Laughter & glitter
Sunshining through straight white teeth – voice unheard of
With a smile to make any man slither over
Cutting soft stomachs open
Driving out with sticks and leaves and rocks
And leaving me with the tab
How like them to err for the sake of error
Terrible and true
Acuity bound
It’s feeding time at the zoo &
There’s no one to take this noose off around my neck
We were swimming in the gulf when she asked
Why create when there’s so much to destroy?
My hands their play things too
Toys ordained from disdain sustained
By tight men in tight suits
Watching us from Ivory Towers
What a relief
& the power trips of the circus beneath them
Reaching out with viral irony I scream
Out to the heavens heaven doesn’t take collect calls
& here she is connecting souls to mates
Correcting hate and abating disgrace worldwide
Webs intangible but thought to be hooked
To the hearts that spun them
Free flowing love & peace to cut my noose hung from
The sycamore tree
As for me what more could please
Disease eradicated
People educated
Our lives illustrated not by blood off a bayonet
But by regret eliminated
Fat cats in high homes with low self esteem would seem
Just as happy to see her redacted from the text books
Crooked lies straightened & the sad thing is they
Trick us fine serfs to mitigate others in their organized ignorance
Leaving us in the dark to elbow for clues
Groping the dust blind &
Hurting ourselves with ***** fingernails scratching
She shouts like a car crash &
Everyone’s at the scene drawn to attention
By flashing red & blue
Cashing their moral chips for a peepshow
Their smiles use less muscles than frowns but take twice the effort
Affecting deflections of accusations
People listen & how couldn’t they?
Her words lifting chins like a rope over a branch
But this time the tree’s on fire
The Tower’s burning & she’s cutting all the safety nets
Like she cut the rope off around my neck
Mar 20, 2013
Mar 20, 2013 at 1:28 AM UTC
‘In the end, it’s the indifference that gets you. You think you’ll have years to get to know each other and, what the hell do they call it, grow “emotionally” together. Relationally. Forget it. That ***** for the birds.’
Scrtchschrrttchschrttch.
The subject arched his extended index and middle fingers on both hands twice in quick succession as he said “emotionally”. He pronounces “birds” as if it’s spelled b-o-y-d-s.
‘I’m serious. I’ll tell you I’m deadly serious. You think you’re going to grow old with some broad and not cater some resentment? Where the fuck’ve you been, kid? Didn’t your old man teach you about women? The times change but one thing remains the same: women. You think that fancy piece of paper over there on the wall really means anything? There’s stuff out there you just got to live through to understand.’
Scrtchschrrrrtschrtschrttch.
‘Well, yeah sure, okay that bit about taxes is true too. Taxes and women. Anyway you got me off track. You marry a girl and sure you feel good. But whatcha don’t know is that a successful marriage is the product of compromise. Love has nothing to do with it. It becomes something you just accept, like gravity. The apex of microdemocracy at its finest. We’re talking respecting and loathing, and I cannot stress enough the irony here, a person too much you wonder why you don’t just wake up the next day and put a bullet through both of your sorry skulls so you both don’t have to live out this day-to-day ******** nightmare anymore. No more waking up and sitting at a breakfast table so quiet the steam rising out of your cup of joe is audible. We’re talking no natural human noises whatsoever. It’s like high-security solitary confinement, but where the schmuck in the straightjacket’s not allowed to even use plastic silverware without the business end of at least three 9mm’s pointing at him by state-appointed officers of the law, not allowed to even ******* feed himself. He’s like almost forced to live like he’s 5 again, kind of like a sick joke, adult supervision one hundred percent of the time. But then at home it’s worse because there is someone in the room with you. You feel this hole in your soul and it’s big. It’s like both of you are looking at the elephant in the room and at the same time looking at each other looking at the elephant. You want to cry but you can’t, you just physically can’t. Screaming won’t help neither because then everyone else but her will hear it. We’re talking about complete isolation.’
There is the sound of cloth across cloth and loose change jingling as right ankle is lifted off of left knee and left ankle is placed on right knee. The subject is visibly perspiring. His face does not have a flush look to it as so much as a sort of the homogenous color of deli ham. An office door slams. The subject’s breathing is audible and moist.
‘What happened? Why doesn’t she give a **** about me anymore? Why don’t I really care? Why do I feel worse about not caring I care than the actual caring? Jesus. Jesus.’
Scrchtchrsctrch. Schtrschchsshtsch.
‘I used to love her you know. That **** I said to her in front of God and Jesus and, like, everyone I ******* knew, those promises to till death do us part and yadda yadda, none of that even came close to mentioning what this is like. I used to love her. I think she used to love me too. I don’t know what even happened, my marriage. One day we’re on a beach in O’ahu and next thing I know I’m shaving in the shower with a straight razor, eyes closed, and hopping on one foot, just tempting fate. I haven’t seen her smile since last May, the episode of my missing glycerin tablets. Heart murmurs.
Sctrtch. Sctrchtrchschtrschtchschtrchshctrch.
‘Of course I’ve thought about a divorce. She’s got to have to considered that too. But here’s the ultimate irony. You go through these pointless gestures every ******* day; every ******* day you get up and wonder just how much more you can take it. It’s like it’s so strong you can feel every second walk on by and slap you on the mouth. It’s so strong that the sight of her literally, literally turns you mute with pressured hatred. Hatred towards the ***** sitting at the other end of the table but sitting there with her head down, complete undivided attention on her toast. Hatred towards yourself for not getting up and chugging every bottle under the kitchen sink right then and there. Hatred for realizing you have nothing in common with your wife anymore and she couldn’t care less that it’s eating you up so bad you get cold sweats. It’s so strong you just sort of freeze and not say a word, just sit there and take it all in, praying for that arterial blockage that will take you to the promised land.’
Sctchschtrch.
'Do you know what it’s like to live with self-contained hatred? Feeling this hate but at the same time just not caring. Hatred that only grows from not a lack of communication but a complete absence of communication, like, I can’t talk to her because I’m too full of pent up depression, loathing, anger, anxiety about actually trying to talk to her, anxiety about failing to talk to her. And these feelings just stew in me and shut me down. No talking. With her. Just sitting there, the desire to communicate just to see if we’re even on the same ******* page, sitting there and wanting to talk but can’t because the loathing and anger towards your wife completely and utterly removes the ability to express any sort of rational thought and the anger over your spontaneous speechlessness just keeps growing making the attempts at even idle chit-chat a prospect steadily receding into the sunset. Just sitting there feeling perhaps the strongest emotion I have ever felt but at the same time feeling completely apathetic towards the current situation.’
Sctrchtrchschtrscrchtrchschtrsch. Sctrchtrchschtrschsctrchtrchschtrsch.
‘Do you know what that’s really like to have to live in this cycle of perpetual hate and silence and the same time indifference toward the hate?’
Sctrchtrch. Scrtchschrrrrtschrtschrttch. Sctrchtrchschtrsch.
‘Do you know what that’s really like?’
Feb 1, 2013
Feb 1, 2013 at 1:47 AM UTC
Lakeshores are so lonely during the winter and in turn make me lonely.
The light almond sand is still covered with the peace sign spokes of gulls’ feet.
The waves and tide are slower and groggy. Everything takes on a grayish tint and the cold air soaks through cotton layers, socks over socks, and deep into the skeleton. Bones take on a new meaning in the winter. They appear white but compared to snow they are filthy from their responsibilities to the living. They become ***** from living. Everything sounds different here. Voices are muffled. Words mix in with the push of water and become deconstructed into just noise. Speech becomes something of tone and inflection. Speech becomes human birdcalls. The sky is the same grayness as the water and there is always wind. Moving air pushes snowflakes into my dark eyes and black hair. It’s almost as if they are fighting to push me back. Creature of heat and light and breath. You do not belong here.
Apr 8, 2012
Apr 8, 2012 at 7:47 PM UTC
The summer’s light is raining on everything it touches
The grass damp with fluid rejoices at
This gift from the gods
They
Worship ever
So diligently
They sing the hymns
Of their Fathers
And cry
For the pain of their Mothers
-That’ll teach them.
-No. It cannot happen this way. I won’t let it.
The path up to the shed is worn
Down
with
each
step
Of the silhouettes that
Tingle with
Delight
-Come on! Hurry! You’ll be late!
-No one ever misses this. You can’t miss it. Please don’t leave me.
-LISTEN TO ME!
They follow their mundane paths as nothing
More
Than dust from
The grinding stone
Shadows
Rebel in the light giving squeals of delight
Evident demise in the mirror
gasoline
of
bubbles
like
upwards
fly
Tears
And pop on the face
Kisses
Of fire
Flies
And come down like lead dreams
Splinters brush
And caress each fingertip
-You won’t make it right now.
-I throw my head to the clouds.
Detached
From reality and freed
From restriction of senses
Up
The wall
On
The ceiling
-Catch!
I follow through the hole in the wall
And fall out of the sky
-It looks inviting today. Shall we give it a go?
Shed door slithers open with a giggle
-Of course you can do this.
On the table is House of Cards
The King of Hearts praises his subjects
With a jump
To new volatile life
-Hear hear!
The whispers expect what comes next
-Always a crowd pleaser, that one.
Out
The door across the steps and back
To normalcy
Mar 25, 2012
Mar 25, 2012 at 9:44 PM UTC
I love it when someone’s thrown into the scene
Like a motorcyclist hitting a woman picking up her children from school
And before she can **** her head back to ask
How was school or
What did you learn today
There’s a helmet crashing through the windshield at 70 mph
Then the swerves and the tire tracks
And the screams and the noise
Everyone get up
Brush yourself off
And ask if everyone’s alright
But the motorcyclist is pronounced dead on the scene
BAC 0.22
And the mother will have to take counseling
Where she’ll start an affair with her shrink
To escape the boredom of suburban life
And the kids will think it’s cool but won’t realize
The whole affair will inspire one to write
Award winning novels
And drive the other into an early suicide
When someone’s caught off guard like that
I can’t help but to smile at
The helplessness and the look on their face
It’s the eyes
The same kind of look the mother has when her
Husband comes home early only to find her
Riding Dr. So-and-so in the same bed her
Two boys were conceived
Later the dad will say to his boys
It’s not your fault
And one will cry like a little girl
And the other will call his brother a little girl
Though in the middle of the night
He will wear the same face his mother wore
When she cocked her head back and saw
The man wearing the half undone tie she bought two Christmases ago
This man is in fact the keeper of some nuptial vows
She can still recite to this day
Expressive redux when she does a double take
And stares at the wedding ring on the hand
Still clutching the doorknob
We embrace order and schedules
But we need that spontaneity
That spark
That everlasting feeling that
We aren’t just cosmic specks against
A grumpy god
Deep down we all have that felling somewhere
That sense of small
The feeling the brother gets as he
Dots his i’s and crosses his t’s
On the suicide letter
But even deeper is the tickle in the back of the skull
Felt right before the rope or belt or Christmas lights or electrical chord
Goes taut
The feeling he is wrong and with it floods the realization
Of meaning in the absence of a reset button
Feb 1, 2012
Feb 1, 2012 at 11:44 PM UTC
Sometimes I wonder where I’ll be
In five years. Such possibilities though I know I squander
Most of them. None just feel right y’know?
I don’t want to live loud though quiet is
Often too boring or given to embarrassing
Introspection. Sometimes I wonder
What it’s like to live like a shaking knee.
Impatient
Do I want to be a tombstone?
Something for people to look at
But never read
As they drive by. Infamy is till a method to fame
But will my ghost care about social considerations?
A friend to all, remembered into smiles bittersweet
With an empty longing
Live in the now, an out of tune G-chord with a broken pick
Applause not because you like the music but
Because you know the people onstage.
Feb 1, 2012
Feb 1, 2012 at 11:42 PM UTC
She fell and broke her hip
Though that’s not what killed her
No, she fought long and hard to keep her sanity
A matriarch, the last matriarch
She never stood a chance
Through bouts of forgetfulness
She cringed as she sat
Wheelchair bound
Rolling with a fool’s smile
Talking nonsense like Nero must have
Playing his fiddle
Our family burned up but she never knew
Jan 18, 2012
Jan 18, 2012 at 11:27 PM UTC
After a great while the paper elephants march
In their sparse herd they lumber along
One by one, their thick legs slam into the earth
Like pennies on a timpani
Leaving slight imprints in the dust
No one is quite sure where they come from
All we know is they just are there
Some raise their children before witnessing the elephants
A lucky few will even see them a second time at the end of their lives
It is not uncommon for generations to pass without the paper elephants
Sometime the periods between their journeys are so long the elephants are dissolved into folktale
The paper elephants are bestowed an almost supernatural quality
The stories are birthed in secrecy between the lights of candles
In the ears of the men in the corner
From the hushed lips whispered in acquiescence.
Every story is different
Every story has the same ending
Every story has the same moral
You do not touch the paper elephants
Perhaps the stories have some truth
If anyone knows the validity they have been dead for quite some time
No matter, man’s superstitious nature will see to the protection of the elephants
The paper elephants are called “paper elephants” because it describes them quite nicely
From a distance they look just like normal elephants
Lumbering over from side to side
But their skin is like paper
Their essence is like paper
They travel together
Even the old and young
When it rains the young hide under the larger elephants
Lest they get wet and melt into the earth
It is not uncommon to find the soaked remains of an elder elephant
Crumpled by a sad consequence
It always serves as a reminder
The old exist to protect the young
Most likely the elephants can be found roaming through our graveyards
Here their pace noticeably slows down
Often enough, they can be found sitting next to a tombstone
Resting their trunks over the epitaphs
Strange things happen when the elephants are in the graveyards
Sometimes laughter can be heard
Sometimes sobbing
As the elephants rest the blue mist rises from the graves
The blue is the most reassuring shade
The misty fog rises and fills the entire yard
Until it is absorbed by the paper elephants
With a long sigh the elephants continue their journey
After many such stops
The elephants arrive at the tree
Gnarled and ancient, it welcomes the elephants with silence
As it has for years and years past
It is here the elephants have yearned to arrive
Under the knobs and strikes of its branches
They bend the knee
The young watch to learn
The adults look up to the sky
And release all that they carry
The hopes, dream, and memories of those long gone
Ascend to the heavens
The paper elephants collapse exhausted but content
And look upon their children one last time
They weep before leaving this world
Not for their children’s sorrow
But because there are no paper elephants to carry them to the next world
Jan 16, 2012
Jan 16, 2012 at 3:37 AM UTC
Left foot walking faster than your right
With no one laying an eye on you but yourself
Razor rhetoric
The cost of your conscience
Who are you to say you are beneath god?
Cut with a stone
Blood dripping off an eyelash
Oct 7, 2011
Oct 7, 2011 at 1:05 AM UTC
On those cool summer nights
We would walk through the grass
And our feet would get wet from the dew
I know my companions
Ever faithful
Who would never leave my side
As I would never leave theirs
As we walked through the darkness
Ever resolute
Determined to accomplish our self appointed task
To spread our word
To teach others what we have discovered in these trying times
And most of all to learn from those who came before
So that we may do the same when our children come to us
Eventually we will part when we finish
And each will turn to a different corner of this world
Where we will live out the rest of our lives with what we have gained
Ever thoughtful
Always aware in the back of our minds
Of that important message
That brief quip of unadulterated human wisdom
Built up piece by piece over the years
Like adding a fresh coat of paint to a living room wall
Until it is thicker than the point where the sky meets the ocean
Ever adamant
We will count down the days until the clock strikes us
Lying in bed next to our husbands and wives
Or alone with nothing but our thoughts and fears
Someday we will meet again
After we leave all we have
Like an old photo slid between two pages of a good novel
We will have moved through our story
After we read the epilogue of our predecessors so long ago
Ever wary
Our cast has played their parts
And whether we realized it or not
So did we
We will go with a cry or a whimper
With tears streaming down our faces
Or laughter in our bellies
We will make no mistake
We will go
Ever obedient
When we realize our privilege to open our eyes
We see all those familiar faces
All the others who felt what we all feel sometime in our lives
Who saw what we must do if we are to grow into something beautiful
We will smile with hope that we did all we could
And begin to dry our feet
Oct 2, 2011
Oct 2, 2011 at 11:34 PM UTC