A.J. Huffman

This bed
may as well be a coffin.
It is already cold.
And closed.
And full of dirt.
Though I doubt it is hallowed.
But nothing is ever completely accurate
in reality’s slight.
So close the door.
And be content.
Eternity
is the only thing
that will bother
to follow you in.

Sadness rains from lines of dotted eyes,
permeating scripted font, selected
to emulate long-handed care. Scanned
briefly before being quickly dismissed.
Discarded as corny self-indulgence,
the browser, closed without second
thought. They are trapped
in sentient cell, mourning lack
of salvatory filing, counting down
their days to inevitable deletion.

Unsuitable
shade of flower.
I am temperamental,
difficult to raise.
Enticing, I can be soothing,
healing. Beware.
My roots are savage,
aggressive, poisonous,
deadly if taken to heart.

waveless expanses of blue.
Not breathing or drowning, I float,
an empty cloud in a miserable sky.
I pick at veins to lure companions,
believing the sanctity of devoured
is preferable to the continuous
resonation of devoid.

Creature of improbability,
I waiver in your imagination.
Tempted, you touch, but cannot commit
to formal acknowledgement.
Belief is a permanent fixture,
something that will not be removed,
and I am temporary to the core, a vision
sparkling in the night, dissolving
into something less than a memory
before dawn.

burn out. One stripe
at a time waves a final flare, falls to
gray. The hollows echo the empty
sentiment of stale breadcrumbs
over roads revealed as not-quite-gold.

like a distant ovation
in an arena where games never ended,
where life and death struggled
to survive, to find meaning in eyes
that blued like evening skies.
The sun reflected
this strange anonymity
against windshields
of cars moving but not passing,
a thousand bright silver bullets
blinking at once,
and I was the silence, the breathing
moment released before everything reopened.

counting me, as if I were something
backwards that would eventually disappear
like morning. They giggle, check me
off their points, a not-too-human to-do list
that doesn’t really need tending,
just attention from a blind(ing) audience
as temporary as dream.

after Metallic Dreams, artist Osnat Tzadok

I am silver. Gold and bronze,
my brothers in armor (yet to be
forged), crawl from midnight’s fire.
We will join
battle against blasphemous sun.
The enemy of creation
is a molten eye. Clarity
holds a magnifying presence,
scars our skin. We prefer to pick
the scabs, let them run
like rivers amongst the fogged
echo of nocturne’s voice.

Money,
men and machines.
My trichotomous needs.
I choke on associated
regrets.