Great man,
powerful man,
moral
special
intelligent man.
Even you
can be corrupted.

Don't worry
He won't leave you.
He loves you.
Your children.
The home you share.
Men have needs.
Vicious needs.
They take their teenagers
on the side.
Like cream in coffee.
Tasty, but could do without.

They say
All roads lead to Rome but
In the Tristate the tracks
Bring you to New York.
This cement platform smells
Like **** but the anticipation
In the air while the crowd peers down
The track for the 6:16  p.m. Eastbound
Train to Penn you'd think
NJ transit was delivering us to
Heaven.

Speak no more
Utter no more sentences
Vague, and context devoid through
Glass electric fixtures.
Stopped communication via
Frozen gears and halted processes
Dead progress, mutated metals.  
Sing no more, no more notes raised
Upward bound towards fleeting skies
Reigning over all we were.
Love no more, see no more
Begone like the invisible microwaves that
First created and ultimately possess you;
That zapped you full of life and color and now defy you.

No, rise like dawn
And blood or
Plants reaching for sun.
Flow, words slipping from
Loose lips sliding secrets
Better kept discrete and dry.

My moral compass is cracked.
It's been tossed against the wall
And thrown in the junk drawer
Too many times .
It's hard not to be lost
When you have no direction.

Loneliness freezing fractures
In old bones, rotted leftovers
Tossed aside among dead leaves,
Candy wrappers and cigarette butts.
Cracking, dragged by streams of
Gutter water in heavy rain to
Turbulent streams
Journeying on to
Distant seas.

Summers at grandma's used to be fun,
Before we realized our grandparents would eventually die
and transcend to planes invisible to our eyes.
And we would sneak into the house, soggy bathing suits and all
Dripping pools on the floor while we snuck slices of American cheese from
the fridge, and butter crackers.
And, in fear, thrill, and delight, we would wolf down our sacred snacks
In the dim kitchen light, before Mama could see or grandma would
get home from work,
And dart, crashing into the swimming pool and enduring stomach-aches to keep
Our secret delight silent.
The delights I endure now are different. More painful, even.
The shrieks of laughter when you would lick my face. The moans when
we slept together and enjoyed those more-adult sorts of pleasures.
Your fingers, when they gracefully plucked a tune from the banjo,
and the notes stabbed me in the heart, and I soared with love and joy and love--
A thrill--like those simple times, sneaking snacks at grandma's from the kitchen
on summer days, when we were swimmin'.

While our sun is setting during
The evening commute,
On the other side it's
Rising.
Alarm clocks and whistling
Coffee pots in morning light
Breakfast cigarettes on the
Front porch watching dawn break
And I'm watching dusk so
For a second in time we're
Inexplicably intertwined.

This cliff is not so jagged as the rocks below,
The heavy tide swallows and spits them
Over, and over, consuming
But not keeping.
The embrace of these waters could not be any colder
In this plunge to new depths, alone and reborn.
Could this mystery be my new muse?
Could this siren sing me home?
Home--
The darkness and the slumber, to
The other shore; surely the sun shines kindly, there.

Mirrors telling lies    makeup
         Painting illusions,
                   Stains
                      On
                     Lips
Making caricatures from my face, a
Character in its place, playing
Narcissist    every    day.
If I love me they will come,
If I love me they will stay.
This part masks insecurity,
If I say I love me, won't they?

Failure and success
Are subjective and
Relative but either way
They're my fault.

Sell yourself, everyday.
A little more, everyday.
Numbers, lists, and names
I've lost count
What's one more?
Eventually I'll be gone
all gone, every piece
auctioned, sold to
numbers, lists, and names
of men whose strange faces
I don't know and can't remember.

Childhood toys now antiquities
Smile from the nightstand with
Shining eyes that glitter like hope
Before it has gone stale.
There was honesty in innocence, when
The mundane kept me content and
Restlessness sought no solace in
Tailored lies.
Fantastic epics were lived, not perceived and
Imagination was solid, not the
Amorphous, ambiguous pile of mud
It has become.

This pain is festering
Like a deer carcass on the highway
Bloated, belly full of
Maggots and the smell
Of rotting flesh and gasoline
In the hot sun.
Bowels crushed against
Hard pavement coated in tar
Where once our proud stag's feet
Had walked with grace
Is now a grave, and  heavy wheels
Speed over a body once
Full of life and love and blood
And drivers, repulsed,
Can't even spare a passing glance.

Years fly
And I have yet to grow wings.
Mid-step,
and half-hovering.
You can't have the sky
with a foot on the ground.

Spray paint still stains the driveway
From that gift I sent you
Boxed up in the red white and blue
And 'MERICA, welcome to the USA.
Who could have guessed that the paint
Would be more permanent than you.
You can shove the Budweiser t-shirt and
John Deere trucker hat I sent at the top
Of your closet and forget about them,
But I can't scrub the spot off my driveway.

My sweet boy:
Kind like soft candies that melt in the
Warmth of your palm,
Velvet to the touch and delightful to the
Tongue.
I was wrong--
That your sweet would quell my sour and
Recoil the pucker that these poison kisses
Slathered on your lips.

When I was young once my pastor taught
The tale Genesis, how God with care
Unto hard clay breathed conscious thought.
As the wind would blow I’d say a prayer
And feel His breath, the hot gust of air
The trees that swayed were His great chest
The leaves that fell were kissed and blessed.
I spread my arms towards the sky
And knew He could make me fly.
I closed my eyes, and on tip-toe
Soared high to heavens, earth below.
Far above the pale green pastures
And winding roads, filled with rapture
I saw where the path would end,
What the course of life would lend.
Unchained and free, I knew at last
What shores we'd reach, when we are passed.
Our clumsy bodies tie us down,
But souls are free, and never bound.
And as the day faded to night
I had to end my sacred flight
Fall back to earth, where reason rules
Where those who soar
Are simple fools.

The Man told me there's a way to be
But I don't give a **** or care about the Man
Because the Man doesn't care about me.

Listen to the silence
It screams louder than the
Noise.
Clarity is in the static
Electric is the
Voice.

A handful of sand in your palm
Slipping between your fingers
Carried by
Breeze.
If only these hands
could build a castle.

Pendulums
Swing in skulls
Crashing against bone,
            Ticking
             Like
            Bombs
Counting down to self-destruct.
Three
           Two
                   One
Time's up, time's gone.

Ready your red canvas,
Fasten the straps of your boots
The silver spurs can't weigh
You down more than fear has already.
Remember, you are not alone.

We in the stands are watching
While you dance in circles with the beast
Teasing him with your canvas,
Waving it like an enemy banner before his
Crazed eyes, his pierced nose garnished
By a gold ring, whose furious nostrils spout
Blood in every snarl.

We in the stands,watching
are not here to see a beast subdued by
Calm words or a stroked ear.
We came to see  a man gored,
Pierced through his stomach
Tossed limp against the ground
Blood that feeds the grass and our
Eyes.

But you did not enter into this ring to die.
You came to conquer the beast,
To pounce upon his massive shoulders,
Grasp him by his mighty horns
To ride his bucking back, amidst
The brays and snarls, the jeering crowd
Until your blade has met his neck and
His tongue lolls from his mighty maw,
You came to fight; you came for victory.

Brevity in time
Reaching through membranes
Outward like pulled cotton candy,
Pink and orange sunset whose
Eye witnesses the dusk and dawn
While all things break between.

A name carved in stone, weathered
All that remains is an
Anonymous ode to a has-been.

We won't wrap our lips around
Or string together    words   through
Proper
            Mechanics   of
Grammar   to
Birth what's inside,  alive
And better off dead.

Another reality is ours but for the time being
We're chronic victims of our own poor judgement  
And anxiety
Spurred by loops of psychoanalyses, like VHS
Tapes rewound and repeated until the film tears

I see you in narrow spaces
Between tree branches where
Light hits dust at the right angle and
Builds temporary fairy-worlds of
Sun in the dark of the wood.

I hear your voice in the hum-drum
Of strange conversations,
Carried on wind, refracted noise
Bounced from edges of buildings,
Settling behind my eardrums,
Whispering
Words in a language I no longer speak.

I walk beside you
On lonely midnight strolls through
Places dark, ancient and deep.
Footsteps echoing while we
Stumble in blindness through
Depths of caverns new and routine.

Screws jammed the lock
In my throat, twisting
Clockwise, choking
Tighter which each revolution.
Throbbing steady like
Hands in a clock crying
On the hour for time
Spiraling from its
Golden hands towards
Dimensions unperceived and
Already retrospect.

Remember my voice on sunny days
When laughter carries on the breeze
Kissing your lips, tickling your hair
Like my fingers would when they were yours, or
Butterflies that fled our mouths when
We found courage to speak.

Punctuation marks the hesitancy in this conversation and
I can't help but dwell on words resting unspoken between
commas, ellipses and apostrophes;the
Spaces between letters where sounds sleep, vibrations
strike empty chords and fall short of expression.

All my life--
Memories in seconds,
Beats per minute
Have led to this exact moment
In which, now, I'm living.
Weight of hours
Accumulating
Concentrating, and compressing
Self and being.

Days blur to years blur to
Memory becoming phantoms
Even this day, vivid
Grows to ghost.