There is an ember
burning brightly
for you
In the darkest
most secretive regions of my heart.
When furious dark tides crash
high against the waterfront
Leaving me soaked and shivering
That ember cannot be doused.
When violent squalls roar across
the barren landscape
Forcing me in
all directions and pelting me
with dust barrages
That ember cannot be smothered.
When the earth’s clashing faults
trembles and shatter
Threatening to swallow me into
its monolithic abyss
That ember cannot be crushed.
When the fires lurking behind your eyes
leap forth and envelope me
in their silent rage
Immolating my very being
They will leave only a pile
of pitiful ash…
…and an ember
still brightly burning.

Is there an order?
In there an approximation of pi
circling our first awkward flirtations?
Does a dragon curve lurk hidden as I
caress the curvature of your spine?
Where does Euclidean geometry fit in to the
first time our lips met?
Does the Pythagorean theorem detail our most intimate
love making?
A quadratic formula for the shameful
discarding of punched in picture frames?
Is there a golden ratio that best expresses
hurried apologies and frantic entanglements
between our sheets?
I know for certain there was
a simple subtraction
on the day your tears added up everything
and finally said goodbye.
Some would say there is order in this
chaos disguised as order disguised as
chaos
Continually debating pattern recognition
or butterfly effects
But I’d like to think
We were more subtle than that

Nestled gently in
hushed lullaby desertion
Beneath tangled barbed spines
of the briar
The dreamer stirs restlessly
as deluge reigns
from the agonizing existence above

I wear a suit and tie all day
slave to a clock
come home tired and irritable
while the lion just does whatever it wants
and has the entire Serengeti to roam
picking off Wildebeests until it is satisfied
but it can't use a computer
or a microwave
and it doesn't have an air conditioner
but then all these things
are in my little cage
I'm not sure who has the better life
But I bet the lion would think
cheeseburgers and french fries
on value menus wherever we roam
are pretty awesome
I'm sure we would be good friends

She pulls my head toward hers
her lips gently part next to my ear
sensual
intoxicating
irresistible
and murmuring seductively
she says
"No honey, it would not
be a good idea
to rob the pizza delivery man
when he gets here
because we gave them our address
over the phone".

You lived in my old house.

You greeted us with
a warmth that
matched the touch
of soft simplicity
and the antique heirlooms
you so often
dressed your life in.
After the others left
and the wine bottles
fell empty to the floor
you smiled that lazy
knowing grin
that so often
told me I was loved.
Just as I pulled you into my arms
the world filled
with that telltale haze
when we are seeing
what is not real
and I felt
the impending sorrow
That so often comes on
As we begin to wake
from these longing mental trickeries.
You died in the fall
and every time the leaves
crumple and wither
I do the same
as we so often do
when a part of us leaves this world.

In my dreams
You still live in my old house.

She was gorgeous misery framed
in makeshift bandage corsets
cinched with fall from grace
sutured lace to save face
Her battered life rife with strife
covered in the mock elegance of
a broken wing dress as
the frenzies
in her enigmatic
mascara trail of tears glare
soften slow burn devotions  
hastening their hopeless necromantic
insurrection

He was a fatal attractive
midnight black feathered wraith
Modeling trouble need scar heart genes
and a bleedwork tainted warshirt
earned by tethering himself to a mistake on
countless battlefields
his enemies' rancorous fear resonates
in a crippled ripple
across stillbirth waters
With his outspoken outrage accented
by photographic violence
knowledge of immoral history charm and
disguised threat lodge wisdom
luring her into
their surprised allegory demise

In the here and now we find
uncaring torture chamber musicians
singing in the black ground
as these two scar-crossed lovers entangle  
in a shotgun wedding
and machine gun funeral
Knowing from the start
it would always be
the two of them
together as one
against the old world

We dissected his synapses
sent him subconsciously
seeking theorized sources
of the substance
Thanksgiving is coming
and I'm stuck mute on my new path
If he comes bearing gifts
can I say anything
through the slow death mask
and scramble suit deceptions
that will make him understand
the murky depth of my regret?

Silas has locked himself away in a skyscraping hotel
perched atop a Vegas casino
Belongings scattered throughout
like passenger train derailments

He was a writer with a jack knife vision
Now he gathers dust next to a windowsill graveyard
crumpled up beside his follow up novel
sloppily sprawled out
unfocused unedited and unlikable

Unable to cope with fame stress addictions
the last of dwindling fortunes
afford the luxury of
having everything delivered
He hides from the maids
thus
his only face to face contact
with the outside world consists of
quick frightening glimpses -
inquiring half-faces through the door
chain

Developed this shuffling submissive
walk to keep from falling over
compensating for dizziness
from stolen prescriptions
he doesn't need
and shouldn't have
Drowning his sorrows with grandeur -
Eating nothing but eggs
Drinking like a fish
to chase runaway pills
A stuck throat refuge
lulling him to sleep

Silas  drifts away into a comatose fate
Left dreaming
Hoping someone wants to ****** him
in his sleep
and end
the dull roar

I've been looking over
my portfolio and considering
diversifying my assets
to feed this junk punk habit of mine.
Ono-Sendai is looking strong
after that Hosaka team up
But I've been told to stay away from
those weirdos at Tessier-Ashpool
and their vatgrown monstrosities -
They're all scary like dead TV grey skies.
Cyberdyne stock is rumored
to skyrocket after some microchip breakthrough
but I've just never trusted their promises -
No fate but what we make and I don't
know if I like what they're making.
Tyrell Corp is down after that
messy Nexus-6 affair -
Tears in rain and their CEO dead
Guess they should leave the synth
business to Hyperdyne instead.
(Hey...are they just a division of Cyberdyne?
I should investigate that one)
but then I've heard Hyperdyne has
some twitchy artificials of their own running
rampant through Weyland-Yutani.
Weyland-Yutani seems like a solid bet
after their merger
but I've heard they'll treat you like
an expendable crew -
Absent mother computers and derelict signals
abound.

**** it.
I'm going with Walmart.

Watercolor forests time lapse
in their creaking ancient rings
We're smearing their earth tones
as the sawblade sings
Grins of snake oil drilling
seeping speculation
on massive scales
Rigged justice with financial backing
even as the prepaid system fails
Golden ratios and timeless cycles
failing the fickle expectations of
fiscal years
But you should know dead
money tastes awful
on a trail of tears
Captive nations petrified
in amber waves not replaced
Borrowing fallen feathers
to hide all we've faced
Dialed down the stars
To depict time as
a definite place
our fragile Axis Mundi
fallen from grace
But how do you find a voice
to speak for the trees
When you’ve been living
in skyscrapers
slums
and SUVs?
As bloodshot tired eyes fail
you've gone too far away
If we meet between the rows
what's left to say?
Brief clashes of red
then long fades to grey?
Am I your keeper
or am I your slave?
Your strip mauled *** toy
to plow and pave?
If you miscarry what was it
we even wanted to save?

You know the cemetery but
I know the grave.

Just as the shadows folded
themselves into the hills
for the night
and the sun dropped its
enveloping glint into
the corner of the looking glass

I drove slowly past your suicide

I could imagine the
scene as if I was there
You were pitifully slumped
over the dashboard
the telltale spray of
sacrificial lamb's blood
across the back window
confirmed
you sold your mind
in a shotgun barrage sale
The passenger door hung opened
as if ominously
inviting all lost souls
to join you
Birds circled
but did not dare
descend

I don't know why you
wanted to be buried
so far from home
maybe you knew
that we would
simultaneously haunt
each other
with a lost love
that never fully made sense

I've been a ghost town since
your unsettling
impersonal
departure
The drive down was
haunting...waking nightmares
and dulling pain
with whatever I could get
my hands on
Mumbled ranting fever dreams
of not so sacred cows
skipped over songs
and roadside immolation

Now I'm here

and they're casting lots
for your belongings
Without explanation
my mind drifts
to the moment we come into the world
screaming as the air hits your lungs
for the first time
they put you in your first tiny
pair of clothes
and you are so loved in those first
days
We blink into existence
Dance in its splendor
Sulk in its darkness
then we are gone just as fast
as they lower us into the ground
no longer screaming
wrapped in our last set of clothes
I turn away from
their morbid possession dissection
because you already gave me
so much
the weight is heavy enough
I look to my brother
without saying a word
and he knows it's time for the
long journey home

Those mass factory
farm dairy cows
lining the highways
hardly look happy
like in the ads
I heard they smack them
with forklifts
and speaking of which
Are we almost there?
My pain pills
are running out

Hey if we spin out
of control
and only one of us
survives
I don't want to go
through all the
saccharine fanfare
of a funeral
You think you could just
toss me on the side of
the road
and torch my corpse
with some gasoline?
I'll leave a note that says
it was okay.

Hey I know
you're the
listen to the whole album
type
but can we skip this song?
It makes my arm slashes
seep through the bandages
and I know I'm supposed
to be over that memory
by now
but the truth is I'm not
and besides we've got
a long road ahead of us

My
life blooms
in stunted fractures
stuck in
a lightless
concrete ghetto
of shade fingered
catatonia

I used to be obsessed with the idea
that the stars we saw at night were
mostly already dead
Like everything was as lost
and as inevitably hopeless
as I felt I was
But this turned out to be another legend
Most of them are still there
and won't explode
for some time
and maybe I was disappointed
that the universe
wasn't as dark
as it appears to me.
What I like most about you
is that you
can turn things like that around
when you explain
how we're made up of materials
from some primordial
atomic cataclysm
that sent particles
in a billion different directions
until they reformed
and made
the sun
and the stars
and the planets
and that the entire spectrum
of our existence
was brought forth
from these events
and
I should consider myself lucky
that the universe
went to all that trouble
to make you for me.

Every razor thin
scarlet slash
is another
broken promise
sparking across a prairie -
Brought to life
as consuming fire
becoming merciless discord
in a broken tooth wasteland -
This upside down world where nothing turned
out and we’re just wandering -
I drift dragging drudgework
fish hook chains
in sidewinder fashion nightmare
searching eternally ****** rivers deprived
of justice on scales and fins -
I'm trying to understand
myself
so I can stand myself
and stand on my own
so nothing owns me
but the last time I saw something real
was you -
You were trapped in a sterile lab coat reverie
your tears stinging traces of honeywine and blackmail -
I remember your hands still so delicate
even with wear from bleach soaked
loyal test subjects -
Those siren voiced synths that are
getting harder and harder to spot
but you showed me how the seed numbers
reveal patterns as revealing
as their camera flash gorgon clothing -
They're just too typically perfect
and in that false perfection
total ugliness -
In the moments not framed by bloodlettings
and love letters
I am ****** to hear the constant rattle
of the existential conundrum corps
Keeping time with a self-loathing decadence -  
Filling my mind as I root
through Faustian bargain bins
trying to reclaim that time
you first let me hold you and
my mind just...


…cleared.

I painstakingly cut off my
fingertips
screaming as I dug out the
microprocessors
so we could live
free from their scanner
grids
The whir of drones
overhead
provide an ironically
soothing white noise
as we spend the night
huddled together in a ravine
The truth is
I'm not afraid of
them finding us
and launching
our firebomb execution
so much as I'm
afraid
you might want
at some point
to see other people

Christina Snowcrash feels eternal suffocation in a landslide
of murky river rumor mongering
and forced black out make out fake out insufficiency
from her choke out black and blue Valentine
All this tragic **** abuse
deals a million miles of bad road damage per second
because everyone else can see
Christina Snowcrash is a starry eyed constellation prize
crashing and burning brighter than
supernovas blindly raging gracefully
She stands her ground with her loss
but we're all praying for the day
she stops his predatory bending and breaking
as she dots her eyes
and crosses her tease
and lets loose tear smeared makeup
breakup bullets
aimed at diminishing returns
on those blood diamond investments
and involuntary commitment
Let him burn for a change and trash the ash in
fretless regretless release from prison bar bedroom brawls
with a loveless lost cause phantom
no longer worthy of the best times of her life
because Christina Snowcrash
deserves better than this

Drug company antidepressants for breakfast with
feelings adrift at the corner of
Armageddon and Vine then
four cups of plundered coffee beans
bring heart poundings against that
swollen old surgery scar but hey now I'm
finally able to focus -
Ignore throat tissue issues that
issue forth acidic ******* bile
to navigate
mirrored command lines cut in
neat little rows -
They tell the machine what to do while
music blares and
****** I wish they'd
stop playing the ******
version of Blinded by the Light
for once -
Agitated and hurting -
But intrigued -
Like watching the jaws of life
wrapped around a car crash
you can't look
away from and
sometimes I just want to go
back to yelling
"Go **** yourself!" at everything
but it
didn't do any good then
why would it now?
An old friend's chaos algorithmic
paintings bring strange
comfort from mass media assault
and pepper spray -
Recall he was dead set on
a jukebox demise but maybe he realized
following linear models of
progression will
derail when spun
across time as a wheel
that breaks the back
of all who push against
it but that doesn't stop
hired guns from hitting
heavy pipes
in the park
after dark
and it's all over now baby blue
because I can't stop thinking
of desert roses even when a thorn
adorns their last names -
If you figure any of this out
let me know because I sure haven't -
Welcome to my stream of consciousness -
Fishing off limits -
You already took the bait.

I will
never
forgive myself
for forsaking you
little howling
wolf girl
with madness
in her eyes
and anger in
her voice
and a face
carved by the gentle
hands of nighttime stars

What I miss most
about you
is those
hidden powder keg stand
salmon net blood stained
scaffold pirate rigging
crumpled roof
dense smoke cloud cabin
dangerous flirtatious biker bar taunting
staggering pool playing
yellow and black liquid haze
full on sensory assault
adventures
we both knew
would never last

With our colonize wide open
we see that these
are not standard issues
Their mortifier brigades stomp
in death march madness
And we while cannot avoid the
genocide ways glances
of iron eyed code stalkers
Our very lives
stand as evidence
that we have endured

Droplets of a black swan's fever sweats
coat purplish nightmare blisters
Reminds me of nights before
I forced my eyes to sometimes drift
through broken down envy telescopes
opening pathways to fissured late night ruptures
Blotting out black plague garlic mask threats
no one left to speak ill of these mass grave
injuries
Our blight flag battle standards set for
miserable whiskey soaked duelists trudging through the snow
past careless crossroad wasps' nest dissection
a Glasgow smile cut in a hostile makeover struggle  
makes for uneasy amends
when my copper cable pirate princess
holds the offending knife
pulled across like a dishwater blonde's drag on a last fix
I know I'm hard to follow but no one else
will take the torrential reigns
to leads us home but bitterly so
Who do we end up with in heaven
if no one likes us now?

My love poems are about drugs
My drug poems are about love
And I never write about cats

She mulls over
a void dance tactic
Before proclaiming
Me damaged and telling me
You need to meet a nice girl
And stop with all these
Pornographic sycophants
I insist I'm not sure
The nice ones would deal with
The cacophonous buzz saw
Roar of my thoughts
And she says
What about me?
Write me a poem like you do
For all the other girls
and then I'll straddle you
And make the pain go away
And I reply
Okay, but I am not paying full price
for this session.

My fingertips sweep across these subtle indentations
Tracing her serial number
A traumatic and numbing truth
copy written and branded on a tiny scar
just below her microscopic transistor
voice box
The shallow intake of oxygen into
recycled plastic lungs recycling air
either for realism or function
felt just as alluring
when they whispered into my ear
Her hardwired ducts always produced
tears that hurt just as much
even if it was programmable and on command
Losing the warm caress of her polymer skin
was just as painful
even though underneath was only cellular service
and not cellular growth
I swore to my friends that she wasn't like
any other I've ever loved
but as I push the lifeless shell of this
all too perfect woman into the muck caked
dumpster
I think to myself
Maybe I would have had better luck with
a name brand

The rain has gentle hands that
smother out my claim to flame
as I stand with a soggy borrowed cigarette
in one hand
and one of those expensive uptown
coffee shop drinks in the other,
their daily grind keeping me awake
but ultimately coffee rings
hollow, insufficient in fulfilling
my constant half-empty outlook.
I'm resigned to bracing myself on a street corner
watching traffic lights
flash and cars streak by obscenely,
wishing I could get by on good looks
from everyone moving past me
but I know it's all just an allusion.
Always alone in the big
city but she changes that,
she's sensual but odd
like the smooth shielding
over the wings of a beetle
if you can stand holding one
long enough to touch them.
I raise my face to the sky
and she washes away my
hazy carbon monoxide exhaustion daydreams,
letting them bleed into corroded rain gutters
All those curve bald face lies and avoidance tactics
dilute by her storm fronts until they mean nothing.
You and I?
Well I can't figure out if our daisy chaingun
romance will ever
be more than hollow points fired
across each others brow,
but I know no matter how hard
she pelts me in torrential downpours,
the rain always answers.

It's not that I don't appreciate
the glorious struggle of this life.
But when I'm crowbar hopping until I can hardly stand up
guilty of smashed in windows and foggy afterglow afterthought
I can't help but wonder
how I can be anything but off the wagon
when they've been circled to fend me off?
They want their stereotypes?
Fine.
I'll be the station wagon burner of their suburbs
but even if they're entertained I don't want their thanks.
I reserve my thanks for being alive
for being allowed to rise each day
even if my thanks are abstract marks lining
my arms.
Sorry if this is disjointed.
I'm writing from the heart
but shooting from the hip
with those familiar revolving killers
slung low on fun belts with
the chambers of my heart spun
until I'm dizzy.
I've always been an avid subscriber to chaos
but I can't deal with this disorder any longer.
I know that each and every one of you
are precious and dear to me
but I can't break away from the oubliette of
my dreary words.
They're like my alchemical dependency
burning dread into gold.
I give thanks to know you
even if showing it is difficult.
I'm a barren mined strip.
Now I'm discharging thought heavy metals into your
water supply and I can't help but think I'm
poisoning everyone.
I've been a misanthropologist all my life
discovering what makes us so awful at times.
Now I just
want to be a sincere apologist.
I need you more than you need me
and I love you.

Darling?
Don't read into it
too much

When I put out my stale headache cigarettes
in your ashtray
and I put out in that
tainted-with-cheap-*****-cracked-lip-kisses
way that I do so well

Then lay my head down
next to you
on your
worn-out-*****-box-spring-no-covers-only-refuge
and you feel secure
like everything lasts forever

Keep in mind
that old adage
that's as tired as I am
about keeping friends close
and enemies closer

And hey
Darling?

This ain't going to end
with one of those awful deus ex machina
dream wake ups

This isn't the dream we're living
so let's make the best of this disposable outcome
get some sleep
and do it all over again tomorrow
in that
over-indulged-but-still
unhappy-first-world-prison-paradise
kinda of way that we do so well

-From discarded poetry found in the trashcan
of Fiona Eris Strand

In the half-life half-death
of cold capsule prison cells
The shaken but unstirred synapses
of my sedated frantic grey matter
are left cruelly seduced into dreamstate contemplation
Forced induction into comatose hypersleep
all systems shocked and slowed
Reduced to internal monologue
debating tranquility and frustration
captured amidst nurturing seas and predator skies
Life support machinations online
so that I must deal with life offline
My interlude thoughts in full control
as they run amok
through the living dead dreams
forever frozen and framed
in iced over glass
floating through the black nothing
of all encompassing space
alone

This is the kind of poem I wish I had
an old rusty typewriter for
so each disgusted clack crack and punch
hit like your shatter jaw swings
But this will have to suffice
and
yeah
okay
fine
It makes you feel better
to put things
in such a stark black and white
that ugly gaudy stale whole-half-truth you
claim to love
then
yeah
okay
fine
All the ill forgotten pill hurts were all my fault
and we can pretend all the long scarlet letter
scratches you carved on my back were
from someone else
So burn my name to the ground
and put your cigarettes out on
my pictures
and all it will amount to
is your last denial
of all I had to give

You know
I was thinking how much
I'd like to just leave it all behind
and let loose like a mad
rebel with plenty of caws
flitting through sunlight that creeps
through the trees
because anymore
I can't get behind another day of
constantly dragging on more
supposed last toxin riddles
while your hands become these frail metastatic
cooling tower fingers
I can already see them already shaking off
clinched jaw fuel droplets
onto cancerous rancid mass graves
and I don't want to imagine what's beyond that
Besides
lately I've been preoccupied
with the feel of timeworn ciphers etched
in my charcoal wings as I
descend on power lines joining
scorched throat jesters cackling murderously
at this scorched earth
See I want to get away from our plutonic friends
all they want is to binge on residual radiation
raising their safety glasses to their excesses
knowing their acceptable risk deformities await
with contaminated breath
Sure we've got a reputation of being devious
but I'd rather proudly flaunt tattered onyx feathers
than sit around with
decaying radioactive half lives surrounding
inactive decaying half lives abounding
We crows scavenge our meals indiscriminately
but we don't dare eat our young as you do

I've got prose
in different area codes

Her lips thrum
like reverb droplets
as I steal
trembling kisses
before the mad dash
out the door
into sun brushed
ruin

All their money will turn to dust
The shopping centre cannot hold
The television signal to noise ratio
borders on obscene
The light of their superstars
already dead when they hit
Their songs will fade
as the music boxes burn out
It all rusts
It all goes silent
It all burns off
Everything decays
Everything dies
But if I can hold on to you
in our unspoken covenant
on the edge of forever
perhaps we can defy the sweeping hands
of this mortal coil
and turn our backs on time

The number of universes
she had traveled was infinite
She couldn't stop thinking of you
in any of them

You can be my pinewood forest
and I'll wander through your mists
ducking through
your hollowed out trees anytime
I'm your huckleberry
bushes growing
under your treetops
and you can eat my berries anytime
Recall that
huckleberries only grow wild
and so do I.

I feel this inhuman suffocation
when I step out into
that officially sponsored
fog machine artificial haze
to start the music blaring from
speakers that don't say a thing
Spitting throat lumps and grinds
lurching like scary monsters
controlled by raving mad super creeps
hiding behind walls of
electronic lies
and vinyl appropriations
committed to automation
in
beats making stage cages swing like
stray lanterns filled with
questionable electrocuties -
wild tarts that can't be broken
but you can stare all you want
at
Black-light-blemish-broken-razor-testimony
obscured with slashed fishnet and
splashed neon body paint
Move to the wavelengths
going to grave lengths
as
my dead beats facilitate this
Deja Vu machine world
of
backdoor audition submission
courtesy of half massed scrubstep poser pseudo-players
and maneaters planted on dance floors
Wearing short skirts low cut shirts
high heels long hair and plenty of
emotional baggage
and
I find myself feeling somewhat sorry
and guiltily enticed by the decadent
conspicuous consumption and sinister
seduction I cannot escape
until
The song crescendos and I slam an invisible hand
into the wreck chords
from now until the end of rhyme
I want to stop the whole thing
but this is what I signed up for
this is my punishment
so
with reluctant crossfader switchblade hands
I scratch the noise back into the air
and out of my head
because
the
beatings
must
go
on

I staggered into our front door this morning
and I can't find the broken home
I feel like we have
because you take good care of the place
while I can't manage to take care of myself.
Dragging myself through the kitchen I
tip my king over in the chess
game we were playing
I know you're just learning the game
but I'm sure you know that means I forfeit.
I can feel the warm alcohol tinge to my
sweat this morning
the soft metallic taste invoking more memories
than I want to admit
I struggle to take in the
glimmer of dust floating through
seeping in light
everything else with its soft haze around it.
I kind of thought everything would fall into place
for us this year
but until death do us part seems like a sick joke
with how much we've struggled
to make it through the first week.
I walk into the bathroom and remove my ring
I always wanted that groove in my
finger from a ring settling in
getting comfortable and making itself
a home
But I've never managed to make myself
someone you can live with.
I had hoped we could rest upon each others bones
when they got too old to hold us on their own.
I drop into our bed and my head swims
will dull ache and deep remorse
as the future we planned blots itself out
another victim of broken and fermented promises.

In the space before
consciousness
we watched
roaring waters shatter
pillars of stone
I locked my arms around
you
and we spoke to each other
in a language older than time

Late night exhausted
eyes strain like a lamprey's mouth
Serrated and menacing
they tell me
"Rely on abstraction.
Just feel numb
obscure
and forgotten."
My face was pristine
when they sacrificed
my cheekbones
but my throat bled
profusely -
It's odd but I figured
you would understand
right away
because you're just like me -
A smeared watercolor disposition that
sees the rivers run red
and the roses go grey
I know they dragged lines of
clay across the lining
of my stomach
so life tastes like dust
Beyond that
- Mystery -
I followed your footprints
across the mud caked
shore
but they provide no
answers other than
the assurance that with us
it was never about
increased distance
or how long we've spent apart
the other arms we sought comfort in
because our spirits always call
to one another
Most things in this life
are numbed
obscured
and forgotten
But the bond between us
is sustained
Kept hidden in that secret place
reserved for things
that never die

Time ran its lecherous fingers
across our youngest son
with his oldest soul
Cruelly pried open weak spots
and stained our walls
with water damage tears
like misunderstood plague
that gloats just the same with
death knell freedom bell declarations
as we are herded
like cattle
and they ran their sacred waters
over my head but I found
I don't much subscribe to
forceful lead pipe
confessionals
and it's not that we want you off the land
we just want you to stop murdering it
with this run on death sentence
see I try to understand but
I struggle to be loyal when I saw what
you did to my brothers
and at this point all I ask
is
please
let my children
live.

There is a condemned shack
on the bleeding edge
of this cracked mud cake prison
Rusted copper pipes snake out
into a murky puddle
holding the last cold drink
before setting out
I feel the ragged heat beating down
on the raw skin
of my hastily shaved scalp
The proud swing of flowing locks
cut off in shame
and thrown into angered fires -
Forever sentenced to wander
in tattered coated
highway robbery squalor -
Machete duel personalities
with blood crazed bandit gangs -
Hunker down on the edge of
gravel voiced pits
mutilating the rock face
in search of bitter roots
to replace the ones severed in
excommunication breakdown
I know
With you
It would be exile
Poor
Dusty
Hot
Banished
Marked for death
But nonetheless
we would sustain each other

I choose exile
with you

In time and heat sand burns to glass
the glass cradles more sand
The sand keeps time morosely
amidst the engulfing heat
and ponders
if in time
it will become glass

Does she know
that she is silver strands of light
gently plucked from the sun
and manifested in human form?
Do those that would see her
captured know that you cannot bottle
sunlight?
Her intensity will burn those hands
before she can be contained.
Does she know that she has become my beacon?
Does she know that she is my warmth?
Does she know that her presence chases away
the darkness?
Does she know that I would not
capture that which
is meant to dance across water?
Across the sky?
I desire only
to hold her in my hands
for as long as she will let me.
Does she know that she is sunlight?

I destroyed the entire universe
smashed every star
smothered every black hole
All life
extinguished and placed
in the palm of your hand
because you told me
you needed time and space

Freezing rain drizzles
off of my apartment roof tonight
I'm afraid of driving on sheets of ice
and I've only got six hours to go
I should be asleep by now
The numbers on my clock are an
irritatingly sharp red
and they stare at me all night
reminding me that they run things
Not sleeping is one of my hang ups
I have this bad habit of leaving my coat
on the floor
so this isn't my hang up
because someone
usually hangs it up for me
Although I'd feel like less of a burden
if I hung my own coat up when I come in
from the freezing rain
so I try
They know I'm just forgetful
so they don't get mad
They think I'm brilliant in other ways
which is comforting
Sometimes my hang up is wondering
if I am at all brilliant
if I am a good person
I run my fingers along all my old scars
and fight the urge to make new ones

A touch of Synthetic Blue
drips
down our tear battered frames
before it catches on
a match made in hell
Becomes an oily
twisting
saffron cold flame
Redefines love
as a pact to collectively
fall apart
Redefines hate
as a pop cultural norm
As it smolders
strife imitates art
Another massacre
Another overdose
Another malignant mass media circus
and maybe now
you understand
inevitability


*Synthetic Blue is a registered trademark of White Spider Pharmaceuticals, a division of the White Spider Corporation, and is used without permission.