Odder Still

There are still leaves clinging to the winter trees

But in a forest of dead stumps, you turn your new leaf

And I stand, apologetically incomplete

And walk away, wearing a too-thin coat of disbelief

Knowing your new leaf is covered in shit

Desperate Poetics

Wait for dawn, on your own, so pathetic

Drown in the sleeplessness, desperate poetics

Wear our arguments like designer clothes

No wonder we feel so cold

Custom concepts to inflate empty egos

Only know what we’re sold

Only wear what we’re told

Armor like white roses painted gold

Skim the surface of your mind

Or dive in deeper, till you find

Some kind of originality

Stoke every thought into flame

Look for more than someone else to blame

To lose it would be such a shame, individuality

Take back nothing

Regret’s a slippery concept

Motivation is a kind of debt

We say we owe this ourselves

But essentially we must give up to excel

Ever increasing

The risk is remiss if it’s bliss

If that’s all that we want out of this

We say, “I just want you to be happy.”

When each one of us is so scared to be lonely

You can take the hand

Of every pretty girl on every street you walk down

But just like the moonlight, you’ll be lost in her eyes

Then all will be gone by dawn:

Her, the moon, and you

Only an empty shell with a trophy for a clue

That this tortoise had better places to be

And a hare’s breadth away is too close to call for me

Color now outside the lines

And race the stars across the sky

Do not fear these flaws and fallacies

Set sail for deserts like a king

Headfirst and offer everything

What’s left is more than worth the sting of tragedies

checkpoint pt. 1

It's like the combination of a confirmation of deviations and sensationalist stations that are all tuned to equations, imbalanced in their frustrations, unchallenged, uneducated, and man, I almost hate to say it, but it's time for liberation.

We've got these mortal enemies incentivized and sending me mixed messages of policies that polish piece of crap agreements, while poverty at home and overseas is hunger more than harmony, leviathans of industry that feed upon it callously.

dirgehaiku

Petals on the wind

Display colors of frailty

Beckoning winter

And Yet...

There is no sense of time

Only the ache, the growing ache

The pit inside, like a hunger

Like a peach's pit or one for fire

Empty or heavy, always and never both

But still the ticking, still the clicking

With tap-shoe syncopation

Devious and dire and dreadful despairing

And yet

Well...

I guess

A place exists for the "and yet"

And that's still something

There's a place there

Saved right there

For the "and yet"

A reservation for hope:

A table for two

A candlestick at dusk

A chimney in early autumn

A gas pump (almost perpetually)

Raw egg

5am...

And yet____________

Stood up

Electrified

Moved out

Economized

Bad

Nothing to wake up

nothing left to guard

take it from me
i can’t do this anymore
i am not the man you thought i’d be
i’m not sure who i was before

take it from me
‘cause i can’t feel anything
i’m drowning in a separate song
that only dead men sing

take it from me
these hands weren’t meant to hold
my callous heart has gone too far
and left me somewhere cold

take it from me
the love that’s in your eyes
when you look at me all i can see
a reflection of the one i despise

take it from me
there’s no use in holding on
what i feel will stay forever here
but of course now you are gone

Sacrilege

To the plastic priestess with the brightest eyes

Her hands raised high inside a modest disguise

While she worships her semantics, frantic for a throne room in the skies

She’ll talk of grace, but look her in the face and you’ll find no second tries

To the sons of study who teach youths how to talk

Raise them up right to be children of a gilded cross

Put shoes of good news on their feet, but with little room to walk

Can the good news get through when all the words of love are lost

Anyway, drunk Jesus and some hungry whores

Are knocking humbly at your mansion doors

But I know these castle walls can hold out the poor

‘Cause really their kingdom was never good enough for yours

So judge me all you like and i’ll try not to judge you

When even the slightest hint of brokenness, you never could much see through

Judge me all you like, ‘cause i’ve no right to judge you

Truth is i’m incredibly broken, and my guess is: so are you

But I'm only kind to hurt myself...

I'm honest, sometimes, because it makes you uncomfortable. So when you tell me, "It's so refreshing" to hear me speak with such clarity and openness, know that my intention was not to be a spring but a drought, to drain you of presuppositions and rip through entanglements. I never meant to give you a "nice way of looking at things". In fact, I never meant to give you anything at all. I wanted to take away all looking at things, all standing on solid ground, all perspective, and subconscious ideas, and shatter every last pane of assumption not just to shine a little light on the situation but to bring in a draft that would chill you till pneumonia set in. I'm talking frankly not to make you miss the old days when folks were more honest but, if we're going to be time-traveling at all, to take you back to the day you figured out that grown-ups didn't really know what they were talking about but you couldn't say anything 'cause you were just a kid. And speaking of "just", no, I'm not "just saying". I mean this. When there's something right in front of you—look at it! I mean, really look at it. Somehow, simultaneously take everything you've ever learned about dissecting a situation and use it to utterly devastate and violate. And then, or perhaps instead of that, throw away everything you've ever learned about anything and everything, and just experienced it. Get slapped in the face by a wave, eyes and mouth open, even though you think you know what it'll be like. Check the handle to a door that's "always locked". Go over and sit at that table, yes that table, and talk to those people who "don't want to talk to somebody like me". Say hello to the old friend you stopped talking to somewhere down the line or finally ask that person their name, unashamedly admitting to the whole world that you're interested enough in them as a person not to pretend to know just long enough to move past the stage where you have to.

Mean it when you say it, whatever it is. 'Cause I do, and after all, I'm only saying this to make you uncomfortable.

Soon Enough

You know when you climb so high

That the air feels younger

But perhaps it's only because

Of how much older you feel

Having made it to the top

That it only tastes so fresh

Smells so clean

Because of how hard

You worked to reach it

Like simple foods

Becoming richer from the hunger

Maybe no experience

Can ever be taken on its own merits

For it exists, as we approach it

Only by our approach

Not to say that we create the experience

But rather in the process

Of our own selves being created

The reality

Of each moment is diluted

By all that we carry with us

And that's why the air feels so new

When you reach the top of a long climb

Because you've been heaving

Under the weight of all that

Old air

And by the time you reach the peak

Well, in fact the only way to reach the peak

Is to be completely exhausted

Of all that brought you there

Left collapsed and

Stripped bare

Carrying only the scars

From ripping off your chains

And letting go of the baggage

That had made it so hard to climb

But soon enough

Even those will heal

And all that will be left

To remind you of who you are

Is what's holding you up

Lifting you toward who you will become