torn pockets flirt with gravity. 

the distance already convinced that we've gone too far. 

simple equations swallow our voices. forgetting puckers its graves. 

we live in the corners. stabbing the void. waiting for the light to speak.

the little lies that we spent all our pennies to purchase.  

corroding at the bottom of an empty well. 

every moment culpable in a lingering treason. 

our skin bears the creases. our minds insist the folds. 

time writes its lessons in our blod. 

tangled puppets pull on their strings. 

the end comes without applause. 

gravity forgets us. once we've fallen too far.
a series of small cuts in time's wizened wrist.

serve as our map. as we navigate this expiring flesh.

we push closer to the center.
fragile monsters slouching on their crumbling horns.

choke on the ugly choices that have stranded them.

the distance pauses.
a slender rope suspending a weighted bridge.

we run. our feet made of dust and clay.

toward what we know not.
except away from where we are.

turning on the fickle parable of touch.
dutifully committed to love's brutal abattoir.

sometimes we are simple. others we are complex.

easily manipulated by the various creases in our skin.

we chew on the soiled pillows that cover our unmade beds.

twisting on the cusp of love's diluted poisons.

feral opportunists on epiphany's shrinking stage.

unaware that time is a promise that can't be kept.

i could almost say you loved me. but that simply can't be true.

can a thief love what he's stolen. can a predator love what he's killed.

sometimes the math lies to us. and pretends that there's something left.

 blunt needles prepare their doses of poison. our atoms thoughtlessly colliding.

all our tender lies calcifying. as we fumble to bandage the truth's deeper cuts.

time presses against the glass. an orchestra of discarded strays.

flesh keeps its ledgers. an ugly accumulation of our burgeoning debts.

lust invents its dubious medicines.

for diseases so profoundly rooted that we are nothing without them.

the lurch of wanting turns us inside out.

everything we are exposed.

we voraciously consume every touch.

stubbornly convinced that they are saving us.

even as we take our last breath.

no narrow tunnels to crawl through. nor perfect faults upon which to perch our questions.

all the obvious nightmares discarded. in favor of more resilient lies.

every question corrupted by unapologetic choices.

the lantern flickers. a promise written in disappearing ink.

we fumble to know these strangers. turning on the cruel equations of hungry skin.

gentle touches belie the monsters within. sweet infections soften their venom.

ostensibly the maze asks us to solve its riddle.


little girls discard their soiled dresses. painted smiles revoke their consent. 

realizing their flesh is a prison from which there is only one escape.  

little rabbits outrun the hungry foxes. in an obtuse world. where everything is too bright.

cut by the sharp corners. as they wnader through their mazes.

our diseases choose their symptoms from deep inside us. 

atoms collide and their reaction undoes us.

slender matchsticks aborted by the flame. a curious inertia among the intensity of our choices.

the race is run. the finish lines crosses us. all wilted storms and frozen fists.

gravity panics. and our wings briefly grip the wind.

brave rabbits lick the foxes' fangs. shocked to taste their own blood. 

the cold tells its stories in simple conceits and shattered skin.

a lonely metaphor of grief in a cacophony of narcissists.

all the buttons are made of why. all the zippers forged from when.

we press the needles through the fabric. but the holes are too deep.

the pillows wear their dented grins.

the sheets fumble with the stitches at the backs of our necks.

we solve each other with melted candy and rusted hammers.

looking for the truth in all the wrong places. 

 the truth is a broken smile. no words. only the dilapidated boxes that we never open.

the truth is a series of assassins. who often cripple, but seldom kill.

tender lies sell their medicine. to the desperate and the loyal.

time is the soiled bed where all those monsters sleep. waiting for us to wake them.

time is the stranger in the mirror that wears our face.

delicate skin flirts with the empty math. of what's inside. 

the truth ties its knots in our skin. 

and we spend our whole lives trying to undo them. 

 kettles on the stove bargain with the flame.
the curious temperament of skin solves for nil.

the contents come to a boil.
and we let it scald us.

kittens in a broken basket.
just learning to use their claws.

the forest sows its shadows.
heavy lanterns strain our resolve.

keys linger in their locks.
rooms better left forgotten.

whisper invitations
impossible to ignore.

familiar strangers arrive at our doorstep.
starved after years of waiting.

dirty dresses in our closets
casually wear us again.

time has simple rules. but touch is more complicated. a long hallway dense with doors we must unlock. 

we spin on gravity's slender strings. a catastrophe of atoms barely connected by the diminishing forces of circumstance. 

skin has obvious parameters. but want possesses infinite variables. 

we dance on the decaying inertia of arrogant choices. a cascade of expectation erupting. 

every window shattered. every room corrupted. 

we push the edge away. tumbling embers negotiate the abyss. 

the flame is paused. 

we slither into the dicarded skins. and remind the imposters. 

that we were alive once.

if only for an instant. 

slouching utopias scour our grief.
for the tenuous poisons that 
that once made us whole.

we balk at the simple mechanisms
that grunt out our lives.
while crippled time machines throb in our throats.

stubborn actors in masks we can't remove.
no more subtle grins to pretend we can be saved.

missing words fret their price.
as we auction off the remains of our skin.
every touch more fragile than the last.

hollow stages quiver beneath
the weight of our discontent.

bitten apples turn sour
waiting for us to taste
how sweet they once were. 

 the numbers travel through our skin. the quiet violence of apathy.

we chase the distance. exhausting every step.

the truth doesn't know our names. and doesn't care.

the solvency of love is a brutal expectation.

small puzzles scatter their pieces across the whole of our lives.

smothering us in broken images.

the math is so simple that we fail to believe it.

when cracked windows lose their purchase on our shame.

 brief collisions swallow our voices.

empty shoes abandoned in the doorway.

drowning in the footprints left behind.

our desires discipline the math.

orphaned numbers in puzzles made of skin.

little fires chasing strays.

we count out loud. daring anyone to listen.

rabid fools tamed by inertia.

sharp pieces of candy sweet enough to bleed for.

fleeting orbits determine our trajectory.

stung by gravity.

we embrace the fall.