This is the ice breaker.

I am always new to a conversation,

years gone by as days slow down.

You may relate to it like a fish out of water.

Breathing under earths clear-blue surface

its hesitation of a world spinning as words are spoken.

In need of a breath of fresh air,

comparing it as a gasp of an after thought.

A finger to the mouth, a cat caught the tounge.

Separation can be too much too scorn.

This irrelevance in term we call chemistry.

The deep secrets we hunt,

for an open country we live without.

Should we walk the talk?

We swim a mile in short term.

The distance a man can take to dive

gives this enough to cancel past premonitions.

An eye length away

we go where the bible parts the seas...

This long trail for a short cut we gut from the book of trust.

We take the scenic route

like riding a bike till it ends with a flat,

making us take a bus,

till it cost too much.

An arm and a leg we kick to swim.

One or the other as we struggle,

we use a foam vest astride by a whim.

This maze with secret illusions,

a movie The Laberenth comes to mind.

Make belive...made up dreams.

Morals of fairy tales.

Stroies told.

Or this fable to tuck you into.

Where there is no grandmother to look forward too.

Who says I love you?

A goodnight that can't live within you.

Nothing but a monster that we hide from under our sheets.

We stress to the progress of nothing but a scary cry of, what if's?

For a wolf like me faking it's false teeth

turns out to be a deciving catastrophy.

Made up and unforgiving.

Living my escape.

It's the farthest away from my problems.

The least of my worries.

If you must try to unpuzzle my riddle.

It comes naturally.

You have it or you don't.

It's easy if you know me...

Phish Food
If time travel was possible, you say you’re sure you wouldn’t change a thing,
but I would.
I’m not mad, but I just think that I’m worthy of better times in my life
than what I’ve had.
This just isn’t what they mention when they mention being my age-
And I have my issues separate of you, and that separation might have been
what drew us together.
I recently compared my love life to Rose and Jack from the titanic,
except I’m the one in the water, grasping and freezing.
I’m not trying to be dramatic, I swear-
I just mean:
thanks for letting me hold on for a while.
I hope I was a turning point in your journey to
psychedelic self-discovery,
or whatever.
You were not a turning point in mine.

Coffee
    Heath
        Bar
            Crunch
Will sabotage those taste buds,
Like Dublin and its Mudslides.
So blast off with that,
Fossil Fuel,
And don’t let me
Catch you.
‘Cause I’ll keep you,
My Maple Blondie.
I’ll capture you,
And hold onto,
Those Cinnamon Buns.
You’re the Crème Brulee,
Of Chocolate Macadamia,
And the Cherry Garcia,
In my every breath.
You’re the Chunky Monkey,
To this Chubby Hubby;
The Dulce Delish,
for this Americone Dream.

Can’t you see I’ve just got,
A sweet tooth for you,
And your Phish Food?
Your Chocolate hair,
Key Lime Pie eyes,
Strawberry Cheesecake lips,
And your skin is a delight,
Much like Vanilla Caramel Fudge.
Did Ben and Jerry create you?
Please tell me they did!
So I can eat you,
With my cup of Boston Cream Pie,
And I’d eat you all up, Well,
Everything but the…
Half Baked,     Karmel Sutra,
Which I’d lick,
Like a cone of Cake Batter,
And then dip into,
Like Cookies and Milk.

Imagine Whirled Peace,
On top of this Mudpie,
And then Split,
Like a Banana.
That’s the kind of Brownie Batter,
I’d stir with you,
And then add a scoop,
    Or two,
Of Turtle Soup.
And you would yell,
PISTACHIO PISTACHIO!
    Where for art thou pistachio?
And with a bowl of Peach Cobbler,
And a spoon of Vanilla,
I’d look at you,
    wink,
and offer you a pint,
of my Mint Chocolate Chunk.

You're like a phosphorescent phish,
swimming quickly through my brain
Leaving trails of glitter to slowly filter through my veins
I'd rather dream in black and white
But you prefer the color blue
So I'm stuck with aqua daydreams
'Cause all I dream about is you.

They ain't  got *****,
They can't have *****,
Ugh they always go to Starbucks and order a frappuccino "**** them rich uppity white ******* get on my nerves."
They all listen to One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer,
"I really wish I had white girl hair."
All white girls have to be this, have to do that,
This is my average day at school.
It's not true.
I know because I am a white girl
But I'm not your "typical" one,
I listen to Pantera and Phish,
I don't "always" go to Starbucks.
And I have an *** thank you very much,
I'm not rich,
I'm not poor,
I have the same anatomic structure as everybody else,
I don't need to be singled out for something that isn't true about me.
White people aren't the only that can have stereotypes made about them.

Los and Lettes,
the horrorcore fans,
the post-******* brats,
the goths,
the stoners,
the metalheads,
Phish fans with no regrets,
To Les Claypool high on toadstool, Reggaeton  block party vets,
To the cigarette carrying beatniks,
Hipsters in turtlenecks,
Fashionable Teens wearing fashionable things,
Armani and Diamond rings,
Business men in formal attire,
Old folks about to expire,
gospel musicians getting higher and higher.
***** alley banter bands, who find their lyrics at the bottom of cans.

At that I had lost my rhyme scheme knowledge dropped on every scene to which i thought i was superior.

Nothing said in so many lines, fines paid for literary crimes.
Like fines levied for a lost library book.

I felt your breath and smoke like
adjacent trains.

------------

I lost my heart in the war between
what took place in normal Syrian towns
(just like the ones I learned how to read in
and the ones I danced through your hair like
asymmetrically curling waves in,
and the ones where
I saw love die like a
half-lit cigarette still burning)
and  
what your skin looked like when the wind blew off the sheets so softly that mice could have ran marathons-
where shrouded shadows cleared vision like your cornfields of tightening nerves,
forever unwinding mine.

It was hiding in between your teeth and all of the other places that were too brightly shaded for me to sun-tan under,
where
you are sixteen acres of magnolia trees donning the darkest leaves that forests will ever see,

and we mirror each other's company so tragically.

----------

Inside,
your fireplace warmed our souls like
Phish Food
and whatever chemical reactions occur when love overpowers self-loathing.

¬The trouble stems from the branches bursted from mean tantrums of the heated Johnny Appleseed’s handgun. held me for ransom but in as much as he trusts his land lock planned spot he must remain unplucked or  ****** with stuck with the function of patiently waiting to branch out and touch something. Turn the pages on the famous channel changer cuz this cliff hanger is upsetting the readers’ digestive systems. Howdy stranger maybe don’t strangle and erase the angle their plato fated brains are facing and they’ll be no problem when the mad-man-made stage caves in. Oh ancient aliens, save them from the cavemen take them to your leader they’ll meet her and she’ll tame them. Train them to fly all unidentified like and fight flickering lights that “look pretty nifty when they’re perfectly aligned all nice like that right”? **** pay attention their coming in hot with a heat seeking mission! Fully equipped with infinite wisdom and phish records skipping they’re insisting you’re a loose end who’s been missing from planet prison. You planned it didn’t ya? The way you resisted being apprehended by those animals. You’re intangible that is to say untouchable to these cannibals. Until they snuck back and struck fire when inspired to stuff the sling shot with cannonballs. ****.. terrible.

That tragedy outlasted the whited out new paper pages for nearly half an eternity. You know, internally I feel pretty empty about the incident cuz theirs a hollow feel in my gut which leaves more room for my heart to bang its head against it. Its like the old tricky ticking ******* wanted to burst his branches out of his old standards and habits of doing the laboring favor of keeping me alive. Which to be fair I completely understand where he’s coming from. I went 50/50 with him on a bet, both of what’s left of our chump change life savings. No pun intended. Threw it all at the odds of the abstract fast track approach to finally get up and move away from this place because we don’t like the crooked looks of it. No more straight edges making us circular patterned people look like were cutting corners. We were taking these squares down in their own home court advantage. They had flat feet man. A good solid stick in the mud demeanor if you know what I mean. They wouldn’t budge. Until the they jaggedly and abruptly branched out to spread their seeds and infect most of the infantry into agreement. I still remember them yelling “stick with me”.

The trouble stems from the tangents tearing the seemingly handsome devils by their new haircuts. Bare-butted phantoms prancing shoulder to shoulder  roll over on the motive to hold boulders or shotguns in his holster. But hold up, he was sold a handgun by a man who scammed him to run as rampant as a rabbit can run to tear up the lack of land with demands to “get in the family’s tree trunk”. And thus we sunk. He was Much more of a cold shoulder of a quote unquote soldier in his old days. Don’t **** the messenger lest you lessen his lesson from his letter, hope next time the handgun writing is a little bit better. In a nutshell, that Johnny kid has a tremor. He’s just a teenager in between the brain and the thinker. Thinking more meaning is a synonym for meaner. No more lingering in this trunk-stuck scenery, he leaves her. Makes a deal with the real inside of reality and magically adapts to their ragged jagged jackpot actually he quite liked the lack of quiet he’d suggest you try it if he didn’t die happily when he tied a tight neck tie to his promised-landslide. Tragedy.

The beginning of this
Break.
–Down
At its foundation
Fulfilling and self-reflective, and
Rousing and neurotic and bright
And perilous
–a fever-dream
¬¬¬
Shadows that have stopped forming,
      Dead
       All
The mornings are dead
The passion is dead
The feeling of the back of my neck –tiny hairs
      All
       Dead

That human side has halted
The “I-feel-like-a-*****-but-” thoughts, gone

All dreams
All barren, with less than profound meaning
******* dead, behind the wheel.
Car trapped
Inside of a sad self-absorption

A frozen-inlet, a fissure in the glass-jar
Road paved with the litter of the late
Night, bug-eyed witless carbon copy Phish fan
Grave yard shift –stick worn-down-brain
Lazily-littered, empty-shell of a
Bottle flung, down to the pavement

Down, into the gutter

Down, into sewer

Which sweeps, down into the **** Heavens
And sits
Down, endlessly
Dreaming only to return
Into life

The insanity
The heartbreak
The fears
The passions
The talent
The jokes
The sickness
The *******

Where it all starts
Where it all eventually sleeps
Where all of this **** came full circle
Where the mind can return
Where the body can lay,
Down

At the beginning of this.
Break.
–Down

I’d like to start
By saying that I have had
So many great memories
(Mornings of Phish shows,
before skiing, going to college,
high school lunch with friends)
Standing in front of your counter
As I eagerly watch you
Flip my sizzling eggs,
My succulent bacon.

Is there any spirit, Jim,
More jolly than yours?
Any soul more deeply content
To engage in pleasant small talk
With the local old ladies,
To put stickers
On their macaroni salad containers
And smile,
To tell them, “Thanks for shopping here,”
As you wipe your hands
Off on your white apron,
Tied off just beneath your proud belly,
And really mean
Every word?

Jim, you have touched the food
Of many, the lives
Of many.

Your store has survived
Well into the age of the supermart
And still the people come back.
They come back for
Your fresh eggs,
For your incredible meats,
Your perfectly baked goods.

But Jim,
Sometimes,
They come back
For you.