Another Wrinkle in Time

he was, in all ways, carried by
the waves of time:
sailing on and on in his boat of skin;
he looked below,
and lo and behold,
creased blue ripples so akin
to the wrinkles his aged face brings
to the view of an average stranger.

it seems the clock had been malleable,
for time had stretched far and wide:
panic had gripped him, and its chiding had
struck him,
dumb and a little less than alive

a thunderstorm came, and the ocean was hideous
and rude, and cruel, and a lot more than vicious!
so his white hair grew paler
and his wrinkles sank deeper;
and he'd blown all the clock's hands backwards –
he cried,
"oh, time, confound you! wait just a little bit longer!"

and so the lightning gathered up all its power
and exploded into the morning
and painted the sky with vivacity and precision,
and seven different kinds of vibrance
and in all this beauty, he had not noticed
that his skin had raced to crumple
and his hair had rushed to whiten
and his fingers had ached to tremble
and that his soul was a little worn-out
and breaking along his body's cracks

but! his boat had come ashore
land and sand all by his lonesome, at last
and the castle of the alchemists once more,
just like how he'd dreamed in the past
he knocks with all the knocks his body can muster
and he finds the best of them, of all the alchemists
she asks,
"how can i help you, sir?"
and he says, all certain,
"Immortality, please."
and she nods, a sweet smile on her lips
– a flower, more than anything –
she asks,
"would you like peace with that?"

next is a flat kind of beeping,
like the calmest of tornadoes
and the quietest of hurricanes.
steady, steady, steady – right.

oh, god. it is the machinery that betrays him.

You and Me: An Exaggeration

so i suppose i'll sit here in all my wishing, in all my needing to be praised
in all my bitterness,
in all my "wish we could've" and
"wish i could've" and "wish you could've"
and one
year
ago,
i met you

i didn't know it yet but you would wreck me

so we are tired

locked and loaded with NERVES
laced up with such inexperience,
(you'd think they were little boys
with their sticks and stones and marbles)
pinned together with the teeth of danger,
dancing with the ballerinas of almost-
certain death. eyeballs circle with
cluelessness, darting from one command
to another (like ladies in a bar) in the
c-c-clumsiness of it all.
the brokenglass the battered windshield
the ruins of it. and their crumbling pride.
they are the defenders of the spectators
completely against their guesswork
strategy. trial and error have no room
in deals with the devil. bargain lives
bargain power but never bargain time.
their mistakes are prominent like the
cheekbones of a man i so loved
before he turned into a disco pig.

THEY CIRCLE LIKE VULTURES

les libertins

lightning bolts come with thunder
(bass, cymbals, snare, and all)
not a religion, not exactly
gods, these messed up boys, these
military wandering flowersouls,
these drugged up wonders. they are
the womb of music, spilling with ink and
teacups and syringes. scar cover their
skin like smoke from their cigarettes.
they smell like sweat and stardust.
planets stampede on their broken bones
and their ruins govern towers. but
they sing and sing,
they eversing. they eversing.

TRAVELERS

where did my ideas go

did they hide in the mind from which they flow

or slip from the skin from which they grow

and fly to the stars and together they glow

or mourn with the moon or caw like a crow

swim down trenches, no matter how low

or entrance little kings, kissing their toes

or asking the queen the little she knows;

did they coil like a snake in the cold of the snow

graze in the grass with bedizened does

or break out of prison, causing a row

or saunter out ballrooms, princes in tow

(and leaving them hanging and wailing in woe

or laying on daises on lips on pillows);

did they spill out of skin that is sliced into bows

or turn into dancers, gliding down my nose

brandishing swords and singing with foes

spinning in circles in alphabet prose

hiding in the petals of a candle wax rose

going where the coffee wind blows –

____oh where!

____did my ideas go