TRY YELLOW LOVE
They never did. Saints could care less if we need rest from the world.
It's my brain I guess. I admit to it. I admit to it now, I guess.
They discard the beautiful intricacies of my corpus callosum
excoriating that which isn’t judged so reasonable or definitively human
dried out of me like the trace of a dandelion saved between pages
though that goes the other way ‘round too, you know. Think.
This particular night wasn't into being so intimate
and all other types of emotions are very low on our list:
reproach in response to mourning. This is not love and I do not want it.
MANIA
It was “to want”
beyond the body’s small capacity
to foster energy.
Before
it was to break the world raw
into soft, silvery white: a surfeit of Eskalith.
This is a basic sample. This is loss of control.
But now we are spiked in the wanting.
Before it was the good work of burning.
A person made universal
by the escalation
as though you knew
how it would present itself
and how you’d lift it
like ash levied from stars.
DANDELION
And anhedonia in her head.
There were wreathes of flowers
in tight chain of weeds, tellings.
The wreathes filled me with rage.
Their story blooms of nothing.
RAY OSBORN is a poet and painter living in Toronto. Ray’s writing focuses on elegy, love, and neuro-divergence, as well as being ekphrastic in nature.