Are we a pestilence or are we angels Did we come here to destroy, or save? We, the creatures who defined the angles Between the stars, and sailed the ocean wave Are we much mightier than the fruit flies? Than all the creatures free in forest shade? Are we constructing such elaborate murals That we can’t see our own reflections fade? We came from dust, to dust we shall return Let’s not drag all other life inside our urn.
broken thing
I am a broken thing now All of my feathers are frayed I hold a glass in my claws And shiver under its weight. The poison that heavied my soul Was a slow, thick drink. I was baptized in human tears Over a hospital sink. Or maybe I was drowned with human blood and hair I can’t distinguish exactly (but it smelled like hospital air.) I cannot watch sad films See the actors’ broken eyes Because my broken back Hauls the weight of their actual cries. The fiction is no longer fiction It’s wrenched itself off the page But real fiction’s worse than fiction Since nobody filters the rage. Nobody gives your hero The extra chance they deserve. They beat your hero with a bat And crush them like a nerve. They burn your hero with matches And go out to watch the game You document the wounds and regrets And remember your hero’s name.
I sailed a rowboat to the edge of the world
I sailed a rowboat to the edge of the world, where the atmosphere meets open space Launched straight up, as the smoke unfurled, as the waves grew small and the clouds uncurled I found myself in that place. Then at the cusp where the sunlight streamed and the edge of the world goldenly gleamed and my breath was frozen in the still night air, I lifted my arms, tossed back my hair And my boat tipped forward past invisible edges, like a thousand needles on a thousand ledges and I trimmed the air like I sculpted hedges For a single moment I was one of the stars, and the sunlight pierced my eyes and my scars, and I caught my breath in the breathless void, and the sun slipped behind the edge, destroyed. Then I shot towards the ground with incredible speed, as though I were riding a flaming steed, with the wind in my hair and my hair on fire and each muscle stretched and tuned as a wire, and I charged the earth as the earth stood still, racing the ice down an endless hill, and the coastline grew sharp and I thought I heard waves, and the dead raised their eyes from their ancient graves, as I roared and I sliced and I bled and I raved, And i burst to the ground with my head unshaved As I lay on the grass looking up at space And the breeze brushed the years and the tears from my face I sank back deeply and felt each blade Like a mammoth's fur, like the earth had frayed And I heard an owl weeping in the night And gravity held me and pressed me tight I remembered and sung what I'd heard before As I seeped down to sleep inside the core.
[Featured Image: High-altitude balloon by Noah Klugman; modified from source]
who wields the hand behind the whitened blade
Who wields the hand behind the whitened blade that carves the edges out around the clouds to let out light, the fire encircling shade a fracture spewing sunbeams over jade? And all those carvings, where on land are they? Perhaps the carver catches them before they fall or maybe they dissolve in stormy ray and crash as crystal rains, a broken spray. Jade forests turn to gold beneath the sun and honey milk flows over endless crowds illuminating sweat of those who run and melting through the ice of day. It’s done. Why should the preface of the night be flames? The sun’s farewell, before she dons her shrouds and tucks behind the mountain range’s frames the final shriek from she who no one tames. Is it because each time she’s dying new? To rise again through song of dawning birds? Perhaps this wild display is her tattoo upon the world before she’s gone from view. Perhaps she never knows if she’ll return Perhaps she wields the knife herself, an art She makes the color blood, in patterned fern She burns the heavens with her spirit’s churn The question that these paintings all beget is not the sunset then, but shy regret that as a mortal, I may be offset by night that’s bound to end my own vignette. When that day comes, I’ll wait, a parapet and hear the air films moving through the trees I’ll see upon the ground my silhouette inked by my friend, her knife wrapped in a net. The sky is calm; she writes my epithet a blue with hues of starry alphabet Tonight I meet her, and together we’ll forget the reason why we feared to be reset.
a millipede waves on the sidewalk dust
A millipede waves on the sidewalk dust ruby-backed scales with a touch of rust deliberate marching straight towards the street a road not perceived by the undulant feet. I pluck it up and it curls to protest blocking me out as it hides, distressed I place it away on safe grass to rest knowing for sure it will ne’er be impressed that I saved it from death that I did what was best. I try not to view the crawler as flawed; I am probably just like that creature to God.
universal donor
I hate it I All the thinking I hate about the facts the lists no thinking that is about the pattern of the veins on a leaf Fake thinking dead brain no reason to think; it is in scientific fact actually about inserting that five-thousand gauge lance into the throttled vein of a druggie So tired that nonthinking becomes thought becomes effort slogging through moist warm suffocation air leaking pressing into the nares suffocating Forced here there are cotton balls in my ethmoid air cells there are frogs hopping on my tympanic membranes there are leeches sucking blood straight out of my abdominal aorta There are small carefully selected sea urchins and metal wedges inserted in the sulci of my brain Electrified by eels swimming in my cerebrospinal fluid Other ribs of other animals are sharpened and then placed carefully in my own intercostal muscles as punishment Not quite piercing my lung pleura I react to the xenograft but it can never be removed: That Is The Rules. Other animals are crawling up and down the walls why is it always small animals crawling on the walls? I wish I could pull one person for walking side by side with me Holding my hands with both of their hands But my hands have no nails anymore: they are peeled Instead of nails I have bleeding stumps The bleeding stump of the small boy injured by his cousin in the door with the bone sticking out of his shortened finger moaning through the ketamine it was not deep enough I have accumulated all the injuries That is why I am here I collect them all that they may be replayed over and over again on my own body and on the bodies of the people I love, in my nightmares in my daydreams and there is not a single person here who would deny it – that they have this experience – except they all deny it, lies to cover up their carnivorous porous wilted souls, they refuse to realize that they are just here also to soak up the blood with their blood, to graft the skin with their skin Nobody is a healer who is whole For you must give away small pieces of your soul like chips flaked off dry low-quality clay They will mix you in with sand and bake you sleep-deprived until you shred off, a universal donor One day I will look in the mirror After taking a pee in the disgusting bathroom that has toilet paper strewn about in fragments And I will see dead eyes staring back.
lizard
Lizard lays on log lapping up the light Never nodding off unless it’s nearing night Licking at the air, licking at the stone Clicking blackened claws Happily alone.
It will be like a guidewire
It will be like a guidewire Clear, straight path to follow Since we are all of the same caliber. But no! Blood clots mistakes sharp turns extra branches atypical anatomy Who said all the bodies were the same? Lies. You will bend until there is cursing And still you will get stuck And break And none of it is your fault For there is a system which must fit everybody And by fitting everyone, nobody fits perfectly. No patients No physicians No students They call us learners but we are all learners We are all broken behind the guidewire Covered in blood.
the dandelion
The dandelion lived in a curious meadow Where tulips and roses grew wild The dandelion talked at the yellow sun And smiled at the passing child The roses and tulips said “You don’t fit in. You’re simple and tiny and sad,” But the dandelion yellowed itself for the birds With all of the yellow it had And mirrored the sun with all of its might And thought that one day it would burst into light Trying so hard; living simply and glad. The roses and tulips grew old and decayed The dandelion woke and its beauty had frayed But the dandelion captured the whitened sun In its prisms of fluff all arrayed And it danced in the breeze and sung with a wheeze, “I’m living; I won’t be dismayed. I’d like to improve the world a bit Make it a brighter place But if I’m to fade, that’s how I was made, So I’ll smile and bow out with grace.” Then the dandelion drifted off to sleep And the wind scattered prisms far and deep And the birds and the grasses drooped down to weep. But then by surprise, before all of their eyes Fed by the sunshine dried from the skies Dandelions covered the meadow in streams And sang to the sun, and flourished and dreamed From the dandelion’s still life, out sprung the young To sing out the joyous still left to be sung And the old dandelion looked down from the sun And smiled as the sky shone brighter by one.
pome
A round pome Slip it under your tongue Like a laser-cut flower candy It may cut you Or you may crush it A weak pome Underchosen words Throw it out A slit pome Slit it behind your ear Slit it between your toes Twist it into a straw Drink. Dispose. A pome of light Reminiscent Luminescent Glistening Kinesis
balladrael 
