Embrace me, your majesty,
I’ll decorate your robes
In tragedy,
Kiss me quickly, passionately
You won’t feel a thing. . .
The poison moistening my lips
Renders your heart paralyzed
but I promise you
this/
Soon, too, you shall pass
Sliding into weightless slumber
To never again have another
&I’ll mark you off on the roster
With tremendous ecstasy
–LM
The white raven on my shoulder
Insists
War is coming
-LM
The vagabond in the shaft
Gripping his wound in the raft(ers)
Laughing/___bleeding out
I heard him
Shadows flit and flicker across his face
like a children’s playground
The bags under his eyes
Holding purple
Weight
His teeth are dug into the way
Vikings used to do
After every kill
To terrify his prey
Full moon out tonight, he says
Glaring deep with bloodlust
I cannot move
A
Single
Inch
–LM
Sometimes the ache is hereditary
&while I look across the booth
Into my father’s eyes, listening***
He describes the death of his grandfather
& eyes blue so like mine laced with tears
the contortions/
I’ve seen this pain before
He tells me, you’re not saying much &
No, I’m not because everything I say
Is wrong – wrong time or
wrong choice of words
That’s what I’m used to
Fucking up
Hard to imagine I’m 30
Hard to imagine you haven’t straightened
Your life
At all
–LM
s e p a r a t e d/
torn apart by miles
of gluttonous ocean
peppered with reflective vessels
in between
&ijustthink
If-only I could build you a raft
perhaps
if I wore a vest/
But I can’t swim
And you’re not trying. . .
I’m not bereft of hope
Yet
That we may always meet
On the other end
–LM
Gorging on jet black humor
and raspberry vodka
I’ve made myself choke
on tears and laughter
I’ve lost hours of my life
& awaken
blindsighted
What did I do last night
where did this bruise come from
How hard did I hit the floor?
Who did I call & why
Who did I text & can they even
[translate it]
I’m feeling penned in again
These walls are closed
Pure dissatisfaction
Faithless fearful disappointment
swallowed_IN myself
If I didn’t have this reprieve I know
I wouldn’t have anything at all
Thank you for listening
–LM
(Authors Note: Tomorrow’s my birthday—]
A lovelorn eulogy for the slaves
Who waste(d) time on Earth for pay&
After this disgrace, I’ll take a raincheck
For 2020
Value seemingly has no value
& It’s all stark right in front of you
If you can see it, when you speak it,
are you connecting dots or just unstable?
(I’ll take the former,
there’s a galaxy of dots
to
Connect)
-LM
Once I had a morbid/infatuation
with the shape of the sky
at the end_of the world
Where all my mirrors reflected
cinders and pipe bombs
bludgeons and rabid dogs
unsolved murder cases
& plenty of missing
people
Now that the nights run early on
and by five o’clock it’s black
I can’t pretend with you
I’ve gotta say
it’s creeping. . back;
–LM
Though traversible, I am
A war-torn shard of a map
Showing only one side of a half
[the legible half]
Yet you know every landmark by heart
& instinctively, what will tear me
Further
apart
See, your initials are scrawled
neatly on the back & your wax seal
Still remains in the corner
[Cra/cked]
Evidence of your presence is ubiquitous
& my canvas too fragile to change hands
Now—
My treasure is lost in fragments
Here,
Found.
–LM
I dreamt I was on a sort of house arrest
& knew where it might’ve manifest
The police officer overseeing me
A big and burly thing but with shaded,
kind blue eyes lecturing. . .
& when he turned his back for a second
Just/ long/ enough
I’d hustled my way
out from his cage but
He gave chase &
dragged me back
Don’t try it again, he warned,
Exasperated,
Instead of adding to mine,
Do your time
–LM
The Lexicon 