I. The Slaying of Time
There’s a man standing in front of me,
A dagger in his heart.
It twists and turns with each passing second,
Numbers strewn in red across his chest,
12, 3, 6, 9.
Again the dagger whirls,
12, 3, 6, 9.
He stands akimbo as
The numbers drip and the dagger spins.

I glance to my left,
And I see a faint specter,
Growing ever solid and so very real.
She stands by me,
A flower on her breast,
Her eyes stare vacantly past mine.

The dagger whirs to 12
And her steady state does shift;
Her gaze is set upon the man.
His hands clench,
His teeth grind,
His arms flail,
The dagger shifts to one.
It’s the slaying of time.

II. The Vein Train
The man falls dead,
The girl turns to me.
She’s walking by me, walking away,
A simple brush of her arm,
An incidental break of moral separation,
And the blood in my body runs cold,
My passion turns to stone.

My veins rushing with
The combination,
She’s left me burning from the heat
and shivering with the cold.

What is this passion,
So mad like summer
And so bitter as winter?

III. Sand
I writhe,
What is this vehement pain?
It rakes into my flesh, biting to the bone.
I feel my flesh crawl,
I stretch out my meager arms,
My acid tears fall from my eyes.
They burn a radiant green that flashes,
Leaving streaks across my face.
What is this vehement pain?
I scream,
But no sound can escape,
And in its place sand pours down like my leaden words.

My throat is scratched by it,
I plead for water
But her back is turned
And I fear she only hears
Shouting slurs and curses.

The sand pours quicker,
Faster it burns,
As green tracks fly across my eyes.
A barren bottle
Captures me, eating away my vast surroundings.
The sand pours quicker,
Faster it burns,
Green tracks cover my visage
As the sand strangles my neck.

I see her slowly walk away,
My eyes burn with green acid,
She can’t hear me screaming, crying,
As the sand pours steadily from
My torn and bleeding throat.
And I cry all the harder,
My eyes bleed green, my face the same.
The sand has reached to the rims of my eyes,
And pools of green stream around me.

I try to move but each frantic
Twist leads me deeper into the trap,
I am buried for all my efforts to be free.
The bottle bursts,
The glass shatters,
The tension in my wrists explodes,
I flail in spasms under the newly formed beach of my own design.
A green ocean is overflowing all around me,
Sharp sand scratching at my throat.

I’ve lost sight of her.
I cannot see which way she went.
I fall broken.

IV. The Man in the Red Tree
I am sunken in the sand.
My head and arms lay about me,
My body buried far beneath.
A crushing weight burns my legs,
A seeping pain lets out from my wrists,
And I struggle furiously to be free.

I stop and resign to my incapacitation.
I look around, through filtered green eyes
I see a red, aged tree, its gnarled trunk glaring at me.
Strange swerving eyes are sprouting out,
A grasping hand unfurls from a knot of wizened bark.
It pulls and pushes, gropes at snapping branches
And I begin to sob tears of blue as a slow groan echoes forth from it.

I struggle again, blue streaks tracking in the sand.
Hurriedly dripping, I feel its path;
Over my shoulder, past my hips, down my legs,
And then… it curls up underneath my toes.
A steady boulder solidifies at my feet
And a smile parts my lips as I attempt to jump.
My legs creak and moan, angered by my sudden spasm,
My arms and hands reach out and scratch
At new blue grass and new earth that sprouted from my sobs.

I have freed myself!
Now covered in earth and desperately feeding air to my battered lungs.
I lie, sprinkled in sand, dirt and grime, looking triumphantly at the old red tree.
Those strange eyes smile and I stand, remembering
My will came from this poor beast’s struggle.
I run to him and decimate the tree, the prison guard.
He falls from its battered remains bare and clean
Save for a scar left on the middle of his chest.

V. Born in Now
My head tilts- his face, so damned familiar,
Where have I seen this man before?
Before, when was there ever a before?
I am now, here I was formed with the newly made
Earth, and he, just now I have seen,
Was born of that great old tree.

What’s this I now see?
A yellow flower with petals so graceful,
The shape could curve and sway as hips.
The man looks, points, sits, stares.
There is something- what is it?-
Beyond the flower’s sepal.
It moves, it twitches.

A cry!
A leg erupts from its roots, an arm from its leaf.
In an instantaneous sputter, without flash or warning,
A pretty face gives way, and then, and then.
The girl is there, she is soft and new,
So deferent and so familiar, oh, how her eyes make me cry.
I sob and beg and plead, clawing desperately at my face
To stop my sudden breakdown.
She smiles so sensually and I am completely undone.

I feel my throat burn anew, and she saunters over to my side,
A sweet flower on her barren breast.
A light kiss on faint lips and I cry all the harder.
She holds me tight, quenches my thirst,
Heals my wounds, and makes my foul body clean.

But my moment of passion cannot stay,
I look to my left, a river has formed of my tears,
And in it I see my face, my eyes are red and swollen,
I look up, the man has been swallowed,
The river’s course too strong for his newly born body.
I look over, the river rises, the girl stands, still she holds me,
But I will not move, she begs desperately for me
To run with her so far away, but I cannot,
The river is mine and it swallows me away from her grasp.
In it I fall so soft asleep, and when I finally awake,
A porcelain bathroom floor greets me, the bite of bile on my tongue.



VI. Folding Colors
I stand in the bathroom, a mirror to my face,
Cobwebs in its every crease.
I run down my arms, perpetually spinning,
And folding, they echo agelessly.

I spread my fingers down my back,
They curve and contort with my spine.
I pour down my legs, flowing endlessly,
Twitching for an itch behind my knee.

I look down at my feet, as cold as ice,
I want to bleach them white,
I want to stain them black.
As white as powder, as black as tar.

I wish them yellow like the stain on my fingers,
Or red like the color of my eyes.
But all of all; I wish to be completely green.
And green I am, I am the monster.

Crimson dragon breath on glistening dragon scales,
My claws scratch at my gloating paws.
My gluttonous ways forsake me,
I am become a bleached white skeleton.

Pale bones protrude from my lemon shirt,
Pale bones protrude from my lemon skirt.
I groan and scratch my greedy dragon claws
Against my yellow lion paws.

VII. A Moment Among the Sober Classes
A jutting, toothy grin displays itself before me,
I see the sordid foolishness in my face,
The visions- my fun, has passed.
I am just my dopey self,
With a foul taste on my tongue.

I reach into the cabinet,
My hands now heavy with weariness,
But I find what I search for.
I hold my dots in the palm of my hand,
And quickly devour two or three.
I smile and sigh, my sweet flowers
Fade on the tip of my tongue.

I hurry to my room,
Past the grim and nothingness,
To grab my loving bottle
For a little drink.

The rum pours down my parched throat,
And I sputter a cough.
What day is it?
When did I last have a glass filled simply of water,
Or eat for that matter?
My stomach burns in anger.
I run to the bathroom,
Heaves of foam flowing into the toilet’s hungry gullet.

I stumble, like the brute I am,
Down my matted stairs,
They slosh with my every pained step.
Not the liquor or acid,
No this is my sober stupor.

The kitchen, so brightly white,
Stains my eyes with visions of past meals
And ones I couldn’t quite keep up.
I feel my protruding ribs and hear
My neglected body protest. My
Gnarled bat fingers slap together
Ramen and crackers. A quick crack of
Lucid thoughts overtake me, and I swear,
This is my last trip, my last night of
All engrossing pleasure and deprivation.

My hands, a shovel, send water and nutriment
To my malnourished body as it cries with glee
At each gulp of cool reprieve and each gush of spices.
My meal finished, I reach under the dripping den of pipes
To grab a cold sweating canister
Teaming to the brim with foul whiskey,
The very best my meager allowance can afford.
I walk to the living room, stacked with old newspapers,
And sprawl out on my leather couch.
The bitter old dragon bites my throat,
Its wretched flames pierce me, as I top off
The flask in two blessed swigs.
The clock purrs,
Its numbers painted on in red.
The thunderous liquid in my gut,
I grow drowsy and collapse like a folding tent.

VIII. Gaining Speed
I wake, my head a mess,
My body lying in the middle of a
Shinning green forest,
Broken pine needles nestling me in.
I stand and see a broken vase,
Its color shifting with my puffs of breath.
Ever slowly, I crawl over,
Grab a shard and look deep within
The teaming reflection, it flashes red,
And a hollow vantage takes me,
My hand is ringing, its color mixing with the glass,
She lays before me, clotting bows
Of smoke ascending from her lips.

A glittering grin consumes me,
And the man lies by her side,
I stand, crunching foam between my toes,
A teetering gate overtakes me,
And merrily I glide beside them.
Centering myself between the two,
I lie in blissful perspiration,
Sweat drips, rather, rain pours,
Vastly over my simple, empty skull.
Corroding away my anarchic spirit,
Leaving behind a sublime divorce in replete.

I turn my head to face her,
She smiles back
And sighs a breath of wind around me.
He whispers songs of flowers.
I thank him softly, as his refrain begins,
He stands and glides away,
Fickle feet inches off the bubbling earth.
With her I begin to move,
Faster and faster, we begin to run.
A blurry specter we have become,
A whirring movement, for hours we run.

IX. An Old Western Hunt
We stop, in glorious nullification.
There is darkness flickering in our eyes,
There is light growing beyond our grasp.
A whistle sounds, slighting the silence,
And the dim streak of light erupts
And from it bursts a thousand chariots and horses,
Golden hisses flying from the masters whips.
A charcoal stallion leads the pack,
Its growling furnace-mouth
Excreting lashes of molten hiss and hum.

Then leaps out a swerving bolt of flames,
Four paws panning out from under it,
A coal black muzzle for a head,
And shinning diamond fangs therein.

Their sudden floating race goes on for ages,
And then, they charge by us, and we turn away,
Fire licking at the nape of our necks.
We turn, a ghost town unfolding before us.

X. Shoot-Out
The north.
The sky rises above my head,
Calling, roaring a blasting of souls.
Stars are shooting, the traffic of the gods.
A cow brays to the east,
And we look.

Buildings tower all around us,
And old run-down ghost town.
Salons, bars, and sheriff’s stations.
Curve around the bend.
The man stands centered on a
Desolate, dirt road,
Tumbleweeds rolling by his feet.

He wears an all black uniform,
Dressed like an old western villain,
Shining black boots and all.
I stand and walk towards him,
He lurches back, measuring each step I take.
A glistening pistol catches my eye,
His shaking hand rests on its hilt
As a stain of red forms on his shirt.
I turn and see the girl,
Her look now matches his own,
But her attire is bathed in white.

In her loving hands,
Nestled in her palms,
Two angry clicks of metal hiss
And groan, awaiting their light.
In the creeping corner of my eyes,
I see him raise his gun.

A shot, a cloud of fizzing smoke.
My back breaks,
Her angry clicks sound off in unison
With his, a pain scratches at my heart,
A demon eats away at me,
And I am suspended in the air.
I beg and hope to fall,
But something, for ages it lasts,
Props me up as clicks and bangs
And pangs of pain sound off in my brain.

At long last, I fall slowly to the ground.
Plumes of dust shade my face,
And I drift to a silent sleep.
A millennium goes by, and when I awake,
I am lying in my darkened living room.

XI. Goodnight
My hand throbs steadily with my heart.
Sticky liquid is beginning to crust on my palm,
Foaming up onto a crystal shard.
I lie now on a bed of glass.