a painted lip flits up and down:

post-adolescent flight.

an Asymmetric dancer or

a butterfly at Night.

we've visited the world at length

but never saw a Thing,

we closed our eyes and spun about,

a man, a Boy, a king!

i pondered on the truth today,

and discovered nothing New

but another way to heaven

and geometries askew.

i am Sixteen and then turn bored

and bitter, cold, and mean.

i will sprint away to elsewhere,

a Girl, a woman–queen.

lips with personality.

a silly mouth, open,

slowly catching life

in pillowed cheeks,

silently pushing a syllable

Puh. Puh. Puh.

through zen emptiness.

i wonder if she knows she's caged.

orange and gold

and flat like the sun in the sky.

she is thousands of miles removed,

from a lake in japan

that's now half-dead and dark

and thick with soda sludge

and pharmaceuticals.

next door are fish from the

tennessee river.

Born to dodge motorboats

and busted tires,

they are simpler, browner,

but they are equally displaced.

equally unquestioning.

maybe they're saved,

maybe they're doomed.

slippery bodies,

eyes like pennies,

all shine in the blue depths.

do they know that behind

two inches of plexiglass

lurk unimaginable horrors?

even a shark would tremor.

electric fairy lights

danced on darkened eyes

of scattered souls.

a neon sign,

ungodlike and self-aware,

straight to the point

proclaims

these lovely ladies dance for you

and

open twenty-four hours a day

and

topless sweethearts

and

WELCOME TO HEAVEN.

heaven.

in the cold place

at the nape of my neck,

or in the grubby fingers

of a divorced mailman with a dollar.

the delicate place of a

half-hearted dream,

shattered in the grey between

relevance and politics.

a strip club behind a chinese

restaurant.

this is heaven?

fairylights and broken bottles

in an alley where someone

lost their way, their innocence,

the contents of their stomach.

a heaven for someone

with dark eyes

and a few questions

under their skin.