Hating roses red,
Slanted, wilted,
Failing—

To make up for
For a lack of
Love selfless.

Ceci n’est pas une pipe;
This is not real, love;
An image making up worlds and/or

Underworlds where we could meet—
I must be imagining things.

Even when frozen in time,
Roses trapped in
Books are swooning.

Bedrock-old tales written in bliss.
Fictitious. Annoying.

I’m gone with a kiss,
Before cruel sandy wings fly me
Off to another land

Of Oz, or overdose.
Slow-burning
Flames drown us as

I, alone, discover a
Love as captive
As an abyss.

Hand me a hanging
Rope; I can’t cope with
All this monstrous lethal

Hope.
Done hanging
On. On. On.

To on and off on and
Off.

Learned to hate
Your pretension your
Full-square manipulation,

Your edges merged with your
Softness you got your act together
Thank god—

Crawling away but you want
To run when I’m
Not looking; a heart

Beating but I hear
No pulse under
A vampire-white

Shell glistening. Only a star
Could make you
Blush, make you red—

Why am I haunted when
You’re eclipsed, locked away
In a memory bank,

Behind full moons
Somewhere
In my brain—

My problematic heart
Or karmic soul latching

On to you— I have yet to
Discover which color I was
In one of my eight

Thousand past lives: a muddy
Blind rose petal or
A breathing plastic so
I never fade in shade—

You kill us
To live
Forever.

Hiring villains to star in
My eyes’ skies so your
Image could birth storm-

Babies like cloud-seed
Rains in Dubai.

Ruin my nature so I can leak red
For months, walk in zombie, I

Pray for an ending less
Cruel than you—

Tucked in a cloud-bed
Raging lullabies to keep me
Dead when breathing.

What’s the world behind
Your eyes? Have you been hiding there
Forever or are you stuck within your
Little implosions of truth.

The heart could reach— galaxies
Of emptiness you host in brown-red
Gates— eyes leaking so slow it goes
Undetected unlike Dali

Clocks—
Time documented in
Oil rainbows surreal—

Rehearsing
Being human, fooling some
But now none—

Slanted offers.
Blonde depression now bleached—
An eternal ruin.

My (h)air diluted in a stranger’s
Outline so I could build a sanctuary from

Creations fresh, bold, clueless.
A rimless spaghetti junction

Eternal until a novel monster eats up
The landscape to throw in new
Apocalypses here and there

Sprinkle sprinkle,
You are a god.
Addiction to drama or new

Traumas. I’m intrigued by
Your familiar little murders, for I am
In love with renaissance—

Whipped dream, I meant
Cream gleaning all
The meaning I can squeeze out

Of words so I can mislead and be an
Unreliable narrator like
You for once.

Whisk fact and fiction let
Them come to their own
Conclusions.

How can
I describe the void
Between the molecules between us

Covered in melting tar a hot prisoner
To be run over;
A melting pot for all things solar,

An apocalyptic choker
Venom covered in honey dangled
On a stick, a vibrant carrot

So I could follow
Your illusions blind.

Copying Sylvia, everything sour
Everything lemon—nothing
Bitter, nothing sweet about you.

Transfusional confession
Left me weak, this week of release
I am not myself;

Never been so loud and
Honest. A celebration, this is.
I keep the bleeding part alive

So I can keep your ghost
Breathing to whisper words into my
Ear. Conquered my fears.

Never knew pure
Fever with elusive bombs—

Fell for your swarm or charm,
Dizzy.

I let
The engines float to get to
You every bright nightfall,

Killed my lethal
Hopes so I survived on desperation.

Pain:
A mere sign of my living human.

Consolations, I need consolations
Like constellations watching me over
Day and night; sway and tight.