There's been a delay on the press
And a shout in the streets; they demand
"Give us our books!"

And lo, such a tragedy is this
That we must wait for the
Yeti to emerge on this
Winter holiday

I'm a raging retort
Burning air and searing flesh

I'm rough rainfall
In the dead of December
When it's too warm to snow

I'm a scarred navel
Touched by lips unknown

I'm a dog left outside
To rot in the Sierra sun

Take my heart and take my soul and
takes my hands and take my role

in this world.
What's worthy?

Your voice,
what's holy?

Your feet.

Tread hallowed ground and
desecrate it with the blood
of new gods,
newly forsaken,
newly undertaken.

Drop the shovel and surrender

Your voice is legal tender

I burned myself today
when the metal bit on my
lighter touched my skin

I didn't let the light go
out because I love the
way the flame dances
despite the pain

I watch the fire for its beauty
and my eyes drink it in,
I hope it never stops

All it takes is a slip of the thumb
to ***** out the warmth

As a young author,
I've published earlier
Years' worth of poetry
In hefty anthologies,
And that which has been
Allotted for 2015 will
Be published on Christmas

This book is called Yeti,
And if you care to pursue a
Purchase, a manner of donating
To a young writer, the link
Will be in my biography

Merry Christmas!

Each time you look at me
I see eyes that have never
met mine

Each time you speak I watch
lips move that have never
tasted mine

Each time you walk I see muscles
tense that I have never felt roll
in days past

Your eyes say we never kissed and
I can only agree

I'm a satellite gone rogue
Thrown off course by an
Unfamiliar gravity

Call me Telesto in that
Solar voice of yours
Pin me down
Against the stars

Give me up to younger worlds
Made of packed stone, rich with
Potential

The best I can do is watch
And fly
And wait for the day upon
Which you will finally devour me

I dream of dark nights
when the moon hangs high
when the wind is crisp

that we sit on roofs
wrapped in each other's arms
breath the silent warmth

I dream of dark nights
that we sit on roofs
and watch the stars in silence
that our eyes be as silver as the moon

Minimus lux,
with little light

I dream of dark nights
when we would not see each other
so the form means nothing and
we are bound by mind and
soul

I dream of long days
when we sip tea or coffee
free of stress of social things or school
that we can enjoy each other's company
and not worry about deadlines or evenings

let me
wipe those tears off your face
come and look down at me
take my hand
lead me through
the forest of things you
can't tell anyone else

remember
the grass is greener
where you water it
love is given freely
and never runs out

there is nothing you
can say that will stop
me from trusting you

I don't know what's crossed your
Brain tonight but I know that
You shouldn't think I want you to
Know that I think highly of you

So please,
Kiss me and get it over with

I don't know what's wrong with me,
What does God want from me?
So I can be perfect and funny once
Again, youth restored, safe so my
Heart isn't bored

Drenched in despair,
I've already been replaced -
I watched it happen, day by day,
And I can't help but hate
That which is better than I am

I need an escape and a place
I can run to because this town
Isn't my home anymore;
These aren't my friends anymore

I know you feed on gossip
******* yourself off in the corner -
You think it's glamorous
But that gossamer mask is gone and
Between the **** and the half-drunk
Smiles, the truth was always there

You pretend that you don't care but
I know
That you care too much and it's this
Fear that fuels you through the dark night

Find me in the far East with a bow in hand and a tree at my feet and a deer fleeing to the sunrise. I hope to find a way to escape the sun before it overtakes me. The deer seeks light. I seek nonbeing. The tree has been destroyed. The North still governs where I set my feet.

Find me upon layers of ice with an ax in hand and a mammoth at my feet, buried under a million years. I cut through a thousand and then a hundred thousand and then I’m there and my ax is cutting into ancient, frozen blood and my own is flowing and I am dying a million years ago. Snow begins to fall. The million years ago meets the now and I have an adequate grave.

Find me in a casket six feet underground with a rope around my throat in case I escape again. It’s happened twice. This time, when I wake, the rope will secure me and I will not be able to dig myself out. This is good. This is what my family wants. It makes things easier. It’s good.

Find me awake in my casket, hands ****** and lips bloodier. I kiss the silk lining of my coffin and the rope cuts off my breath and my claws cut through the rope and I push forward and wet soil falls into me. It is raining. I escape the graveyard in my white and red and brown suit and I hide in a trash bin before they can find me and **** me and bury me again. This is the eleventh time I’ve escaped. It is the last. My veins are filled with preservative and it is colder and drier but I am alive and that’s all that matters. The sun comes soon. I’m not ready for it.

Find me on desert sands with a rope in hand and a horse nearby, thirsting for the river a mile off. I am mesmerized by an image before me. It shows an island. My mind tells me that the island is where I want to be, so I mount the starving horse and make my way to the island. I am clad in a white and red suit and the horse pales and they call me Death. They call me Death because I scare their children at night and I seek the island that harbors my dreams. I don’t know that the grains of sand beneath the hooves of my horse are lives.

Find me on that island and know that this is my destiny.

The illness catches branches low,
heralds beaten unseen woe.

It grows inside me, spark by spark,
a fire in my favorite park.

Jewels forgotten, rivers clean,
mark it by the ashy sheen.

It's gone again; it's worth your while,
stab yourself and spit up bile.

Your days are done and I will rise,
I am back to claim my prize.

///

Bigfoot is real and the government is
Run by lizards dressed in human skin!

Wake up, sheeple! We're being invaded by
Beings from beyond the moon who want to
Steal our culture and **** our land!

Chemtrails are killing free-thinkers by the thousands
And we'll only be safe if we retreat to that commune
In the middle of Utah

Brothers and sisters, you wouldn't think a
Blanket encrusted in ***** could do so much
Damage but clearly we've underestimated the power of deceit

Brothers and sisters and everyone in between,
The land isn't ours and it isn't theirs, and it'd serve us
Well to remind ourselves that the land has always belonged to
Itself and that's never gonna change

It's been several generations now but the blood is still
Fresh and nobody can blame you for being
Sour, but for the love of the gods, it's high time
We transform that anger into motivation

We're more than hokey voodoo magic and
Prophecies about reclamation or apocalypse, or
Cheap drugs and casinos

We're back now, we were never gone,
Just buried

I feel like now playing chess
Through hasty key commands
We're on equal standing

Long ago,
Rain fell and music rolled
And instead of fog
They knew smoke

Long ago,
Crisp was muddled by
The sky and the sun
Rose and fell in grid-like rows

But I can't go to an age that's
Lost but more earthly

Take my hand, darling--
move on to the stars and watch as the sun sets
See those silhouettes?

It's a summer retreat campfire beat and
sticks on railings in the dead of day

"Bring me back," they plead, but
that's not our way

Oh, no.

Look at the past and swallow your regrets
and make bad jokes about your fading silhouettes

Cast on the wall as a saucer after their call, broken
Take my hand and lead me through
the garden of our broken promises

An echo of "I'm sorry" in the embers

my feet are on backward and i think i'm dying
baby, hold me

i'm landing in my sunnystep and my brain is like
thunder music, a beat only a child can drum to

eyes squinted i'm overwhelmed, an anxiety attack
only my mother could sniff out
honey i'm too in denial to tell

i got ******* work to do

but my mind won't let me go
won't let me walk
talk

baby, hold me
lift me from my sunnystep
make me slow down

When you cut me open
We both noticed something
A little odd

I know it made you want to
Run away but I swear,
I'm nothing bigger than you
No better than you
No higher
Than you

My blue blood is nothing
But memories of a lost
Time

This is a different kind of
Vitality and different
Doesn't mean bad

Take my word; the world
Looks no different through
My eyes

I miss the touch of candlelight on my skin
Faces pressed together without discretion
Thoughts projected onto cluttered walls
Littered with forced memories of years past

I'm confused by nostalgia
and conflicting desires
and the will to make it all right
when it's not my place to do so

I remember years ago when I looked in my wall-wide mirror
and realized that I'm not who I think I am
and I never will be
and I'm different by every sunrise

Reborn in a new light
singing new songs
humming old tunes
reclaiming lyrics from scrapyards

This is my destiny, I realized;
to be ever-changing

Each night I find myself clawing
the skin off my face

I find myself singing along to love songs
that I'll never relate to
not because I won't find love
but because I won't let myself

Each conversation blocked by doubt;
this is my curse
and my blessing

I'm forever safe, guarded by gates that
will never open

GONE WITH THE SUN ON MY BACK AND THE MOONLIGHT IN MY HAIR, I proclaimed, and I left with a trace in the form of six footsteps perfectly aligned in the soil post-storm.

I PROMISE THAT ONE DAY YOU WILL FIND ME, I bade them farewell, my message scratched in stone with a knife that if it were any sharper then I swear to God time would've bent to it and not the other way around.

I LEFT YOUR MONEY IN THE FREEZER WITH THE WINE YOUR MOTHER STOLE AT HER FINAL MASS, I called back, the words rolling off my tongue like an afterthought, and this fleeting carelessness is all I wanted in life and I was ecstatic to finally achieve it.

Hear the bugle call - the woods shudder

Beyond the eyes of glassy sands and
blue elm trees, blood pours in fountains

It soaks stone,
cracks granite

I seek him out, picking through faces unknown
to me and oft seen of you, seeking scents unfounded

Swipe, the blade goes, flinging at the end of my arm,
and the skull goes flying true

i am glowing now
my eyes are dark like
fresh-tilled soil
my skin is soft like
the leaves of jungle trees
my voice is clear like
ancient spring water

i know what it means to
be new, now
to wake and feel it in your
bones, to
rise and feel like singing

So excited but so cold
Haunted by the icy lakes outside
And my thoughts are muffled by
My insatiable hunger, I cry for a
Release from this pain

Send them my regards and I'll
Seal the deal with a kiss as I
Wish Minneapolis goodbye

I hope to return here one day since
My visit was brief, you frigid
*******

You know these waters as well as I do
and I know that you live for the perfect shot

I know that you find safety in knowledge
and the shore is your only salvation

You know my youth; a bounding call
from roads I could never walk

A sea I could never conquer

Copper sunrise
Sand between my toes
Lips on mine
Sublime
Lean into it
And grasp the wind
Still when we hit the stones below
Take me to Indeset
I'm out of breath
Take me into you
Forever
Promise me that

Self obsessed roamers wandering
Without a path in mind within
The bounds of a world they think
They can see

They think they know

What love is and what it means
To get lost and that neither of these
Things are evil but are in fact the
Two remaining wonders of this world

I know exactly what peace is and I
Hate myself for filling my head with
Meaningless feelings and material desire
And I will do anything to get lost in the
Woods again for if you know your mind
Then you are never truly lost

He is not worth my time
He will not consume my life
He does not care about me
When I left him he began to rot
For he thrives on attention

He is worthless in my eyes
And to say this is selfish but
Selfish will save my life

He was bejeweled in my eyes and
He is nothing more than a stone in
A pond, rife with moss and void
Of gems, a faceless individual lost in a
Crowd of billions

He is not worth my time

I know the way you walk
On a bad day
The way your hips speak
To the wind and the way
The air listens

I can read the sway like a book
Or like a bible;
I haven't decided which yet
But I know that your eyes
Can't change my mind
No matter how hard you try

I know you're crazy;
The way your arms fly apart
Like a duck in a bird hunt
And when I walk away I know
You're falling too

Nobody seems to care and I begin to wonder
if it's because I pretend I was never hurt

I told him how easy he would be for me to
cut out of my life; he's dating my ex, the
one who cheated on me and tells me he was
right in doing so

I told him how easy it would be for me to
cut him out of my life because he does nothing
but whine about his feelings and tell
unfunny jokes

I gave her everything and she did nothing but
tell me I'm wrong, tell me the boy I'm with now is
trash and I was only able to bring up the mirror
and show her own hypocrisy

Never mind, none of you deserve me, so I'll embrace my
feelings now and go to that place I've been avoiding for
as long as I can remember

A place called comfort

I love you and your voice and
Your music and I wish you'd
Embrace your talent and your
Skill with change

If I could cut through the miles I
Would, if I could find a way to
Help us both I would, if I could
Find a way to get you here I would

I'm building a garden and a haven and
I want to replicate the beauty I felt last
Spring, a year ago, pulling off that
Woodsy Bohemian Highway

We're so similar I'm scared to speak,
I was living a mistake, killing myself
By the fireside, and all the while I was
Petrified

I've found a light since then and I'm
Hoping we can speak again

Get a new love.

365 sunrises is simple math,
But you can't forget sunlight
When it's winter just because
You feel like it

Wrong me and I will eclipse
You because standards mean
Nothing to me and I will
Destroy the charts where
They stand

You know this.

Listen: it's been no different for me --
We've both found a future and a truth

And I remember the flashing lights at that
Concert devoid of pyrotechnics or
Rube Goldberg machines but it was
Perfect anyway

Do you see it?

I have a theory that a new
Day begins only when you've
Had a chance to sleep after midnight
And for an added bonus, maybe
You'll wake to see the sunrise
As well

I've gone a few mornings without
Sleeping but I'm ready to put a
Big red bow on this night and
Call it a day

I mean,
Call it sacrilege but
A break is what I need

Here, this is my haven place:
My light-rain windy dew-bound place.

There, that is my chaos place:
My flip-turn shattered axle flaming place.

Now, where is my solace place?
My hidden-thoughts mystery space?

Taking a look inside is harder than it looks
when my eyes stare out into the world and not
back within.

Glimmering, beset by glittering ocular retinae,
I see the ghost of my whispered solace place.

It is more than I'd ever hoped for.

i look at you and hear guitars strumming in my head
a thousand at once, you know, rising up like the
crashing of atlantic waves

violent, silver, dark as blood but not the right color
at all, they don't care what you think

but they can tell what you're feeling so when the
storm recedes and the sea grows suddenly calm,
you are forced to look it in the eye and
say that you're okay

i will be on the sand and i will
know that you are not

Dig knives into my chest,
see how many will fit.

I'm doing it,
those are my hands.

This knife has your blood and this
one has hers, and that one has his.

There's no whisper telling me to
stop.

Stop.

I was born from snow and glacier
meltwater from the lands the sun
doesn't touch

I was born from blood and the ink
on the writs for a million ancient
creeds, lost to time

I was born on broken promises and
the dream that one day, California
will be mine

It's my American destiny to be haunted
by roadside attractions and to drink water
poisoned by my dog's dying howls

I dream of porcelain snowfall and moonlight
on your upper lip as we kiss for the last time
before you lay me to rest

I sing of a legacy forged in steel and stone, set for
our children to gaze upon, a great mausoleum
destined to fall to our greatest adversaries

But if my dreams don't come true?

Breathe me back to life

Show yourself,
take what you want

Steal my words and my craft
and my beauty

I am more, I am the
killing song

I will rise above the waves and
slice their heads from their bodies

Rending flesh,
rendering muscle and sinew

Veins of sea spray down ******
rivulets, and there is nothing left

So, may we
start again?

the sun was bright that day
leaving freckles in my skin
burning brown grains of sand
stepping a little too far inland
losing sight of the sea
looking for the snake's oolong tea

theft ain't bad if you're taking
from the thief
got nothing to lose, friend,
just like you
you know how it is

oh, hello
i'd never steal from you
just wanted to look around
admire the place
you've got a pretty good setup here
no, i'm not a kiss-***, i'm being for real

scraping my knees on the rocks near
the shoreline, digging sand into my skin
the reddening streaks on my legs
remind me of the sunset
pain is nothing, i tell myself
kneeling and praying to god
for mercy upon mine soul

but this doesn't get old
face flushed with relief
my pockets full of the snake's
very aromatic oolong tea

I've got my eyes on the sunrise
Meet me at the gate
And tell me I'm your yesterday

There's a nail in your skull
And you're pulling it free,
I can see
But it's not my place to help

Instead, I'll read mysteries in the café
By the waterside and wish you the best
With your boy trouble in the Golden State
But I really wish you'd
Ask me for advice one of these days

We're the bezel-born,
Birthed on the outskirts
Of all that's known to
The world that chewed us up and
Spat us out

I know my place,
Little angel,
And the time;
It's on the little silver band
On my wrist and
All you have to do is ask

No soft down of the goose
No suspirations of peace and condolence
No love for the broken

No volume of kind words will ever heal me,
no amount of rose-tinted promises will ever convince me that I'm not alone in this fight

No pillows for me when I fall from my great heights

Only the justification of my actions and the tissue to the tears I forgot to shed

Pulling on my heartstrings
Commanding every move
I know how you feel

I can feel your tension
Through these cords
This electric beat
Pounding through my brain

Blest be your eyes
Because they read mine
And don't call back

Ceaseless shouting:
an echo in the light

Shadow has its mystery;
the sky 'nspires no plight

Bring it back to the days of
our forefathers and the infernal
cries of horror --

A constant back-burning is no
writ of lore

Dredge in the fields and harken to
our mother-chiefs, goats will be the
death of me, like me,
they gnaw on ancient skulls

Like spears cast in soil and seeds
sprouting young, the claw quick in
grass will scout the thunder's rolls

Blank as blanket clouds on northern holiday,
black as boots and blood in forests
deeper still, like the young crow's 'gotten trill;
death be found in my last shield's holes

Forgotten statuettes of Sophocles:
a hum of our queen's new families

I take a step and plunge
Headfirst into a well full of
Oil and grease

I roll my eyes to the back of
My head and I see my assailant
Behind me

Eyes in my skull as old as gold,
Seeing lands to which I've
Never been

Never been there to pray for peace

I told my friend that
you're the past

Because you're everything
aging and terrible and ashy
about years gone by

I've got a million other names for
you like cowardly, disloyal,
traitorous

But speaking to you would be a
manner of giving in, going after your
lure, and I knew you as a man of strength
and honesty

And you were, once upon a time,
So what happened?

Kick the ground and it'll send you flying

Hit the wall and you'll punch right through

Power, oh power.

sickening grip on reality as
you
bend
it

Stretch the miles and retract
Go go to the edge of the universe
And your sneakers will track stardust
Into the kitchen

Take from the poor and give to
the poorer

Scorched lime on ashy
bread

Bronze in fist and silver
in tooth

You're surely ******,
highwayman

you do not feel for me
but the thought is enough

you are beautiful beyond compare
as the types of sunrises and sunsets
you cannot tell apart

you are the moon as it kisses the sea
and i am jealous in each moment your
lips are not on mine

flawed to the bone i have never felt so
deeply for a closer friend

i love the fun we have, virgo

I see it in your eyes -
The endless inertia, energy spent
And left behind, recycled in an
Overcrowded skull

You were killed in the snow
And left to dry in the sun,
Beaten back like the weeds,
Held down like a martyr
Underwater