I am content being in my closet-bed, safe and alone. I am ok with my window open and the night air. I can switch the switch of pursuit, fondness and a candid smile. I have my own sphere of existence and I am happy to have it. I cannot always start running on a new chapter of my life but I am fully able to continue to ream in the past with new vigor and statistical desperation. I am one of a few million-million and it is still unclear what creates the legend of capital uniqueness. I love my father and mother and always my sister. I want better for everyone and myself. I want to love on them all that I can.  Marriage no, children no, family is what I have as conflicting and contradicting as it may be. Thing fall apart. I love the ugly moments of my ceiling.

I am not a new story waiting to happen. I am not a ravid political face or frenzy. I am not a desperate grunt who got his just-comings. I am not the type to be escorted in any way by the crumpled void of fallacius fame and humble-beginning-fortune. I am the desperate coat bearer of the northeast bronx. I have the mind of a child. I have the graces of rat. I have the public anticipation of a broken man apart from his chariot-era. When sitting I grow anxious and hungry and mis-mannered and poor and terrified. I throw away any hour to the madness of deep seething and wallowed whispers of loathing per-the manuscript writings of two years ago. I cannot help myself like others can. I cannot say what haunts me the way they can. It's the deaf ears and I have some too. I was born this way and I who I am. They are permissible and I am another anachronism. I am tempted to start over somewhere completely unknown and away. I just want to break free from the cycle my age and be with my age. I want to chase my girl around the city and stop at another house and have another long conversation about the same daily occurrence of you evenings. Then move on when you have moved on and see straight into another tomorrow like I was unable to until now. To write myself out of another horrific night, alone. Defeated by my own revelations of my own determined normalcy and struggle for authentic dialog. Near the line of conviction that I should never say another word because the shy me now will be appalled by the shy me years later. That I will surely be an embarrassment in my own if I ever stepped on a stage. That I have nothing, and will never have anything, worthy or useful to the world around me. That I am completely doomed to die forgotten and unoriginal.

Culture slips from me
At a faster pace.
The void: “Hi.”
I say “Hi yourself.”
We smile.
Knowing we’ll be back together, sometime.

(Breakup song for the void.)

For a month a part of me was missing.
At least I thought.
So when I found it again, I was overjoyed.
Life made sense again because a void was filled.
But everything that glitters isn't gold.

You can't miss a part of you that was never there.
There's not a word for it either.
I tried to conquer the lexiconical gap.
So I watched as the petals grew crisp
And his words lost tenderness.
I relived the feelings of before that were  the reason I left.
I questioned why I ever came back.

I watched myself and my movements.
Wondering why I did everything with him in mind.
Just wanting to be seen as imperfectly perfect,
Be any and everything.
To others I was everything and more,
To myself I tried to be more, to be that part he never could seem to find in me.
But yet again the lexiconical gap stopped.
I couldn't miss the part of me I never had
Especially because I never knew what it was.

Summer came and went.
Our summer was the sweetest.
I miss what I actually did have then.
Those constant conversations, that eagerness and anxiety we'd get when too many hours passed without seeing or hearing from each other.
We did have that.
Now summer comes again and I'm faced with the
everlasting gaps that are me waiting to hear from you.
That denial I have when I finally do.

A gap, the lexiconical gap that may never be filled.
Not even Lexi can fill it, not even Lexi can keep you.

Life was easy before
Loneliness.

There wasn't a
Void

To fill.

Life was easy before
Love;

There wasn't a
Heart

To break.

Life was easy before:

Jobs
Girlfriends
Money
Apartments
Friends
Death
Fading idols
Tickets
Debt
Anxiety
Genius
Bravery
Solitude
Freedom;

Life was easy before all of that.

Instead of a simple life
Our society bogs us down with
New things to make our leaves easier

But the truth still stands behind;
Lingering on doorsteps,
Behind the television set,
Underneath our persian silk sheets,
Even underneath the sidewalk
We walk upon to work.

The truth is still there,
With a blank stare,
Holding a smirk as old as time.

Gadgets gear us towards the idea of immortality
That we are the mighty Gods now
But all we need to be reminded of our dispensability
Is a little rain
A little shake
A little gust of wind
And our gadgets and selves will just wash away

Don't let me stray into those matters
Evolution always has me worried
Envy of not seeing man at their newest, their best
Holding the gates of my eyelids open
So to see the break of the waves blue white breast

Atonement in these times generously dispensed
But everyone remembers a face
The way the iron clad soldiers forget is through
Further murder, hoping to one day die themselves
To be truly forgotten is the greatest of miseries
Never having lived means to never have existed

Our footprints are getting wider
The trees sway further toward the ground
Exhaustion peels away at me
Like a babies hand would an orange
Barely standing, I go to work to make $50 a day

Expected to live and be grateful
Produces a laughter mixed with mad absurdity
Where are our heroes now?
On the screen? On the stage? In the field? Behind desks?
There is so much to be done and
When all is finished, the hands scabbed and the knees scraped
All of it will be in vain

Though, we can say we tried
Rather than sitting on our loins
Watching the clouds burst
And the swirls of sand form a tunnel toward God

Lizards prepare their feast
Buzzards rip the flesh from a fresh carcass
Dung beetles roll their wears to the holy land
And the hope of man breathes in and breathes out

One final time

There     are     faults     in     our    stars



                                                             ­    Ink marred by burning scars

                                                             ­      Holes in velvet seams

                                                             ­           We cling to foolish dreams

                                                             ­   Seal the blinding hope within

                                                             ­                          The light will always dim
                                                             ­                 
We burn so bright

                     Can we ignite without the light?
                                                             ­                                                 
I have never felt the same
                      
                                   Since you extinguished my flame
                                                             ­                                                       
I am a match with no spark
                                                        
                                       Now you are a stranger in the dark

I tried to quit smoking last week. And my best friend died for eighteen hours. Such a deep loss has only been felt by rose hips, in the early winter, after the petals have fallen to the ground, like snow, like jumpers from high-rise buildings, like a maiden, after that last, fatal step off the plank, with swords at her back, and the horizon calling to her, the song of the Sirens drifting up from the ocean floor. Dropping, like petals, caught in a harsh winter breeze. The left-overs, the carcases of the flowers that were and are no more, watch with eyes of sorrow and hearts of lead, as each friend, companion, lover, even casual aquaintance plummets, to land on the already frozen soil of a dead, snowless, Colorado winter.
I died with my friend. My roots were tangled, and with each second that passed, a million axes took bites out of them, feasting on my identity. The axes were only gold-plated, it would seem, and not pure, unadulterated precious metal. Engraved in the paper-thin facade was a name, a face, and a hope, all of which were merely a poor excuse for an excersise in willpower. The cold, iron blade shone through the thin, gently curved lines of lip and ear and eye made of nebula. With each breath that passed between loosely parted lips, I felt myself fade, giving my everthing to the world (hope, name, face) that had, only moments before, murdered my closest companion.
My eyes grew steadily hard, increased stone-content. By 6:30, I had been staring into the eyes of my mistress, Medusa, for at least two hours, my head filled with love songs and daydreams, clutching straws and holding out for the one perfect moment that would shed a brief light on my life, which is, in all reality, the afformentioned pirate ship, but void of lamps, candles, or any other means of illumination.
Questions flowed to the surface of my disjointed mind in a stream, a river, an oceanic current of molten rock and sloppy second guesses.
(Will one hurt? Half? Just one puff? Why? Why? Why?)
And as I turned to stone, I finally found the courage to answer one of the questions that my brain shot itself with, injected into its own blood stream. The question was the sole bullet in a revolving, high-stakes betting game, the answer, the fourth trigger pull, with only two chances left anyway.
(Because... I don't know why...)
So stand up, go to the place you have thought about two-million times, and, yes, smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette.
As my friend rose from the dead, pushing aside the boulder blocking the entrance to its tomb, which everyone knew was just a temporary tenement, and we were reunited, we spoke of fascists. Well, I spoke of fascists, it listened. I spoke of the kind of fascists that exist in grayscale television commercials, spewing ingnorant words about the untimely deaths of beloved family members, who give me dirty looks in public, and have forced me into alleyways, across streets, out of sight, out of mind, to the back of the bus, as if non-smokers live forever, as if everyone can accomplish said impossible feat, if not for the evil plant, the evil spiritual plant that poses a threat to the well-ordered religious structures, pyres built for martyrs and long-dead saviors.
I have only begged for eternity once, and I was very young, with years of rocks and hard places ahead, only pink clouds behind, and eyes incapable of foresight. This boy ate apples, and drew on his arms with black pen every Sunday. Go into the church clean, bathed, come out with temorary full-sleeve tattoos. This boy was made of wonder, myth, and blind acceptance. No longer.
I have now gazed into an eternity made of open graves, lost loves, and harsh, barbed-wire truths, punctuated with sharp, jabbing exclamation points of brief pleasure that only seem to make the reality of eternity worse. I am a masochist, and even I don't want that. A body can only function for so long without sleep before the motor wears out, the radiator breaks, the gasket leaks, and the marbles flee from the growing insanity of their owner. We all need to rest eventually, and in my secret mind - the one that grimaces with sick pleasure and only shows its teeth in the lines of a poem, slightly blurred by metaphor - I long for that sleep. I am tired, but the day is only half done. But each sun sets, and we can not deny it that truth, that sensation of finality that settles upon senile eyes like a cataract, that snuggles against warm, pink lungs in all its black, tar-like splendor.
Truth, like so many other things in this solar system, only takes shape when under the eye of a microscope, with a passive viewer sewn to the end of it, with the sole intention of passing judgement before shouting "NEXT," and repeating the process untill they either run out of things to judge (blame, think, guilt-trip) or die.
So, smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette. Puff, puff, puff it and let us hope they never get to either of us, old friend.

I am disgusted by your privy and lathered face, facial expressions fill the gentle void, devoid of all human concious, empathic license of intelligence, you were always smarter than me, I wonder, does that make you happy? Twisted twine and pathic phrases of gang related gore, driving me off the walls, towards and in my own stall, waiting, phrasing the right thoughts in my head, to silent to tell the meaning of the names i came up with, of the charcters of my theater peice playing soon on broadway's basement. ten spins into a spiral and i am out fast, fill the void you joker, mascarade in and all around the plaside place and face of the broken frontier town. Call it home, ring the church bells, praise fast and all around the sight of kindoms entitled, to your brain, to your thoughts, to your brilliance, to your majesty, to your all enslaving tone, the same tone you speak to me in as you console your inner golgotha, fingering me out at the river-side bluff, alluding to our own memories, mind games, drastic plays for attentions and self-preservation. So go ahead, carry on your legacy, your driving will to self impose morality and autonomy on others, you decide these things, am i right? You arise to the occasion and hold them tight to the nuse around thier necks, the same nuse and braid i called to amend all those years ago and yet still you don't trust me, after all these years you still don't trust me , what lies you summon to fight for you, bastard child of liberate and hate.