Mars

He releases a valve, hoping to adjust.
Thoughts ribbon from his gauzy head

to catch in the maw of something else.
The computer's hum becomes a song;

it's lights: a burgeoning kaleidoscope.
He delves deeper to another surface,

loses mass, tries to exercise to slow the descent,
but resistance leaves concentric red bands.

His love disburses into the atmosphere,
hangs in the air like a question,

condenses shotgun on stark charred mornings,
obscures his porthole mirror image

with the crumpled geometry of landing.
The days tessellate together to form

a crystalline skeleton with red blood
beating desire blue into his torpid body.

The realization his eyes are only lenses.
The curdled emotion microscoped indefinitely.

An unsettled numb rises from his throat,
ragged and pure like an infant bird.

He finds life and doesn't beam it back.

Real Love

It was such a disappointment

to find Santa isn't real

and it was just my parents

presenting their love each year.

Not Helping

There is an ant who,
when cut in half,
fights his back end to the death.

There was a botanist who
came across a scaly herb
and named it "broomrape".

Life-like

In the future,
defying all reason,
we can be represented by algorithms;
our essence encoded.

My first kiss,
blown through the sieve of her equation,
collects dewy on experience.
We touch in theory.

It is always my first
time and never hers.
She said I'm unique.

Just what I wanted
to hear.

Ladyfingers

Lady Macbeth's hands were always filthy because she was always putting them where they didn't belong. After trying the spiciest Italian remedies known to her people the good lady decided to buy a puppy to suckle on each of her dirty digits, giving them names like pinky for her pinky puppy and Princess for her other pinky puppy because they were the daintiest. She spent many an enchanting afternoon gallivanting around her kingdom high-fiving the court jester, using her five puppy discount at the local market and giving her servant boys the most roly poly wallop they had ever received in their short malformed lives. And of course there were downsides, but she played them off as fun: new gloves to be buy, interesting new methods for eating a sandwich and elaborate manicures to be had, but sadly her fluffy lumpkins developed a taste for imagined blood and took off on an all to real rampage, dragging their lady along for the ride. "Oh what fun!" she garbled, her mouth stuffed full of dirt as though something could have grown from it.