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casually stretch and scratch the sand at the tide-line

indents in your flesh show you;re too invisible to move

and the glass clinking fireside behind the night drive makes you shudder smooth

you are the queen and your king is fresh

the skin of your mind is newly minted coinage

and all the blame you lay at the feet of your parents

will grow tenfold scars that outline each of your million worries

sandman dreams of you and finds you wanting

epaulets on your sleeve are gleaming gold

you're drinking in the victories before you are winning

but youthful ignorance is armor, blissful and cold

finding your silhouette by memory

the snakes in your soles unwind

all the promises of tomorrow may yet hold

crushed against your chest like a hundred-weight of dried marigold

speech like lips were never meant to be closed

hydraulic pumps piston blood beneath your matching clothes

salvage the knowledge that you were never picked last

take home the trophy that proves you did more than asked

gentle leaves falling and landing, twisting sinewy paths in the froth of nothing

your bones are fragile in the grip of new emotion

stand in the bathtub, squirting lemon lotion on perfectly good skin that has never lacked for attention

eventually the salt will dry even the most lubed of minds

and the person you were on the day you felt the happiest

is as dead as the tomorrow you

dying more swiftly than a graveyard full of crack baby bassinets

appear in the midst of your own obsession

blink fast enough to escape the after image

of smoking weed and drinking

and passing out cold and waking up with remorse

the deer are children who eat from your palm but you're too tired to go home alone

imagining isn't so hard when the moon is so bright

and the sea at your feet is twisting with light

you can inhale the breeze and electrocute yourself

a passing quiver in your belly becomes a minnow in your healthy worry but you continue

as if you didn't notice the bruise, coagulating, dark and red and blurry

so drown in the crying moans of a lesser beast

cannibalistic, defying the pugilistic destiny of your fists

hand meets meat, teeth gnash against vein

the maps impatiently wrapped around the wrists of the conqueror

who insists that you are worthy of his drunken rage

how can i write about you

sitting perfect like the first day the sky met the earth

without weeping and rewriting history

that was never meant to be

not for the likes of me

who passes and succumbs in the direction of your impish thumb