Still
hanging in the frame of mind
if you will
practice with me, that would be so kind
does it seem better not to care?
More sane, more in-touch?
Or is it okay to get attached,
even if you sometimes care too much?

Quilted tales
square by square are marching away
leaving the stuffing pale
without skin to contain its clouds
tomorrow blends with yesterday
"disobey" drifts into "allowed"
when there is blue, it scales to grey
a comfortable taste of the trap-home-place
nullified whimpers of passion and all there was to say
it's not so bad once you learn to sit and stay

Wrap the ocean in a bottle
and pour the cool liquid down your throat
tilt the cradle of stillborn hope and let it rock
with the wind to carry it a few times more
turn your back and walk away,
there are no cries, no creaks to draw you back from the door
do not pretend to perceive a portend and retread the same path as before
these are your first steps on land, are you already drowning on the shore?

Fingernails pull against stomach lining for the words
arrhythmic synchronization with cohesive thought
a pendulum eclipses everything when convenience and preparation overlap
strike now! While there's confidence, before the paralysis
while hovering straws fall from the grasp,
shorter, like sips of a temper

Be at peace, broken silver chain
now suspended, weight eased from the clasp
never worn in vain, never to be worn again
pre-dying era, a fresh breath and a last gasp

Suffocation not felt in the lungs
as though a plastic bag is tied off around the brain
the moist heat where self becomes proxy;
intimate issues become schadenfreude
and insensitivity becomes a matter of cutting through thick skin
where the initial struggle is spun off the back of the mind
so that all these slices of you, handed out for free, butcher you down to raw nerves and take your armor like bacon
hyper-focus and tunnel vision, can sound like good work, but that's where burnout begins
what does a wordcount mean if you hit a wall at fifteen thousand and can't finish a scene?

Going through hell, somehow we tricked ourselves
to say it's just part of living
forgetting that life can be good, we work for it, want it,
why we don't have it when we plead for it, dream of it,
beg and ask for it, fight for it, like we like the struggle more
or we like to resent the care-free, weightless people,
there's no normal in the first place, so who gets to say everything has to be so hard?

Suffering is not the human condition, it's just a condition of being human
just like surviving, living, existing, dying to live and living to die are all separate
there's a balance, no blankets, nothing explains everybody; nobody can
freedom to try and fail is the most important part of making a plan.

Not a droplet of dream or ambition

once bitten, a rendevous is due with intimate suspicion

offset by a faucet of sleep-dust running off yet,

even with a mind to wander and a heart to spill over introspection;

that moistens my lips, but no cascades of schemes or missions

or even desire, not even a wish

seen as empty for I do not have a goal

I don't want anything greater for myself

a walking, unburied plot, an inconvenient hole

bereft of a career, love, possession, or wealth

and all the more fulfilled for the time I keep

the dirt does not care who steps on it, it settles where it falls and there it is earth all the same, and the earth does sleep.



The unburdened become pressured

to feel the weight of direction

that one is not free to flow

as they please, without navigation

unfetter me, untether me, you have no future to sell me

all these promises of luxury and tier-locked sensations

destroy balance, perception and health

falsifying the demand in a supplied narrative

mass-producing the genocide of individuality

from artists raised in poverty to success stories searing on college degrees

the appeal of "drive" is one to virility

that only holds a digit on the hand of the economy.

All our notes are all laid out before us
none predetermined, we play as we see fit
chaos is the bridge; disharmony the chorus
all lives of clamor, there's no red string to tie you to a duet
this sheet music of our agenda, our plans, our odds and chances
humanity is a moving work of art, all discordant noises and stepless dances
fate is many minds' imagined painting, doing justice in their sight
truth of burden and birth is the weight a flower carries with it from the dirt into the light.

I have been joking about suicide in conversation lately
as though to hyperbolize despair for comedy;
I think about the front-face of my personage and begin to hate me
the attempt I made was no laughing matter,
where is the karma, belated cancelation by the speech-policing PC society
I'm no good, I might be half crazy, they credit me with trauma, documented history
it sounds like I actually signed a paper for a NDE
the trick to trigger warnings are wasted on me,
you don't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater before you turn off your TV

Sometimes, lately, I wonder if it's a red flag flying from my teeth
like my tongue, freshly squeezed stinging cuts from my gums
anxious laughter, am  I    just    pulling on the leg of my legacy,
by behaving questionably, a poet or a lunar misunderstanding,
eyes wide like two new moons, an hourglass with sand outstanding
talking to myself to be heard by someone else, a prideful soliloquy of lunacy,
ergo the ego bends my silver spoon,
and I'll be digging through these glass walls with it soon
entranced to a tune, dancing like a loon, this window-pain, you don't know,
trust is such a boon and bane,
I swoon for a swain, a drop of admiration is tanks of fuel in motivation
a kind word, risk the sonic pendulum that separates my lane
to a bitter attention getter, doused with dense sweat in winter
get this steam-storm off my brain
condensed intensity contained, I want to explode; restrain
into the chest, deep winds drawn
the humid reflux, insomnia, a long yawn

I think too often of how I'll be remembered
when there's far too much life to live
how or if I settle into any memory is in this awareness, to make not of my concern
for I have kept alive too many I resented and reviled
on a pyre of hatred that I alone fed to burn
the smoke choked my thoughts all the while
to let it go from inferno, to embers, to ashes I had to learn
patience and defiance of a forced perception
that to be nothing is equality,
everything you are seen to be is a corruption
lenses of opinion that obscure purity
oddly, the punchline shares each conception,
and given the destination, why don't more people laugh at the journey?

Litmus papers fall like leaves
barren woods, skin below the bark
exposed legs shed of greaves
purer nature stirs below the dark
tend to imagining new colors while the old world bereaves

Ice on membranes crackling, creaking like an old house
with new bodies within it, none dare utter a prayer to ghosts once there
creating a haunting conscience, guilt crawling 'round the brim like a louse
these tales can't bury the memory, chasers to the chancery, scoffing at the skullduggery presiding over this trial in equity

With new thoughts through it, plodded and frigid shoes mark the marble under the mare
to speak to the rest, whose malnourished spirits' and flesh hang from their bones, clinging with nary a care
this palace-cove whose palisades are pitfalls, sinking dirt and feelings, all lines entangled snare for reeling,
in retreat flesh amalgamations bellow their hoarse call, broken things begin to crawl
one unblinking, all-seeing eye in clay and mud, servants gleefully accompanied
artificial artifices spewing from their orifices, sacrificial bones for dice, reborn to dedicate themselves twice to the ruler of all touched by windfall
all the rain stings to touch, burns to drink, all creatures move at the speed of one herd in a stampede
clouds all move uniformly, each the same shape
trim and proper, primp as a moth's evening cape

Rocks that hang like metaphors for swords pointing down all show,
the ineffectual weeping of centuries, this world of caves has come to know
day and night cycle the same, even time to each all year,
and the eye turned inside, stacked atop its counterpart sheds a tear
for the surface sees mountains are headstones, each for one moment of woe
this colossus sows despair, pinpoint accurate and slow,
a garden of edicts and a veil, the world turtle's movements sew
laws applied to the wild magicks unexplained and defined, bind the eyes to mortal time and so,
mesmerizing until blind and without sensation, the only interest or love, fades until it's gone,
now the only interaction is an internal, infernal reaction to resist madness in grief, to find grace in closing both sides, both eyes, and letting go.

When I looked at my eye this morning, it was an old state map of red and blue
and when it saw what you had done, I was farther than ever then from you

You reminded me so much of myself
find comfort in knowing this, too, has happened to me before

Coddle your inner child and he will turn unruly and vile
running amok with his spoiled intentions, poisons in whatever-intentioned vials
his voice louder and more immediate, charisma and emergency
in the volume from the hollow speakers turned up by broken dials
while the manner of spoil within rots wits, burns wicks, with wicked will and wile
I loved you while you were beneath my nose like sick incense on a pile
wafting the scent of your mischief and malfeasant misconduct through flower pedals and cloth
nostalgia for the ******, the ingrate, delinquent and **** I was and am, the death of myself as a juvenile
sweet separation of vision, impartiality to indecency, I feed to the worm and the moth

Knives poised in two hands, two backs bared in embrace
you forced me to hold this in our exchange, and lied to my face
I have tasted my blood and been the villain of betrayal
fool yourself as the victim, twist and writhe away from your disgrace
it is not trust to forcefully fall onto a blade held by me, so you can clean up the blood you spill all over the place
I have been a thief, stealing attention and time, love and affection
driving wedges and preying on social links to break chains
internal damage to bodies that cast me out, with strength in the section
where the shadows on their x-rays played out dramas and pains
to my own shame and humiliation I didn't mark you to be dissected a year ago and split in twain!

This is heartbreak again, for I loved you my friend, but my heart is hardened to loss
I am prepared to endure you a dozen upon a dozen times more
if I were not, we would be aged much closer to each other, and what would I have been growing for?
I do not feel anger, disappointed, upset, I have none of the moxie to hoist the wrathful five sails of my grief
embarrassed a bit, that I enabled and encouraged and stood by you, promised never to give up and held such belief
for you'd only hear me if I say what you want to hear, and we may as well talk to the wind
at least the scent blowing back on the draft is bound to be blameless and kinder than the hot air you'd send
go with peace, find love, this last shred of respect like a torn up shirt in the woods is all I have left to offer you, my once dear friend.