I am filled with cancer.
An endless senseless sensorium
rather than anything tangible.

Take it all through glass liquid flashes
of an extant place
that lives inside.

Why?

and I come back
and everything's sick
and all that matters
is crumbling slowly
so so slowly
that I no longer know that
it is

But hey, on a bright note,
I wrote today.

Sadie’s leaving, feet dragging on the old red carpet.
My last apartment was shared with a stranger
in apartheid, separated by the
very same carpet.

Then she just decides what’s best is best,
that summer dress blowing linen waves.
What’s lost in jest is often for the best.

Lists are old and now I’m left to remember yesterday
while planning divisive gestures for a drunken
muse tomorrow.

She asked me if I’ve seen it all.
Befriending mask before the fall.
I see them as they all abandon.
Granules of sand in gravity land.

Summer lies while river rats gnaw on posts
weathered from the reverence tides.
Hunching over limestone slate,
picture ******-eyed states of the caricatures.

Loss of limbs in dissociative fugue.
St. Anthony's fire up along the coast.
Ergot Dreams: Such splendid things!

Waking up in a pool with callosum yarns
spinning words of concern.
And i've come so close
time and time
to find the pinhole tube light.

Words keep seeping out,
I hear my mother holding me here.
Frozen solid.
Stuck in a cot.
Letting the little ******* off his chain just to
hear him stream

How many lives to burn in the ecclesia pyre
while jesus sweeps the remainders
off to sea?

Maybe I have died again,
living in this ferrous skin.
Seeded fledgling after all.

I remember crying over Chopin.
I was twenty years old
and coming down from alcoholism.
There were words in the
hammers and strings,
but I couldn't understand
a word that they were saying.

Around that time I started meditation.
A room to renovate, I took
a step-ladder to the astral realm
and spilled poetry from my dreams.
I was twenty years old
and in the process of quitting.
It's a slow-burner, even now.

There were doctrines for self-actualisation.
I was moved to understand them
in a smattering of conspiracy theories,
Buddhist mantras, and lazy hikes.
I wore sunglasses and shorts
in Gran Canaria, and strived
to get you out of your dress.

I remember swimming in the cenote
and conjuring breeze from
the warmth of your breath.
I would soak into wine and
stolen cigarettes, as you toyed with
your bikini in the mirror. I remember
the freckles along your inner thigh.

Around that time I worked a living
scanning bar-codes and forcing
hangovers down until lunch.
There was a tiredness gained
that cannot be shaken off,
and a lust for justice
amputated at the tip.

There were road-side sandwiches
and flicks of hair in the wind.
You pinned me to the bed
and showed me what love meant.
Three years on and I'm an old man.
There are friendships contained
in memories, as I think back to when
I was twenty years old.

Things are ok
Not dead and currently that’s a good thing
Optimism abound,
Climbing mountains only to jump off the other side
Hoping to find some understanding or meaning
Or even a median in space, or time
Precariously traversing the rock face
Walking down a fine white line
Seeing the whole world unfolding before you
Only you’re too focused on climbing
To appreciate the view (Tunnel Vision living)

Faltering now, nascent feelings of inadequacy cloud your mind
Who are you kidding?
Latent feelings of inadequacy? (Yes)
Cliché existential crises? (God Yes)
Denial? (Don’t stop!)

Atoms for Peace on repeat (Before your very eyes)
Sinking into it like a warm bath
A glass of absinthe and a head full of dreams
Though you aren't asleep
Sinking into that hole, it feels like dying
The room spins
Senses rapidly disintegrate, one by one
A nothingness deeper and more profound than anything
Timothy Leary knew
As your head dips below the surface
A ******* child, D.M. Turner minced with Kerouac
Or a laudanum laced Thomas De Quincey
You saw god that night,
The layers peeled away
It was pure chaos and caustic fear
Brimming with breathtakingly beautiful apathy and acceptance
Quantum clairvoyance springs forth

You see how the cards will fall
God reminds you, “Everyone dies alone”
And you know the truth, he doesn't have to tell you:
God isn't there when you die
Smiling peacefully as your Sisyphean plight dissolves into the night

Lifted on a wheelchair
while trying to stare at the toonish heads inside.
A bright light appears.
I'm hoping I can tunnel in.

But my legs won't move.
Every time I reach for the light
a large hairy arm restrains.

A smooth utterance follows.
My muffled ears and the seeping quell.
This is as close as it gets.

Fold the sheets in toward you.
A cold that won't leave the bones
keeps up.

The old brain governance was a relief
until I realized I was back where I started,
with a makeshift ash try
and an innate sense of urgency.