Problems I Solved by 28

I. Aging

My beach is the length of three sonnets
with a  breathing width of fifty feet at high tide.
I want to live here forever, twenty-two so I can crack a
          thousand hourglasses at their waists
pour the torsos' mintues and fat seconds along the shore.
With handfuls of time I build myself a brown castle and tower,
but the foamy tide soon swallows my manor like a sinkhole moat.

II.  Love

Well, if I can't live forever, who not live in love?
I am lonely, Van Gogh's ear; I eat a dozen roses and
          wait for love to come,
but I spend the next four hours alone, picking thorns
         from my tongue
and flicking them in the sand.

III.  Mortality

I was necrophobic
until I was sixteen, when my dad died and
         I saw Bergman's Seventh Seal,
so I poison all the undertakers in town and
         Molotov the flower shops,
even steal every crucifix I can find and stack
         them on the beach,
pour ether over the pile and listen to the wood
         scream its small scream,
a sound like distant Sirens burned at the stake.
Having defeated death, I deal with my other fear.

IV.  Fate

I fear I'm becoming my lunatic mother with twisted
         logic, who has warped rationale
for breakfast.  I buy an old Cold warhead
on Ebay, erase the moon like a misplaced period,
        turn the crater smile to vapor,
and hope it will amputate Mother from my fate,
        only my hands are still numb,
but sea still washes over the ruins of my castle.
I drop to my knees and throw up my arms
under the falling shards of the firework moon.
The silent stars remain silent, the answers are
         handcuffed behind their backs,
so I snatch a blade of green glass from the beach
         and cut a new future into my palms.