orchids in beer bottles
orchids in beer bottles
scenting the compound,
pungent musk marks the walls
and bed, dripping from each end
the night that i couldn’t stomach
and a shaken apartment for one.
c. me
on lilacs
on lilacs
this is what i will leave behind:
littered with them, pinnate beauties;
natural tapestries of magenta,
creamy-whites and lavender
arching over the compound,
quiet under their unsettled revelations
that one day they would rot and decay
as well.
against austere reflections of the sky,
they stand as sores to be marveled
but they were my little sores,
and this is why i loved them best.
c. me
on divorce settlements
on divorce settlements
central park, mother’s day
lilac clusters girdled ripe greenery
ignorant to the house that gave it life.
in an instant a dream relives itself;
portraits and armchairs
vanish each by each
they found ways to upset it best,
ghosts cry for what is no longer theirs
but they aren’t alone.
divided are the temperate lifestyles
i accepted best, planted my feet
firmly in your savage grounds
money mends the deeds that our hearts
never wanted to.
c. me
rum and the moon over lawrence, ks
rum and the moon over lawrence, ks
from what i contemplated to be
your empty mouth came the smog
hushing the creeping cold on my spine
(the songs bleet together
in a rushed bouquet of sorts)
honey-rose walking with you
under the streetlamps, my hair
was a mess of leaves and ash
(the flecks were garnish in your eyes)
ask me to stay
and i’ll work on keeping around
c. me
black cherries
black cherries
(summer) under sun,
the black-rouge nectar
baked into my fingertips
that once was sweet on my tongue.
i stained your secrets
with your voice unsung.
c. me
untitled
(untitled)
The shape of the words
in his mouth clung to each other in panic and so he told her
like this:
Winter’s tarnished roots were blushing green this morning
and unearthed the jars of crimson poppies I left you
in your stone garden in the smog of August.
I had imagined you passing them lightly between your fingertips
and on top of the hardened shell of your stomach that held
the same black-pit blossom (and this was the earth’s secret
that it kept from us in her cold clay hands) and how I wish I
could have held your skeletal claws in my own, kept you quiet
from thrashing your bones at the unknown.
c. me
here’s what we found
(…) here in the poisonblackwater
of these frosted canyons did we find
the ghosts of our emperors, that croon
to their rusted armor(how they keep me up at night)never to have
an infant of royalty(little jewels of thine name)
weigh on their calloused arms
(i hear you, i do)
ownership was once threatened in blood
by the bullies of these waters,
they who shed their unbentlight
in the shadows of their disputes
(in song, of freshwater pearls)
merely haunting the waters that was left to them
in the rosy sunsets of their unrefined lives.
c. me
on thorns (revision)
on thorns
(they were your favorite garnish)
these iron-wrought gates in the spring
are actively infested with roses,
pink and fleshy,
their thorny stems hug the gates
and constrict it like a snake to an
unsuspecting neck,
like you to me,
like me to us.
c. me
on forgiveness
wrote this for my new poetry class.
on forgiveness
my fall from Arizona
pulled from my shaking grip.
desert rose and sun-baked
rich soil rusted in pieces.
final destination became hazy,
prickled desert foliage.
i never forgave him.
this city kept me captive
most of my life,
the scent of dampened cement
rose from each corner of my room
without invitation.
i said nothing, i am sorry.
c. me
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