If this is drunk,
please hand me stronger.
This body may be slow,
but the mind races ever harder,
an attempt to out run...

...sorry, caught myself thinking,
can't be my own enemy,
I've quelled this war once
and civility has a strained grasp
of these two pieces,
body conquered mind to conquer body,
failing to see benefactors true checking
the co-op abysmal...
the fuck am I saying...

...now where'd I put that drink.

I once wrote myself a poet.
I once claimed musing my medium
and creation complementary.
I failed in contemplation
and mistook my muse for a replenishing source of inspiration.
My fictitious claims clogged my metacarpels
with mismatched scraps of metaphysics
and mistakes written out and expounded without fault,
yet still incorrect in regards to truth.

I once wrote myself a poet.
Claiming creation was my destruction,
I failed to reminisce with blank pages
and remember our origin,
the original flawed poem posed in prose.
Words met the page before they came to mind,
ink like water,
my vessel was cracked
and I was spilt
before I recognized the filled binders stained,
before I recognized the broken seal leaking.

Emptying my head faster than I could move the pen,
I wrote myself a poet,
the lines were cramped with
messages left between,
I CLAIMED myself a poet,
and all creations were an extension of me.
My destruction was complete.
Flowing like fact,
I was held up by the people
I couldn't help to think of
with the break of every turning page.
Inspiration but desperation to
refill a tank of exhaustion
and minor miscalculation
when hesitation
became the transportation
for that dropping ink.

I once wrote myself a poet.
I once claimed myself a god,
destroying me to find a being
born from the pen
and suckling from a disembodied self
found at the fork of was
and have been,
some body got lost in translation,
the rest
was misplaced during the transition from wrote
to was, and back
to the road I traveled.

I wrote myself a poet,
became one
only to lose myself
to the title.
I rode my self,
a poet to an altar,
though during my final sacrifice
I faltered.

I wrote myself a poet.
I claimed myself creator.
I lost myself to show it,
skirting the opportunity
to prove myself orator,
and now I'm back to
reading between those lines
in hopes of finding
my self.
A poet.

Life.
4 Letters.
Numeric assignments,
I stall to answer
"what's the question?"
with
can you repeat,
my answer's too foreign,
conceptualization, it makes
sense.
Is, question or answer
deep thinking,
because the answer ran on
and on
until it was deemed compound
and split into finer artist pieces.
The question I just don't
get.
I'm stalling
to question statements
when I respond.
Numeric assignments,
4 Letters.
Life.

I

broken gasp,
ghosts struggle for breath
in empty-mouthed former selves

II

eyes adjust,
rebelling
against a storm circling
with dust and demons.
blind, but still searching
through the silence for
the rust-locked screams choked
in the throat of this machine

III

resonance ripples softly
forward
babbling over stones
and gravity.
something was always
pulling him down.

IV

tongue tumbles
trying to profess truth
as the river stumbles forward
to those speaking soothe.

I felt the resonance of harmony
while the speaking of the walls
coerced me into a state of calm.
The object of my human side
is to find upon which line I lie.
Is it the one of psychosis
or the excitement of the third line.
Bi-polarity co-authors
changing connection
from subway stations
to the lashed lights
flashing to asteroid induced beats
breaking down into
the words of a typewriter
with transformative properties.
Night time stars shine bright with
knowligious screams from
millions of learnt miles
while oxygen conducts the brazed
grasslands into consymphonies,
leaving each branch scraping
so leaves may be allowed to applaud
the ever changing constants
of retold stories.
Calling to those intangible ideals
to materialize
and bring their followers
to comprehension,
it’s not difficult to see
that it’s there,
that insanity
spinning in circles
as it sings the newest top twenty,
or rather the bottom of the barrel.
The resin’s been scraped
and we’re supposed to breathe in
the words of artists
too plain to be humbled
by their works,
their fame
bred,
fed
and
condemned
by ego’s ever expanding.
Tangents are tangy after effects
of this twice smoked state of mind,
air thick with smoldering thoughts,
mindless devotion have
this current generation clouded.
Branded they’ve been
caught and tagged
at prices far too high
for the product not wanted,
brought by falsely peaceful corporations
which have us foolishly brandishing
dark thoughts,
shining guns,
and the faces of the dead.
When is the price too high,
or have you yet to realize
there is no price too high
for your sanity to relieve,
nor will it take lightly
a candy coating
for the daily vitamins
prescribed,
ensuring a sure glimpse of truth
beyond the walls of your Empyre.
Are your blinders to set to see
that your peace of mind sits in a glass house,
just a thrown stone away from cracking,
shattering what little tie holds you
to what you perceive as truth?
Can you imagine picking up those pieces
that were once your life?
Hard to do when you’re lost to vanity,
noticing only your thousand framed face
while blood trickles from your hands,
wounds winding the course of time
leaving behind verbose trails to aid
in your unbridled return to
the surface of sun-drenched memories
punctuated by foreign invasions
of advertised deaths.
You kill yourself to gain recognition,
but are resurrected by laughing gods
finding humor in your perceived sorrow,
knowing your story just another set of
one wrong placement, they push you
finding your god a benevolent being,
playing your suicide in reverse,
a miracle too large
to be measured on some scale,
the ripple effect of
performing just to flaunt.
Now born again,
you regain your militia’s
malicious status,
rejoining the ranks of an army
unheeded by threats,
torture,
pain,
or empathy.
They care only for members
and will be the truth
by any means possible.
Run along now,
you don’t want to be late.
The Masses don’t care
if you are left behind.
Have fun with
the like-minded “individuals”
as you agreeingly debate
the newest trends,
laughing at the means to your ends
you sit with your bleach-blonde brethren,
your Barbie-doll bitches
and your bigoted behavior.
Just make sure you’re still laughing
next time you look out and see naught
but that thousand framed face.

Excuse me, if you must,
as the spinning causes seasickness.
Open the clouds as you continue on
in an aeronautical sarcophagus,
thirty-thousand feet
above broken land.
Grab your lover’s hair,
last resort to prepare for
the emergency crash landing
into mother earth’s disease,
or are they simply parting the seas,
causing darkness to spread
from the unfilled hole in their chest?
Stomachs turn as the
broken wings and sails
fall upon the shores.
An ocean of rage delivers
waves of hatred embraced.
The surf clears, exposing pain
and the premonition
of a cleansing blood red rain.
Shrieks of the banshee
and the howls of the hurt rise
to meet the clouds seeking
to brighten the days afar.
As thousands flee in terror
we make a toast in the French Quarter.
The chariots gain speed
and the wake gains mirth,
laughingly applauding
the approaching dark comedy.
The newly arrived antagonist
has forced the hero’s hand
and now she births forth
a wave of healing epidemics.
The wake’s in the wind
and the funeral’s imminent.
Its population’s been soothed
into a sedated slumber,
but our character has issued
too many warning,
and strikes deep at the heart
of this sinful city,
breaking apart the basin’s barrier,
and lulls its children back to sleep
with bloodstained lullabyes.

Pacing strides left a man
etching a phrase into the linoleum,
dull yellow, the world gleamed
from a single bare bulb,
resembling either an idea
or afterthought,
strung up to illuminate
this small world.
Each step accidental
he strung together a verse
he would never read,
letters laid down
as eyes were always fixed
above the cabinet door
sitting slightly askew,
paint chipped away at the corners
and the inevitable banshee screech
of tortured hinges choked by rust,
or the faucet with its loose handle
and stains of hard water
dripping to the rhythm
to which he walked,
unbeknownst to him.
Pacing turned to past time
when the energy died down,
steps forward holding neared stilled
in comparison to the mind
set at a running pace.
In each step,
meaning was lost to him,
setting down his soul with thinning rubber,
the plastic giving way
after years of playing that solemn bass,
a nightly monotonous melody.
Circles would have been better,
a truer glimpse of a cramped mind,
though the message of his walking
in waking
would have been lost to the pattern.
His line suited him better,
unfortunately he has yet to read it,
always keeping his head high,
forgetting to tuck his chin
to defend himself from those thoughts.
Breaking down around him,
his home holds but essentials
yet is still somehow cluttered.
There’s always a rustle
when the draft slips through the walls,
a constantly changing mosaic of light,
his shadow helps to paint the opposite wall,
where the only figure is the outline
of some long forgotten photograph,
an image he refuses to hold any longer.
The aire is refreshed
by a new batch of memories
floating in on the wind.
He misses the messages he’s laid out,
and his pacing fails to falter
when he’s stripped of all remembering.
If only he could sink low enough
to look down,
but experience has taught him
to hold high with every stride a must.
If he let down his guard
his defenses would be up,
the time would slow in dusty gears
and it would bring his hand
around to face the thoughts of
the circling becoming linear.
A second’s skip would detract,
all rot and decaying
what precious little was left,
though he’d soon be back to a missed step,
each foot accidentally placed
in a purposeful stride.
Unbeknownst to him,
his rhythm’s left behind a message,
flickering fluorescent reflects
the dull yellow verse
carved into the linoleum.
His pacing has stopped,
feet now carrying away
the jumbled thoughts,
walking out the door
the distraction his head held in place
allowing the buzzing bulb to continue.
Realizing,
returning,
he happens a quick glance
in the last light of the fading night,
flipping the switch he misses
his words worn to wood,
“We are all alone,
but rarely are we forgotten.”

Sunrise nearing its death,
the end of today
complementing the beauty of a pen stroke,
harsh scratching alleviating indelible ideas
showing selves in hues painting our last moments
allowing me to trace timelines
in the contoured caresses
of this silent instrument played
to blend melody with beginnings,
each progression scaling further along
the passing hours left settling
to minutes from now,
purpose elaborated in contrasting
blues and oranges and purples
composing the elegance of utility,
colors not enough to excise the excesses
of depicting days in dimensions,
of simplifying it to degrees of time.
Laying alongside this current
to shape clouds
and animate constellations,
my faux-corpse stares again into
the memory held in galaxies
only glimpsed at twilight.
Sharp cuts of consonants
and vowels' smoothed corners
try to rid me of
stream of conscious thinking loosed,
the inner struggle hoping for reprieve
from that constant combative nature
of inward disagreement
and dialectic digression
deflecting the question of
what if we'd only spoke
instead of being lost
to foreign type-faces designed by
some soul never to see
the dying day my way.
If only we'd spoke,
I would have had the chance
to stumble on a goodbye.
Rather we are left
to flourishes of unfamiliar weapons
sitting askew on these pages,
the balance shifted due to
us degrading to another's personality,
and writing out those lines
we couldn't come to say.

Introducing her life
to my collapsing passages,
her breath helped drag out
a muddled flow of words,
all lethargy and nonsense
questioning love and life
with time the matter
of the minor degrees.
Saving me a piece at a time,
I was a patchwork
of stitches and scars,
this new clot
far from my last ailment,
it was held tight chested,
airways left strictly one-way.
Coughing out bits
used only to express loss
and the truer side
of life/time obsessions,
diaphragmic convulsions
leaving my head dizzy
and directions a confusing mess
of the simplicity of four rights,
to end up going the wrong way
down one-lane streets,
falling behind the wake, trying to chase
flashing lights, no way to fast track
to her side, I'm afraid she's been lost.
Unable to attend the viewing,
I missed even the chance
to see her in that
moment of peace
that never was her style.
Snapping in and out,
concentration casting clouds
on concrete I'd not recognized
a failing of reality,
or whatever we're calling this,
just knew that it brought about
imaginary friends and these invisibles
that play their parts, pushing pens
for those whose reality
was too far from truths
and had lost everything,
yet still couldn't
push forward that pain,
expose it so as to be free again,
preferring it cradled 'gainst their breast,
feeding it heart's ache.
Never do they release themselves of truth,
allowing the absence of this intensity
to control their propensity
down to the air they breath.
I got lucky, having her
return to deliver rescue breaths,
for with her,
inspiration died and
in its place came paradise
in invisible's covert creation.

Let me learn the crests and valleys,
this mapwork work of your skin,
find beauty in every vitiated inch
most see as flawed, but I know
naturally formative of experience.
Allow me next to you
on Mars' sacred arid landscape,
finding hidden rivers
and reflecting pools
to hold our memories.
Permit me that smile
creeping across your lips
as you walk through night skies,
picking bouquets of flowering stars,
freshly in bloom
and neatly wrapped
in comets' tails.
Holding your image carefully,
I've tucked you away
between brainwaves,
safe from the deep sleep of time,
figuring your figure
too precious for decay.
And though you've privileged passage,
I am plagued with hands unable
to run their familiar tracks,
watching cascades of violet twilight
run through my fingers,
down that nook behind ears
I'd whisper sweet everythings into,
taking off at your neck
just as we let the music
open our shells.
Setting out as astral projections
our dances innately elemental,
yet intricate,
all spirits and gods we'd cross
rapt in our movements.
And in an instant
we'd finished,
pirouettes had you engulfed
in a dress-skin fusion,
drifting into a ravishing
black hole finish
as I'd burnt out,
causing time to split this mind,
both sides struggling to grasp
which course I'd been carried to.
Left back wishing for some insight
on your skin's stunning topography,
searching for those pools
in which I can wonder
what you ever did
with those bouquets you'd made,
and wishing that
I didn't have to wait
to see if this time
will lead me down a different path.

Disconnected linguistics leave broken fragility,
tongues speaking with such trite truth.
Thoughts turned to musing,
perception detecting that creeping chill
sliding as ivy from toes
to engrossed mind constricted,
comprehension continuously catching
the cold of ancient rites,
a reoccurrance of yesterdays',
in it such melodic disorder.

With sweet venom she sang my way,
understanding aural shortcomings
allots no egress off racing choruses
coordinated to keep pace on her tongue,
lacing time so delicately, a feat
of only passionate disdain
she left life with vicious viscosity
to buckling knees forcing haggard steps,
mind abstaining from physical obfuscation,
knowing contact lends focus to
the surrounding mists, draining away

these rains you called, in echoes
and cries once denied
and allowed to resound
within the dark halls of your eyes,
until tomorrow fell under
yesterday's reign
and you see the essence
of the escaping water,
logging time with tide marks
as it's encircling columns
we've yet deemed pedestals.

In your service
you are served by purpose,
as well as the audition of caution
refined to the request of presence
in those empty commons
you still hold.

And with such sweet venom
you call, leading through corridors,
the only ceiling marked
by the eyes of those predating sorrow,
yet unwilling to be its end,
or allow a Freudian slip
in which we'd reveal
a true identity,
yet allowing us to grasp
that it is only the light
which will release us
of that shadow cast overhead.

In this maze I am flanked
by hedges of stone,
mortar,
a mixture of
one part water
to every habit
allowed to cement unyielding.
Reformative shifts scaling
to emerge a new horizon.
You echo inward, or up,
this song claiming either path
directs towards her.

Catching firefly notes
providing burning passion
in an unaccustomed embrace,
all requeim and maladroit
in flames we let engulf.
In the center,

colored neither by experience
nor glass,
our melting embrace had yet the time
to trade themselves, though such idyll frivolity
after skirting two terrains of lucidity
to end at this reflective core,
our masks sufficed 'til parting's light
when falling apart
proved a simple concept,

conceding to the allure
of situational gravity,
given my path,
a constant upwards crawl,
less chosen,
providing more provisional tears
and finding conceding tears
commonality.

For now though
we'll sit beneath this eldar tree,
material dissociation,
left to the wish
of a lover's kiss
taking hold in the leaves of fall,
releasing the sea of change.

And as waves pervade
she wraps her palm 'round mine,
and in the dust left between
barefoot impressions
and innocence's evidence
we leave a note addressed
to any of us to return.

Everyday I am born to gods relaying
lineage through winged messengers.
Virgin radiance enkindles immaculate retinas
in solar flares
and picturesque mornings' idolatry.
Tones entrancing, blue jays
or northwest mockingbirds,
their range of majestic differences
eluding attentive innocence,
elation ebbs to pain's perpetual flow,
streaming hypno-suggestive claims
finding me inexorable
to beliefs I've not died.
Impassioned voices usher me through,
by mid-day I've learned
to speak their tongues,
strange hisses
and twisting trebles
an attempted appeasement for
conforming to continued cyclical living,
instinct selection seeking final detention,
rebirth a trapped evolutionary trait.
Dreading each twilight,
coping through whichever maiden
may allow my musings
to conform to her form
for the night,
overlapping until I
am but a shadow
dominated by her presence,
her brilliance illuminating every scar
of the side perpetually left
to the dark,
enlightenment held
in the warmth of her touch
until she too
falls beneath the horizon.
Sun setting upon this silhouette
and whispering tomorrow
in stagnant sleep speak,
settling to sacrifice's sufficience.
I fear this rest.
Gleaning premise from barbaric genealogy
qualitated as residual spatial pandemic,
leaving this life cycle
reduced to just one more death.

Standing beneath black skies' hush,
cold rains' fall a stimulating touch
bringing rise to forbearance
forcing stormcells to pressured positions
above our expanse.
These words escape to nothing.

Thick air mixed in
with each vowel of smoke,
straining to glimpse beyond
those choked fragments.
I caught your shadow
skirting the edge of visions
and slipping past my bounds.
You were cloaked in millennia,
time soaked from downpours
seemingly lost of origins,
be they long past
or still forecast,
you were,
falling drops rolling
from silken hair
still bruised in memory,
forgoing present presentation
to reacquaint opportunity
with overlooked encounters.

Soaked to soul,
the ripples spread quick
stepping to the plane of...

...wait,
where are you...

when are we...

...will you be?..

...or have we been
lost in relativity
and escaping in
each word I breathe.
Comprehension critical,
compassionate clouds constantly
reminding of drowning you out,
professing this changing view
in hallowed hurricane whispers.

An angel you became,
living upon these grounds
your plague, living on,
earthly existence anathema,
each second foreword
another progression of
decreeing beating heart
a final concerto, Ava Maria
your soliloquy, serenading
dreams in a missing tongue,
with dying tone
and a pulse set out for loan.
Loneliness my investment,
appreciating until the light was blinding,
pain breaking anthems,
scaling back to feed off
what was left.

I missed our true nature until it was reflex,
illumination only brief glimpses of a passed future,
grief developing to timelines sutures,
bleeding blending was
and has,
with will be still the memory
I'm forced to foresee.

Broken in neutrality,
droplets still caressing the shadow
skirting the corner of my eye.
Your life was short,
I let us die far too young.
Consider it your sacrifice,
the reason for the crying clouds
whose pain soothes these brainstorms
vented through cigarette breaks
wasted pouring words
to howling winds.

Let's start with two eggs,
bacon sizzling, cooling, ate,
three pieces left for another,
why not a third egg before
my moment of solitude.

The beginning, boredom
always creeping ivy slow,
taking hold between the strength
of my resolve.

Let's start with two shots,
eyes blurring, focus, blur,
three-fourths left to drown out another,
why not one more
to soothe my solitude.

If my canvas was removable
I'd have snakeskin sheddings
piled at my feet
tattooed by a pen in
languages I'm still learning.
Lessons may have missed,
but concepts still birth
third-eye conception,
without static
the reception looked perceptive
but lacked the proper method of thought,
though those with lacked grasp
are gasping to breathe,
are constantly seething
in serial reading,
your glasses reflect crystal balls.
Distortion skewed what you said,
proportionately blowing away my thoughts
with what wrath you wrought,
temper tempering timid temerity
to take tricks to the thoughtless actions
making affairs public
and tricks tickets to freed selves.
I'm tired of feeling like an addict,
your trips to town
leaving me shaking,
the absence
a strong shot of absinthe
followed by detoxification
of my blood
and thoughts.
Atrophy caused apathy
and heart-rot.
This shaking has to stop
or these words will forever
go unread.
Lines becoming waves
I'm seasick off thinking,
sea, I'm sick of thinking,
sick, I'm sea, cool blue
holding vast universe
and creation claimed creatures
in crevices buried
under self.
Thunderheads strike me
with glimpses of brilliance
as they reiterate what already was,
composing a self-made being
prophesised by ancients
who became whole,
a collected conference of ne'er-do-wells
and great lakes of depression
mistaken as puddles when the clouds
reanimate their deadened self
with soul of we,
with vodka and spirits,
both happy and deadly
lost only in the way
they lost self
to selfish thoughts
of a growing (m/w)e.
And when essence is discarded,
replaced by common cents
or otherwise deemed useless
we are left to wonder,
who's this?
Eyes
look, nearly censored
by silver backings and
dulled centers
seem lacking in humanity,
left more to primal urges,
hunting for those thoughts
left behind and gathering
pieces of rotheart
to rekindle that passion we've forgotten
after complacency compromised
our composure,
leaving heads slung in hopes of finding
a small piece of fragmented earth
in which to glimpse
a reflection of our core.
It lies dormant, though not dead,
we fear eruption of emotional enticement,
instead sleeping giants be we,
volatile and awe some,
do not catch eyes
lest we be the last things seen,
two peaceful for something not known
in the unknown languages
that cover us,
nor seen in the depths
of collective conscious,
though treating us apart,
hair by hair,
limb by limb,
being by be ing we are separating,
nay, unraveling,
untangling me from the complications
of we
only to see we
are incomplete and
alone.
Broken to pieces it's easier
to accept
the whole of who we are.

Once we were lost.
We were gone to music
we couldn't hear,
dancing in tribal tones
dust encircling us,
draping us in secrecy
these whispers keep
feet grounded in time,
hoping to hear tomorrow
on a dying breath.
When was nothing before
and after an illusion
but the secret's been sold.
Found out,
we must run, sweet baby,
run in the darkness
for it's the everyday trap
we're about to fall into,
wearing away this world
the surface too weak
for us to both continue on.
I can't lose you to sin
our earthly expression deemed demonic,
concept without credence
our revival's television gold
for commercial advertising,
but I can't lose you to a baptism.
Being birthed from tainted water
will strip that clay keeping
you connected to me,
water down these bonds
until the weight
turns them to shackles.
I can't lose you to the pyre,
firing will strip you
of your raw truth
and transform us
to tangibility,
transform us from being to thing,
a point where smiling shows
naught but cracks in your face
and breezes blowing through,
stealing away that cloak of us.
In their eyes, dust clinging to sweat,
our yelps primal and joining primitive,
we are filthy.
In ours,
emblazoned.