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

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.

She bleeds ‘all tragic steam work blasted mists
‘All hobbled clamped free fall for ‘all seasonal depression slump
She’s ‘all death knell cramp urgency and held back suffering kneeling
on kitchen floors ‘all like boarding school broomsticks lessons
with ‘all that theoretical **** the ***** save the man type
schlock shock rhetoric shtick
so ‘all I’ll be is her savage heretic wagon burner page-turner
on the hot coal back burner ‘all boarded up sealed shut in the walls
until she calls
Expecting me to be 'all combat ready
‘all back with a vengeance
while her thrift store hazard suit groups and droops
‘all over my haphazard dream sliced hang nailed hangover hands
hiding ‘all derelict style while between the sheets confessional
gets voided by social media air raid sirens
bringing me ‘all too close to rocks and crystals
and who ‘all needs another pathetic apathetic
junk punk when
‘all and ‘all
I'd rather die for you
because
I just can't live with myself

I would scale the highest
most decrepit radio towers in the world
the rusted metal crumbling against my feet
Risking electrocution and the constant threat of falling
as I rewire the ancient spiderweb of cabling
so I can hear even the faintest transmission of your voice
I'll clutch a stained and faded photograph of us
The only remainder after most everything digital
dies out in flickers of dormant transistors and dissipated binary
I'll protect it from acidic rain and the grit of persistent dust storms
So little resources left in a continent of incinerated cities
yet this picture of you and I is all I will need to keep moving
When I finally find you
I will fight against all impossible odds and potential ends
I'll walk entire burnt out highways with you just to make one last stand
I will carry you across these deserted wastelands and returning forests
To show that even after the bombs drop
My love belongs to you

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The ethereal plane goes silent.
Pilot decides they are too tired to fly.
Decrease cabin pressure to decrease cabin fever.
The cousin of my cousin who is not my cousin cannot engineer a solution if not given proper tools.
Cavemen can use simple tools but are adept at clubs if you injure their hearts so let’s call a ***** a ***** we know diamonds are only rocks but forever is simply tomorrow repeating.
I can’t see what’s in the cards beyond that.
Even worse is to look at the present you gave worn each day.
Standing still a painful reminder.
Best to keep moving.
I'm in a precarious juxtaposition.
One move and the King is toppled but the Queen reigns in this game.
I shall grant our enemies no quarter, this game is free of charge.
The truth is the true blue you doesn't know what to do but the blue blood in you
requires more upkeep than that and you'll deny it until you're blue in the face.
That's enough blue clichés, especially when I'm seeing red.
Fell trees for the fires or gather the ones already fallen.
It doesn't matter, you'll still
wear multiple layers to get through the knight in shining arm morbidity.
I keep all your sugar coated spiders sealed in jars.
I'd rather they not bite me anymore either.
Outside appearances mean little when one wears so many faces.
See you on the flip side but remember on the inside I'm dying to meet you again.
I am jumbled.
I'm mixing my metaphors and metaphysics.
They promised adult supervision but I can't see clearly without glasses.
I'm like a deer caught in the dread lights.
I'm under cardiac arrest and I've been coaxed into signing a police state meant just for you.
How can I be held responsible for the consequences when everything is out of sequence, doesn't that leave me only a con?
Paradigm shift has occurred.
The door to my heart is closed.

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

This is how I wish to remember you

The steady rush of mountain creeks
guiding us along almost invisible paths
that shimmer slightly overhead
The two of us tumbling
through tall untamable grasses
growing as wild and free
as we hoped to be

The wide eyed wonder of youthful
innocence as we take in
the majesty of obscured sunlight
gracing the thick overgrowth
of the forest floor
The trees trembling as they
share whispered secrets
people have long forgotten


The two of us here
Where there is only the simplicity of tradition immemorial
upholding our primitive dreams
Perfection contained
in a vanishing instant
Ancient testimony
that there is more
than just what is seen
That in the end
We are never alone

This is how I wish to remember you.

In the murky clots of consciousness
between sleep and awakening
we clung to an icy overpass railing
spitting down on graffiti camouflaged
train cars as their charging rickety
boom carried our uncontrollable laughter
toward destinations unknown
Our spirited tenacity was matched only by
turbulent winds whipping us into submission
Forcing us to brace ourselves to avoid getting
swept away
You tumbled backward off the slick rounded bars
of the overpass rail
and bit your lip so hard
I thought you would need stitches
but you kept on smiling as the blood plummeted
dripping all over the tracks in a sanguinary frost
Feeling arrogant and invincible
like two avante guarde dog soldiers
we marched past our old urban battlefields and
grimy fast food cattle fields
closed in on a ramshackle bar
and drowned our taboos and inhibitions in
foam drenched pitchers until we closed out that
ramshackle bar
We gleefully stumbled
wearing hazy street light halos
back to the
duplexed squalor of my doorstep
Sloppy kisses stained with the scent of
cheap beer completed the night
as we tore into each other and
made love on that ratty creaking mattress in the front
room
All I had at the time to rest on
was that ***** old bed
and you
until several months later
when they confined you to
pristine hospital beds instead
Intravenous deceptions and false hope blood tests followed
but even with all the motions of our modern medical drama
we couldn't avoid you getting slowly swept away
I regret never having the strength or honesty to visit you
just as I regret never telling anyone about you and I
I go hang on that overpass railing sometimes
remembering the knock-down-drag-out-reckless perfection
of that night
knowing that my agonizing love for you should
have been something I proudly proclaimed to the world
Now the trains carry away my atrocious wails
as the weight of my shame
nearly pulls me onto the tracks
and spills my insides in sacrificial testament
to all we've lost

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.

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.

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?

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

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

The flat desert terrain melts together
when you’ve been driving all night
sliding through twisted canyons filled with nothing
but rugged gray brush and ***** sand.
Even in complete darkness the desert air is still hot and dry
every breath harsh and dusty as it’s drawn deep into my lungs.

We round another of the endless corners on this highway
the engine of our rapidly aging vehicle shakes
as it soars along this empty stretch of nothing.
She sits quietly
almost comatose
blankly staring forward
with occasional slight smirks of morbid fascination
each time an insect smacks the windshield at
breakneck speeds.

She used to love hanging out of the top of sunroofs
letting the breeze flow past her body
dancing
my obscenely beautiful angel.

But we are long past that now.

When we met we were that couple
everyone knew
would be perfect for each other
but horrible for everyone around them
We did all the awful things most people our age did
but no one would have pictured us on this path
On occasion she shoots me hateful looks
silently accusing me
of ruining our perfect romance
with weakness when confronting the things
we've done.

At the edge of the horizon, a downtrodden motel
our destination
and tomorrow's headlines.
I don’t say anything to her
I just nod slightly
For me this is a matter of survival
because without her I could not survive.
Vague pulls of morality tell me this is wrong
but I remind myself my morality is reserved
only for her
Morality is for people that have everything
and I have only her.

We select our target by the cloudy glow
of a left on television that will muffle
any sound
The flimsy door splinters against the hardened sole
of my combat boot while
her hardened soul howls with tragic insanity,
and as my angel's wings grow black
the grisly screams are lost to the sweltering desert air.

Little Scarlet Mouse Girl
and I
had very little cash
left from pay day
in my days as a
projectionist at the
cheap theatres
and her time at
a head shop
that didn't keep very good books
But it was enough to
buy a few cheeseburgers
before my shift
on Christmas morning
and Little Scarlet Mouse Girl
says muffled through
a huge bite
"Jack in the Box burgers
taste like ****"
and quickly adds
"Not that I would know".
She dropped me off and kissed me
as the snow flurries gathered around
our feet
and I had thought for sure
at that moment
this was the person I would spend my life
curled around
Regardless of the drugs
our tongues were acquainted with

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.

Burnt out on
a legion of increasingly mobile devices
for a legion of increasingly immobile people
Antisocial networks and a friends list
of listless friends
But what judgment is justified
while staring at square screens with
increasing intensity
and begrudging propensity?
An information ******
that can't get a fix
for all that's wrong in their world
Let's start to run a shutdown command
march away from the heat of indifferent ****
pull away from those fright emitting diodes
crowding a fiber opticked off planet
With nothing better to do
No plans that aren't metered in Gigabytes
We can topple their towers of babel
and towers of cable
And the night sky will shimmer with thousands of stars
we never knew were there

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?

We are condemned to
pass by
in the smudged opacity
of bygone oil lamps
It is in these clandestine
exchanges -
Between pulsating nettle
stings in lightless anguish
just behind my eyes -
I steal treasured glimpses
of your timeless features
painted in
faded sepia tone depiction
of war torn Soldaderas

Lips carrying traces of shellshock
Eyes that speak
of barbed wire carved laceration
and coiled braids telling the story
of combat

As we sneak past the ruins
of failed uprisings
We defy this sorrow -
this separation
with a slow
sensual brush
of fingertips
across each others palms
A substitute for our
unrelenting passion
that must carry us through
until we meet again

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

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

Abscess blockade burrowed
to the jawbone
dream ruptures
infectious screeches
threats of gangrene
mainlined syringe residue
drawn back-blow back-cross bow-shot across the bow
racing thought
restless night shade swollen eyes
mud caked dispossession
broken promise treatment
crack in
the pavement
things fall apart
lies upon lies upon lies
and
she says
'While I'm at it,
I don't really want to talk about it.
Can't I just use you,
to only tell me nice things? '

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

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

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".

Hyper reality
torched our dreaming eyes down
to charred empty sockets
and you should know
Like all the nasty swirls
wormholes swallow everything
because they aim to please
There is no what if
as it is apparent
we will -
in increasingly reductive fashion -
eat it all up
:remade rebooted recycled scrambled
deja pay-per-vu:
until
void
conquers
all

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.

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

The decay
you've wrought
with your doubled up beating
and distortion assaults
gives me no choice but
to fixate on new sonic romances
and I'm in love
with the way she cradles me
in that sedated groove
and the caress
of those faint record scratches
I need to
get through new time signatures
as I grow older
and apart from you

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

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

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

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

Blotched botched
word failures spewing forth
from defective machinery
subtracted from
popularity conquests
showing youngbloods
how to write up
this tragedy thing right
Mouthless voiceless
shapeless formless
avoidance and mockery
creeping like carbon monoxide admissions scrawled out
in digitized assault
and crying out
What kind of democracy is this?
What kind of freedom is this?
When torn from those clutched
analytical political land mines
I have to ask  
Before revolutionary words are mistaken and reduced
to stripped inspirational drivel
adorning office drone strike stationery
What makes you think
your
words can hurt someone
who wants to ******
themself
daily?

Quantum grave robbery corpse bride stood up
acting as a grotesque sign post warning but
that tragic sideways glance splits seconds and
intersections spatters concrete bodies
Pathological investigation and morbid dissection
bears the heaviest weight
of horrifying and paralyzing eternal return
when time loops breaks you upon wheels
Tethered in bad faith
reminiscent of clamped surgical invasive insertion
Ouroboros chasing the dragon only to find the dragon is itself
taking shape as endless mass fed media distraction
Nativity naivety engaged in misstep
of evolution smolders like oaths broken from
talking heads revealed
as trumpeting propaganda warlocks
and even in an infinite period of time
they are still liars
No longer concerned with if it curves
oscillates
stays flat
explodes
is empty
Only want to know
when it all ends.

The shrill thrill **** of young blood ills makes the hill
become a valley of death writhing desperately in hands
too often dragging queens through the mud
all along the botched towers leaning and glaring
without caring
Instead intent-on
restricting oxygen with crass observation
only ever offering tasteless insincere apologies as afterthought
Alone and easily overpowered
clouded crowd-sourced asphyxia overtakes
just enough breath left
for recorded tied down violations
with faint traces of ****-shaming-victim-blaming
cat calls free-for-alls
and “don’t it always seem to go
that you don’t know what you’ve
got” ‘til it’s slammed shut stolen
and swollen gutted-paved-depraved
by gentrifires stoking those immolate night advances
and god oh god is it really too much to ask
to feel safe on my own sidewalk?

The pregnant sun
lurches forward
crashing across the
nocturnal horizon
lovingly delivering a
a new day
At night she quietly agonizes
Understanding that
the flaw of
entropy
dictates she will eventually
eradicate
all life depending on her warmth
And what mother desires to outlive their
children?

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

What good is a ******'s love?
No good.
Unless you too are a ******.
And even then...well...
we'll get to that.
But here's the thing...
Most people will abandon you
when they see the unkempt hair
and glazed over eyes.
When the phone bill doesn't get paid
so they can't talk to anyone
besides you and your murmured incoherence.
When too many calls in to work pile up
along with the dishes and garbage
and they keep wondering how long
until they find you drowned in your own
*****.
When you won't stop scratching and
when you are just plain all around one hundred percent
unlikable and annoying.
They will abandon you.
But the fellow ******?
The fellow ****** will stand with you
and fight for you
until the end of time...
...so long as you've both got junk.
Holding spoons and needles and
spinning those lies right alongside you.
The fellow ****** will hold a candle
for you when all other light
is gone.
But once it runs out-
-the money or the junk
-once they get what they want
they move on
to find a new source.
So a ******'s love is much more intense.
Like nothing you'll ever feel.
But in the end, you'll still leave them or they'll leave you.
Did you ever think we would be anything else
when all our heroes were liars and thieves and loners?
Suicidal freaks and criminals and junkies?
In the end why did we want to be just like these people?
Did you think that we could really pull this off forever?
But hey...
I've got one last hit.
Want to love this ****** one last time?
You should know by now
with me
it's never about the drugs...
...it's all for love.

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.

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.

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

You call me
a piece of work
and a piece of trash
but
that would be putting
it way too lightly...
Lowbrow
down low
and never coming down...
...I'm a ******' fabulous
piece of fine art.
Here's a part about
the way the sky looks
today
so I can wrap this trainwreck up
and pretend
to be deep.
It looks clear and blue. What a disappointment.
Fin. QED. Mic dropped. Bombs dropped.

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.