ON THE HORIZON

THE WANDERER

the horizon was broken by skeletal trees

cracks in the glass of the world

I am licking the motherboard in search of water


beautiful branches like charred legs

reaching through the smog to touch the analog stars

the horizon thighs


I remember the font of dead languages

but I am only singing vomit to the ground

an ode to those salacious limbs


the nuclear wind ignites in the distance

I think of her pixelated civilization

the trees reach upwards, fractals


here I am, after The End of it all

plucking microprocessors from her toes

drinking the sweet nectar of potential energy


the bones of humans etched with unholy curses

the tongues of cannibalistic capitalists long evaporated

they are now silicon-based life forms


in the chaotic silence I planted a memory stick

the dirt swallowed it like lightning

the crystalline trees fed it spit, blood, semen, urine


a disabled mther gathered dark clouds

bef4re The End there were no glitches

the horizon was a horrific straight li/ne


I licked a hairy leg fo r. wa wa wa wa water

in the darkn//ifound it gleaming

woUld it bl0sssss0m or be TRAPpe3d in ts

numeri1111cal prison*



THE COWGIRL

bubbles saunter to the horizon of the glass

like turquoise jazzing its wavelength down to lavender

a tear in her eye


she came out west on a train but she didn't want to be homesteady

wood creaking in the moonlight dance of a chilly breeze

frontier cocktails


pearl snaps and a heart of gold

the ground soaked down the water she gave it

but the soil was already barren and bloodstained


what would the trees say about her

she thought. a man passed her

wearing a stained dreamcatcher t-shirt


there's a certain kind of sadness on the edge of the world

though of course she had never seen it

from her prickly rose throne at the top


she took a sip and thought of her cowboy days

the stars swirling ancestries of dear departed particles

bubbles gasping for air dissipate


a saxophone mourns for it is mastered

the mouthpiece appropriated by an unfamiliar breath

the reed quivering as it dreams of songbirds


but still the band plays, she sips, the wind blows through the trees

she will never dance with justice

she is only drawn to the bubbles


the horizon dissipates

the stars bluck the trees

their vibrations echoing through the

mountains



THE PRINCESS

a princess in a tower afflicted by serpents crawling out of her brain

she never leaves her bed

she got potato chip crumbs all in her boxers


an illusive prince emerges from the smoke

to rescue her from archaic Euro-centric gender myths

or maybe that's just her idea of irony


is she getting too comfy in her ivory bed

with her laptop and literature and thrashing moths?

perhaps the prince could save her from herself


"you're still a child,"

hiss the serpents, or the smoke, or the tower, or the princess,

"you're not ready to fight but that's okay"


"the king and queen imprisoned me here but they are usurped and penniless,"

thinks the princess,

"and my dragons devour me in the moonlight"


"my parents were postmodern irony and cruel optimism,"

replied the prince,

"and they imprisoned me in ontological ambiguity"


and so the princess lies in a primordial spiral

trapped in the horizon between a dichotomous desire to end binary

and despair that she will fail


and the prince saved her, or will save her, or is currently not saving her

what is a tower but a prince?

after all, the bed is so comfortable


and the serpents or the prince or the optimism

or the princess or the brain or the author or the bed said,

"The End"

they immediately regretted their decision