remember when we sat on orange-peel boats overlooking the emerald sea of green?

when your arms would stitch musings into my waist--grassy thread, skin seamless, green /

& you’d stuff tulle down my unruly throat [be silent, still, as the inky ocean flows],

i taste citrus-- omphaloskepsis; peel the navel oranges, stems, leaves, green

why do you float beyond the kuiper belt & grind saffron into the space behind my ear /

we are but dust-- [swirling / deteriorating] caking onto oxidizing copper [green, green]

& the sun smiled at me as she sunk below the horizon, losing the war to nightfall /

you are clovers steeped in milk, once sweet, once lucky, once green;

now: drowning & you don’t know why, don’t notice the flame in your thighs, don’t notice

don’t care-- & there’s me, bruised, broken, laying against the sea of green

[cassiopeia] will sing to you from northern striped clouds; opening wide to these knitted symphonies cutting a velvet sky. this scarab-beetled beauty may numb your campen disasters. vanity will precede her, or at least that’s what the nebulae say (even the faeries among a limned- blue moon). poseidon, with his triple glances and reflective abrasiveness stands aloof after his sentence. she dare not call this her downfall, andromeda will be chided by her as dusk laps up the ocean waves. celestial daughters fear nereids, after all. don’t look to the north star if you feel yourself falter, but keep on, one flattened soul after another. maybe you will find the crescents bleeding into the milky way, ascending upwards. maybe you will find gamma’s reindeer guiding her to perseus, seeking gossamer refuge among the rocks.

[lyra] is carved in vulcan fires and neon-streaked binaries, watching eagle-eyed as midnight calls upon the creatures stalking gently. to pray, to feed upon her weaknesses. aster plays the lyre, blessed tunes dripping like shooting stars from her. summer nights awaken these triad memories, hands circling around bonfires. complexity flows like orpheus’s citran melodies, breathing life into the wild but swaying the sirens, all aboard sailing to many a driftwood lad. novae brings the muses to a halt, where orpheus turns in his soil-lade grave, never forgotten.

[ursa major] lies in patterns, etched in the stars. heptagonal spheres branch out: jade, pearl and alkaid all through the night. three huntsmen search for revenge; slain greybears. alioth strikes, mizar, peach-eyed sustenance and alkaid with sustenance. stepping stones through rivulets, wayward sons skipping up to a lily pad. unfortunate deliberation in constant ecstasy, motherly blessed. goryeo pulling these linen curtains to a close. callisto’s odyssey stays afloat in violet horizons. the wain will show you the way.

forgive me father for i have sinned.

i have sinned, and her gardenia,

green tea breath speaks purple and red down my neck.

forgive me father for i have sinned. 

i have sinned when her fingers drag down the curve of my hip and

forgive me father for i have sinned. 

sinned in the rhythm of my heart-- my sacrifice to her. 

sinned.

i scream above me to sappho in her weaving,

can her aphrodite see me now? 

flesh and blood and enamored with my demise,

i pray to her. 

who is the songbird that sings me,

along my dark, twisted path of love and light?

her eyes are heavy like mine,

sinking with the weight of a passing stranger's prejudice. 

wrapped in one another we curse the earth and the heavens. 

we curse the breaking of eggshells and strings of song,

and our own bloody nihilism. 

i'll crack open my veins and pour out the contents for us to drink,

my light,

forgive me father for i have sinned.