9 and 8

Perhaps in the pain we have pierced the veil
Let leak from the heavens an enchanting light
Yet for all our desire, so bright and pale
We are burnt by the golden-edged strands of night

And I will be longing for you
Between the page and the book and the tree and the forest
I will be calling for you
Between the drop and the sea and the me and you
I will be hanging on the edge of myself
With your song on my lips
And your curse burning holes in my lungs

Perhaps in the dark we are still and cold
Beleaguered by the wit of an ancient lie
Yet for all we're taught we can never know
What are miles on the earth under an endless sky

9 and 7

i feel like the shit that you don't give.

you don't give a me.

you don't give me a break, but

you broke me.

for shit sake

please stop.

9 and 6

a set of keys in the snow till morning
a hand held in the dark while waiting
a wish fulfilled without due warning
a moonlit shoreline promise breaking
a music room and your lips singing
a question 1,000 miles flying
a scandal synchronized and swinging
a nature, rock-filled, wild climbing
a curtain smile widely opening
a van on the road-side stopping
a young heart bewildered and still hoping
a photo never meant for cropping
a mask of mirrors ever falling
a game between two actors playing
a wounded why that keeps on calling
a love that cannot but be ever staying

knowledge

am i more of afraid of what i do or what i don't know
the ocean outside or the leak in the boat
the action, the reaction, the prescriptive anecdote
the violent silence or the hum of a darkly haunting choke
are we two too terrified to be around ourselves
inside shells we hide on shelves like unread books
who long to be cracked and spilt upon the minds
of unselfish introspection
and blinking, blinding looks
perchance a glance at truth could tell
how far, how utterly far we all fell

9 and 5

I'll say what I need to from such a great distance
Just liked I did next to you by your own insistance
I'll get by and survive by my trying attempts to
Make use of some honesty but never condemn you
'Cause I don't think you understand what it would take
To escape the faces of fates next great big break
And all along lying here in my home-made half-shell cell
I'll fall back to the habits that I can't explain too well
You don't know me at all, do you
You don't owe me a call, but could you?

Fabricate

when hunger rolls and rumbles
climbing claw by claw up bending walls
the aching halls of a hollow house
with songs of longing pangs and pains
the tugging weight of waiting on and on
blanket dry strands of cracking sand throat hands
slapping stacks of hay-scratched packets
of nicotine patches and attacking the vast
and the vastless
the habitually addicted sarcophagi madness
snacking on scraps of off-brand medicated sadness
articulately synthesized, artificially categorized, academically memorialized
before their time and mine
is a mind long lost to the cost of a good line
over the milk and bread
of some well-fed middle class menagerie
sleeping streets down in shadow towns remembered
in folk songs long deemed mythological
while the cosmological fallacies of cosmetology's palaces
paint new masks for the past-wearing ash clouds
and rain down more starving mouths to bleed
all singing a humble numb mumbling hum
like some jingle they learned from daytime tv
with one hand on their heart
and another starting to putrefy casually
like it's only a matter of biology, sociology, and a healthy diet
plus this new recipe i picked up from a paper
outdated and soaked through in the gutter
a virtual buffet of your refuse
and my undignified salvation
recreation inhabiting your equal nation

9 and 4

Were your wings burning wildly
The day you dipped way down
The earth to grace and scorch my face
Mark light upon the ground

9 and 3

Ain’t it great there ain’t no universal tastes
While we all talk of love like a language
Here I am speechless, my breath so bated
Turns out we have not a single thing in common
And I'm onto your schemes
You've been showing up every single night in my dreams

So you're moving on without me
I always loved the way you'd run
Holding my hand we traveled the whole wide world
But the moment I stopped to catch my breath in the sun
You became of a shadow of yourself

And every now and then I find myself up on the edge of you
Scratching at colors by a genius made a masterpiece
So long as we're searching for imperfect words to counter it
Let's let this feeling be a poison for our enemies

I never wanted to
Betray or hate or chain you
I never meant to
Hurt you at all

I never intended
The way this ended
But good intentions
Have paved my whole way down

LP

my life's become not unlike the space

between the needle and the groove

the air that lingers there between the stab

and the utter urge to move

spinning round without a sound

i exist betwixt to disappear

that i may cease and then release

some magic for your ear

some trap or trick that you might pick

by which to dance and jive

and there between awake and dreams

is where i keep you alive

9 and 2

I imagine it's cold where you are, with your words like the sun through a car window in the back seat some Sunday afternoon.

You compensate with conversation for an environment of ennui and dilute your simulation of the forecast reality.

Silence on the other line is an invitation, I wish wildly.

Calling all cars, we've a collision on the information super highway.

Let's pretend we're kids and then say you and I just met; except we didn't meet as children so let's do it all again.

Rocks in nature are your friends and line all your bedroom walls  like stoic guests waiting for an invitation to begin devouring your style.

If I could guess your favorite color, I'd have to stop and think.

I am the architect of linaments, at least until your stitches took.

9 and 1

Your tear drops on beach rocks inscribing
Like your head on my shoulder reclining
Even the city lights can’t dilute this night
In my memory your smile’s still blinding

Your hand holding mine as we’re praying
So coy, I’m the boy that you’re playing
Just a toy in your arms, you’re all wonder and charms
And you can’t hear a word that I’m saying

Your mask fits me too I can feel it
As the tide washes in, you reveal it
Confused and dismayed, yet it’s love that we played
And again as if heartache can heal it

And fear is my poison, my true vice
While you were my gamble and my price
The cost of the truth, was lost to me and you
And by then we both knew not to think twice

Your goodbye was ever enchanting
Your words winter wolf’s breath left panting
Surrounded on all sides, waiting for the cold bite
I might die with your friends still ranting

Your mark on the shoreline is gone now
And in autumn, without you I fall down
My roots dug too deep, guess that’s why I can’t sleep
As the air grows too cold for this song

9 and 0

City lights dilute the night sky
No stars out tonight
Just the memory of your eyes when I close mine
And the echo of a lie, when I say that I’m fine

ok

I don’t like you like you like me
But I’d like to make you happy anyway, is that okay?
I don’t trust you like you trust me
Trust me, maybe we could do something else today, is that okay?

Is that okay? Is that okay? Is that okay? Is that okay?

I don’t want you like you want me
But I don’t want you to be angry when I say, is that okay?
You don’t please me like I please you
So please don’t tease me when I can’t get away, is that okay?

Is that okay? Is that okay? Is that okay? Is that okay?

‘Cause I can still taste your kisses after so many hours
And I still feel your touch after so many showers
And I don’t want to be alone with you, is that so bad?
‘Cause I can still feel the scars where you stole my skin
I’m always running for the exit every time I’m in
And the worst part is you’re still the best friend I’ve ever had
So please, please, please don’t be mad

It’s not okay. It’s not okay. It’s not okay. It’s not okay.

cumulonimbus

drifting like a rain cloud

stray thoughts form a chance of slight

precipitation

would i know if i should go now

drive on out and up then down

this old highway that cuts

like a story-less scar though my hometown

between granite hillsides

headed to an aching shoreline

where memory is an iv drip

and your smile by my bedside

as much as scandalous moonlight

and its consequential shadow

irradiate my every joint

flip-flops melting to the boardwalk

pavement

outside the family bar

a busker named brian broods abuses

and my useless stray thoughts

drip one after the other 

like old friends calling

just to say

we all hate you now

and this highway cuts

like an open wound through your hometown

volunteers

it’s too damn easy

making promises 

the way you look tonight

it’s too damn easy

making poetry

about your perfect eyes

it’s too damn easy

saying “i would never lie"

when the world is bright and new

and everything that’s good 

seems true

it’s too damn easy

Polytix

politically, I guess I’m independent.
and not just because of how much I so resent that
whenever someone subscribed to a party tries convincing
me of their rightness, I can’t help but start wincing.
see, it’s not necessarily your strongly held ideals
or the way that talking ‘bout them gives you all those feels
but that if your ideals were all there were, then that would be fantastic
‘cept instead we get reality and the actuality is drastically
unacceptable in an ignorant, us-vs-them, and kinda racist sorta way
at least its mad classist so don’t ask me to be okay
with how you can say the state is far too big or far too small
or how it’s doing too much or not nearly enough at all.
because for all your talk of liberty and all your talk of community
the talk builds up to naught but talk and binds with such disunity
that i don’t give a single fuck what you say it’s all supposed to be
‘cause what is is what is and that’s all that matters much to me
to love the most those who are loved the least
justice and hope spread through the whole like yeast
and give rise to a revolution of the heart and the mind
and throw aside the privilege that makes those in power so blind
and turn guns into shovels, so we can finally bury the hatchet
and turn bombs into classrooms, and cigarettes back to matches
and take all that paper we used to use to write our bills
and make a planet-sized canvas, until all the color spills
and then wipe down our souls, and pay reparations with a smile
till justice flows like lemonade and there’s a place for every child
around the dinner table of ingenuity, and the human creative spirit
says to mother earth and father sky and anyone else around to hear it
i’m sorry.
i love you.
let’s eat.

Sold Out

They told me lonely was a hole
To be filled by hello
But when I said no they sold me out
Told me the only way through
Was to look like you
But no matter what I do they've sold me out

And money can buy you a whiter smile
But it's not worth the while to use it
For a job and some food and a roof over your head
All the riches in the world will abuse it
And money can buy you a paradise
Full of sweet-smelling distractions
But all your blood and your bones and your painted toes
Will rot off from blissful inaction

And your friends all whine, "you're takin' too much time"
You tried to find yourself in their apathy
So you can spend the night or find yourself a wife
Only to look at your life like "what's happened to me"
So when you're up all alone and the doors have all closed
And the air itself tries to choke you
Take a good hard look, read a good hard book
Light a match, ask yourself what can hope do

A Compliment is Not a Contract

I’m thinking about a compliment

About pointing out how great it is

You know

The way you…

Oh you don’t know?

Well, let me tell you!

You’re [lists all the amazing that you are]

Did I go too far?

Do you now expect more from me?

Do you doubt my sincerity?

Do you think I meant B when I really meant A

Don’t you think if I meant B I would say

Or not.

Did you only do that which inspired that fire

that sparked that ignition to warrant admission

that someone like me finds someone like you

to be quite something more and maybe better and new

Did you only act for the reaction

Did I only notice so you would notice me back and

Then did this whole thing happen

‘Cause neither one of us is that great

Just sorta wonderfully, beautifully, awfully

Lonely

Waiting for someone to mention

How they noticed

Us

And how very much

We could be

Formation

We aspire toward inspiration, desire less contemplation and more exultation, deviate from sensation only long enough to expediate jubilation, and fixate on the icy invasion where education became a code word translating indoctrination.

Intoxicated generation, reliniquish fated ostentation!

I dare thee, foreswear these belated obfuscations!

Berate the inflation of our celebration. In fact, conflate all conflagration till the incineration is a heinous heresy of hades’ own hellish animation.

Let no tower stand demanding our humble congregation. Humiliate the machinations of one-sided debate and toxic communion’s irrigation. Every statement relates less to growth than deforestation.

The gardens of our minds, of our Mind however, are made for the beauty of creation as well as obliteration.

And let no man, woman, or child spend their wild years wanting for a world of more deviation.

In my dreams, memories, monsters, and institutions are the ones on their knees, while the least of these are applauded, awarded for their service with a standing ovation.

New Shoes

sometimes, walking in other folks’ shoes
means walking down their street in their shoes
hearing the jeers and the cat calls
as you speed up in their shoes
getting stopped by the police
for wearing their shoes
having to listen to the ignorant disregard
of those who still wear your shoes
because you wear their shoes
letting your shoes become their shoes
and their shoes become your shoes
while still knowing they can never be our shoes
because each have their own
in which we all must walk
our own shoes for our own roads
yours, theirs, mine
sure
but what matters is what happens
when you put back on your shoes
knowing all along you never really took them off
and let your time in their shoes
affect where and how and why you walk
in your own

Unrequited

You can still tear me open

Like an unmarked box

Wrapped in christmas paper

In the middle of may

Found somewhere at the bottom

Of a closet of old coats

You wore in older seasons

And sometimes put on

To look longingly at the past

In dusty mirrors, with

Cracks in their corners

Like the ones forming at the crests

Of your shining eyes

That look down

Dispassionately

On that sagging cardboard form

Too much like the resigned grin

Of your now dead dog

When you found her under the porch

Last christmas

Forgetting

What was left

Under the tree

I Don't Trust You

The condescension of the old
The indignation of the youth
The indulgence of our reckless desire
For some kind of higher half truth
To get used to...well, excuse you

We align to the designs of our times
Redefine all the lines in our discontented minds
And we'll do what me must to mistrust
And invest in the hallowed hopes for what's left of us

I will do whatever I must do to do whatever I must do

I don't care if you swear you meant the best
If you're just like the rest
I don't wanna waste my time with you

Smiling faces
So complacent
Perfect places
Take a picture

Out by the water, we watched your own father drowning
And on the shore, you said you were bored of the crowding
So we went to the farm where they grow new hearts
And you said you'd like one that was worlds apart
And with every new breath I could catch your old one pounding

she said she would never hate me

She said she would never hate me
Nah, fuck that, YOU said you would never hate me
I’m not gonna say she as if you’re not in the room
‘Cause even if you’re not in the room you’re on my mind
And I don’t want to gossip about you to these folks
I want to talk to you and maybe let these folks overhear
Like you eavesdropped on my lonely heart
Then interrupted the one-sided conversation
When you said you would never hate me
And filled me with the hope that maybe I was not only able to love
But was perhaps lovable
You said you would never hate me
Which, I thought, meant that you would always love me
But of course they’re not the same
Because you said you would never hate me
Which, I guess, really meant someday you would forget me
Or at least push me so far away that on this planet that somehow keeps spinning round and round and round your distance makes us back to back
Neither one sure how to turn and look the other in your eye
Like you did when you said you would never hate me
But to hate someone you have to at least care they exist
So much so it burns with a passionate you just want to...
Sounds a lot like love except that it isn’t
‘Cause love can’t help but know that sometimes it’s okay not to make promises
Sometimes it’s okay to admit you don’t know
But you said you knew
You said you would never hate me
But I guess when you have to say, then you know it isn’t true

Her Name Was...

I traced the cracks along the wall with my finger tips and tried in vain to ignore that cold, hollow feeling that can well up in the back of my mouth when I've had too little to eat save a few mints--which, of course, do nothing to appease the hunger but merely flavor its gnawing gums when there's naught but cracks in the wall to distract me.

My calloused index finger crashed idly into a picture frame fencing in a dusty rectangle. My breath too ragged for clearing the scene, I leaned in close and used the corner of a torn sleeve, honoring the garment by calling it Rag.

What vision then transported itself no words can quite tell but to say that homesickness can often be more for a person than a place and at times hits you so suddenly like a sock to the gut. As you'll recall my gut was too hollow to take a beating and rang out like a moan, irreversibly escaping from chapped lips. A pounding head swung both ways to look for any eavesdroppers before I realized it was the skull in my position, plastered with a face some describe resembling bewilderment.

That face which had been so tempest tossed in steady consternation to suddenly glimpse in a thin and ageworn glassy reflection its own self breaking into two miraculous occasions. First to see there reflected a smile and what other miracle? Full and briny tears were trickling from the leaky faucet of my bloodshot eyes. For beyond that monstrous complexity of a dim reflection, in poor light just made out, I saw the face of hope again.

Her crooked whimsy grin, a mischievious gleam in her eyes a flutter, and what else, I dare say the glow of laughter about her cheeks--for this was, without a doubt, the voraciously excitable, discontentedly rejoicing wonder of a woman. Her face said more than all the libraries of human thought in that instant. Had it been so long since I had seen such beauty? Since art had fluttered down as the last leaf of autumn and set out upon the lazy stream of my times? Had no gentle hand been there to whisper off my tears that they too had dried into the crusty and forgotten tome of this broken vessel?

And to have it be her of all things, of all people, of all faces, and in all moments? To have her portrait be the last of them? Oh, to be sure, I knew that this frame and what it guarded would be the last of its kind as I knew that I was the last of my kind, and in that, I think, there is a solemn poetry, like the beauty of an afternoon dirge that echoes in the square. Where or wherefore you know not it comes, but the shaking of the timbres of your bones is so truly entuned to its resilient melancholy, well...

A job is a job after all. And with one thought and a nod I did as one does, lifting my hammer to the glass and burning all that would remain.

Soon too, I will be past, and nothing must last when all that was is now ash.

Bruised and the Abuser

I carved your name

On my fingertips

So I could feel you

With every touch

Lost my hearing

To the sound of your song

So every kind word

Or harsh accusation

Buzzes with the last breath

Of your goodbyes

Burnt my tongue on your

Passionless kisses

So every reply

Is dulled with

Begging

I ran

One thousand miles

To reach 

A bed of coals

And sinking sand

(I’d run again)

teuquob tneloiv

violent bouquet
—more thorns than roses

dissonance by degrees
needles in the knees
facsimiles

time exchanged for glances
over shoulders
schizoid romance

tactile hallucinations of
optimistic numbing agent

over-the-counter
exit signs
(neon medication)

#calcificationbynumbers

over familiar landscapes
worn souls tread
heartbeats of the damned

engendered hegemony
socio-economic pantheism

*fragility

Shrapnel

Who gave you permission

To carve your shape out of me

Your silent dancing shadows upon my cavern walls

In the aching institution

I am only wearing grey

Because you left me alone

And this is who I am

Who gave you the key

To my long lost locked cupboard door

Echoing along the hall are songs that we once knew

Under aging, withered cedars

I will write your name for hours

Because you forgot to call

And this is who I am

Who gave you a veto

Over this puppet soul’s new strings

As I illustrate my point with a blunted hunting knife

Upon the barren, salted shore

I collapsed my last good lung

Because you were my true love

And this is who I am

Who gave you my choir

And bled their corpses dry

Skeleton songs remain for the solemn man

Without a course to set my sail

I will dive till I am crushed

Because you held all my air

And this is who I am

Blasphemy

You can burn the world down.
You can cure or cause any disease.
What do you want from me?

You can love us all.
Like a mighty wind or a subtle breeze.
Do you love me?

I was a child in your temples,
Was an infant in your church;
They said you wanted to know me deeply
To free my heart from hurt,
But you've made it worse

Your book is full of promise.
Your book is full of lies,
While theologians compromise.

You condemn our questions,
But you won't say hello
As far as I can know.

I can hear your children crying,
Bleeding out in the dirt;
We only ever wanted to touch you, to know you,
To be free from this hurt,
But you've made it worse.

You've made it worse.

They taught me that you died
To free us from your curse.
They tell me you're alive and well somewhere
As if it shouldn't hurt,
But you've made it worse.

You make it worse.

Your silence makes it worse.

Your judgment makes it worse.

Your people make it worse.

I make it worse.