Hound dog for honesty
got a sniffer for fearlessness
harrier than thou, oh yes
only closer to here is this
growling for profundity
and bark at the moon in bliss
catch the scent of levity
clue you in what you missed
get a whiff of humanity
bona fide and real artistry
doesn’t get more upfront than his
and hers is straight virtuous
true art has an odor no less
than you and beasts and me
it’s certified amenity
to smell when someone’s
finally free of
uncertainty tee-off
performance feat me-bluff
authenticity handcuff
got rid of the fake fluff
and reeks of human real stuff.

Brilliant, brilliant, Synecdoche,
Child of Sorrow you hide me.
I’m here, beneath,
Name, Employment, Relationship,
Wealth, Assets, Social Alphabet,
Because it’s better than seeing bare
A spirit flayed with heirloom silverware.
Inheritance lopped off from a branch
Of a tree I hate wholeheartedly
I’d rather shrivel in the grass,
Far from kinship’s rootedness.
If I were alone and completely so
Less of a case would be
For all this arid metonymy.
I am flowing with blood and water
And are not surmised by a part of the whole
Nor by the whole for a part.
Call me child of sorrow.
Not me, not me, Synecdoche.

I'd stomach the smog of Athens
Just to pray at your temple.

Went back to the river and its waters still flowed
Like they did when I was younger and lost in the world
And time was drawn by its white-capped rapids
And boys were still playing in its treacherous mud.

Mushrooms and fishbone, aniseed whiff
Traces of apple and rosewood mold.

Went back to the lake with its water still calm
Mirror-like settled and brushed by the dawn
Upset by waves of careless wishes
Made by hearts of aimless mood.

Time paints heavy with water like this
A landscape of sorrow and dreams and bliss.

Sat down at the banks, felt lost at home
A visitor I was, now and back then.
Something leaned heavy on my shoulders and heart
Like a friend all tired, how we’ve grown apart.

A fruit all shriveled in the grass by the trunk
Waters uprooted and blossoms undone.

Whatever makes you happy, can’t be owned.
Let it flow unbounded and winding just so.
Come back to its shores and come undone
Return to where it has all begun.

Time paints heavy with water like this
A landscape of sorrow and dreams and bliss.

I wake up on a golden beach, relaxed.
In the surging neon plenty of a reveling metropolis
that can’t wait to leave yesterday behind,
I cheerfully embrace the warmth radiating from my chest.

And I dance
with the ghosts of Chiba, Chiba.

Sipping in the Chiba sun.
Hacienda, cheaper ***
than anywhere, I don't care.
I'm sleeping with my boss's wife
and leave her on a beach at night.
Disheveled, drunk, and sickly high.
Delve deep into bohemian life.

Chinese cigarettes, imported;
Rice cakes, ginger tea, and pork chops;
*** fights in deserted courtyards;
Betting thousands, deal out more cards;
Go all in and ditch the loan sharks.

My cat with laryngitis and only one eye
keeps watch as OD-Girls doze off and die,
Choking on puke and the air of a city
that runs low on love and the last fumes of pity.
Odds stacked against me for as far as I can see.

Hookers greet me, pimps compete with me;
My number one is fifteen and smells sweetly;
I make 'em pay dearly;
I move house yearly;
I come home to 8-ball freakouts weekly;
Adrenalin shots in ghostly veins run freely.
Running lonely in bodies so completely
riddled with pain that is too much to take
and too little to ****.
I'll decide when I've had my fill.

I wake up on a purple beach, paralyzed.
In the burning neon excess of a frenzied metropolis
that can’t wait to burn through its own circuits,
I hopelessly fight back the acidic swell in my throat.

And I dance
with the ghosts of Chiba, Chiba.

My body, very terrible.
the shape.
Demon comes in
and crazy time.
take the sleep,
for the wake-up time,
feel like cheery boy.

The world grew a puzzled look
and settled in silence.
There was no answer it could give
about who you would become.
And so it marveled with us together
at what you had become
in this short time alive.
A wonder.

Misty shapes and blotches
Wept from hairline cracks.
A world-bloom, fertile ever
Painted the river shore.
Saplings turned to knotted trees,
Grass whipped by wind turned yellow
Died; and then were green again.
Sun, moon and stars, above.

Rock formations burst, stampede
Elephants across the land, I learned,
Every secret of its beauty,
When, like an arrow let loose
A mouth cast me swiftly
Through sand bank swirls
Into tumultuous ocean
It spoke with me:
Immensity

Diaphanous, like glass dons frost,
the view to lavender distance is lost

I want it to lean heavily on my shoulder like a tired friend;
Tell me of its secrets with earthy hints of walnut and aniseed;
Lure me into warm melancholy with traces of apple and rosewood.

Ka-Pow!
It's really nothing dire
Just an engine misfire,
Something that you and I are
Not even thinking about twice
But it turns his blood to ice
And he's back in the dust
and the mud and the fear
has him convinced that his end
is finally drawing near.
And as he's cowering and screaming,
and want's nothing but to be dead,
His blood that was ice, has now turned to lead.

Verily, I must confess, a witch’s cauldron
Has been bestowed upon my belly,
Churning and roiling, Bubbling and boiling!

And, even though my days of yore on battlefields
Are far and few in-between,
I do remember bloated pig’s carcasses, stuck
Eternally asleep in strangling dead-man’s-land-muck.

With which I feel not seldomly inclined
To trade places
In my most severe moments
of deep-gut indisposition.

Dost though not hear my foul mouth speak no riddles?
Abort, it cries, abort!
Expelled be those pernicious liquids
That make haste to rend my stomach asunder.

And expelled they shall be, violently as much
As a bubonic deluge from the very ****
Of Belzebub!

A young veterinary,
just shy of a degree,
was put in charge of caring
for the circus menagerie.
Although he kept on trying
near-continuously,
the animals were dying
almost incessantly.

As the old sun touched the horizon, dying on the brink,
The ship we were aboard slowly started to sink.
When the day found its end in the ***** of the sea,
And the only ones left alive were just you and me,
The unrelenting waves, for just a moment, just a twinkle,
Ostensibly assumed the shape, shade, or sheen of Periwinkle.

Herded homewards by howling hands
Hushed hurry beneath dead marble bands
With darkly pallor in seams and strands.
“Come Fimbul”, whisper the static lands.

A flare, a roll, four faces thin
Now starkly there in lightning's din
Severity tethers distant kin
“Come Fimbul”, beckons the winter dim.

She is a dentist in Atlanta
She comes home at half past nine.
The only thing I want to do
Is speak to her just one more time.

She lives alone
at the ocean.
Bird's eye view of her
feeding off the waves.

I am a no-man's-land
I'm killing it in close inspection
I watch my secret love across the room
I want my kids to take after their mother
I want a TV in my house that's always on
Playing odd things that you can't help but watch
I want to have a party
where there is only royalty-free music playing.
I want to enter a room
like no one has ever entered a room before

Diaphanous, like glass dons frost,
the view to lavender distance is lost.