A wild sun refuses to set
ribbons rotate on the circumference
with thousands of eyes looking on
jagged tendrils boil this meager surface world
hear the screams, hear the cries
those who talk to angels

Sanctuary in the shade
safety in a secret
whisper a kiss to a bouquet
upon a headstone where it lay
beneath a sacred poem-prayer
meditating on granite in the still air
lay to rest the ghost-fire of resentment there
burn this incense, French inhale
cloven foot scraping grave-dirt, spitting smoke
bull-headed minotaur, lungs full of white sage choke

The wilderness is a spirited if pilfered place
lashed by this wicked star, ash falls from grace
prophetic tongues whirl in circles, speaking as if omniscient
beware, beware, dreamers cozy in the night
who climb the cosmic-skinned mountain of subconscious
the stone cairn-haunts of fireflies that light the way to the top
beware the abysmal black of Tartarus, that is far below the bellows
colder and darker than the wilderness, where not a nightmare dares to tread or trot;
nor has a dream been seen, beware

A void unseeable chews on innocent, sane, rational and reasonable minds
the seven pointed star, with oily, invisible corruption
that lays sweet words in stone with silence
how it moves across the air, an inverse to the wild sun
beware, there are no dreams, no rest,
there are no nightmares; beware.

Blood in the mind stream
Static snow in the mediation
Hit up the Dharma, do up a dose of reality
Cosmic karma costly casting reincarnation corpses
Become bodies buried beneath Bodhi, individuality
Medicinal purposes provided mastered meager-minded
Alien past life, animal past life, getting past life
One of a kind, no one is, as long as you act from kindness you're of our kind, kid
Emptiness not nothingness, peace and quiet all space and time
Tomes on happiness, suffering, humility, tones on wisdom, resounding off domes
Graceful gliding in tolerance, not knowing, binary views close immediacy in open homes
The ripening of karmic fruit rings true inevitably, sharp insight those whetstones hones
Dishonesty, disturbing attitudes, halfway there by punishment received in one lifetime
Endlessly halfway on the way towards the other half, perfect in the odyssey
Honestly, oddly, altruism and refuge, compassion and balance in watering the tree, naturally, care, do not create a deluge
Rushing to empathy a falsity, propagandized views of clairvoyant superheroes
Materialism, salt in coffee putting oneself to sleep, the poisonous allure of cynicism
Positivity, the colored, striped snake witn a crown on the neck and no venom, safe to embrace
Fearful to approach most in this day and age, but easy to chase
Chant a, mantra, with the voice inside ya
Holy positions not required to elevate a state of being
Just being quiet, breathing, following the flow of life on the element of air to know
One exercises control in letting go.

Time
What is time?
Time is an endless ocean
The current moving ever over occupied space
All objects experience time, making it the supreme element
The omnipresence of an unflinching, all-seeing eye whose vision engulfs all
That swim through the marble-white corneas
Time is crucial to knowing what life is
Experience is anything that happens to a body coursing through the oceanic eye of time
The waters wearing the edges down to rough or smooth, chipping in unique places
It can be refreshing, oasis waters in a dead sea of salt
Or pull life into a zone of deep pressure until it crumbles away to dust in the darkened depths
Drowning in time, dying of thirst, watched and surrounded by water, unseen
Experience over time is inevitable
Filtered through the nature of perception being inevitably unique
Experience over time applies to all living things
Circumventing the anomalous perception, pesky as it is
The equation is true, life is everything that happens while a thing occupies space in time's ocean.

Afterglow grieve bereavement
violaceous flesh limned
kindled espied populace
afflict exultation ayont
disengage, uncage, redeem
bewail materiality it would seem
wager evil haply on dreams
venerated existent ken ataraxy
here transpires this idiolect soul-to Pliny's ism;
lone eminently felicitous forebearer.

I apologize for what I'm about to say
if you're sensitive to language, I speak not with the intention to do harm
but to reflect pain.

Heavybag's fallen
knuckles only started to trickle with blood,
my new self-flagellation ritual interrupted
coitus, denied, the penultimate inspiration served
with every swing a flash of the past invoked
in my borderline personality crossing rage
bipolar seeming on a stable day, and I see
the nervous breakdown, these teachers
sanctuary for you, to me they say
**** yourself ******
hey, come over here and deal with this
dismissively
I keep my head down, a higher dose the next day
apathy, numb to stigmas, stigmata on my soul
martyrdom they beg of me
an inconvenience and how timely, they jokingly
say go on Tom, shoot up the school
**** yourself, you fat ******* ******
you *******, ******,
**** yourself ******,
I've been called that more times than my own name
by a long shot
all I ever wanted was to do what I was there for
then to not be there anymore
and I used to salivate as early as middle or intermediate school
at jumping off the roof, but I realized that it was too short a drop
so I recalculated, I decided on a ripcord, the train
**** yourself ******, if I do, that'd have been how I did
and I defied everyone by clinging to the only thing they couldn't take
they couldn't violate
and they did take and violate, they robbed my home,
I was beaten, *****, I keep it all bottled up
I couldn't tell anyone because all they'd say if they knew a boy ****** me was
**** yourself ******
so, I let him **** me several more times until I snapped
a tree branch over his throat
so, I clung to breath out of spite for all of them
and as soon as I could I committed their faces and names
to an infinite pit, I granted myself the greatest mercy of all
I let myself forget

Teachers never looked twice, if they did it was like
watching daytime television
no lesson plans, no structure, I remember them
sneering at me for being there, for being called names in their classroom
for being nervous, overweight, clumsy and awkward, uncomfortable
and scared, and then being mad at me when I skirted truancy laws
CPS, investigating me after my dad stopped beating me, when
I could've named a dozen houses where kids were still getting beat
and the **** cook's grandson who showed up late from the lab
and the drunks who showed up with the flasks, the rednecks with the tobacco dip ring in their pockets
I was so ****** on an overdosage of poison that it damaged my liver and I had to stop it
but that didn't change the reality I was supposed to ignore, I still saw it
in hindsight, I wish I was blinded, then I might have turned out alright
I know they'd probably just have led me to the tracks and left me there to **** myself
assisted suicide for the outsider, moved into town before they put up the first stoplight
but, sure, teachers do their job, if that means they said, just sit down shut up
watch a movie, play on your phone if you got one, do this quiz so I can say you did something
read a textbook, I don't give a ****, I'm gonna be over here and if you interrupt
**** yourself *******,
that's how it was, I never questioned it, because it always was like that
I never asked how it was elsewhere, I didn't think I'd live past 17
or past 18, or 21, or 25 or 27 so I'm really in uncharted waters now I'm almost 29
and no codependent relationship for me to abuse, just drugs

I talk to you
and you might think that means you, it doesn't
it means the paper, me and you
we've got our own thing, I don't need anybody else
this is what got me through
my first and only love, the thing that I lassoed my heart and identity to
that nobody else can take credit for giving me, I found it myself
dug it out of my skin and bone and muscle and sinew
and cultivated my own interests in it, forged every fiber of growth
over every year, every second every minute, I took the energy burning me up
every time I saw disdain, dismissive, disrespectful, belittling, hatred and inconvenience in someone's eyes
impatience for my still being here, still being alive, and I turned that into notebooks full of chicken scratch handwriting
my learning disabled hands could manage it, nobody gets to own this, not one lethargic **** teacher who didn't raise a finger to the board
when the kid whose dad owned the car dealership was running me down, or the football team, or the cheerleader was threatening to **** me
but when someone claimed the same on my name they sent me to the office and I had to sit there, knowing it was useless to protest
I did my ******* best, I never let these people make me violent,
when they wanted the worst of me, I wrote it down,
defied them to fight me, stayed silent and turned every
**** yourself ****** into a story, a poem, an idea, anything creative, just anything that was something
more than that repulsive reaction, get over yourself *******
I'll die when I'm good and ******* ready

Bag fell off, gloves off,
barely a trickle of blood,
barely a tickle
no air circulating, stagnant and stale in this summer heat
there's nothing on the table, but the dog could eat
hand yourself a victory, hand over fist pat on the back
and at this address leave defeat
I don't care, who wants what if anything
what you think, I don't want to know
just keep it to yourself, I don't care
just leave me alone, goodbye touring these last few walks
shaking fingers tenderly touch memory lane, caress the stalks
and with each punch I've thrown, exertion grunt and groan
I let spit fly through my teeth, a rabid dog beneath
biting, reminding, flashes, each landing blow, **** yourself
rooftop, train, pills, parking garage, gun
I hit him harder, harder and harder
tail between his legs, his carcass is thrown
standing, heaving, desperate fear, anger quivering in my eyes
I snap and snarl at this specter of myself, to just leave me alone
you don't have to be gone,
just be quiet, god help me, just shut your barking mouth
stomping the throat of this animal expelled,
I fall back into myself, an escalated conflict of spirit
elevated into frenzied panic, the need to hurt
without reason, I delve, don't make me remember
I seal them away, superstitious of their nameless, faceless
demonic hold, in jars in my head, these mentors, these helpers
teachers, there is hardly a worse word

I want to go away
to a quiet place
I want to become a quiet place
where I can let go of all the noise
and be quite okay
life does not excite me
I do not anticipate it
if all my life were writing, then maybe
but living alone is a task greater than this
and I do not know what I want, but more
more than the peace I've seen this can offer
so I search, in other places, finding myself
right
back
here
I want to be content, at peace
and so I write, I feed my spirit, body, heart and mind
but I am given to darkness, foreboding ominous evil
acts of malice and treachery, betrayal of the most intimate trust
and even the best efforts to keep myself leashed only serve as a noose to me
so I try to distance people, and isolate with the best intentions, finding myself
right
back
here
and sooner than later I will complete this tour,
say goodbye, this confessional, it is not poetry,
you do not understand that it is, expression is
and you can do it, let your red setter loose with wandering ennui
speak your displeasure with today, rewrite history, in your closing set
circle back around like those teardrop vultures over the mausoleum gallery
and come back to me, for I will be
write
back
here.

Sitting here behind a cloud of smoke in this gin tinged dumpster joint
glazed over eyes drinking in the bleakness of the world in all the customers
coming and going, such a dismal state of affairs and oh the affairs they're having
wedding rings found in the pockets when they're going for cash the next morning
the sanctity of that institution, ultimately the meaning is being phased out
on a generational level, a rye chuckle, never been the marrying type,
settling down with two kids and a dog type, picket fence type,
sounds like a slower suicide than sitting here, behind a row of empty glasses and bottles
there's no question where the ichor in the glass stands, empty
empty like this white man's ambitions, like his dreamless nights
go to sleep intoxicated, wake up like you've been battered around, sore and destroyed
with nothing to show for it, no title belt, no gold, just twice as tired and slower for all the pain
******* his teeth, looking at the shuffling bystanders moving about
flies buzzing around this open sewage, a king's feast just for them
one day a trumpet will blow, you muse to yourself, rolling the last drop of swill around a crystal cup
and that warm, honey-like texture, sticky and thick, slowly pours down his throat at a molasses pace
more spit than substance, like the words exchanged in the fervor of the night
we all wander willingly into our hole in the wall, where we become tell-tale hearts
never wanting to come back out, you muse as your eyes and instinct clash
stay open, but it's past two, so close, another one to help him decide
and another, hits to the head that'd leave grown men reduced to childlike
all this squalor, so glorious in the vibrant glow of evening
a hand lands on his shoulder, you turn around to see who it is
hey, life don't stop for you to get hurt kid,
sunrise.

Thrumming bumblebees' flight distorted and slow
bass heavy traces, trails of sweat, praise be the valkyrie
wandering aimlessly on her ethereal angel's wings
a pale woman on Pegasus to gather the,
fallen, think for me, of deeper, darker sleep
than even kings in their undiscovered jungle dens might know
unseen by the eyes of men and all the things their memories might show
what alien fascination of nature to recall an animal's lifetime
in the wild, among houses of caves and skyscraping fauna
where the temperature on the floor thick with vines
is hot and heavy with steam, condensation gathers on the lungs
like breathing in a perpetual sauna, perception gathers on man's tongues
deception of his meager imagination laid on the ears
croaking, groaning stalks of unknown life
turning one's own mind into a parasite
making a mirror of insight inside, reflecting back on fears

Goodbye tore open the sky, a fist through the ribcage
a bolt through the squall line
in a moment, Pangea on the ceiling above Earth
a nightmare remembered, reflected and projected
shown to this creative ocean of life below
the endless thick of Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and Lion
whose eyes shine in the green that is bunched together black- like diamonds
striking a matchhead, the phosphorous tip of a finger
the kiss from a lip of one oblong, impossible, obscure God
splitting the last pure retreat from the disdainful nonsense of humans
in an environment where only so few can survive,
play us out on a high note, rest in peace assured
with a mutual trust, man isn't mind, no one leaves this universe alive.