Your crooked smile flows upward
and I can see it from the ground.
Haunting myself with
a film teacher's creature feature
in black and white,
an old orchestra for sound.

You said you'd get nervous
when on our clunky telephone;
saying that customer service
could hear the fibers
in your voice
rustle like tall, dry grass,
with a wind whispering through
confirming, with every breath,
that you feel alone.

We'd recite fifties sitcoms:
Honey, do you --
do you have the keys?
Well, gee whillikers,
I could use someone to
open me, close me, and
dispose of me, please.

I write this for no one,
which is the category you fall in.

Sincerely,
signed Issues,
P.S. The television
is in color,
and I don't miss you.

- There ain't hope in the U,
the S is for Show me your soul,
the A is for Always forget:
the United States of
Killing it, Killing it -

A radio perches on a mahogany end-table,
singing like a mechanical bird:
bellowing fuzzy jazz, reaching my ear.

Its sides are rounded
like the curves of a classic car.
The antenna is *****
like the arm of an eager child
I've had swinging in-between
phantom-bytes and sonic slush:
my mind: inexcusable and mush.

A deck of cards shrugs it's shoulders
before it climbs on top of the radio;
it's rigid joints straightening and angling.
It tucks the tab back into it's head,
concluding before singing along to
'Somewhere beyond the sea.'

The voice of the deck rattled and squeaked,
like a caged mouse doing a capella.
Shot spit of it's mouth,
like a translucent spaghetti noodle. Bloop.

- I stormed outside, inaudible to all,
unmoved by few, chosen by none -

Today I sat across from a girl --
across the room, not across a table
or across the universe --
Her hair dangled like a carrot's wig,
a carrot's impersonation of a blonde girl.

Of course, her skin was closer to orange than pale --
but I like that stuff. I want it rubbed off on me,
physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally.
Old-oxidized-green-coins invaded her eyes
and settled in the center of eggshell-white buffer.

Pants were as denim as a brush of shale
or the picture-pose of a flannel-clad beard,
holding a pick-ax and a dusty journal.
A journal of my thoughts, timeless
in their irrelevancy, until discovered
and claimed by someone else,
someone with a beard, a daughter, a smile;
See: Things I will never have.

What could I mean to this person?
How could I be desirable to her?
What am I but an alien,
coasting a galactic sea,
unable to relate to what I see?

- And what was your prize,
in this life? To be loved?
Or to be conquered? -

The deck of cards disappeared.
And I, I without consequence,
rummage through dust blanketed boxes,
hoping to cut my hand on something
I have mistaken as dull.

I have been told that my mother inhabits this box,
somewhere, sometime, somewhere, sometime.
A framed image, a polka dot cloth, a forever
unprecedented by a sunny-day funeral,
where I am the tail of the dying snake
that is my family: last to perish, last to wait:
a corrosive ingestion of unadulterated isolation.

My beige fingers wrap meat and bone,
but also a cheap-golden frame of my mother and us.
Our glasses are all too big, but we were all too poor.
My mother is wearing her wedding ring,
but I don't know why.

So young and vulnerable,
held by a freckled, strawberry blonde.
I don't even know her, any more.

The deck of cards reappears.

- But I've been alone for too long.
Even the winds have stopped whispering.
I have become a witness to my own death. -

It's loud.

Violet, Blue, and Green lights
scatter across the floor,
across a canvas of house music,
echoing back into itself.

She crawls towards me,
wearing only poorly inked tattoos
and the lights that kiss us all.

I touch myself,
wishing it was her.

- I leave the room,
the music fading away,
like retreating from
sound-carrying-birds -

The smoke that comes from the cigarette
forms a skeletal web, reaching for the moon.
With rain slapping the dark brick walls,
hugging and creating an alley reminiscent
of a salivating, crooked-cement mouth,
I stand drenched in silver forgotten.

I drop the cigarette in a petrol-colored puddle,
watching it sink, become hard to distinguish,
and fade away.

- I reenter the room,
the song has changed
and is more mechanical. -

It's loud.

The lights are now
Bubblegum, Aqua, and Tangerine.
She lays supine, watching dollars
drift down, slowly, almost frozen.
Then the splitting of the air.

Fat-Man's body does a half-spin
as I lodge a bullet into his obese shoulder.
The music still blares, almost meaning more, now.
Regrouping himself, Fat-Man is weaponized,
drawing a greasy, inky blaster, desperate to spit.

A supernova erupts and quickly disappears--
like the aftermath of blowing birthday candles--
as his black speckled, crewcut scalp peels back,
letting fragments of chalky skull and pink penne
***** out of his square, boxed head.

Blood appears black under these lights
and instantly whips across
Samantha's still supine body.
The remaining people in the room
scatter like light exposed roaches.

Haunted, she is a toppled statue.
My steps move with the rhythm of the song.

Fat-Man's leather jacket
holds more meat than some mouths.
I plant my hand inside all pockets, find $6,480
in greasy, bloodier-than-usual presidents,
and move towards her, with the music.

Crouching beside her, I wipe the blood.
I clean her pale, tense torso
and help her up.

On two painted feet, she looks detached.
Silence exists, now, despite the music,
while she studies me with the same brown eyes.
Her lips quiver, she remembers
and wraps me with much thinner arms
that used to exist in nothing but memory.

I know the horror
how you can't undress
without feeling like
a ******* mess.

There's got to be something
more than this,
just write until
your thoughts aren't as heavy.

Everyone glances
but nobody reads:
Pour your emotions
into a glass that
nobody drinks.

There's got to be something
more than
vulnerable words in vain:
a medicine
that increases the pain.

I know the horror
how you can't reveal
the fullest extent
of how you feel.

There has to be something
more than a glance,
to help you feel heard;
to validate your world.

Just learn to write
and let it all go,
even if nobody notices
or nobody knows.

Because there is something
more than this.

Sheers of shimmering gloss grace her torso.
And I have broken her bones,
imploring that I love her so.
Blueberry lips belly the cold;
hold her too deep, hold her I'm told.

I.

He says Call me Mr. G.
G for Gore, Greed, that Green.
An atypical stoner
with hair wetter than his mouth.
With more ******* than a pound,
he says, With an understanding of
all the suffering in the global delusion
that is the Earth. Mr. G, his name.

Oily brunette, Mr. G., would smoke
Marlboro Green Blend -- menthol --
and spit shot out between stained lips
after each extracurricular exhale.
The saliva would land, tremendously,
and puddles of Rasta shooting stars
would lay, stretching across concrete galaxy.

Hazel eyes invaded and shamed him,
for he wished to be green, like life,
but only envisioned a contradiction:
death (see nature),
for which he learned to embrace, stoically,
like a shepherd of an endangered breed
meant to die among skewed perspective.

II.

This house could be mistaken
for a cinderblock purgatory;
between color and absence of,
eternal and temporary.

A raptor laughter purged the tension --
he abided by no accommodation of civility.
As smoke followed his hyena howl,
the landline lay suddenly of purpose.

Resin raided the clunky, black buttons;
a voice was whispered like a blue phantom:
*******' cheese, pineapple, pepperoni
-- no, extra ******' cheese, extra pep --
Sure, add some more pep with your driver:
he, she -- honestly, man -- they better have
pep-in-their-******-step-you-feel?

Minutes passed like sentient matchbooks
dropping towards a skeletal fire.
G threw the phone across the room
and, like a disenchanted drunk dance,
his words wobbled over each other,
I ordered a 'za, a pizza for the layman.
About thirty, probably thirty-one
minutes, that is.

Passing me the flower-stitched ****,
I ****** in one, maybe two, three,
blasts that I swore
had some sort of nano-insects
bite and burrow into the holes
of my sponge for a throat.

Wringing my rubbery neck,
watching my words leave my toothy cave,
I found out that G doesn't believe in beer.
Believes in souls but not beer,
believes in green men, not beer.

Alcoholic splash is what we all need,
at times. So I told him the obvious,
I'm going to get a case of
(Insert your ****** choice)
and I'll be back as soon as possible.

G stared at me and made a guttural noise,
Do whatcha please, I'll stay here and
protect us from vampires.
You know, blood-suckas.

Pale stoner vampires.


III.

The leather painted door was wide open
like the legs of ominous spider cave,
but the doors of a car
I had never seen before
were as closed as the lips of a VCR.
There's nothing but silence in these situations --
is this one of those situations? Grassy knoll?

Approaching the mouth of purgatory,
I entered with the hesitancy of a lost dog.
On the plastic covered couch,
two people sat atop the invisible cloud
above the patterned fabric
and above the fingers of time.

Blonde hair sprouted from her scalp,
raining down upon vanilla shoulder blades,
her chest a harbor for two pale, freshly mounds,
with crooked, beige diamonds in the center.

She trembled when G said, Meet Steph
-- can I call you Steph, Steph? --
Meet Steph, the artist formerly known as
Stephanie, holding up her licence,
Vanmeter, of 441 1/2 Locust Ave.

That's creepy, huh, Steph? Locust Ave?
Are you something that lives in the ground,
comes up every several years, making noise?
Has this been years in the making?
Are you bound to make noise in my house?

You know this is a house, right?
Whatsa matter, unfamiliar due to ya
living-in-the-*******-ground
or is it because you share a house,
an apartment, Steph? Is it one of those?
Pizza deliveries ain't paying the bills?

G gets up, I, a coward, approaching him
about to say -- Hold up, brother, he says.
Not another move, pulling his hand from
behind her shaking, confused head,
a silver cannon an extension of his arm.

She's here to **** our blood,
She's here to ****. our. blood.
Whether she means to or not,
I know you don't think you want to, Steph,
I know you don't mean to,
But you're here to
drain-us-like-the-Red-Cross.

I tell G that she isn't,
What have you done, G,
You need to let her go
before this gets worse.
That cliche dialogue.
Because these things always do,
cliche or not.

Brother, you don't understand these things
-- It's impossible for a godless man
to understand the mechanisms
of something bigger, something holy --
but you need to listen, G said, You need to --
she tried to move, quickly,
but G grabbed her by her blonde strands,
pulled her back towards the couch,
She swiped at his eye, drawing blood.

There was a pause, a deathly silence,
by the hair, she was rendered motionless,
Oh, no, he echoed, Love, you shouldn't,
You ought not do those things.
Looking at me, he asked me to listen,
Always remember this wasn't your fault.
Sometimes, you can't be in control

Holstering her neck with his gun hand,
G picked her up, slamming her,
head first,
into the drug covered,
resin sprinkled
coffee table.

He dropped on top of her,
Looked at me, Remember, okay?
and beat her head with the **** of the gun,
until the cracking of a larger M&M; shell
muffled towards all eardrums,
maybe even hers.

With blood,
that could be mistaken as war paint,
swimming across his jaw and neck,
and sprinkled on his forehead,
G whispered, You are free,
and I was never sure
who he was talking about.

My feet left before I did,
I was suddenly in my car
with only the ignition
and G's voice registering.
I passed car after car,
pastel metal wagon after
metallic matte creation,
not sure if I ever saw him,
not sure if he ever existed,
if I ever existed.

IV.

Sheers of shimmering gloss grace her torso.
And I have broken her bones,
imploring that I love her so.
Blueberry lips belly the cold;
hold her too deep, hold her I'm told.

Waking up in a cavern darkness,
my dreams disintegrate from my eyes,
swirl in my headspace, evaporating to
heaven knows where.

Scattered pitter-patter
drowns midnight Seattle,
killing and washing away
cluttered, modern filth,
******* carnivorous minds
into hungrier gutters.

This is the part
where the screen of my life reveals:
SIX MONTHS LATER,
in yellow, stenciled letters.
But what it wouldn't say is
how I still feel like I'm dipped
in the ink of Ithaca, NY.

If this were the indulgent
autobiography of my life
it wouldn't say that
the distance doesn't matter,
because that'd be a lie;
I feel like I have only escaped myself.

The rain swells, sounding as
thick as blood, swishing around
the veins of the city.

Stephanie dies every night,
disappearing and reappearing
behind secret doors only she can open.

When she comes to me in sleep,
she is baptized in green, head caved,
Forget-Me-Nots sprouting
between fragmented skull
and select spots of brain soil,
the flowers singing jazz
with a different voice, every time.

One time she spoke.
With blueberry lips that belly cold,
she sounds like my mother:
I am so proud of you, she statically says.
You saved me. Remember.

V.

To be continued.

The bloodied marble is
where the youth was sold.
I sit and wobble on
a mind of gold.

Burn the end
and pass me a thought.
Pale smoke differs
from state to state.
Top forty hits;
songs or cigarettes.
What was your dream
but an isle of regret.

Your tears were insects
burrowing into your cheeks.
Red painted hands
and yellow stained teeth.
I could've remembered
that I had sworn.
I never found your death
a place to mourn.

And I am tortured by regret,
things I've not done yet.
Thinking this defines me.

And I cannot deny
that I'm terrified
of fading to black.

I used to cherish every doubt--
now unsure in what I've found:
my instability was transparent
and now it's apparent...

And I now keep the lights on,
lay in a cold bath until warm.
My lips, so purple and svelte,
have sealed all I have felt.

And I stay a static transplant,
a homely nomadic infant,
stumbling towards the abyss,
thinking it's what I've missed.

I used to utilize the past,
stretching time, but at last,
the only fire I've consumed
will soon fade to black...

This reality, different from yours.
Sandpaper ice-cream cones sold
in engulfed, aflame stores.

This body, tense yet soft
tears underneath
the rub of rope.
My friend's feet swiped
a flailing chair,
And her neck did snap,
feces everywhere.

This sky, wrapped in saran wrap,
becomes pregnant when it rains,
the plastic weighed down by water,
slumps down the aquarium sky,
we slump down as it kisses us,
crushes us, mashes us, thrashes us.

- It all changes here,
from god to god,
from year to year -

Her hips lay like cursive,
pale, promising, pent up
like the shoulders of
an anxious angel.

Her hair a burnt brown,
wrapped around a whatever-count pillow,
like a L'Oréal snake, sleeping sullen,
drifting off into a designer dream,
unsure of this, unsure of me.

I see her as a child --
No, I see me as a child --
No, I see us as children.
This. This surreal feeling I get
when you're around me.
When the world is around me,
vibrating underneath my Toms.
Vibrating in my prescription bottle.
Vibrating between her legs, my ribs.
Between each page, so much is hidden:
my early swearing that my late love
is slowly draining.

Maternal French kisses
Mental illness defines her
Pretend to forget

Money melting in a spoon,
let's shoot it into our veins.
Flashing Kardashian lights,
streaming into our brains.
Donald Trump! He's our man!
Mark Muslims is the plan!

All-you-can-eat-
Pile. It. The. ****. High.
When you walk or
When you talk,
let the words squeak out
like they're between
Your thighs.

Thighs. American thighs,
Dreaming next to our Calvins.
Our slacktivism, our regurgitated ideas
spitballing out of our McDonald's mouths
into our peers' ears, distilled by years
And years of "almost-knowledge"
that we quasi-ascertained,
if we knew what that meant --
but we've been left behind!
No child left the **** behind!
We were left behind and there's no
possible way we slacked off, that we're dumb,
that we aren't the movie stars destined for
Lamborghini cars, five-star bars, designer bodies
for designer you and designer me:
the most special of the unique, the
Pearls that have been made in the
darkest parts of the sea, the darkest parts of
origin. Origin. ******. ****.
American ****: virginal ideals sliding around
the muck of a marketable ****, fuckfest,
******* of the American mind, the
congratulations of the American ego,
the proud mother and father tears associated with
buying and lying, "trying" and frying our food,
our ideas, our friends, our neo-impressionistic
children in Jordans, skinny jeans, on tumblr:
the unknowing cousin of Fox News, surprised
by its own wit and wisdom: they're ******* twins.
Carbon copies, unknowing, unwilling, un-un-un.

The romanticism of mental illness.
The close-up of reality-tv emotion.
The manipulation taught to servers
from managers.
The manipulation taught to customers
from society.

All we care about is ****, image, and ***.
Self-preservation: **** Donald Trump
and *******.