some guy on the corner, living like his third world relative, wearing a shirt that says “the only cure is kindness”
a woman on the subway, fattened up on consumerism, flipping through the pages of her first read in three years-
“you are enough: and other ways to avoid overeating”
the shocks come in the form of niceties
bloodied, invisible war faces dishing out the l-word
drying up the n-word with their own iodized vocabulary.
places to go never served much for me save for the literal change of scenery
something else for my eyes to melt onto.
Columbine High School right off Pierce
If you squint hard enough,
I bet you could still see the linoleum sticky with blood and
feel, not hear, the primal screams bashing themselves against the walls
Fear smells potent enough that most of us can recognize it, and some of us crave it,
like a shark.
miles of ocean is nothing when your life wavers in the heat-
survival becomes nutrient-rich
don’t let me catch you salivating over it
I might just destroy you too.
Hope Cemetery
eat the rich
**** the dead
pass by the living in all their
sun-sucking glory.
Dithers attempt to wrestle the silence cast out by a thousand stones
inscriptions lost all purpose, dates scuffed away by wind.
at night, each night past the full, bleeding moon,
he gets on his two bad knees and prays to God that his unloved family might become lovable,
that his mind may be forever closed to the idea of sin,
and that his throat may never feel the hot rush of alcohol again.
because who could judge the people who were victims of life’s potential?
who was to blame?
not the kind-men
not the prayers not the seekers
not the midnight drinkers
it was only the ones whose anger arrested them
and then the law
and then their own guilt.
summer was a severance
some time to grow too warm in the sun
disregard the ************* who leaned on faith with all their weight and pointed their skinny fingers at every disobedient child.
**** the cookie jar.
if it wasn’t me, it was the Noah’s ark worth of people that shuffled up and down that spiraled staircase each summer.
last full memory i was there
i saw some blue birds with balding spots, tethered in their concrete cage
which i opened silently as silent as my own breathing
as my rage.
and as i was scolded
the scorch of hot breath against my gooseflesh neck
i smiled, a fluttering one
because that freed one was kissing my eleventh winter.
Jul 25, 2021
Jul 25, 2021 at 12:37 AM UTC
i whimper and struggle underneath the weight
of a full-scale massacre
won’t my world ever be the same?
won’t my consciousness refuse to wake in the face of such…
tragedy?
cross-hatch the heavens
seal shut the gate as he looks out upon me, out past the closing door
his eyelid like a tiny boat.
it is with a ballad in its might
that i both see and feel this
goodbye,
to my others, it bolsters itself to the light of the sun
and the grief that tears through me
is another entity.
it has outweighed the sound of nails against board
it has outweighed illness, and the tiresome conversation of hope
it has outweighed many days lost at sea
outweighed the great loss of a person
outweighed the equal and greater gain of another
outweighed the potential of life
it has outweighed its shortcomings
every-thing,
as it is,
has been diminished as an ember.
yet the fire rages on,
embellished and doted and needed
labored upon.
and i, i do not dream of labor.
Jul 25, 2021
Jul 25, 2021 at 12:37 AM UTC
thirteen claw-marks from that cat on the shaky marble floor
who knows, as it etches itself into a rich mans immaculate masculinity
wiping away my helplessness before it too makes its mark.
i wish they would put their shoes together
left toe touches right toe
thats the only way it can be,
just right in the invisible space in the carbon dioxide collection.
twenty-seven pennies
bitter smelling in the jar which has just reached its peak in age and dust
they are the majority within their glass prison
dignified despite their rust
meaningless in their respite,
soon to be obsolete, as he points out constantly.
oh, how the world changes.
and i have only been conscious for a tiny tick on the clock.
now, this old man, with his inflexible spectacles
lacks the view in his birds eye and peripheral
but probably considers my shadow a bad omen.
he shivers in the wake of such an evil.
my teeth click against each other, electrified with the being of that evil.
the setting is white,
or rather, a version of it, decrepit with the plaque of a pattern all too familiar.
this is my dream room.
where i find myself often
and where often i am a stranger
my letters of wonder which i design on the walls, on the solar filled floor to ceiling glass
backwards of course, in hopes that someone might read them,
have turned tired and cold,
no longer illustrate their longing
nor their greed for adrenaline
nor their want for the world.
black and chicken scratch
stationed among the randomized pauses and the seemingly infinite crack in the wallpaper
might it widen its mouth for me
as it did so slowly
so lustfully
for her?
how possible is the other side,
when the world that you breathe in suffocates you only long enough until you remind yourself in silence
to breathe again.
imprisonment feels kinder when you can see out,
even though they can see in.
shuttered away, i build upon my layers until my mind can multiply itself
sneak out its smoky tendrils and climb along the terrace,
and wail
and scream
and scream until you could hear it down the street
until each person ceased their hearts
in between beats they meet the sound of a consciousness so distinctively torn they can’t help but reconcile with their own.
but i will never reach them that way
as i did not reach her
as i did not reach you.
i wear the glass, a translucent suit of sea green and nursery blue
each time they touch me, allow their fingers to feel my life
to feel my death
to feel the imperfect atoms which make up my aloneness, the invisible filth-
they are pricked and sliced open
the way grass does on bare skin only to be noticed hours later
in me, they see themselves
and the hatred only
grows.
Jun 15, 2021
Jun 15, 2021 at 11:29 PM UTC
there was a fire between you
a passion, some kind of lust
and you called it a miracle.
a split ashtray and broken seatbelts and
a flat tire and a screaming baby
you called it a miracle.
dead romance, techno music,
afro picks and spilled beer.
you called it a miracle.
boxes lined with insulation,
IV drip and nurses pressed for life.
you called it a miracle.
happiness, hopelessness,
hurried love, first homes, small toes.
miracle.
then and there and back again,
hospital bed, open head, runny eggs and
silence
is it still a miracle?
im just me,
and theres no cure for that.
and you ************
you twisted sick-suckled son of a *****
crash with the street kids
ruffle up the birdies
who grow seedlings out
their ribcage
only they need to be dead
for that kind of beauty.
and shes shithoused drunk by 3pm
forgot the toothpaste but
not the alprazolam
whats better than a swig out
the ol’ medicine cabinet
and half a cigarette?
thought she might’ve stomped it out
had she not had that metaphor
sharp as glass in her left hand.
men with mottled skin and
charred faces mar and del mar
locks up them up with only
a nose through the bars
i meant to stay hid beneath
that misconception
hear that monster coming?
with his rusted bayonette,
alcohol on his breath?
whats it to you
but the game of life?
of life
which player am i?
the wound or the knife?
and i spent my days treading
barefoot on the beaten earth
radiator burning holes through
the socks she gave me one Christmas eve
which player am i now?
or am i a pawn, relinquished in black
in the lack of light accompanied by foolery
of favoritism?
the heat never did them any good.
so i like to think of it
like a terrorist sympathizer
the constantish reminder of
nothing good
between those blue walls
lives still a desecrated ghost
with a shut off brain
and no reason to
let go.
and all the things which once were simple
***** themselves in the draining effort
of simply being.
there should be places to hide
instead of wide open skies
shall i surrender now
afloat on this hill,
or wait until i am surrendered?
i do it for this agony
a nightly presence
a friend if it weren’t for her
gnashing and talons and rust metal teeth
leaves and grass screaming
in the wind
another part of me
they cannot see
and do not want to.
why is pain so welcome?
why is infliction so
delicious?
the slow fade of a hesitant smile
to eyes which cry and a face that
contorts in the sweltering sun of rage -
is it sinful, shameful greed of hurt or is Godless,
as they say?
somewhere there is something
left to say
you go to shake my hand
and realize i dont have any
cut off and bled
like they do to the cows
and the pigs who are ******* smart
enough to know
because stone cold
said so
so you hug me instead.
its easier to cut butter
with that small fancy knife.
what more do i need,
when i’ve got me,
a body to break and a mind to feed
so when i feel that harsh note
of morality gone and an ego in tow
that nihilism crawling its way back up my throat
all i can think of is God
the Leviathan
to better my chance of living
but not really
just dying,
alive.
Jun 1, 2021
Jun 1, 2021 at 1:18 AM UTC
my mother used to dress me up
with pink and baby blue
she used to sit and scowl at me
for using too much glue.
on all the projects i failed in school
cuz i never saw my daddy’s face
he was always off to work somewhere
in a cold and lonely place.
and as he cuddled with his cash
the four of us would sing
the songs of gospel and a dying man
who rose again and was called king.
and when my daddy was away
i would come across the paper men
who knew they’d float higher than me
and said i looked a certain way and then,
they smacked their lips and tongued their teeth
and smoked their cigarettes
and without fail they always gunned me down
with a stare and beads of sweat.
thats a fine looking high-horse you got there
in the hollow of this hot and southern drum
theres not a lot of girls like you
that would kneel for a pack of gum.
i used to think i owned the world
because i made my dolls queens and kings
but soon enough i realized
that those were nothing more than things.
and i was one as well to them
a thing to hate like daddy’s bills
they liked to break my arms and legs
and hunt me for the ****
but after all the fun and games
and smoke that burned your eyes
i came to know that i was sin
with a kept secret between my thighs.
and plastic jesus only sat
on his high and mighty shelf
and despite my prayers or
shut-eyes confessions
he never moved himself.
and what could help me more than that man?
certainly not mother in her cool dark room
and not my daddy raking cash
in some business ridden flume.
here i reside in this truman show life
smoking cigarettes of my own
suffocating memories and
ignoring the phone.
one day there might be someone new
whose teeth are white and straight.
whose hair is neat and eyes are kind
whose clothes don’t spill their
hate.
but till that day i sit and feel and
keep my head down on the floor
because theres nothing more that i can do
but drown in metaphors
Apr 4, 2021
Apr 4, 2021 at 8:07 PM UTC
has it been kind? i should be a fool to think it has. and i'm not sure i want it to. at least not to me. perhaps others, other souls which serve true purpose and meet needs of each other, bouncing around and need-meeting and hard-loving, instead of crossing every line that is thinkable and failing, undeniably, at each little obstacle and challenge. its true that we meet many people over the course of our lives, hollowed-out and thin, hearty and honey-like, thick and sweet. sometimes these people candy-coat our existence. sometimes they **** it over. sometimes they simply sit, limp and lifeless, like a dead ballerina. serving no purpose other than for us to spit upon them, curse them out, regard and disregard. often they come and go, allowing us to live on, just living it out like a Greenland shark. but despite these people, despite these purpose-driven minds, i still stand around with this empty head of mine. and yes, i have no doubt i can create beautiful things. but i am certainly not one of them.
to me, it is interesting how being alive is so unacceptable, seemingly only it becomes so in the wee hours of the morning, like four am, right before the coffee and right after you've awoken from your most recent nightmarish fever dream. when the disintegration of your soul has yet to become entirely apparent. when you've yet to look in that ****** mirror and see yourself looking like death warmed over; ready to take on a new day, yeah right. and often, things, people, places, smells and sights and sounds and textures and tastes and simply cogs of our lives take it all back to those moments. telling myself to forget them, push them away like i always do when things get too close, too much. remembering anyways. that first touch, the blankness that follows. the feeling of being split open. being broken. thinking i would die. living anyways.
looking at people. remembering. like the way things tasted so good before. and the way they taste now. the lions at the zoo. pacing, hungry, fantasizing about ripping the fat white man's head off, feeling the bones crumble between their teeth, licking up the blood and ruling the world. how bad i felt for them. the time i turned too fast, too tight on my old bicycle. more blood. laughing. shaking. bandaids and a dark bathroom. the smell of chocolate cake and the scent of wine on my mothers lips as she came close. go to bed. the deadpan thump of the kitten against the wall. an empty kitchen table. summer nights that drifted through the windows, ate you up and calmed you down. black shoes that clacked against white linoleum. Hitler's army. discovery channel and broken televisions. racism. mud fights in the river behind the small brick house, grass for miles and nowhere to go. thick honey people whose touch felt lighter than feathers. belly laughs, beer drinkers and thin paper-weight women. hospitals and IV drips, sunburns and stars you could actually see. tranquilizers and sickdays and scalding showers. obliviousness. neutrality.
happy childhood, sad childhood.
crazy talking teeth.what more could you ask from a primordial life?
i should be a fool to think it's been kind. whether i feel sorry for myself, that's another question. sometimes i am like the three-legged dog, dragging a leftover stump behind itself, buzzing with flies, whining and cowering and sitting in its own **** ugly and dejected, victim to helplessness. a street-walker, a tired-talker.
then, i get filled up. with some insanity, a mix of molten rage, and that dangerous thing called hope. break the glass ceiling and you'll make it in life. or drown in it, and you become identical to every other human being that every lived and didn't end up in a book. a nuisance. an addict to all the small things life has to offer, never willing, never ballsy enough to allow themselves to get hooked in the cheek by some life-changing ****
yeah, cuz that's it. that's the thing.
everyone is just absolutely
terrified.
Mar 27, 2021
Mar 27, 2021 at 12:05 AM UTC
stuck in the wheel between
living and dying
rage between teeth
and words beneath tongue,
that fear will get ya.
lying under the vaulting
of the technicolor sky
smiling among the white-bellied
rotting creatures
smiling because there's not another
thing to do which lets you show
your teeth
besides a scream.
and scream you must if you hope to ever
make it out of this beast.
the fear will get ya and
all you can do is bare those pearly whites
and hope your head and heart coexist
and oh please tell me again
why i cannot hear the sound
no matter how hard i try and remember
shut up i said, or did i?
here they are inside of me,
these evils, these souls who so willingly
ecstatically employ their wrath,
upload their anger
******* on the hard-drive with a golden
molar
and here i am
drowning in the noise when i'd rather be
basking
extending the possibilities of a working realism
mathematizing my existence
because it was nothing to you
and you hurt ME
and you don't know it but you've colored it all
red
blood-red beet-red battle-scar-red
and you don't know it but that's all i can say
and that's all i have said
because if i say more then i'd have to be dead
no way i'd let those suckers see me
finished by a simple three-letter
thread.
i love you
oh really? you do?
**** me again then.
and the worst part about it is the hands.
that sickly warm skin,
i can feel your sweat and your
sin, all mixed in with that under-the-breath
promise as long as i give
in.
time is reckless in this fever-dream
live all day and die all night
become talented at suffering
so when someone asks you if you are okay,
without looking away
you can say
its just another day.
you, so talented at suffering
so skillful in your right to yearn for death
like that wire-tailed cat
in the gossamer green,
so fit to claw your way up and lose a bit
live a bit
love a bit
and see with your shuttered soul
the entire ******* thing come
crashing down before you.
so when my eyes meet yours
i do not know you, i know
the hands that took
it all away.
so **** me over again and again
even though you’re dead
again and again,
in my head you’re dead in that bed,
where you left me the last time
turned inside out and rotting-white belly up in the air
dead fish cant breathe on land
and a child cant breathe on need.
the fear will get ya
worse when the control is blood-letting itself to the exit
they’re hunting now, im trapped, all sides cave in
hot breath and cigarettes
its too much to take in when
we surround ourselves with birds of a feather and act like we don’t want to pluck them.
take away the things that make us human, things we can glue on ourselves, decorate our faces like the places we’ve had our first firsts.
the heart is 5/8ths of a pound so why did it take me so long to
tear it to pieces?
each tick of the tock reminds me of how birds count a lot for not knowing how
and van gogh cut off his ear and gave it to some *****
appreciate that ************
at least he chose a sacrifice instead of suicide, twice.
so im stuck in that wheel, going crazy
waving that S.O.S, shredding that white
flag to ****** pieces because i know now
that not a single person cares unless
they're on that wheel too
turning blue
turning to
the only thing they know and that
is this.
life isn't what you make it,
life makes you.
Mar 13, 2021
Mar 13, 2021 at 10:56 PM UTC
18 years, its been
since i first felt the scalpel make its way into
my eager skin,
yet, it should be called a KNIFE
because that sounds harsher,
less kind.
and this is not a kind story.
18 years its been since they
re-orchestrated my existence
for a third ******* time,
and hey nobody asked me.
nobody did.
if that was an emergency,
whose to say this one isn't?
but hey, doesn't a cheap motel sound
nice when you get to have the continental breakfast
with a freshly sewn up chest?
doesn't oatmeal sound nicer with oxy?
i've gotta say man, this is it.
this is the time where you get to feel better than you
ever have and better than you ever will.
don't get used to it.
don't get used to that freedom feeling
that fly-away hyped up bs
they're always gonna look at you and scour
always gonna have that glint in their eye and its
not the one that says
i love you
i need you
i want you
how you are...
its the one with that bitter disapproval
the one with the utter disappointment
the ever-untrustworthy smile.
this isn't you
this isn't you
this isn't you
so come on
grab your KNIFE
grab your sutures
grab your morphine
get on with it,
and don't forget who told you
about God on your way out
Jan 29, 2021
Jan 29, 2021 at 10:46 PM UTC
sleepy-eyed, walking through the
field of landmines and bombs.
right foot left foot no protection.
pain up to my brain and down to my feet.
not a single thought behind these eyes except destruction.
cold clang of hospital metal, warm drip of intravenous.
why am i shaking?
am i terrified?
unfamiliar with this feeling,
the strangeness of an ownership
that has never been mine.
i am afraid of this part.
afraid it might fester, rot in the corner,
away somewhere unable to be seen
but forever existing.
i am left hoping
and praying to simply concave, implode,
fall apart one last time, for the last time.
i need this,
with every ounce of my being
i need this.
i must destroy this monster outside
so i can destroy the one in me.
Jan 22, 2021
Jan 22, 2021 at 8:30 PM UTC
dont mind me in my predicament, steer clear
just waiting for the evident fear here
of the confinement
to a prison for
one.
mama said ill regret it in a year or so
but to her i say at least thats a year of my
life to know
that i wont have to wake up
wanting to shed this skin.
my thoughts are filthy, shallow, obsessed,
theres not a day goes by where im not lessened
by the urge to destroy
and snip and cut and bleed.
and so i lay and wallow, grieved,
upon my throne of mutiny
suckling a fantasy of
FTM.
holding on to hope that it will
end.
Jan 20, 2021
Jan 20, 2021 at 9:37 PM UTC