Future

I saw my future gasping for air
Screaming silently 
Mouth wide open
A hundred teeth
Five hundred eyes
I ran to the ocean
With the shadow of a woman
Left erasing herself 
Replacing every syllable with 'sorry'
Another
Who hated flowers 
But kept some by her bed
Met the man who painted them on a wall
Wilted, and never looked again
Shrunken as the man of Sundays
Heading to a church to kneel
Shrunken as a song losing bitrate
Shrunken as a wide angle sepia tinted jpeg file compressed into a floppy drive
"You're better at reading,
Not being read," said another.
I saw the gifts 
Sent to me in pairs 
In twos and threes
Trickle
Then a rain
My wretched mind floods
Then trickles to drops again.
I saw days turn to hours
and life turn to numbers
In pairs of three
We drank the ocean dry.

A poem is never finished 
Only abandoned
But who
Reads a poet
Who does the task 
Of chipping away
At the rock
All alone
'Sshh' the universe hisses
"Sorry", chipping softly 
And slowly now
As you drown in wires 
And lights 
Disguised as tomes
Tones can be misleading 
Digitally 
"Sshhh" louder now
Everyone stares

Insane

The salt on your lip
The sweat in your brow
The hands you slit
The hate in your marrow

The way you undo you dress
The way you say you're a mess
The avalanche in your empty belly
The heroes and queens on your telly

Tell you you're the scene 
You can be the rage 
Burn the stage 
Be the gates to everything 
Cold and warm
But July stings and April won't sing
You're just a silent storm

Fold the girl

It's all the same, she said
The days and the ends of ways.
New city, she's seen before
The keys that dangle from her chain
The eyes that follow 
Down the lane
I steal the songs she used to hum
And when it snows, she breaks
Into a run.

It's all a game, she said
The sun has kissed her eyes too often
And the rain has not
left any pore dry
While I drown in bottles of different shapes
Darting between pills like scattered beetles
An old passport smudged with stamps,
She leaves home.

I know why I'm not in your view
My seaweed hair holding on to the ocean floor 
Eyes darting like a chicken running from the knife
And after all has come to pass
All I want to see is
you, unframed 
After all this
All this time I can't 
Hold the girl
So I fold the girl in half
And put her in my pocket.