Category: –

1. Cali @ Rochester

CAESAR SALAD
— Crisp romaine croutons with caesar dressing

Continue reading “daily grub” →

Continue reading “いただきます (itadakimatsu)” →

Continue reading “sixteen” →

see, every time i rise from the dinner table

i leave a battlefield behind.

bones plucked, strewn, broken;

spit showering down like hail.

what is otherwise something sacred,

really is a waste of space.

they tell me to pray about love, but if they

can’t tell me that we‘re something real

then that’d just be blasphemous.

someday always, and

eventually diffuses into a myth.

so instead i build a militia of something less.

something less than divine intervention,

or rhapsodic songs about soulmates.

because i know better,

because i am a soldier,

yet

this is why they call me a monster.

i.

everything’s been riding on

lamenting throbs that screech along

to the white noise under my tongue.

ii.

moonlight rains down to sweep me

away to a place where my eyes turn crystal.

and fails.

iii.

i think my head beats more

times per minute than my heart.

or is that just truth knocking at my door?

iv.

i swallow eggshells like

breadcrumbs, but birds still fly south,

finding themselves pecking at plates.

v.

write about yourself so you can

clinch something bigger so you can

write more about yourself so you can

clinch something bigger so you can

vi

is this the life i’ve always wanted?

i’m sure i pressed another button

in the elevator.

Doom like a vulture’s cry—a sputtering

flame choking on honest

water; a sea wave that stills mid-air,

crest and trough multiverses apart.

I think I saw it first, brimming in the

pools of your concealed pout.

You can’t fool me: there is stubborn moss

growing within the cracks of your voice,

your eyes bruised and melted,

making me feel like a wayward child

seeing his mother cry for the first time.

This is my last plea to you:

pat down the last few slabs of earth

into my screaming mouth and let

the grass grow from my bones. After all,

what else am I, but something

gnawed and spat out on mosaic floors—

A toothpick on a chocolate sample

Once craved.

Twice forgotten.

Never loved.

———

with scaly fingers, i tuck these

thickened, dry lumps of quasi-forgotten

nightmares with a sticky duvet to sleep.

i sweep the dust off another, and smoothen

it out on my weathered mountains of knuckles.

the cabinet i thought i’d never open

slams shut, scaring away the spirits

of need and thirst and greed,

until girl in the mirror pins me down with

that familiar gaze.

i tilt my head but she does not tilt back.

instead, she tells me she hopes they will not

notice my wispy, dry hair—constantly

bundled in a scratchy mop—

or the way my lips crack at the edges,

when i smile to kill the silence that stalks like a predator.

but she can only hope: so as i, can only pray.

entropy is a laughable thing.