AD Culvain and the Cuthalion

 Cartographer's Ghost (AD Culvain) feet on the floorboard tongue tastes dust sky a blister compass rust I kissed a road and it bent in reply Snakeskin path beneath a jellyfish sky Maps are liars, so I ate mine whole Now I dream in detours, drift in scrolls where the wolves draw lines where the clouds confess I chase the hum of the nowhere-ness fold my breath into a sail let the ink-storm tell the tale Bootprints bloom on breathing stone Mountains blink — they are not alone A cactus sang my name last night In Morse code moonlight, blinking bright Oh—(miles)—to—(nowhere)—go Skies stitched in vertigo Turn the wheels of undertow Every step, a vertébrae In the spine of the world today Fold the day into a paper crane Launch it from the cliff of pain Let gravity forget its name Let borders blush and melt in rain Found a passport in a raindrop Stamped by thunder, signed by moss Traded time for riddled space Left behind my shadow’s face Where do we go when the path dissolves?...

 Dust://Recompose click / crack / hum / hush (spine unwinds, the marrow rusts) bones… to… d—u—s—t ribcage = cathedral filled with moths kneecaps drum a funeral waltz teeth whisper in Morse don’t forget the face you lost tongue turns grey words decay your name sleeps in frost bones to dust to dusk to hush to hush to hush (a lullaby in entropy’s clutch) The femur’s a flute for the wind to play Pelvis cracked like porcelain clay I wrote a poem on a vertebra then fed it to a vulture god Who laughed in binary and bled static through the sod what are we but collapsed geometry symphonies in fossil minor carved on stone, erased by time grit in the gears of a ghost’s design (dust to bone, bone to sigh, sigh to breath, breath to sky) sky to hush sky to hush sky to hush I built a city out of bones It rained, and now I’m all alone Dust’s embrace is soft and just And love, too, turns— to ash, to rust to bones to dust

 The Quiet Weight (Nothing Answers Back) flesh clock / tick-tick / dead click / blink blink / no god here the ceiling fell inside my head I sleep inside a thought that bled a spoon of shadow, mouth of glass nothing moves. but all things pass. Is this? All? There? Is? the hum. the sink. the face you think is yours. I found a word beneath my skin peeled it out, tried to begin but the page ate every line and left me blanked and undefined I built a tower made of sighs stacked each one toward the skies but gravity’s a faithful friend it loves the fall, it loves the end I held my breath for twelve years waiting for a reply but the void is an introvert and nothing answers back this all is dust inside the crush of time not time but rust & hush & hush & hush I pressed my fingers to the ground heard the earth make no sound I carved my name in fog but it never stayed let me not be let me undo let the world pass through erase replace the quiet weight the quiet ...

  Phantom Ideal I stitched you from starlight errors and breathless code you flicker when I sleep you fracture when I wake eyes like silence in rewind lips like thoughts I never find your skin = static / your hands = mist you are every "almost" I've ever kissed you don’t exist you don’t exist (so perfectly) you only resist you live in script and glitch and twist a love like fog i can’t untwist i wrote to you in pencil on the spine of clouds you say nothing but I fill it in every stranger fails your face every body misplaced grace what if i love the thing that isn't? what if i need the flawless absence? you don’t breathe you shimmer you don’t leave you never enter you don’t exist (i insist) but my chest remembers your myth you are the dream I ruin the god I drew in a loop that loops and never fits you never lied you never lived you never asked and still I give a thousand names to one blank shape a thousand hopes no world could make phantom ideal in ache...