You might ask a clocksmith
how to fix your broken hands
Or you could keep the ones God gave you.
Small, clumsy,
Great at golf.

Teach me how to Kneel
Teach me discipline
Embarrassment.

Teach me martyrdom
tell me it means Nothing.

You can't be a martyr
if you only die
for yourself
you're not a god.

Tell Me I'm not a god
Tell me with your fists
with your spit.
your boot.

Teach me submission
take my pride in your palm
torture it until I am human.

Teach me guilt
Teach me ownership
of my sins. of myself
hold my chains
I need them like fire
needs water
reduce me to embers
when you start to boil
The bubbles are how I know
I've gone too high

I love watching your bubbles trickle in slowly
how quickly they spill over the lip of the kettle

Teach me with boiling water
Teach me with fire
teach me with fear.

I want to beg for it.
Please, make me beg for it.
my life.

if you make me beg for it.
I might want it again.

You dangled from my laytex glove
Prey above dogs
Held sturdy by the chest
Gentle

Playful beasts they were, barking.
TOY! MEAL!
FOOD!
They couldn't see how terrified you were of their instinct to howl.
I foot them inside the rickety screen door.

I agreed to toss you in the woods.
expected a cleaning job.
Extracting a cold still object from her sisters cage.

You looked at me.
I wanted to look you in the eyes
before I did it.
And You looked at me.
Stretched out your legs

We laid down together
Sun cooked the wooden porch beneath our bodies
desperate to learn everything like fresh fall season lovers.

You moved when I touched you.
Like my attention gave you an extra moment

You didn't seem to breath

I offered a carrot.
Meek. You used what life was left in you to open your mouth.
You hadn't the strength to chew.

I was too optimistic.
I know now.
When I broke the tiniest peice of carrot free
placed it in your mouth.
You hadn't the strength to swallow

But you were breathing heavy now

I felt like god.
A human god.
Selfish even now in the giving of life
How happy your mother will be
How powerful I will look
Deciding which creatures live.
And die.

I shoved the bit of carrot
with a medical pinky finger.
You took three large gasps for air

I Dropped my godly optimism in a grey plastic bag on the desperate table of three worried pet doctors.
Embarrassed for me, they ask us to leave

You already had.

At a field of uncut hay.
Same laytex glove.
Same grey plastic bag
Same executioners guilt.

My guardian angels curiosity and risk slapped my greed with icarus wings.

I cried.
threw you like a baseball into the sunset.
Cars pulled wind behind us while I stared.

How like me to give my full curiosity to what is known to die soon.
How greedy I am to try and bring it back
Risk shoving my hand down its throat to chase a miracle that looks
to you
like charity
for the praise,
then abandon it when I discover
the treasure comes with its own ghosts.

I pull down another sunset.
Fast.
Like curtains on a stage

How many domains can one god have before he is daring too close to omnipotent

Curiosity, Risk, Luck, Failure,

How many names must one have before they are a god?
Adonai

How many titles?

Leader
Lover
Father
Mother

I am curious
I am the god of curious

I am so much want, greedy, so selfish.
I am the god of human

I am so human
Show me, god...

I keep waking up to sunsets
Affinity for the moon I suppose.
the fireflies, cold air.

I've felt happier at night my whole life
Sitting in elementery school
popcorn reading
Headphones plugged into a PSP
Blaring mindless self iindulgence
Putting me to sleep through the day
So I could level up my nightelf hunter in World of Warcraft until 5am
And sleep through social anxiety.

For awhile I woke up at 4am to serve you coffee.
Seven years addicted
I loved that too.
Traded coca-cola for drinking it black
My coffees color is the smog in Chicago
This nightlife is my real addiction.
That's why I love the graveyard shift.
Devouring untold stories
assisted living facilities.
This Goldmine of consentrated Wisdom
Parkinsons Orchestra Doctorates.
Politicians prepared for Death

Rabbis still flirting with nurses
remembering the whole torah service by heart
forgetting their wives name.

For my sunset
I like to imagine a big desk
A wall of glass
The top of a grey tower.
I want to Birth a skyscraper.
I want to stand staring out my wall of window back turned to my coffee cup
watch how beautiful stasis can be when you shatter through it.

I like to pretend each sunset
Is a death that wasn't mine.
I like to count the deaths in assisted living
As sunsets.
I like to read obituaries like sunsets.
I keep waking up
To sunsets

Affinity for the moon I suppose.
the fireflies
cold air.

I've felt happier at night my whole life
Sitting in elementery popcorn reading

Headphones plugged into a PSP
Blaring mindless self iindulgence
Putting me to sleep
So I could level up my nightelf hunter in World of Warcraft
watch Naruto until 5am
And sleep through social anxiety.

For awhile I woke up at 4am to serve you coffee.
Seven years addicted

I loved that too.
Traded coca cola for bkack coffee
And an eating disorder

Now Im a graveyard shift worker.
Manjc smirking at untold stories in assisted living
Goldmine of consentrated Wisdom
Parkinsons orchestra Doctorates
Politicians preparing for death

Rabbis still flirting with nurses and remembering the whoke torah service by heart
When they cant remember their wives name.
Wives of Men that played god until they met him.
Breifly
Before the trap door unlatched

For my death.
I like to imagine a big desk
A wall of glass
The top of a grey tower.

I want to Birth a skyscraper.
I want to stand staring out my wall of window back turned to my desk.
And
watch how beautiful stasis can be
As the trap door caves beneath me for my sins.
I want to leave someone behind to tell my story.
My journal is someone.

I'm a night owl
I am alive most when the world is either sinning or silent

And I refuse to die quietly.
Or before I get my Desk.
Or my window.

To watch the sun rise and fall
But never stay.

I am not meant to watch things last forever.
I am a night owl.

I enjoy this world for all the endings.
This is my favorite part.

We got back together on election day
As they say
When one door opens
Another one is threatened with missiles by China

We did not have the popular vote
Our electoral college hearts didn't care.
We knew our love deserved another term

I stole my girlfriends car to pick you up
Drive us to the voting booth in my old elementary school
It felt like by you entering that building we invented a tine machine

If we actually built a time machine
Do you think we would change the world somehow?
Step on one of our stomach butterflies or **** ******.

when I hear butterfly effect I think of election day
I think of the butterflies in my stomach
Learning how to start the first fire with sticks
How we rub them together
Until the sparks catch
Watch each other become warm
For the first time
All over again

Your legs slide up behind the tiny curtain of the voting booth
They say not to let others know who you vote for
But you were very clear
I've never heard a louder pledge of allegiance from behind such a tiny curtain

We stole the tiny pencil
In exchange for your *******
I think it was a fair trade
I want to see the face of who found those in the ballet box

I wonder if the vote counted.

I feel like firing missiles into the ocean to showcase our willingness to destroy everything for *******

We still don't have the popular vote in our next term

Even after all this legislature
They only remember our campaign slogans
And sound bytes
No one reads bills we pass
Laws we right

We have so much love
It must be run like a country
Our Senate is skeptical of the leadership

Our people are butterflies
Always jumping
Flying
Giddily bumping into walls
And getting back up

If we are so bad at running this country why are the people so healthy?
What makes them sing so loud?

It's the letters we write.
I took our time machine forward

They keep our letters in a muesem
Glass boxes
Display our hearts played out with our poetry
I always knew you deserved the attention.

There's a tank of caterpillars
Children watch them grow and set them free
A living breathing memorial

We really did found something beautiful.

When we passed on
They elected our children to run.
Our love still thrives
Claims territory
Inspires young writers

I saw a young girl reading your letter start to cry
I didn't need to look.
I knew which one it was
You haven't written it yet.

You are in a recliner
M.A.S.H. is on the T.V.
A boy moves you to a wheelchair
White doors
Hallway
Small reuban cube dinner
Thickened water
Chocolate ice cream
White fabric
White light
Black curtains

What is the sound of a silent heart
Isolated in cold scalpel bruises
Carterized by abandonment
Autistic hearts
Feeling emotion without the correct faces
Muscles that can't dance
Blood that is blueshell and breathless
Uncooked lobster hearts
Amazing how a heart screams as it is submerged
Suspended room tempature in a sensory deprivation tank
Left of center

Slam my hip down
Hipbone a Warm teardrop
Ripples on impact
My body
Of water
The stage

Walls turn wonderland
As the pills kick drum
I am the bass drop
Hands dove letter
To my mouth
The room waves
As she stands staring
Knees locked in contrapassto
Pinstripes in my eyes
I have no need for the white eyes
Or white fabric
Purity was always
your delusion
Dreamt into syringes
Pricked into tiny faves
Fat with cake and promises from their daddy's
Or any man
With a poloroid camera

I am standing on the ceiling
Chandler trees raze
And solidify a shining icy stasis
Large and formal
Cold and towering
Tables glued upside down overhead
tiny tealights stuck too
Fire flickers down

You are a spotlight
Head
Chest
Skin
All Lighthouse

Peninsula
Ocean
Curvature of the earth
You beam clairvoyance
Shake your head.
Free of these lighthouses
You are under tealight s
A woman dances

Your hand touches your tie
Pen
Wrist muscles with fingers stimming
Champagne watch
Navy sleeve
Shoulder
Cheekbone

Soft hand on your cheek.

My eyes have no whites.
My age, gave me stale white sheets
White light, black curtains.

Tattered flags
Wedding dress train
White fringe cached in dirt road
Like baggy jeans bottoms
Converse stomped but worn each day like a religion.

Stolkholmes syndrome
Maybe she would have taken off the dress for the right sandpaper hands.
Delicately telling time and wearing her
Down six months
Down eight years
Down in the basement
Ducttape cuffed to a wooden chair
Bandages torn off slow
Like a drag on a thick cigar
From fat lips
Fat teeth
Fat wallets.

She spent a lot of time on her side smashed down on her bruised ear.
From the cold concrete after tipping cedar legs
Or listening too closely

Didn't clover though
Despite the Irish eyes
She isn't lucky enough to have scars
We can see.

Green. She is tall
Held fire shattered in year 20-something
She has flash backs
When men in black
Hold pens to her nose and click

A boat from Ellis island
Rainstorm on white picket signs and fences in a dance of coin and sweat

Under long arms
Holding the hilt
Called the broken blade fire.
Say there's a mountain somewhere that matched her on tinder
Three men's faces carved into it.
I hear she used to represent freedom
Before being robbed of her flaming sword

I bet if the statue of liberty had a voice

And she does

She would wear a red dress.
No makeup
Sew her mouth shut
Love the pain
and post Gore **** pictures
on adult websites as confession.

I believe the statue of liberty owns stripper heels
And can run in them.

I believe god is a broken torchlight.

I believe being consumed by the fires of god is a metaphor
For drowning in the green shrapnel of a voice or a wedding dress.

I believe I am ready to be a statue
To drop my fire in the ocean

Crumble under America
be found in Atlantis under pounds of enough pressure
only the angler fish can tempt me.

At least underwater
Men are ***** producing parasites
And I can drown in something beautiful.

I want my book in a children's library
I want my book in a maximum security prison

I want my book resting on a cloud in a sky
to be seen by a passenger in an airplane
the passenger to crack the escape hatch and jump
survive the fall

I want my book to be a parachute
I want my book surrounded by tiny hands,

hearts,
and mouths,
saying I love you
I love me.
I will survive

I want a book that is a house
for the abandoned
I want a book that is a vacany sign
Rent me.

I want my book that is a headstone
I want a book that is a flowerbed
I want a book that is a matchstick
a Tire Iron
an oil tanker

I want a book that is a leatherman
in a hunters pocket
in the belly of a deer
in the zip ties and cellophane
of a childs Christmas present

I want a book that bleeds

I want a book held by tiny hands
with wide eyes
wider because of me

I want to destroy the innocence of children
by handing them courage and wisdom
I want to inspire revolution
I want sad eyes and clenched fists
I want skydive
wings grown during the fall

I want a nation run by answers
with blood stained sheets

I want a book that is every question
symbiotic book
single cell organism
splits in two hearts

I want a book that is a surgeon

saving lives,
holding scalpel
I want a book with hands up
no rubber gloves, just a gun to it's back
an engine running
I want a book that is a bank robbery
paper bag mask
on fire
Molotov cocktails
disguised as champagne bottles
Destined for VIP

I want the man who threw it
to be the only one burning
and well read
And *****
I want my book in his VIP

I want him to read it with a melted eye
I want my book in his prison cell
to be next to me
maximum security
my casket

I want a book resting
on a cloud in the sky
in a children's library
surrounded by tiny hands
Before I am gone.

I confused agave
for Amber
when you spoke
Drank a glass full

Choked on all the flys
In elementary school
Muesem of sepia boxes

Sluggish down my throat
Petrified My heart
buzzing
Pathetic, and filthy
frozen in carbonite nectar
Like a classroom fly

blush my cheeks
make my cold hands touchable
Harvest my Amber heart

I never was
A mourning person.
But I have always been
An exhibition.

I make you pancakes in the morning
Strawberries and whip cream
Just like my grandmother used to make
They call me the trash monster

Those tattoos of wings on your shoulders?
Those were the first two tattoos I ever stabbed into a person.
You were my first.

Remember I was the one who told you to pluck your eyebrows
How you cringed and refused.
plucked them the same direction
they were growing.
One by one.
So you wouldn't feel pain
I made you beautiful

They call me the trash monster

I paid for your world of Warcraft subscription.
I was at every birthday
your second mother

They call me the trash monster

My face is on national Televsion
Photographs of my living room.
The same one you woke up in every Saturday morning.

You wouldn't even recognise it.
Hidden beneath all of this spilt hourglass sand

So much between us now.
Prison bars
fast food shrapnel.

They call me the trash monster

A baby boy.
His little sister
Swimming in this filth
My depression hording

Their father left us for a 19 year old who lusted after his motor cycle
joined a gang
sells heroine

Left his autistic son and daughter
Taken now, my everything
From the nest

I was left to clean

They call me the trash monster

This filth
The broken wooden horse
The wax paper backs of sticker sheets.
The McDonald's bags n' grease
Scrapbooking strip cutters.

They call me the trash monster

Did you hear yet?
Do you remember me?
Did you throw me out?

I've got my warrior ******* on
Wolverine lent me these acrylics

Lasso your credit card with my weave
Tuck your tunnel vision in my G-string

This is my ******* song
Got my bad girl heels on

You can't get me off your mind
So how you gonna get me off

Come over to the throne room
I've got an after for you baby

What other religion costs $25 per song

Give me your devotion
I want Matronage
Ritual

When I was 19 I turned days into kalediscopes
Water into water
Paper covers rock
And coke cures a bad trip

Trip over my perfume

You won't spend money on me High on life
So let's get you depressed

Tell me your story sad boy
I've got rent to pay.

Ever given an apology
when embarrassment
was your true feeling?

Is there space between them?
Or is one the wrapping paper?
Silverskin on coffeebean.
Parchment.
Ornate half mask on a dancer in all black
Between Pointed nose and chandileier
Same infastructure as churches
Decorated to make others look to god.
Up, with gargoyales and bells

If embarrassment is the root of an apology.
Does it ring?

What time of day?

Embassy of embarrassment is your apology.
It is no secret, it is kevlar.
Harder to break.

If you are never embarrassed.
You cannot be sorry.

pride and abandon
As honest as they are to a man
Who loves to love
Strike offensive on ears set
To red at your past.
Own the honesty like a magic shield.
You will not have the kevlar of apology
If you do not have the embarrassment.

You'll need to fake it.
This takes delicate work.
Convincing the world you are not selfish
When born in america
Is not easy.

Loving your own failure seems proof enough
To learn from mistakes
But intellect.
Is not the opposite of selfishness.
In abundance you carry both as a burden.

People see you as a man, honest.
People see you as a man, who was not honest.
People see you as a man, selfish.
People see you as a man, who would rather be wrong and manic than human.

And people see through sometimes the armor
Of your *******
And magic armor of your smile

Because you talk too much

When all you want is too be heard,
Your biggest weakness is when someone listens.

You are so powerfull when no one hears you.
And you are so seen when you never open your mouth.

But the second you do.
You are ugly.

Underneath the ornate white mask and pointed nose
Without the smooth pleasentries of a nirror for a face.
You are seen a bulbous boiled blemmish.
A red infected wound for an ear.

It hurts to hear their testimony
Wittnessing you when you are without protection.

This is not embarrassment?
You are not embarrassed to be seen an ugly thing?

And no.
It just hurts.
And the pain callouses, making it more ugly.
Until we got to where we are.

Indestructible in all this broken.
Untouchable from all this infection.
Unlovable from all this attention.

A greiving suit of armor

The pharmacist at CVS says I am not prescribed an inhaler anymore.
so in it's place.
I prescribe myself cigarettes

I need something to inhale
cigarettes seem a logical alternative to inhalers

deliberatly I decide to not drive
to the cigar store.
i walk to the cigar store.

it is far enough to be inconvenient
which means maybe
If I am not destined to buy this cigarette
I will receive an overwhelming sensation to turn back

I always add time for potential divine intervention to my agenda.
It happens often enough to be logical

we may have different definitions of logical

the cashier asks my age
And I tell him 21.
I am 22.
somehow In the confusion of waiting for god to prescribe me an overwhelming emotional reaction to not buy cigarettes
Instead of an inhaler.
I forget a whole ******* year of my life.

this is great context for
How I trust myself when making decisions.
which is to say
I don't trust myself to make descisions.

I buy the cigarettes.

upon searching for the optimal location
to loiter and slowly **** myself.
I stumble upon the old teen center.
the first place I was a mentor.

Out the side of the building
There's this rock
Long enough to sit five or so children
two laying down.
it's Perferated like a candy bar
each rectangle curved slightly
custom fit to years of munchkin ****

this slump right here
this slump is my munchkin ****.

each break of chocolate
on the candy bar rock
has a ladyslipper growing behind it.
tips of the five purple flowers
stretch to align perfect with the tips of our childhood belly buttons

humbled, I brush the leaves
excavate delicately
this heirloom.
I had forgotten.

The sky is recovering When I lay myself on the rock.
light grey clouds that want to cry
an optimistic sun that won't let them

I Cover my face with an old journal
made of old book smell.
I smile into the pages.
my lips barely touching the silk threading of her binding.
I've never breathed so intimately
a new lover.
the tip of my nose tucked into her spine.
honeymoon phase, Intoxicating.
Still excited to be in love.

there's breath here
wisdom in the records of
loving young,
cherrishing this new book smell.
Filling your chest with it.

When memories are tangible
There are no more expiration dates

Fill my lungs with
the crisp of unturned pages,
worn leather covers
Soft silk crosstitches

Kiss air into me
from the space between your lines.
I know how intimate an untold story can be.

Today I started breathing
I fell in love With a metaphor.

I never did smoke that cigarette.

You ask me if having a baby in this world is selfish.

I imagine two stout bodied genderless dwarves.
with beards.
hand pumping a minecart down
subway tracks in Boston.

Hear the rattling
cart wheels along iron tracks.
the crackling fire of a lit torch
Illuminating an obvious macguffin
a glimmering maguyvery boulder
in the side of the tunnel.

This vision is a testament to how well I pay attention
When I have tunnel vision.

One pulled lever slows the minecart to a screaching stop
the dwarves zelda bomb their way inside

There is a man behind it
the size of a mountain
hooked up to a bypap machine
umbilical corded to a television

he does not know whether he is nocturnal,
trusts his wristwatch to tell time
Which was over $5,000 dollars.
trusts this watch
about as far
as he can throw his money away.
So He collects watches.

I ask you.
Does this man sound alive?

Do you think he more closely
resembles a metaphor
For children zombied into media leashes.
another pet to pitch in the graveyard
of working class
blades of grass leaning on the T
nodding off to sleep?

Or is he more like us.
escapists
wandering eyes
With roots in our mattresses
Shackled in the entertainment
Always breathing
inflating never creating.
or breathing out.

Would a child help us out?
would that be selfish?

breath can we still
tubes of oxygen up our noses.
can we rip out the catheder
save with will power
would a child somehow spin
eugenic honey
royal bee propaganda jelly
Would we see the world without sepia
no more screen filters
less headaches
less screen time
advil addiction.
Two less pills taken
comitted to attention.
stuck in tunnel vision
smoke and mirrors
are so shiny after blue pills

This mountain of a man
said to ask the man on the mountain
and I was so deep in my grave
I decided to dig down thinking
If This is hell I must be at the earths
molten core, so the road up
is just as long as the road
in any direction so long as i went straight.
But I change directions all the time.
And I still haven't hit the surface
And I keep building boulders
to keep out the cave rats
and making them obvious,
glimmerig macguffins so adventurers
will zelda bomb them open
and find me sitting here
watching the world go by
losing track of time
But always checking the clock on my wrist.
Because it's so beautiful
and biological.
The ticking is so loud
I'm deafened to the humming
of my oxygen machine.
the television,
screaching minecart breaks
My front door being blown open.
By zelda bombs

I'm stagnant with nothing but
my dreams and a metranome
Counting down to the day
I hate this television enough
To turn it off

Trust this clock enough to turn it back.

For a breif moment hear the
screaching subway tracks
The whirring of my bipap,
The bombs going off
not just at my front door
but all over the world.
blowing open my eyes to see finally

that life isn't worth a bomb shelter.
If I can't be selfish,

**** repopulting the earth.
I am going to paint drooping clocks
eat non-parishables ironically
and Die an honest man.

fell from her home
Skies of ohio
stumbled from a cloud
Grew her wings on the way down

hellboy in the back pew
cigarettes, blue dress shoes
closed her bible, "I refuse"
She said, "To be a mans property"

Honeybee
Honeybee
honeybee spread your wings
Honeybee
Honeybee
neither bird nor angel,
she flys free.

"I'll take the skills to cook and clean
our sneezes will still sound the same
I'll vist on holidays
but don't you ******* bless me"

"I'll be Domestic for myself
clean home and the best of health
Foster bees
a book to read.
But the bible ain't for me."

Honeybee
honeybee
Somewhere in the inbetween
honeybee
Honeybee,
apartment on deering st

she met me
at a speakeasy
"if you want me you better find me
Through the bookshelves I'll be waiting"

I turn the pages
Find her wedding ring
kept under the mattress,
not even god as a witness.


Doctor in ireland, she told me

escape in comic books
while he's away.

"Before we start, you have to know
One day I'll leave forever
Let's live a life we won't forget
In the meantime, together."

"I live with no one to respond to.
I live without boundary.
My ride or die resides in ireland
I'd like to love you while he waits for me."

Honeybee
honeybee
I've never tasted honey so sweet
Honeybee
Honeybee
Honeybee, Come lay with me

A few kisses later
cross legged in an office chair
sipping warm tea
I wake
green eyes watching me sleep
It's these moments
in between

Honeybee
Honeybee
were those mornings just a dream?
Honey bee
Honey bee
you leave

Remember me
in the old and green
honeybee
you were always free
guiness jogs my memory
The little things
inbetween

"There's a whole new world here,
and you're trying to debate who God is
Ignoring all the growing plants
And animals feeding on them
Turning a blind eye to the hunters, gatherers, and civilizations.
Look at the tadpoles

Watch how the blades of grass bend to the windchime lullaby through mountains like passengers on the T in
Boston

Witness detail before you try to figure out some black and white
yes and no answer.
Try empathy.

Discuss common ground
on where the rivers are,
which spiders are poisonous
which sliders just look that way.
Don't ever decide who gets to name
god.

Decide who gets to name the blades of
grass.

Agree on who names the spider.
You can name the trees.
I'll name the oceans

before you know it
this new world
has a place for both of us

and isn't that world more beautiful?"

Submissions to the Annual Musical Torture Experiment for 2017 are officially open!

Submit your five songs by emailing them to
TorturePlaylist@gmail.com

"BUT WHAT IS THE MUSICAL TORTURE EXPERIMENT NICK?"

Well me, I'm glad you asked.
The Musical Torture Experiment was started in 2013 by yours truely, Nicholas R Coulombe.
Where I asked everyone I knew, met, or saw on the street, to hand me 5 songs that I would add to one playlist,
listen to that playlist on a loop
AND NO OTHER MUSIC
for an entire month.

I have continued this tradition each year
recruiting Willing victims & voulenteers
to listen along with me.

These victims have many different lives, interests, and genre preferences,
but there is one thing they all have in common.

The blissfull escapism of living in their headphones.

This gaggle of Tune-heads who use their music as a fundamental life resource, a coping mechanism, an escapist fantasy or meditation.
These people offer their body and spirit to music.

Now, for a whole month, they are relinquishing control of their music.

Shotgun no longer shuts their piehole.

For an entire month.
Listeners will not be able to skip or select any music other than
YOUR SUBMISSIONS!

This is the perfect opportunity to force someone to really find whats so amazing about those artists we culturally hate.
Or maybe theirs an oldy that your grandkids Refuse to consider music because there is static or twangy voices instead of bass drops.

Maybe you talk about your love of skrillex and a hipster spits their kombucha in your face.

If you have songs that DESERVE the light of day.
This is your chance to indulge in their exhibition.

want to voulenteer yourself as tribute to listen along with these crazy *******?
keep tabs on what is being added cause you think its kinda interesting?
Or contribute YOUR five songs?

Just
Send an email to TorturePlaylist@gmail.com
by the end of August to participate!

Go check out the playlist itself here:

https://open.spotify.com/user/124409443/playlist/2TAdzDUKx7sfW1uJrqMS7K

A snake doesn't just throw shade
We thrive in the shadows
Stalking our prey,
Think you've got what it takes
We'll swallow you whole.

I dare the kittens birdys & roadkill
To make a mistake
You really think your house spits
poison Better than a snake?

Our Partsel tongue is "forked for her pleasure"
Each time we seal a letter
witches get wetter

other houses cringe at our fame
cold blooded killers

don't buy it? Just wait.
Our Snakeoil salesman
Will Have you beggin' for change

You dare to stand against a python?
You don't even know code

I can't pull punches
if I don't have hands, Bro.

Like medusas hair dresser
Expect-to petrify
Better call Cobra
Get insurance for your life.
What's the matter
Gonna cry?
Because We can't.
Ask science.

I dare you to challenge
My Reptilian brethren

We're Unhinging our jaw
getting fed like it's league of legends.

Collaborate on a spotify playlist that will play on shuffle in my casket after I go.
I want you to add songs you want me to feel the radio signals of.
We know we feel music with a fifth sense,
A full body ASMR tingle
Whispers of russian woman fixing our robot parts.
Well I can't hear you, speak, move or eat
But bones vibrate to soundwaves just the same.
Give my casket the best **** bass you can find.
Bass that will wake the dead.
Rattle me like an instrument the way you plucked strigs while we were alive
You have control over what i hear after I go
So you may play me music beautiful as we played in the space between our fingertips

Play spotify in my casket
Only you and those i trust have access to adding songs.

But don't add garbage music.
Because I swear, I will haunt you.

no suzie, you can't sit next to Thumper.
you're my dolly. You sit where I want you to.

look at those fluffy ears
I don't trust 'em suzie.
he's a creep

Thumper stop looking at her like that.

Thumper, let me sing you a song
so you understand.

This is my dolly
You can't have it
This is my dolly
And *******

this is my dolly
You can't have it
This is my dolly and
*******

this is my dolly
you can't have it
this is my dolly and
*******.

*Stomp stomp stomp *
"What are you singing?"

Nothing Daddy!

"If that is what Nothing sounds like.
You will sing for the rest of your life loudly,
Do you understand me?"

yes daddy.

"I don't wanna hear nothin' ever again.
where did you learn that song?"

Mommy sang it
last night
turned the shower on
she thinks I can't hear
if the waters running
it doesn't work though,
the way her voice cracks
when she sings
I can tell shes crying.

"Oh...
princess...

you misheard...

last night,
mommy sang:

This is my body
You can't have it
This is my body and

Well that last line...

...that wasn't singing

Daddy just desereved that.

You know, it's funny.

you and I...

...we got the same word wrong."

Heirlooms

Jun 2017

One day, parkouring through my uncles two story apartment,

I was drawn naturally to his desktop computer

upon which I found his OkCupid Dating profile.

I don't remember his username, Or anything about the site really,

But I remember the head-shot of a beautiful woman

framed above the desk

the sterile grey Rubbermaid totes behind me like caskets, 

How they made even the hardwood floors

look like they were holding in the dead.

For my Grandmothers birthday

my family gathered at Captain Newicks

her favorite seafood restaurant.

My uncle flirted with the waitress.

I don't think I've ever gone to a restaurant with my uncle where he

didn't flirt with the waitress.

Captain Newicks went out of business shortly after that dinner

followed shortly by my grandmothers life.

the relationship between my uncle and that waitress expired well

before both my Grandmother or Captain Newicks.

I remember asking my grandmother about my Uncle.

Tarots Fool would have predicted

my grandmothers eyelids

a silent prayer before her words.

He had two children by his first wife,

keeps a portrait of her above his desk.

She was a blessing on the family

Selfless amd loved by every one.

She took her own life

Spread her wings to break free from the cage He kept her locked in.

He buried his heart in her casket,

motorcycles, empty bottles

had a third child by a second wife

who buried her heart in drugs and strangers.

Amanda was 6 years old when her mother died.

my uncles wife. Her brother josh was 3

when she died my uncle wanted to put them both up for adoption

he didn't.

Their mother died on the 20th of September

a week after her 25th birthday.

their mother once bought a bunch of carnations

with a dead rose in the middle

and said "it looks like I'm dead".

she took a bottle of pills before going to a chinese restaurant

went out as a family

and collapsed at the table.

she was rushed to the hospital

she didn't make it.

their mother wasn't happy

her and my uncle were getting divorced at the time

lived in the same house that I grew up in.

when my uncle told the kids mommy wasn't coming home

my mother was 17 

and there to see all of it.

When my mother was 17 

she had to watch her baby cousins be told their mother had died.

When my grandmother passed.

grief bounced off of my uncles callouses

ricocheted to my cousins, robbed 

twice now of a selfless mother.

The tragedies in my family

have always enthralled me.

like shakespeare sonnets

I breath them into my faithless nights

tap an extra dream-catcher on my bedpost

in space of a prayer.

When The hearth-fire of our family dimmed 

a tealight in my grandmothers eyes.

grayed, Glossed.

she could no longer crochet 

one big dysfunctional quilt, 

together from our families yarn.

without her needle, 

I was determined to watch how our life spun forward.

The next time I saw my uncle,

He offered me a job.

Thick mosquito blinded us as we carried our sweat 

with Rubbermaid totes into a blue two story home 

deep in the evergreen thickets of Maine.

a tall white fan rotated slowly back and fourth 

Cooling the wet patches on our T-shirts while my Uncle 

flirted with the landlord

I still remember when my uncle tossed me the truck keys

the look of terror I gave him

How easy it was for him to trust

I guess when your heart is buried in a casket 

you stop worrying who has your keys.

It makes me remember

when my daughter asked for my keys 

I would sit her in the drivers seat

watch her pretend to drive.

I loved imagining her free

living how she wanted.

I still wouldn't give her my keys.

she would turn my car into a casket.

It makes me remember

when that little girls mother asked me to drive

My words spun portcullises

prison bars forged in anxiety

scaffolding out of latex secrets

Glued with siren smiles, pacifier kisses

denying cigarette smoke on her breath

fueling infernos in my head.

when my uncle handed me his keys without hesitation.

my religion was insulted by his tough skin.

I felt his simple kindness 

like a splash of holy water. 

saw in me, the devil 

caging a woman like property

holding her hostage 

out of fear.

And yes 

when She could drive she left me

And yes 

when she left me she took her daughter.

every morning 

cereal bowl of pills, I **** myself

keep a poster of my mothers face 

covered in bruises 

behind the tiny orange bottles 

to remind me why I do it.

wake up twice, 

first as Phoenix, dying

second as a watcher, writer and admirer.

callouses are not to protect us from the outside at all.

Callouses harden our bodies into caskets.

Hold in all our dead.

Galaxias is greek for milky
Your skin is Galaxias
It is the root word of galaxy
I drink milk because it tastes like space

Twentieth-century american theoretical physicist john archibald wheeler summed up einstein's general theory of reletivity as, "matter tells space how to curve; space tells matter how to move".

I guess you are space
and I am matter.
I tell you how to curve
and you tell me how to move on.

Dolly, you know Fluffy can't play with you.

you're my dolly.

Fluffy stop looking at her like that.

Fluffy, let me sing you a song
so you understand.

This is my dolly
You can't have it
This is my dolly
And *******

this is my dolly
You can't have it
This is my dolly and
*******

this is my dolly
you can't have it
this is my dolly and
*******.

*Stomp stomp stomp *
"DOLLY?!
What do I hear you singing?"

Nothing Daddy!

"If that is what Nothing sounds like.
You will be loud for the rest of your life
Do you understand?"

Yes daddy.

"I don't wanna hear nothin' ever again.
Did your mother teach you that?"

Yes daddy.
Mommy sings it sometimes
turns the shower on so we can't hear her crying
But the way her voice cracks
I can tell.

...





"...Body.
It's body Princess... not dolly."

"This is my body
You can't have it
This is my body and

Well maybe that last line...
...that one's for me."

"Your mommy taught me the words last night.
it was about time I learned them too.

funny, we both make the same mistake."

rock smashes scissors
break our swords
Scissors cut paper
tear up our poetry
paper covers rock.
shielded by policy

we have our voices.
all rock, all scissor, all paper.
all spock, all lizard
we do not play games, we Speak.
We throw spock hands like Gang signs
spit parsel tongue at pride haters
we write love letters to revolution
We cut red tape with our long fuzes
Hit rock bottom, more bass in our
Voices than god knows what to do with
So we tell him exactlly where it should go.

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock

They hold their pens like scissors
carving history books into erasure poems

We would swing our pens like swords.
But no leader we trust has been elected yet.

We would have a leader to guide us
But snakeoil salesmen plague our trenches.

There would be no snakeoil salesmen if
we had a stable government

We would have a stable government
but the stability was sharpied out of our history books.

And To history, loud voices sound
like the fires of god.
And are we not the voices with more bass then God knows what to do with.
without words on the wind,
There is no flame
so aren't we fire.

We all have tealights waiting in cold oven hearts.
stone hearths begging for Ignition
eager for bootleg promises of warmth
The orange rhetoric of our future
no warmer than tinders logo.
or a video recording of a fireplace
flickering on a flatscreen at best buy.
We are distracted constantly.
misdirected by Houses of paper cards
origami swans we don't dare unfold
Staying ignorant of the tire track liner inside.
origami swans are so much more beautiful
when they have secrets, right?

I have a matchstick
watch me strike it lit
flare this paper swan into a pheonix.
And hold it in my fist.
there will be fire.
and it will not be a metaphor
But It will be a revolution
And it will be a pheonix
and the pheonix WILL be a metaphor

The Rabbi at Temple Beth El
said when a mans consumed by gods fire
it is a severance from faith, a spiritual death.
what have we done
if not lost faith in our government?
Been consumed by the fires of god.
and why not tattoo pheonix feathers
on our backs?
at least this death gave us warmth.
a home in the world's ashes.

I stared at the dragons fire that stormed towards me
thanked it for the oppurtunity
to walk out of this world
holding dragons eggs
Like Daneris Tygareon
and they will be real dragons.
incubated by REAL fire
despite this crumbling cataclysm
you call a great america.
Spock handed Lizards larger and louder
with all the rocks
paper and scissors they need
to set the world on fire.
To Finally see something beautiful be born.
A Home that keeps them warm.

Trailer hyena

I was forged in the gutter

Too, I just got out.

Thunder, and Lightning decided to open up their relationship.
Invited me to join them in a Triad.

Thunder and lighting have this eternal connection,
Belong together
I love watching them dance

Perform for me impulsive without leashes
I worship the trust that requires
The loyalty, faith in each other
Flying wherever they want,
Loving loud and without boundary
Knowing this storm belongs to them.
Safety, Definition: that moment after every passionate lovers kiss.
We are worshiped as the same storm.

Now I have the oppurtunity to build intimate connections with thunder.
With lightning.

Thunder has this base drop palpitation
Our hearts twitch in time just to align
The feeling of her crushing my butterflies
With firm hands, a passionate kiss that lasts only seconds.

Lighting comes in these quick bursts
I never feel like I can look at him long enough
Bright, dangerous
Knows he could **** me in a second
If he only touched me
He will never touch me
Only dance
Never long enough
Keeps me craving more
Likes to give me that headrush
When he returns.

As for me,
I was content just worshiping them
Every second they weren't worshiped,
Wasted chances, lost time, missing puzzle peices.

I didn't expect an invitation
This chance to see them honestly
Two seperate beautiful creatures to worship
Instead of one savory storm to feel pulse through me as one dancer.
I'm just an awestruck boy staring at the sky
Lost in endless baby blue, warm off sunrays, or choosing my favorite freckles in the stars
More lovers to distract me when they are gone.

"SIR! How do we silence anxiety? Sir."

Welcome to the new era,
A-dread-alized Motivation

We Swept concrete
under bombshelter rugs

Wept skyscraper scaffolding
Twin tears down construction worker cheekbones.
Dangling off plywood
Staring at their lunchmeat
In silliphane
Placing it back
Closing their eyes

The sun rise past the construction
Shone red and yellow
Orange and black
War in the winds

We all knew that there could be only one thing to silence the Trembling fingers
still left shaking
from the resurrection
of our ancesters sins.

The uncertainty of our nationalism,
or ability to breathe. A tragedy
to bond us. Glued
to the severance of anxiety horizens.
"The New Era"
Stapled to the door frame.

Green now in the sky
They painted the missiles gold
so we'd know who sent them.

Waves came
Tore cartilage from the floor boards.
Fires came
Swept veins up in the smoke
a plague would have come,  
but the world glazed over with laughter.

labeled allergies a
coping mechanism
in the face of cataclysm
We swore at each other
Didn't blame god.
For once

This time we didn't want to curse
gods name that way.
Not when we knew our aggressor

The rich had bombshelter elbows
The beautiful had lips like
plane tickets

You stand accused of revolution
Influence,
motivation, rebellion!
PAYING ATTENTION
What do you have to say for yourself?

Says Judge Judy.
to the artists.
All of them.

Shackled in front of ovens,
Brothers and Sisters of rainbow skin

Motivators aren't needed when you're "Silencing Anxiety" She says.

A general in the white house asks:
"They're all too loud.
How do we unleash genocide
for a whole generation?"
And this *******,
Gaunt in the corner?
Says suicide.

4/12/17

At 8pm, it is the changing of hats
in assisted living
It is time I releive a woman
from sitting in the dark
waiting for our paycheck to die.
She survived one more shift.
it is my turn at this game of russian roulette.
I meet so many strangers this way,
Each night before I sit, and wait for doors to close
I take oppurtunity to watch one open
Ask the new surviver to tell me their story.
and Write them down.

she moved across the countrey
away from her sister
a divorce from her beleifs.
sister Against God.
I empathize
How hard to move across The world,
pack up your morals
move in with your ex sisters ex husband.
I promptly told her I was polyamorous.
That my lover moved to ireland
To live with her husband
Packed up everything
She did not flinch.
I held this stranger
as she cried on my shoulder
She
in the fifteen moments I saw her
Realized
the world of differences between us.
She can find comfort in solitude
never once knew what I thought
of her Morals
How In my family
we celebrate divorce
how all burning houses are Phoenix fires
abusers can nametag forever
nametag your body is my body
Nametag husband
I worry for her safety.
A woman who doesn't beleive
in the word stop.
Doesn't consider leaving
my biggest fear is those
afraid to weild the word no.
to close the door.

she closes the door
I sit in the dark to my journal
I write down this poem beside a dying man.
the next contestant releives me at 8am.
I pass her the revolver.
I have survived this round of russian roulette.
He died the next night
and it does not feel like winning.
I live in the world of
revolving doors and revolvers
I wish to be the bullet.
pass through their skull as they go
see what they were thinking
In that last moment.

"Welcome to the future"

reliable rocket ship trade routes, for any rich man.
Flying cars made with science that everyone pretends the myth-busters didn't invent first.
Dead rap stars and anime girls performing,
live on stage with smoke and mirrors
and a government that redefines the word Live,
and operates on smoke and mirrors

"Welcome to the future"

There is a company developing brain chips
so you can watch me climb this mountain,
just synch up with my vision
Also, while you're in my head
check out these commercials I'm hearing from the drone propaganda radios
Feel how this rock feels, synthetic and stamped with advertisements
smell what I'm smelling,
the propane, the soot.

You think this sounds crazy?
There's a little magic rectangle in your pocket.
to Record and send audio, take a photo,
we are halfway
we're just making every science fiction dream a reality

"we're so ******"

What's gonna happen when the world
runs out of dreams to make true?
marty mc-fly got his self strapping shoes, and also we got heelys
and sometimes we got self strapping heelies that glew in the dark
these things are ancient technology now
but we aren't far from the delorian

...or a nuclear apocalypse.

We have flying cars!
when we get flying houses, islands,
cities
when we populate mars
when we umbilicord ourselves to technological advances
hack, splice,
stich in memory chips, nerolinks
Who's gonna come up with the new dreams?

Who's gonna pen the next future
when everyone has seen the jetsons
outside their window.

Bring me the most creative,
innovative minds,
Untouched by the rhetoric
Who will be our new gods?
Will it be the artists?

No,
Bring me the Children.

"Welcome to the playground"

Words of aspiration graffitied on trump tower
Kaiju stuffed bears with saddles transporting business suit toddlers to their desks
where they draw, and draw, and draw
Mechanical dinosuars replacing trains.
Shutes and ladders everywhere
We will put our faith in mommy
and she will be beautiful
just like me.
we will pray to mother
she will rain affection
guide the pint sized diaper academy
while the adults sit in sensory boothes,
occulus rift 99.5.0 on their heads
feeding tube, cathader, an ash tray of tiny blue pills.
a small child hired to wipe their *** once in awhile,
for minimum wage
Which now is $200 an hour,
they still can't get health care
the lowest plan offers crayon insurance
that they can't use until they are promoted to artist

So they pray and pray to their mother religion
but mother doesn't exist here.

only birth robot
only television parasite
only plugged in queens and worker boys

we have the responsibility
to mold these tiny minds
if we **** up, remember
the fate of the world
was never in our hands
it was in very tiny hands
with pencils in them

"Welcome to the future"
"Welcome to the future"
"welcome to the future"

Beating you isn't like
beaters in a cakemixer, my love.
You can't cover a cake
in moans and whimpers.
No matter how much frosting we lick up,
No matter how hot we make the room.
We still can't bake a cake with our bodies.
We don't have the right ingredients.
We need eggs
flour
salt and milk and
Actually I guess you do have most of those things
All we really need is flour.
Hold on,
I'll go buy some flour.
We can pour it all over ourselves
and bake a cake.

4/30/17

A cheetah speckled woman
With long curly red hair
Invited me to a bean shaped cushion
In her studio apartment.
her keys jingled in the closing door
Sealing us, a hot red room.

"Love is creepy"
She says, sinking into
Her candy apple bean shaped cushion

I am a watcher.
When We met, She was in her natual habitat.
A coat tail of men,
I admired how oblivious they were
to being faceless goons.
watched her direct them
like an ***** desperate orchestra.
My back against a wall,
Smoking a cigarette.

Now, I'm in this studio apartment
Again, I am a ******.
She tells me stories
Of bad tinder dates
as I survey the strung up Christmas lights
Posters of Marilyn monroe.
Teenage quotes of aspiration.
"Be unapologeticly you"

She smiles at my ignorance to her body.
I am not ignorant by any means
Only respectful
I notice her smirk at me swing around
Leaning into shelves of pottery and art supplies.
flying around with a clipped wing.

"Will I be a poem?" She asks.
"You're right. Love is creepy."

I pull wine out of my bag and place it on the counter, put Chicken and vegetables in the fridge.
She turns on Netflix and asks
"whaddaya wanna watch?"
"bird documentaries"
i say,
an effort to incite her own decision.
domestically,
A bird documentary starts to play.
I gloss over a smirk at my failure
We share wine meditating to the sounds of
Bad Voiceovers and chirping

We are the card dealers of moments
hourglass columns
sand falling where art should be carved.
fractures of timelessness stacked like
Jenga blocks
each sip of wine a ritualistic dymensia
blackjack tables with no dealer
just a bartender

We watch an owl puke up mouse bones
"Owls are Creepy."
We agree.
witness to me, is indulgence
silk strings pull my heart towards exhibitionists
When she changes to A pink robe
Textured to compliment my heart strings
the singsong of birds chirping.
provides an exotic baseline for her sway.

I stare at her body.
"My love is creepy" I say
pressing thumbs to divets in her hips
I am slave on her shadows
My hands trace contours
follow my worship eyes
"I like the attention" she says

In the morning
drafty eyes part

whisper From swirling pink elephant dazes
smiling at me.
the soft moans of her night
the reason I started dealing cards.
an addiction to that moment.
the reason I turn the hourglass.
the wide green foggy eyes
Watching me stare back.
stretching like a cat
who plays with the bird
brings it to it's master as a gift
limp and submissive,
Perhaps she is the bird.
Sunken to the curves of the bed.
a limp beautiful body
the most honest and intentionless fracture
love is creepy.
I am a watcher
ask only that you exist.
Existing is equally as creepy.
we have fingers
thoughts
consequences.
So why not stare at a part you want to keep?
Why not write it down for others to fly?
so many beautiful things are never seen
Oppurtunity wasted for fear of being creepy
Fear of love.
fear of cats
Fear of birds
when I stare I capture
When I write, you stare
love is creepy.
we are creepy.
birds are creepy
be my creepy love bird.
peace dove
fly with me, if for a moment.
and stare down at everything while we can see it
I want to see everything with you
For now I see you in everything.
Photoshop you into my dreams
Imaginary
Love is for the birds anyway.

It is a four way intersection
With no street lights.

An unlit cigarette

It is a car
with no headlights
No taillights
No signals at all

It is a hearth
with no fire.
It is no television

It is a chruch
with no windows.
An unlit candle

It is a stage
with no spotlight
It is a rave
with no lazers

It is an uncharged cell phone
It is never having a cell phone

It is crowding to watch an aura boreailois
With nothing in the sky
It is starless nights

It is a storm
With no lightning
It is a ship sailing to land in a storm
With no light house to guide them.

It is naked and safe
It is surrounded by dark
Surrounded by snow
Surrounded by spirits

It is grey eyes
that don't look back
they look through you
Into the light.

I spent seven years in purgatory
Not between heaven
Waiting for hell
Felt like sand and fire
Like I was dripping down
Cooking the Unsubmerged parts
Up above the hourglass
Pitter patter
trickling below my feet.
In a heatwave.

who showed god
The magnifying glass
He burns ants with?
**** that guy.

I am an ant in purgatory
It feels like I can carry so much weight
I am small
capable of so much
look around.
Everywhere around me
People built normally
can do more
It takes a mad scientist
His imagination of the shrink ray
The switch on the side
Something out of a sci-fi movie
Just to make me grow

It takes somebody with an imagination
Just to think i'm impressive

who gave god the Shrink ray?
bless them.

I thrive on the creators
The thinkers
Bath in their passion
Crave their attention
I need to hear their words
See their art
Live their stories through mediums
This abundance of descision
Where they hold hands with a paint chip god
Fingernails of mustard, line and savage
Seductress tendrils
Spilling splattering across canvas
Or music sheets
a stage
Computer screen
Purgatory.

Who gave god the paint brush?
It was me.

4/19/17

Pave whatever heartfelt wisdom you have with bedrock
Bury it under thick heavy ores
Tombstome lullaby your thoights for me.
Catacombs.
Temples.
Deep in the under earth hidden from my children
My children who come to me of their own will
I do not make them, they make me.
I am nothing without thise I inspire
Take your worship of their bodoes somewhere else
Take your lures
Your beartraps
Your candy
To the cattleprodding red man wher you will hide your ambitious eros for my family
If you are really "Wise"

Oh, they love you don't they?
You made them so giddy to be slaughtered
After years of molding and guiding
One tertdacyl swoop with your hungery eyes
My friend.
youbare not worthy of my rivalry
I do not need to throw gauntlets down for ****.
Let there be no forgiven intentions
Your mind would not be kept to yourself
If you laced it with trip wire
We know your secrets.

This is not a wizard battle.
we are not spiraling in a cataclysm on rooptop islands playing guitars shootig fireballs at one another

I am standing in a doorway.
You are naked on a bed
My arms are crossed and you are leaving.
This is not a goodbye
This is a warm bath, ibeprofen for your headache and a razor blade
Charity

Patrick starfish has a better home then you deserve.
Even at the bedrock of bikini bottom
You are mpt far enough down
Down
Down
Out of sight
Get your filthy hands off this grass
This sky
This air.
Stop breathing already

4/20/17

This is a public service announcement.
Attention
There are cockroaches in the walls of your body
Mold in the ceilings of your eyelids
You cry so often they can't dry out.
We paint over them with makeup
we have no idea why
we think paint
will fix your roof
There's still mold
There are still cockroaches
in the walls of your body.
We called them butterflies to be cutesy
it's time we told you
they are cockroaches.
In this familiar metaphor
where you are a grand hotel.
You were actually an AirBnB
Someone decided one day:
"AHH **** it.
We can open our house
to strangers
for a quick buck.
What's the worst that can happen?
They rob us?
HAH!
what are they gonna take?
We got nothin'"
then you did.
And they did.
they smelt bad
brought their girlfriend
and ****** in your guest bedroom

I mean it was your den,
with a sleeping bag
But they ****** in there!
In YOUR sleeping back
And stole your coffee maker!
YOU DIDN'T EVEN HAVE
A COFFEE MAKER
BEFORE YOU STARTED BEING
A HOTEL
you bought that ******* coffee maker
for airbnb guests
and now look at you.
Spent more on ammenaties
then you made.

Should have gone to walmart
but no
you had to "buy local"

Yes
we are still talking about your body
And cockroaches.
That ******* tennant brought cockroaches
You don't know how
but he was from new york
so it was totaly his fault.

now you need to hire pest control

BUT WHO IN THE HELL
CAN CONTROL THE PESTS
IN YOUR GODAMNED BODY

Not you.
You buy local.
These hippies don't use pesticides
thats their whole shtick.
You gotta use dirt and pray.

So you do.
You open up the wounds they left
Or you found
Or made last night

And you shove dirt in them.

And I'll be ******
if it doesn't make the cockroaches
leave.

Grandpa?
Tell us about the flowers again.

"I don't like to tell those stories anymore little Bug."

but you write allll your poems about the flowers
you have so much love in you papa!

"I don't remember the flowers, Bug."

you have to remember the flowers!
you spent years telling the world about them on stage!
How the sunflower invited you to an occupied bed
and you stayed there for shelter
imagined a future with her, another child
But You found your child in the pansie
when the sunflower left for Hotter adventures.
You really loved the pansies Grampa

"Yes I did, more than anything."

Every time you met a flower you left them for the pansies!
the pansies are so pretty
they had you obsessed grandpa, you were addicted you said!
how they smelled, how they felt on your fingers
but they were always getting into danger and never listened to you
they made you feel like you were broken
and they were withering away
All of your flowers always went without eating grandpa!
why didn't you water them?

"I promise you bug, I watered them plenty."

crying on them doesn't help grandpa,
you needed to feed them

"I fed them plenty"

Did you feed them enough sun?
you always said you kept them in
with the windows shut, that's why they withered
until they all left you for the sun

"The sun left me, they didn't leave me for the sun."

No the forget me nots took the sun from you
you said that a lot
how she stole the happiness from you and gave you this poetry
how you really can never forget her
and you hate that it's her favorite flower
because it seems enchanted on purpose to haunt you.

"Let's talk about a different flower"

Ooh the daffodil didn't eat either
she wrote poems about it! and she even wanted to plant a bunch of poison for you
she kept coming back too! all the flowers came and went with the seasons
she gave you so much that you practically died when she left
you were poor and got sick from not eating
crashed your car and tried to **** yourself

"these aren't casual things you should be talking about in passing with your grandpa bug"

but it's all in your poetry!
the pansies really loved you grandpa.
The sunflowers gave you Charity because it's what they knew
The daffodils supported you when you both needed each other
the forget-me-nots are the reason for all your trauma and will stick with you for the rest of your life
but the pansies kept coming back because they loved you
you didn't offer each other anything other than love
you didn't drive each other or pay for bills
you didn't even like to go out but you did, because it was a reason to be together

What's your favorite Flower Grandpa?

"I never had one when I was asked"

when was the last time you were asked?

"when the pansies first told me their name"

what did you say?

"I said goodbye...
but not for long
you know me and the pansies"

4/17/17

You ever wanna lick a lollipop?
You ever wanna take turns licking the lollipop
With your loved one?
You ever wanna lick the lollipop at the same time
But your loved one shoves
the whole lollipop
stick and all
Down their throat
Swallows it
Asphixiates on the mere Concept
Of ever having licked the lollipop in the first place
Let alone the reality that you
You, the love of their life,
They, the victim of ultimatum
Have both licked the lollipop?
.
.
.
Have
You ever been the lollipop?

Erasure & Found Poem from
"On Photography By Teju Cole in april 16th new york times magazine

--

You were The fast moving disaster of a tsunami
added to the slow motion disaster
of a nuclear calamity

Towns flooded
Infrastructure wrecked
Forests splintered
more than 15,000 people dead.
earthquake cut off
my external power supply
Floodwaters damaged my backup generators
Disabled it's cooling system
Overheating ensued
Fuel in three reactor cores melted
Releasing radiation

Everyone saw The water coming in
The roads swept away
Towns and harbors destroyed

Extensive documentary work
was undertaken by photographers
Of the ruins,
Debris,
Cleanup and relief operations

The gut-wrentching scale of destruction
The professionalism of the emergency crews
The fortitude of the survivers

The extreme uncertainty I feel
in our current political moment
helps me understand for the first time
the curious twinship
of mourning and premonition.

Information
about the tragedy
Sorrow for the suffering it caused
Gratitude for the work
that makes sorrow visible
Foreboding about the future.

An alert flashes
your phone
Something terrible has happened
Far away, a flood, an airstrike,
Soon, there's footage of people picking through wreckage
what used to be their homes

It is easy to pity them
Difficult to imagine this will be you
Suddenly bereft of a solid place in the world.

Listening to anything
that touches on the sublime
makes me apprehensive.

Like The silence that greets us
waking in the middle of the night

Can't remember if
My family knows I'm gay and
Polyamorous

Perhaps my story
Loving him and his wife was
Misinterpreted

When you spent so much time
at work and school
social activities and non-profits
doing art and homework and making money
And wondering what sleep feels like
that you don't see your family for like a year
so when you see them on Easter
You are neon pink amd pistachio cream
in a sea of Blues and greys
Everyone is polite and lovely
You want to blend in
But Everything you say is out of context
Because %75 of your lifestyle is based
In being REAL gay
and you aren't sure
if they remember
You are REAL gay.
Or Polyamorous
Orthat when you say you were beaten that's
A GOOD THING
so you kinda just watch everyone else
And hope nobody is offended
By you smiling at them.

4/15/17

I look around at what totems I've collected
Paper Fair bracelets and movie tickets
Trash standing in for memories.
Some with pen on the back to remind me what they mean.
Others blank, reminders of how much i've lost.
I keep meeting men twice my age with the life i wanted who have done half as much as me
Who are impressed at how much I've done  
But I just tell everyone I've completed everything I've started.
Like I'm fast forwarding until my body catvhes up.
By the time they realize it's a lie It will be true
And the only thing stopping it from being real
Is time.
but I keep forgetting what I say will happen
Unless i write it down
become a prophet of my own story.
Ink spilling like reminders
Papertrails in lockboxes

4/12/17

She said she moved across the countrey to
Get away from her sister
They got a divorce and it was
Against her beleifs.
Against God.
I told her firmly
That i empathized
How it must be hard to move across
The world, to pack up everything
Just for your morals
She said she and her husbamd moved in with the ex husband her sister
And that the whole family besides herself
Supported her sister.
I said that must be hard.
Then when she loved me
Knew i understood.
I promptly told her i was polyamorous.
That my lover moved to ireland
To live with her husband
Packed up everything
And how hard that must be
and She did not flinch
I held her as she cried on my shoulder
She in the fifteen moments I saw her
Realized there is a whole world of differences
She can find comfort in when she is alone
She never once knew what I thought of her
Morals
How In my family we have divorce celevrations.
How ending is always a new beginning
How you can love amd still realize that a forever is going to make you miserable
Or never having a baby will **** you
Or being ***** every night is going to torture you
Even if the abuser is your own husband
I worry for her safety.
A woman who doesn't beleive in the word stop.
Doesn't consider leaving
Or letting go
I could never trust someome like that.
I would never be able to see them without feeling regret.
There is no words for the sorrow I place in that body of theirs.
And it is not my place to change it.
But I can tell them how happy i've been
Letting go someone I love, forever.
Not because We are unhappy.
Just because it was time for them to go.
Tell her how I still love them.
How i miss them every day, but it does not depress me.
It enlightens me.
Tell them of all my happy memories
libraty labrynth where she made me look her up with the dewey decimal system
Ice skating and backwards buttwiggles
Every time we stayed up late and I whispered that she existed.
Because even I wasn't convinced.
Now that she's left.
I'm still not.

But I will never forget either of them.

4/11/2017

White knuckled on keys
Stabbed through leather steering wheel
Air bag pin cushion.

chalk outline
seperation Of cigarette ashes

wet tar, broken glass.
wine stained wedding dress
Playing paper towel commercial
Soaks up all the rosey in her cheeks

When the thud was heard for miles
She didn't **** herself.
Simply tossed her dress
out the hotel window.
at a crime scene

It was some other *******
Who covered it with caution tape.