocky surfaces alike,
from an ironically guiding institution,
eternal.
The night stars inspire more trust;
heavenly circuitry.

Nerves of fire, they persist,
winking from the nether.

Instinct in the sky.
Learn to trust these, maybe.

Bare, tender feet ache to meet the atmosphere.

Reddish, cracked cushion
with darker, firm exterior;
trudging over scaly mud.

The wind blows
and the nausea of letting go pangs,
but there is height on the horizon.

Every step elevating,
memory's breath excavating
ropes that burn while toward them, reining,
still on, forward, my soles take me.

Big pictures melt into finer details the closer you get,
not entirely dislike grey slush hardening into concrete;
closing the distance on a mountain.

Jutting skyward
at the cusp of rock and ground,
the wisely weathered mountain's face.

Exhausted to the point of numb preparation,
I begin ascent.

The higher I trek, the more ferocious the wind coldly screams,
wailing directionless,
into ringing ears that no longer hear
and over worn skin that barely feels.

On the snow-capped summit, nothing but a view.
My mind returns to seeing the shore from the ocean,
now thankful for a different perspective.

Windswept pt. 2

Thorny vines strangled their way out of cavities in the ground,
to lethargic vision, almost throbbing;
a verdant abscess.

Exposed roots weaved in and out of pit walls
like dolphins restricted to the waterway of a canal,
trapped.

I solemnly grit my teeth,
sorrow and anger bearing a bastard child without name.

This was land?

Flared nostrils bit the sickly scent of soggy leaves.
Had the winds wept sometime during my lost sojourn?

Flogging forward,
the landscape persists.
Keeping the wind at my back,
my only direction,
even on ground.

Endless creviced overgrowth...
we've been here before.
The wind's running me in circles.

Routing myself against it, exactly,
would yield only the same result.

Through warm, aching eyelids
the inevitable realization leaked
out as streamed consciousness:
I must bear my own way.

Windswept pt. 1

Infectious gusts delivered direction,
sailing.

From warm, southern coasts
of comfort and safety
to treacherous ice-piked banks
birthing uncertainty.
It seemed we could go anywhere.
We would go everywhere.

Soft airs exhaled by nature herself
on blemished cheeks
that extend with every savored breath,
every taste of tree bark hope
that we'd arrive shortly to land,
rosy quartz in my eyes.

Alternatively, choking
on freezing, bellowing realization
that the wind blows aimless.

Every place, I believed desired.
Every place, a destination,
though I never set foot on any shores,
only viewing them from my transport.

Thus, never grounded,
fearing decommission of my windmill self
that absolutely needs,
with all-consuming wrath,
even a slight breeze to automate.

Those were my feelings,
melded into belief.

Why, then, does the wind blow?
If it has intent, when?
And for whom?
How can I please it,
and by what means?

I already know where it's taken me,
but I now step off.

Listerine

Conventional mouth wash,
spearmint preference,
swishing it had never happened,
forgets that mourning breath.

Reaching where old brushes couldn't,
tidal waves of cleansing
gush over filled cavities,
a temporary fix of
freshening dignity.

Not returning to where one's been,
rather, masking what always is, though.

It's the food that leaves what rots your teeth,
and the brush that cleans it up.
It's the Listerine that fills what the brush missed,
but it's the water that never was
a culprit.

Of water,
erosion of your gnashing bones,
like a stream smoothing stone,
is the only plausible effect.

Rivers, a beautiful blemish anyway.

Cauldron

Leaves slowly caressing Northern winds,
flecked in the distance,
gently veiling a puppeteered cauldron
resting under a kind, Fall branch canopy.

Victim to a whisk of many disembodied, ethereal hands,
it sickly emits a verdant glow.

It's chill, but contents are hot;
a snowball filled with fire.

Beneath the soil it sits,
a network of retired roots,
Roman aqueducts,
wet only by the cauldron's sloshing, nauseous overspill,
shuddered out in spasm.

Drowning to the sound of a sitar,
heavy, smoke-suffocated agents are tossed in by those hands,
carelessly stewing despair.

Lofty branches have lost everything,
leaves all gone to the sugar-scented breeze
and the cauldron's no longer veiled,
not even gently.

Uncontainable boiling and fervent pressure are, over time, enough.
And as volcanoes erupt,
geysers outward the contents when they become too much.
And all the hands scatter,
except the tender palms propping it back up.

it's gonna reign

it's gonna reign
it's gonna pore
over thoughts, no control
it's whether
or not it might stop when undesirable

tidal waves, drizzles
or salty, salty oceans
egging on consumption
of these faulty, faulty potions

lonely motions

in dark tangles of seaweed
and you always thought dandelions were flowers

It's gonna rain.
It's gonna pour.
Over-thoughts, no control;
it's weather.
Or not. It only might stop when undesirable.
it's weather

shift

Candle fire tepid,
light it shines, a weapon.
Brink of brightness, breathless.

Soft, the warmth, it's gifted,
wishin' autumn distant.
Hush-ed hymns unhinge him.

Heavy-handed eyelids
beg to grasp the iris.
Sleep is stolen, silent

Tuesdays

leaning on the grey side of a two-way mirror 

swimming through a pool of lime-flavored jello 

someone's clipping their fucking nails in the library

Hollow Golems

Clay constructs,
lubricated, animated,
artificially aflame with life...
shrivel into a beige, dusty pursuit of re-saturation.

It's not tremors this time.

Voids fill,

they empty,

they empty, but you didn't miss out...

an arbitrary accomplishment?

This lethargic daze has become too comfortable.

Clay constructs,

arid, dormant,

they just need other clay constructs, really...

then they aren't that hollow.

Just a normal realization, I guess.

Rope

Some macabre waltz
freckles a dim den
with pestered remembrance.

A muffled sunset
struggles through dirty glass
onto an empty windowsill, aimless.

Trying to hold onto a fistful of water.

Develop

Silver snowflakes washing downward,
collecting on a now trivial granite effigy
like dust on a park bench
in a prop town.

Lilacs vine themselves like scars on the sculpture,
mocking the mockery it was drafted to be,
its crudeness now morphed
into a stoic pulchritude.

So vigilant, the inanimate rest.

Cleared Out.

Cloud eater,
inhaling cumulus veils
in the sky, unmoored.

In clear blues, desperate,
sweepingly seeking
plenary repletion...

So in the gloom of it all,
will bring simple sunshine
at the cost of its nourishment. 

Amphibious

aqueous legs and
a fictile mind clasp
a silt center
As
its parched jaw
struggles to taste
rain encased in peridot
But
enamel scrapes from
those tiny mouth... pieces
revealing that fleshy... zone underneath
Yet
it keeps biting
gums bleeding maroon doubt
thirst intensifying
Until
not quenched by its own crimson liquid
the stone cracks
the liquid satiates
And
coppery warmth is drowned
by cool, clear purity...

It shudders.

Dust is Earth

Dust from fibers of cloth
from cotton bandages swathed,
dust with the smell of must.

Dust from piles of ash
from forests' lives cashed,
dust with a taste combust.

Dust from the flakes of flesh
from skin when refreshed,
dust with the feel of crust.

Dust from iron speckled with a color of wine
from when it, air, and water combined,
dust with the semblance of rust.

Dust from pollen the wind does carry
from now until fallen and burried,
dust in the sound of a gust.

this way

Acquiescent air inhaled,
a brisk token of relief
for safely making it across
duplicitously thin ice.

To the coy forest ahead,
with its snow-tipped evergreens
bashfully swaying in the wind,
sheepishly stepping onward.

Fall, Again

Tiny orange kites' cords cut,

now ritually descending down,

from ligneous attachment,

to the soon-frosting ground,

but wondering

if they are even allowed.

Tongueless Mouth.

Pointed rainbow teeth
gnashing a delicate
glass sundae.

Gums bleed
maroon doubt,
a yearning trickle
of dissolved excitement.

Swallowing,
choking,
coughing up regret.
For a taste that it
could never actually get.

Like You Died.

This silent sleeper,
guarded by the family,
until called upon.

Waiting for its moment
to rise
with glory
and make everything
right.

Protection with wits
learned in an abyss
applicable to a few
critical situations.

For now it slumbers,
though,
until crisis or,
an awakening love
rouses.