the spaces in between the smallest of our constituents can only be referred to by indirect means & insecure methods. by men in clean white coats & pale, sun-starved skin, blasphemous practitioners of black magick & ancient apocryphal amalgams. circle logic and Babel. towering nonsense & staggering genius.

my tongue swelled & in my mouth tasted of bile & yesterdays idle thoughts. words that hadn't gone down when i chose to swallow them mingled with the meager lunch you & i had shared earlier that day. all grease & bitter. all ill at ease & stutter. i slid the rigid mass of muscle along the backs of imperfect, yellowing teeth that formed what i liked to believe a genuine smile. a crooked if boyish & naive smile. my tongue swelled like the surging tides & likewise shrank back at the thought the understanding, the knowledge, novel & curious, of its reckless nature. self serving means to selfless ends. the waves subsided, my tongue retreated to the recesses of my brittle throat down, down to lick the wounds that itself had opened. my tongue retreated & the waves became as if unbourne, crawling back drawing into cold briney depths of a long barren womb.

earthbound & setting sun crowned you stood before me. nimbus aflame you existed unafraid but ashamed, you would have died for the stars. i wanted to die in your arms i wanted to be cleansed by the hot tears of despair that in my dry eyes i envisioned you would shed for me. you would have died for the stars while in their perpetual madness, utter & terrible, these very same these thousand million cold suns ground your bones to dust.



but i couldnt find my words. they eluded me or maybe perhaps it is i who carelessly lost them. the shapes of their letters, my expert punctuation & exacting delivery & cadence would be no match for the indefatigable march of numbers. the graceful unfolding of the The. i shook & i shivered at the grand design of things that i saw scrawled in the wet sand at my feet, the adventuresome lock of hair that fell out of or perchance into place on your forehead. the low throaty babble of the great architect rumbled in the surf & pierced the air in the cry of the birds circling my head. more apparent was the neat equation, the exquisite demonstration that fit between the parenthesis that cut so harshly, directed the light so cleanly on either side of your smile. the distances between the galaxies the vast limitless tracts we had already wetted with our lust dried with our greedy love bathed with our tears honest & profound & covered our tracks with this infinite longing.

the sun kept the fire at your heel. with it, you awoke & were driven here, to the sea. when it burned above you yearned to be buried deep within me, to sink into my cool & welcome oasis. and when dusk fell, so too did your tender feet into synchopated rhythm as the relentless heat at your back & the directionless memory of me caused a curious, wandering dance. calculated misstep led you here. but i told myself it was written in the spaces between as the sun, for whom you would perish, set, & you began, as you always do, to walk back to me...

































ae.