I used to be hidden in my room
choking at my mouth's roof
as if stuck within a stutter,
exhausted from existing, hinging
like a wind-chime battered by a hurricane.
Then a troubadour with honey hair
had me humming to his ear-worm
of a melody, depicting a choreography
that jolted my legs into frenetic mania
like an early talkie starlet's.
For years, I have memorized
this intricate chord structure,
immersed myself in its crescendos
until I could belt it backwards.
It's the only song I know by heart.
There is this one tune, though,
if you can even call it that,
this atonal reverberation that alerts
the darkest corners of my mind,
a slowly muttered siren song
leading to lands I never want to visit.
I can never fully decipher
the lyrics to an entire verse.
It's the excerpts, scattered
like dust mites in a concert hall,
that try to nibble at me piecemeal,
romanticizing the revolving door
of self-destruction, bruises
veiled as smudged calligraphy.
So please excuse the minor notes
that hiccup from my vocal cords
every other half moon or so.
It's just the ebb and flow
of awkward drumming
that disorients the ear,
causes me to trip up
on the patchwork of refrains
we've spent so much time weaving
into heavenly cohesion.
Above all, please remember
that no static or din
will ever shoehorn its way
into our ironclad harmony.
Oct 2, 2015
Oct 2, 2015 at 3:53 PM UTC
We can sense it.
Something deplorable
is about to happen--
we can no longer stop the ranks
of housebroken infidels
from migrating into the wild
they have never encountered
beyond photo and film.
It's coming out! The stampede
of hairy-legged pheromones
we could once browbeat
into prepubescent shame
with the speed of a smack
upon the tender noggin!
It takes courage to enjoy
the canned campfire stories
we passed off as ageless doctrine.
How they once recoiled, squirming
like slugs thrown in a salt mine!
Now the writhing is self-inflicted,
the sweat off their brows no longer
cold, damp beads but now welcome
lubrication that slithers down
their lecherous masses of flesh!
Despite our most dogmatic toiling,
the iron shroud has revealed itself
as a featherweight curtain within a few tugs.
Anyone else feel the walls shake to and fro?
Why does the water in that glass ripple so?
Has it arrived already? The end of our reign
as dictators of the prevailing value system?
Fetch thee the community smelling salts!
Too late! The young and vulnerable
have already begun to trample!
Push the powder out of your wigs
to blind yourself from the carnage!
*The Age of Inhibition has screeched
and skidded into its evil twin's Renaissance.
Big time sensuality has straddled the saddle,
too busy racing avenues to declare victory.*
Jun 26, 2015
Jun 26, 2015 at 2:46 AM UTC
"I'm not angry," barks
the man-child with fingers
clenched into mittens
made of tendons
and brow line hunched
like the backs of cavemen.
The veins
that line his neck
form boiling canals
when he's quicker
to set ablaze
than a paper doll
in a brush fire.
The annals of his ancestry
could fit into a matchbook--
a pocket-size anthology
of swinging *****
and temper tantrums.
The sweat his pores harvest
both quench
and drown him.
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 6:03 PM UTC
If you ever get close
to the fork in a path,
wander through the tectonics
that diverged the road
in the first place.
Every pixel of your being
is animated. Even the unlit
trap doors leaving pockmarks
on your mind's landscape
possess colors with no name.
Who knew electronic and acoustic
were just estranged family all along?
GENRE is a manmade affectation--
music appreciation for Jingoists.
If they feed you a raindrop,
swallow the entire ocean.
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 6:38 PM UTC
I shed pretension like a stunted snake skin
within the vicinity of your warmth.
Chicken soup simplicity, I love the recipe.
Took me ages to find the right stock.
Four-on-the-floor beats the dissonance
of time signatures fighting for dominance.
I've thrown away so much paper for you.
At least a few trees have died in your name.
How selfish. You're lucky I'm sticking around!
And that it takes almost no effort!
That a barely audible suggestion from you
can sink in further than anyone's barking!
Why am I still yelling!
You did this to me!
Coaxed me into cracking
the icy shell I was mistaking
for a safe haven!
How dare you make me realize
that the light at the end of the tunnel
was something other than a freight train?!
You beautiful *******
You magnificent cur.
I'll never be the same.
With your roasted chestnut
of a personality, how could I not
expect to start thawing?
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 1:55 AM UTC
I left the plantains you sent me
on the counter. Wiped
around them on cleaning days.
Eyed them as they sat there,
expectant and unwanted,
for hours into weeks.
Let them blacken and soften
until they resembled
the dental records of a corpse.
Were they lifted from the soil
of your Dominican hometown?
Did you farm them yourself?
The bruises speckled on its skin,
were they hand-picked? You always
had great aim with that sort of branding.
I'm awake at the birth of morning,
early enough to see dawn's rosy sun
crack onto the horizon like egg yolk.
From my bedroom window, I can also see
a garbage truck craning its rusty claw
towards the pile I set out last night.
Talk about a metaphor.
Nov 17, 2014
Nov 17, 2014 at 10:45 AM UTC
Nails the length of javelins click on countertop
with the speed of a coked-up woodpecker
as this goddess of the night with bullets
of caked foundation sweating from her forehead
awaits her fifth free Long Island of the night.
Safe to say, she's a little high maintenance,
like all treasured centerpieces
of a local museum deserve to be.
She is your generation's Mona Lisa, trust.
Her sneezes will be dissected for coding.
Like the rust on buried Babylonian armor,
she lives sandwiched between myth and reality.
A Frankenstein of queer iconography,
door-knocker earrings designed by Adrian.
Stilts for heels clack on blinking dancefloor,
balancing a hermaphroditic echo
that charges through hieroglyphic binaries
with a four-on-the-floor precision.
May 10, 2014
May 10, 2014 at 8:20 PM UTC
It's been a bit jarring, this stumble into symmetry,
my good senses
gluing themselves intact
like an eleventh-hour craft project.
No string sections swelling for this comeback kid--
the just desserts, in this case,
arrive in the form
of a steady hum
that breezes the past away
with the ease of a loose eyelash
flying in a tropical storm.
It took years to embody this equilibrium,
to approach the mid-morning sun
and not recoil from overexposure,
no longer draped in the sweat-soaked robes
of secrecy. I have tripped upon a biome
of bravery, fallen into the measurements
that require no prickly tampering
from the rusty, dulled needle
of a fraudulent tailor.
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 9:21 PM UTC
You make me not hate snoring.
You miracle worker, you.
Usually it feels like a lawnmower
massaging my skull, but you, buddy,
croak like an angel.
The acoustics of your voice,
the high fidelity and crumpled static,
the seesaw between treble and bass,
have my head singing
pitch-perfect harmonies.
Your hum slows down my tempo,
heightens my crescendo,
sends my heart pumping
at double-time staccato.
May 28, 2012
May 28, 2012 at 12:08 AM UTC
I want to tell you something
but my lips are flicking sparks
like a lighter draining fluid
and I want to bombard you
with all my ragged knots
of truth but the words
are stuck in traffic
giving each other the finger
ramming bumper to bumper
so they can reach the nearest
exit and my nerves
are a rickety jalopy
almost flipping over
at the sight
of any speedbump
and I'm ripping
at the edges
like the pages
of a Lynch script
because
I want to tell you something
Apr 5, 2012
Apr 5, 2012 at 11:47 AM UTC