chiaroscuro

there's something about girls who wear ragged shorts and drown in puffy coats who roller blade to class and scrape their knees and laugh through lipsticked teeth there's something about girls who glide across snow to sing with whistles and shrieks who beckon with their eyes "come hither, come here" they say through their ringed fingers there's something about girls who wear metal and spit fire hair like stripped bark and stars smoking on the tears of the withered and grinding their boot heel on the butts of whimpering cigarettes there's something about girls with their library of collections their small eyes full of world's wonder and the borrowed curiosity of the old trekking in muddy sneakers towards the gaping library doors there's something about girls who forge on a determined path towards an age of weightlessness where people stand on soapboxes not to preach but to reach for the folded black umbrella above there...

On the outside I'm looking in Prying into something broken I hold a single candle Against the backdrop of a thousand fires The crypt is filled The mourners gather I stand here with a single candle On the outside looking in The sky vomits rain Drenching the banners of black A few raindrops splatter my cheeks Under the guise of tears My single candle sputters in the wind A single smile, a single greeting Exchanged in the burgundy hallway A single candle to a thousand bonfires Her match has gone out Choked to death by the vomiting rain I am on the outside looking in Mourning a death that once smiled at me.

that heart-colored galaxy surpassing the rich raging tapestry throwing it all into the stars like trust, like hope, like resolve we bounce from constellation to constellation wishing and seeing and singing to unsung icy melodies that pick at the frost of the heart speaking to the inner flame in our chest rattling like the tail of a snake giggling like the child entwined around your knees wailing like the bone flute carved from death sleeping like the monstrous dragon around the mountain we think in dreams and we laugh at reality bowing every ten steps to bless our path groveling as the pantheon throws the dice of life aces on the table, and you fold unpeel yet another memo, unfold another paper heart and reveal your lucky numbers, fortune favors the wise stand on your own two feet and seize unkind fate and wrestle it until the earth dissolves into craft glitter the last winding road you should take leads back to me standing under the iron bar lanterns flickeri...

my breath seizes i cannot see  what's ahead of me there's a thread of laughter a spool of smiles and i long to unravel and to tangle but all i see is unity and organization and i plummet and i choke for what is it about your arresting air your debonair nonsense  pouring like rain in the desert i long for disorder and all i see is serenity let the waterfall crash, let the storms scream let them in and i bid them welcome for at least i can pledge my troth to one unsteady phenonemenon after another until something comes to truly sweep me away for good

Frothy happiness bubbling like champagne Carrying me abreast a wave of silver flame Which swells and swells until my heart would burst And I balance in the precipice, my wings unfurled Soigne and curious, like a dapper dancer My emotions flit and fly, in private they concur That this new ball, this splendid shining thing Deserves a worthy response, more than just a confettied fling And so we clasp our silken hands and we laugh Aloud and with careless shrieks Until we melt into faerie wilderness and foreign heat A strange, contorting writhe, like a dragon's prance Colors blur into pastel obscurity Nothing but green, green, and goldish white I see nothing but your eyes in mine As the water shivers on your star-studded eyelashes They tremble, and I fall.

two broken people do not make a whole nor does a whole person make a broken person whole what is this yearning, this cry for an other what is this inexorable demand for your perfect half it's something sublime and attainable ethereal and earthly, perfect in its imperfection let the night be your past time and your sunlight be my moonlight equity but not equality wholeness but not completion a pearl above great price or is it just so, before the swine? well i say fuck the system take it back i want to cut it off pluck it from my skull roll it into the chasm i hate it and i can tell you do too let's hate it together and die in a blaze of fiery white hopelessness and not of their pretty white lace and their bloody flowers. The bells do not toll for me; they toll for thee. 

what is feral but free what is passion but fire what is dead but unmoving what is freedom but death what is loneliness but aloneness what is peace but stillness what is love but splitting what is maturing but aging what is life but endlessness is it more to continue than to end?