Let your memories burn together. Form a barrier that flows into sound. Clover.

Jump.

Cyan. Clean.

   Gerrymander.

Ig. Not.

We live on glass towers. Bong. Click. Tock. Clop. Bounce.

Headless, once again. Why always me. better than her?

       The car is fixed. Let me put down my screwdriver inside, we can leave(live_) in a minute. You leave without me. I wouldn’t let you leave with me. Drive for the sea, but end up at factory, past the windmill. Hay una vida muy bonita. No te gusta trabajar. A spider swipes your keycard for you and you enter.

       Inside is a hotel. Marvelous. Splendid. Terrifying. Ostentatious. A red velvet carpet calls our name, but instead it’s blue with yellow flowers and garnets. You pick the gems from the lace fingers. They grab with Velcro wills, but it's not enough to stop you from collating a golf ball of precious gems held together by honey the doorman gave you. Place the ball in the bathroom sink. Sleep

In and through. Better for they who bleat. Crim son Jolly, but cold. .Isn’t ev’rth’n. A piece of other? Visions will keep us apart, so why dream.

  To

    Fight

       Forward                Goad.

Herd. Now you’re alone. But, sorry I love you.

       Now you’re tangled in the kelp.

       Like a whelp.

       Need some help.

       Hard to tell.

       I’ll see you soon.

       Tell the tune.

       To croon.

       For soon.

       We twine.

       And the clock beats, and the swarm charges, and the Foired Fankle leaves nothing but ghosts and treats behind for us to scavenge, but we always choose the one that doesn’t talk back so we can enjoy our life like fine wine.

       Are you awake yet? Sorry, I forgot you were alone. For good. No talking? I’ll just leave. Check please, but there are cold cuts everywhere. On me, on you, on the knife on the floor made from ice hotter than Umbilicus herself. It’s bloodstained edge is almost purple in this lighting. Open a window. Only white outside, but return to the knife. Look at how clear it is. Look at how thick it is, yet how it is not wider than a needle. You could use it to sew a new body. A body made in the factory. Wouldn’t that be nice! Wash the knife off in the sink, now that it has more cold cuts on it than before.

       The golf ball is still there. Where the garnets were are now sapphires. It has doubled in price.Throw it away? Yes - NO - no.

       Cling? /// Clutch? \\\ crush.keep

       Did you keep the key for the door that is no longer a door but a dog that is down for dancing if you douse dudes in drinks drop dead dope doll. Chase the dog. Chase it until it tells you to stop. Have a coffee break in the lobby with it. Be careful not to prick your finger on that there mine. r

       Feel free to touch anything you want though. Don’t feel obliged just because I said something. You have prerogative. Is that affirmative, objective? Enough questions. You take over. Give me the doll. It’s your only escape. G00d(goad_). I’ll give you my sunglasses. Look into your coffee I think I see something.

       The ice. It continues.

Bud, we live together at the bottom of the ocean, so join. We’ve plenty of snow in our shoes, so step in. Is Umbilicus here for good.? Let him take his sweet time. Share a cigarette. s

Bliss.

K

M

Bliss.

ack

ame

Bliss.

Kll

Mmc

Hide the body.

       YOu need it later. yeah

       Find a way out of here. The coffee is too cold to save for later. It’s just too cold. There’s nothing left behind. Just run for another day, where the coffee isn’t so cold, and Umbilicus can have the knife to itself. Hire. Higher.

       These are glorious(gore_) days.

   3/27/16

I’m at camp to teach bugs how to fight. I have a tiny centipede that can easily be mistaken for a piece of dust. It’s smaller than my pinkie nail it’s so small. I lose my bug, and so do some of the other kids, so our counselor finds a different way for us to have fun. We decide to race. I blow up an inflatable mattress to race on. It’s shaped like a bean. I blow into it and physically feel it expanding. I look up and wake up. I’m clutching my pillow and blowing on my arm

Classified: Vivid

It was the snow that brought her to tears. This beautiful powder that layered their roofs, got in between the tires of their automobiles, and stuck to their eyelashes, was forecasted to stop exactly at 6:43 pm tomorrow, suspended in the air as the Messiah stopped time to judge humanity.

The Greek Empire fell

On August twenty-fourth, 2006

When the boy was told he could never go to a planet that

Shared a name with his bloodhound.

The Greek Empire fell

On August twenty-fifth, 2006

When he was told it was actually the Byzantine Empire that fell

In 1453.

The Greek Empire fell

On August twenty-sixth, 2006

When Atlantis was drowned with Plato

In the sands of maturity and nominal ethnicity.

Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman,

He, a gas lamp that craves the renewal of his nature,

Was chained together with

Nero, Justinian, and Suleiman.

One bit the others’ necks and they writhed,

Breaking each other’s spines one by one, bit by bit,

Until all that kept them afloat was

An unsteady ocean current,

Legs swaying loosely like hairs.

The golden glow of a moribund candle

Was consumed by the already defunct flotsam,

As it drifted in and out of the deadly nightshade prongs.

A goldfish belonged in the Atlantic Ocean

As much as a Portuguese Man of War did,

Slowly drowning together

In the macabre dance of death to the bottom.

Through the abyss, manatees and manta rays

Stayed clear of the gruesome illusion

Of a dead angler, sinking to where only his light could illuminate

The interminable evening.

In a flash of bravery, the goldfish miraculously escapes,

But I’ve heard that not even light can escape a black hole

Once it’s passed the event horizon.

The tendrils of submission wave with empty taunts.

From a distance, it looks as if that fishbowl fire had decimated the Portuguese Man of War with a single blow.

The colony of polyps sink, like Nero’s Rome, incendiary at dawn.

By morning, even Troy

Could see the fires of Rome

Burning on the horizon.

Nero did not run, and neither does the goldfish.

The omnipresent pressure of an ocean’s empire,

Flattens the goldfish to his will.

Swallowed by darkness,

Like that of an angler’s stomach,

The goldfish even loses sight of the Man of War,

The antagonist that dragged him

To this eternal resting place.

Even his flame, is quenched by the blue.

Nero’s fire: reversed.

Focus through the silence

Remains tenuous.

All that sustains the constant interval of time,

Is the beating of the dead Man’s heart,

Floating just a few feet

From the fish’s face, invisible,

Because light can’t escape a black hole.

But I’ve heard that at its center

Is a crystallized treasure,

A pearl of light,

That can fuel a submarine for centuries,

Or a candle for millennia.

Most people drown facing up,

Because they only focus on where they came from.

The goldfish does not drown,

Because he charges head first into the darkness,

And finds a pearl at the heart of Plato’s sunken city.

The ocean floor is the brightest part of the sea,

Because in open water, there is no surface

To reflect where the light has gone.

Rainbows of kaleidoscope cameras

Flash about the goldfish,

Making him more radiant than

The golden age that fell just last week.

The ocean floor is the safest part of the sea,

Because in open water, there is no surface

To spring off of and propel yourself

Into the air

With the pigeons and eagles

That fly so close to the golden sun

You so long for.

The ocean floor is part of the sea,

So why deny what’s outlined in the void

of golden starlight

reflected on

our pupils

like the fire

so close

on the horizon

to our bloodhounds, and

to our ancestors?

"Cornelius sent the badger out,"

We come to sing today,

"His fur is tough, his eyes went duff

A year ago in May.

The livid beast beyond our door

Went uptart at the sound

Of howling wolves the king let out.

They followed the Hasker Hound."

"The Hasker Hound of Barlin Buke,"

We come to sing today,

"Was as tribute to the king

A year ago in May.

The knight of Rum had lost his head,

A solemn tragedy.

The serfs across the kingdom mauffed

Without a guard like he."

"They reapt and goored without a hope,"

We come to sing today,

"For without a knight, there would be beasts

To pillit our crops away.

But lo the dadler, Barlin Buke, 

Sent us his loyal dog

Who chased the ghouls and fliveret such

From out the yattlinjog."

"But good ol' Corn revealed a plan,"

We come to sing today.

"His pet parfyufe, a lily sort

Would find the flowers of May.

These crops would hummer the peasants plenty

Without a lick of sun,

And pleasant creatures such as he

Need not a meal once done.

"He worked for free! A noble parf!"

We come to sing today.

"Though something dreadful linned about

A year ago in May.

The Hasker Hound of Barlin Buke

Went garvid at the sight

Of a roughspun badger, shaking his torse

In the Mayflower field that night.

The badger stared with fearful deam

As the Hound descended.

His life by frot was held to hokker

If not was surely ended."

"But hie, the Hound just struck the eyes,"

We come to sing today,

"And Corn's poor pet was left for blind

A year ago in May.

But little fear, we had my dear,

The badger could still smell!

He gathered flowers rich and rume

And all of us ate well.

So join the merry tavern din

And come to sing today

As we remember the Blind Badger's Blight

A year ago in May."

In the clamor of the station, I quickly hopped aboard the train just as it was pulling out, breathless and relieved. The relief soon vanished when I stared across the platform and saw my mother failing to hold back the doors of the correct train, frantically searching for her son.