no, i saw you stand when you felt
compelled by some substantial guilt
to flee the concrete stoop and spout
an equally unwieldy bout
that all was like your box of bricks
subject to your picking and mixed
in such a way that the unknown
nature of your constructions grow
but no i say, you are opposed
in everything you say and know
for half is master of control
a thief, unlike romantic souls
that take things in pace as they are
swooned by soldiers of every war
and consequently fated to
be affected, but always lose
this is how i bear with the glare
that flashes in those ever rare
moments where i see your muscles
twitch a smile at the puzzle
and yes, I cold be wrong.
Feb 10, 2012
Feb 10, 2012 at 5:41 AM UTC
no, i saw you stand when you felt
compelled by some substantial guilt
to flee the concrete stoop and spout
an equally unwieldy bout
that all was like your box of bricks
subject to your picking and mixed
in such a way that the unknown
nature of your constructions grow
but no i say, you are opposed
in everything you say and know
for half is master of control
a thief, unlike romantic souls
that take things in pace as they are
swooned by soldiers of every war
and consequently fated to
be affected, but always lose
this is how i bear with the glare
that flashes in those ever rare
moments where i see your muscles
twitch a smile at the puzzle
and yes, I cold be wrong.
Feb 10, 2012
Feb 10, 2012 at 5:41 AM UTC
i think i’ve killed it
i can see it deflating in the skull’s corner
all of it
no matter the think thought
speak it enough
and all perspectives
are complementary mirrors
circling the magician
and no matter where you stand
you can see the rabbit come out the sleeve
i think i’ve killed it
all of it
you know the sides of the die
you know odds and chances
you know the faces in the deck
you know no matter what is thrown
you don’t even have to catch it
because i can do that for you
but i is not stitched to you
and when you see i pulling
card tricks and rabbits from his hat
you look into the mirrors
and you laugh at all the laughs
and if i fails, then you might see
the wretch retreat to the back scenes
and as his friend you may sit beside him
but you does not have empathy
because you can know me
me, i think i’ve killed it
and seen the magic dead
and even killed the magician
just to bring him back again
because i can do that
i can be affected by all
i can bleed from wounds
and pore with pride
and find beauty in it all
while you just sits there smirking
at i, a twitching infant
over stimulated and babbling
and feeling every minute
and now you’ve gone and thought too much
and even this pretty martyrdom
just seems another trick
to keep baby i entertained
Feb 7, 2012
Feb 7, 2012 at 4:04 AM UTC
listen, its like this:
say you live in a cold house
you have a fireplace
when the closeness of the air
starts to crystallize your capillaries
you can go out in the yard
fetch some firewood
and providing you have sulfur flint or friction
burn the fuel for warmth
whenever you may feel
that to ward off slowing blood
you'd like to light a fire
then the fireplaces remains
an outlet for your blaze
and i will be the fuel
when i am plentiful
but here you are kneeling
twisting match heads by the wood
contemplating flame
when you turn to the pine and complain
how come you never get cold?
Jan 18, 2012
Jan 18, 2012 at 1:59 AM UTC
i have a cut on the bottom of my foot
how, i don’t know
when, i don’t know
it merely appeared one morning
i was drowning in cold sweat
i was choking in all that sunshine
and in my transparent
chimeric dream state
birds’ song and memory
became intertwined
i think i lit a fire the night before
i think i found a begging hand
and slammed it in the door
i think i still was guilty
and ridden with malaise
i think i hung my coat in smoke
beside my crafted blaze
to cover up the stench
of my last few days
so i awoke
with this cut, as i said
barely stitched together
by eager hands of fibroblasts
coagulation had amassed
futility in its efforts
for on discovering this cut
and the soreness that enveloped it
i crushed the meat
between my fingers
until the milk of infection
and blood of my veins
flooded in release of pain
broke the binding scabbing chain
and the fleshy chasm still remained
that day i spent repenting
or correcting, i should say
for as the morning trudged along
i found the casualties of my ways:
an opportunity slaughtered
that a coward wouldn’t save
a friend beneath a boulder
in the belly of a cave
and a innocent life
in that drowsy night
found my tires
as its grave
but with all the mistakes i’m sure i’ve made
with all the morals my moves degrade
with all the arrogance i parade
and all the faces of my charade
i know a hole of regret
where my heart should be put
yet i only wish i was not beset
by this cut upon my foot
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 10:11 PM UTC
fire is the cyclin
of my sleeping cells
i confide that the sirens
could shake me out of hell
outside my window
they whip lights in a pinwheel
like the spin of a circus tent
the watch of a hypnotist
blaze, then extinguish
red white, red white
as if your neighbor's home in flames
wasn't annoying enough
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 10:02 PM UTC
you are absolutely necessary and utterly unimportant.
you are not important because
everything is important and important means
you are better than the mud
you are not
i can say this because
i want to be content. and to be so
i think i must owe myself to everything. because every little piece makes the puzzle, every tiny drop of paint changes the color, whether
you or
i can see it. down to the atom, every rock that
i step on, every bird in my ear, every bearable sting of guilt felt from swatting a fly, they have worked in perfect proportion, each paint drops precisely suffused to the present shade of my experience. and if
i am to be at peace, my life should not be measured but
i must be accepting of
everything as it comes.
i find this possible in realizing that the stretch in my smile and the tears on my cheek are all just as needed in shading me. no single experience makes the man. and to be accepting of the summation
i must accept that every single experience in my collective past was utterly necessary. every single experience, and each minor detail of each experience, and how they scatter on the surface like little melting beads, and how they eventually sink and mix; all single molecules of paint diffusing in the only proportion to make the present shade of my life, none more important than the other, down to the atom, ultimately equal.
not in quantity, but in quality
everything equal. what it means is that
i love you. but
i love the sweat greased ball bearings of dirt in my boot
i love the percussion of infection drenched nerves in my foot
i love the salt stick of your skin and staunch of your cough as you beat through the barreling wind. and
i love the invisible river of shivering brush waving like cilia down the valley. into the bioluminescence of our L.A. colony.
i love you if you love me and
i love you if
you hate me. because even your hate will drop like paint into me and change the shade to something
i have not yet seen.
i know we have different eyes but
i think this works for mine.
i will love you in equivalence to every molecule
i breathe.
utterly unimportant and absolutely necessary.
Dec 13, 2011
Dec 13, 2011 at 6:53 AM UTC
There’s no sense in trying to describe the present
it always runs like dye;
diffused and confused by constant currents
in the river of my mind.
Memory is the ferryman
who laughs beneath his breath
each time I seek him, begging
to take me there and back again.
He smiles like an old adviser
subject to a child king
and picks up his oars, still dripping
from the last time I came knocking.
He never ties his boat
I know why, but he won’t say.
he hopes one day I’ll turn the world
and let the dingy fall away
Like a tired tutor ready
to let his pupil fail
he swings a gaze that navy father
would save for son before setting sail
Do you find the silence clearer?
He pulls us from the pier.
*Because I won’t bring back
every cricket to your ear?
Or does the laughter seem prevailing
when I don’t give you the chance
to collect in such detail
each abundant downward glance?*
My finger starts to tap and
I anchor eyes on opposite shore
and clench a fist into the dye
that hurricanes about the oars
The bank beyond this river
is salt white washed and dry
and shows off only footprints
I dragged out from tides
Its only touched by water
where I choose to tread
and only on these paths
does the river dye it red
I slip into a grin
and Memory sees me smiling
he lets words fall again
with the clatter of iron filings
*And how about the nights?
The inky drinks of smoke?
Don’t you see they make my job
No more than ******* joke?
The less that I can give you
the more you fabricate.
You sedate your days awaking
to make that other shore ornate.
Every day you come to find me
and we cross this boiling stream
to bring you back the torso
of some amputated dreams.
I can’t fill in their limbs
so you take them to your cell
and flesh out puppet wings
to play heaven with your hell.
You coward of a tyrant
I wish you would realize
the bliss that you remember
is just your best told lie.*
Now he leans in close and stops his row
to watch my face unwrap
we drift a muted madman’s pace
till he curls his words into a trap
Before he even spoke
I feared the question mark
*Why do you find the weight
So much lighter in the dark?*
Sometime before we fell
from the river’s mouth to sea
I chewed a knot within my jaw
And squeezed between my teeth
a defeated growl of malice
Just keep rowing
Dec 13, 2011
Dec 13, 2011 at 6:45 AM UTC
The medals from Vietnam only saw light
when it fanned beneath the bed
so that when you removed them
the black velvet had grown forty years
of grey moss
it wasn’t that you wanted to forget them
but that they couldn’t stack up against
the black and white time lines
the photographs of your children
my mother, aunt and uncle
that grew into color by the top of the stairs
it wasn’t a matter of forgetting
it was a matter of choice
and the shark teeth and crab jackets
that all the cousins pulled out of the Chesapeake
stayed on the shelf because
that was what you were fighting for
the only relic you decided
to keep in plain view
laid right next to the crab jackets
a little vial wrapped around
a little metal tooth
because when the mortar flashed like a stroke
inches from your head
your thoughts went to home
and that fragment of near death
you keep in the glass vial
looking out over the living room
to tease it, to torture it, to say
Not even you could make me forget
Last time I saw you was a year ago
and you were dying
bruises bubbled anywhere a corner touched your flesh
and oily scales peeled from the shell of skin
stretched over your forehead
last year you told us everything about your medals
they were all just throwaways
though your wife and daughter pried,
you knew that remembering them was a waste of dying time
now two more strokes since that mortar flash
have left you in the ward
people have stopped visiting
because visitors like to be recognized
and when Marmee sits and watches football with you
she hates football
she asks you what teams are playing
you sob
I used to know.
Dec 13, 2011
Dec 13, 2011 at 6:43 AM UTC
i didn’t come here to smell like roses.
the stain in my shirt; blue paint crystalized in cotton
and greased in sawdusty sweat,
goes unwashed as waterfowl feathers-
an oil skin to shed the lake.
i didn’t come here to build an empire.
the lumber walls and archways go unbowed on the stage
measured to the bone of fingers, polished by blades
made to be perfect and immortal for a day,
then razed and unchained
and quicker than a sandcastle-
laid back into the bay.
i didn’t come here learn a trade
every skill is the same; do as instructed,
think for yourself, know when to push the bit into biting the wood
and when to put your drill back on to the shelf,
when to re-cut what doesn’t feel right
and when to trust the math
over your own sight.
i didn’t come here for the photograph
or your theater arts career path
or to sing through the saw screams
even though i do
i came here, where we know
the characters are in costume
the creations will be forgotten
where the applause wont reach my ego
and feed the ghost of self
that wants to captain without crew
i came here to work, where only work is true.
Dec 13, 2011
Dec 13, 2011 at 6:42 AM UTC