Loss

There's nothing more sadly sensual than after-rain pine trees stuck into earth like paper umbrellas dropped 

into a cocktail glass. 

As I walk under dripping branches, thinking my thoughts, I see a black scarf on the concrete path before me. It belonged to a woman. She wears heels and perfect make up. Sweet perfume. She is afraid of growing old. The wind must have untangled the scarf from her shoulders. She walked all the way home from this little park with the ghost of the scarf wrapped around her neck. Before she realized it was gone. 

Metro

I walk past a man sauntering down the escalator like a sweet rotting Jamaican swamp. Puddles

of ghosts flicker around his feet. The distant rumble of trains sounds like a stifled yawn of an 

aligator. He leans forward with a grin; rests his fingers on my shoulder: "You are

a witch",

he says.

Bug

I wake up. I go to the bathroom. I see a sheet of paper with some scribbling on it and an upturned glass on the floor. I think to myself: strange.

Under the glass there's an imprisoned bug the size of a grain of sand. Roommate had left a letter next to it. The letter reads: "I found this animal in the bathroom this morning. I was afraid it might be a very small cockroach. I'm leaving it for you for closer inspection. R.".

I murdered it.

(...)

Existence of elephants(ensations)

manifested by a stampede of metaphysical

elephant feet rolling across my head.

(...)

Dolphin in a tree - 

Chinese man pokes

the air with a stick.

The act of writing

Is a game of turning

a chess piece

into a turtle.

(...)

You're an interval

(dis)harmonized

with my silence.

(...)

Morning: fog clasped

on the streetlamp's neck

like a wet glove.

(...)

I think of your tongue as a leaf, punctured with light, spinning

in the water.

(...)

The demon of disturbed sleep

broods

in bright daylight.

My strings tremble like electric

power lines set in motion by a swallow

taking flight.

Snail

She said, I don´t think I can handle
being in this place where
each minute is like a hundred
snails asleep under the snow.

I make time for ideas that unfurl along the slender stalk
of tongue.

4:23 am

A cloud of steam sits on the mirror like a strange

white parrot on the shoulder of a pirate.

Ripe fictions fall on soft December 

ground.

Untraceable: the trajectory of body unraveled

like a cotton ball.

A crimson chasm - spread wide open from edge to edge -
gorging on your presence.

The witch of the unspoken perched on my shoulder
like a slouching bat.

I think of red crawfish crawling over a naked body; dangling from strands

of ashen hair. A human starfish sprawled on white sand on the curved edge

of the sea.

A hundred years ago, it was 7 am. Beds rocked softly 

on cold floor like empty peanut shells. 

Rooms and Herons

She opens her eyes and watches sun rays scuttle into the room on hundreds of tiny clicking legs. Her skin is still moist with sweat; sheets cling to her like mouldy wallpaper peeling off stained, yellow walls. She smiles. The corners of her mouth tremble and flop like a captured trout.

Fish glitter in the bright dawn sun: lonely heron wades through torn lily pads in the shallow water.