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Those ghosts of grief who, with isolation,
     creep into our tombs of lives, veiling things
     we refuse to view, those truths we deny,
     those windowless souls, those shades with blank eyes,
     their sore holes of mouths whispering, ‘You can’t
     pay a whore compliments,’ to them I write.

                                        ◦○◦◦

To gain heaven without suffering, by
     uncovering this forest floored by our
     lies, to creep where overgrowths of exiled
     lovers groan, those incensed initiates
     of mysterious amnesiac rites
     whose extinguished flames glower at the sight

     of us, those severe(d) (m)embers whose broken
     limbs break further still when stirred to new life,
     to their soft memory I toast a health
     and to them I write, to ideals fallen
     from sequoian pedestals, to silenced
     windmills and trampled daffodils, I write.

                                        ◦◦○◦

Those billboards grieving their tattered adverts’
     unplastered smiles move me, far more than their
     hard-won campaigns moved products, unwanted
     stock filling up my warehouse consciousness
     with remaindered thoughts unfit to publish,
     taking up what I want to become my

     altared ego’s holiest spot, this place
     the solitude of which I covet, trace
     amounts of celestial residue
     menstruating their sugared-thighed way through
     highways of information without which
     none of us can prove our wound’s existence,

     that we, too, are fools who have traveled far,
     that we are fickle fruit whose flesh has been
     gashed by what teeth fate’s cards have shown, corners
     bent to permit those on their blades’ edges
     to be in the same room, I write to those
     who have lost and those who have yet to lose.

                                        ◦◦◦○

Knowing what I do now, and that what I
     do shows them what cannot be stopped or slowed
     down, I choose to continue to write, lines
     inscribing wisdom on wrists, bleeding out
     slogans for kids when parents and peers have
     no shits to give, to tell them that love lives.