Amphetamine Salts

Hung upside down on the green couch
Tips of golden hair graze the wood floor
Some shiny ringlets pile in small circles
I bicycle my legs in the air 

I startle with a clap
Pull my spindly legs close to my chest
Rotate and
Reorient 

Lilliputian bitter beads
Incorporated into melted ice cream
A miniature spoon in a blue and white dish
Because I couldn't swallow a pill

All this for the times that
I tried to walk on the ceiling

Velveteen

Fingertips graze scalloped purple petals 
Affixed to bristly green flesh 
She turns to me 
“I don’t like African Violets”

I recall the violets that once populated her mother’s dining room table
I put the shallow pot down
And readjust the pinstripe calathea
in my hands 

She plays me 
Why by Annie Lennox and 
I may be mad, I may be blind, I may be viciously unkind
But I can still read what you’re thinking

She cocoons me
With sheets of a lilac kind
Swaddled in
Gauzy and thoughtful protection

I don’t ask about the violets
Instead our fingertips align
New moon intercepts new moon and 
It turns me inside out

Noesis

When I cross that state line

I think of before when your head was in my hands
And mine in yours

You held your thumb to my lips
Offering a centimeter of reflection

Chuggin poppy seed tea
You tasted like gasoline

Live oaks and a distant beam
A parkway with a dead-end

Now sheets of rain separating you from me
And me from myself

I will purchase a bail bond for sanity
Scream with my head out the window

I float above like a hummingbird
Head pressed to the ceiling

I can see you properly now

You are an empty shell
An oyster gleaming

Fleshed Out

It was Heavy June
When I met you

Piss on the floor
Shards of plastic

Displaced fear

Crowded spaces
Between my teeth

Tightened

Suddenly open 
Caskets parading through the street 

Ruby Red Heels and a Lilac Wig
Encrusted with jewels 

I got shoved
Into the funereal face

Closed eyes
And wispy eyelashes

Levitating alone in a Seafoam Cadillac 

I didn't know you

Didn’t willingly  conjure
These missing pieces

And now you are never coming back

Purgatorial

Our teeth waning and cracked 
Sharpened and profane 

Wringing hands and splay-footed feet
We scrape 

Shaking the jar 
Straddling the stream 

Holding a royal bottle to the mouth 

We skirt along
Beneath the surface

Undetectable 
Disguised as moss 

Of two worlds 
Where we were both forgotten