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.

You are all repression
and denial and avoidance
in the face of anything
not ideal
because the alternative is
self hatred
And we both love
you
too much to prioritise
truth
over
your happiness
and do you see now
why
this is killing me

Before she could speak she pointed.
grabbed my hand and sat me on a stone wall.
tugged her mothers shirt and pointed beside me.
sat between us and smiled, kicking her feet.

I just met her that morning, but she knew.
bright little girl
maybe that's why her mother named her after the sun
Soleil.

fond of "No". that was a big one.
and "elsa" of course.
and every night when you tucked her in she'd list everyone she knew and ask if they were home.
"papa home?"
yes, papa is home
"numnum home?"
yes, numnum is home.
"Dada home"?

I can only imagine she does the same.
an I imagine it... so often.
I wonder what they tell her.

"I love your words."
That's the last thing she told me.
and the first.

I love her words too.
I still hear her, whenever I say them.

"Blue"
"Three"
"Venom"
We played Lego Marvel together, and I told her venom was Daddys favorite, so naturally she always wanted to play him when you asked
"who do you wanna be?"
"Venom. BIG Venom"
There's different kinds of venom in lego marvel, cause he can like,
turn hulk size and do hulk stuff, or turn spiderman size and do spiderman stuff?
I liked him because he was super versatile,
but I'm pretty sure she picked him because he's my favorite.

"Elza"
"let it go"
she could sing the whole song before she could even make full sentences.
and her mom would make her stop because she wasn't good at it.
but I thought her voice was beautiful and always told her
"I love your voice"

I don't know very well the relationship between love and memory
but I heard once that the key was repetition
and if for nothing else, just to hear her in my head forever I say them over and over to myself

"I love your words"
"Let it go, Let it go"
"No."

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 found gods voice
In a clocksmith in Rockland.
I asked him how to turn back time

He said
"Careful use of your hands."

I smashed clocks like pills
credit card scraped sprigs & sprockets
into lines of chalk powder.
Just to hear more of his gospel

His shop closed.
Rain washed pink pastel rivers
down my childhood home
street gutters like blood
Glitter became shattered glass.
That same chalkdust
fashioned into A body outline

Ask a child
"What is your favorite creation?"
Witness the passion of a thousand poets.
Fade with age
Hands stretched out for paint
Handed pills.

He said sprig sprocket dust

"What is your favorite creation?
I can guess your mother's."
Took her 9 months

Timeless old crinkled construction paper
colorful paints in the shape of your fingers

I Cover my hands in blood
From the shattered glass
Press my fingerprints
To the timeless colors
I've forgotten
Where to place my hands.

Clumsy with time
Leave ****** handprints
On my mothers fridge
My lovers

Face down in sprig sproket dust
On my final tick
I hear a clocksmith tinker
One last lullaby

"when you run out of canvas
You will stop drawing blood
you will still leave fingerprints"

"What is your favorite creation?"
Was it worth the time?

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.

How much of myself do I need to give up before you want me
I am adding to a pile of bones
I don't have many fingers left, they just sit there
staring.
can't you take them?
you are off hunting your own food, Making your own bones,
so I know you need them.
maybe at least pick your teeth with them?
Please?

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

Won't feel him stay
start to change
Just a poster taped to blame
Only see him float away

Good luck trying to play nice
It doesn't seem very likely these days
With all the kids pop lock and dropping dead
gunned down un a club
Astronauts getting high
The worlds gone to ****.
This post apocalyptic monstrousaty we call mother earth
a flea on the cat of perspective.
Projecter onto a sphere we call planet
Every tree a hologram
Color refracted light
Light my cigarette 
see a small spark of reality burn out.
Inhale some air that has no color.
Proof of it's existence
Blocking the color shot at your retnas
Burn your retnas.
Burn them On the sun
stare at it till you blind yourself
Take those happy pills
Don't ever forget the days you don't  remember
quiet warm days,
sounds but never understanding
just blissfull floating
lit until you pop and cry.
Don't let yourself pop.
Stay curled up
Sleep.
Sleep.
Sleep.

tattered flags, wedding dress trains
white fringe, cached in dirt road
like baggy jeans, converse worn like religion.
Stockholm syndrome, always ran away

never left home, delicately telling
time wearing, down eight years
down in the basement, duct-tape cuffed
to a chair, bandage torn off slow

like a drag, on a thick cigarillo
from fat lips, fat teeth
fat, you know the drill
ear didn't clover though, despite her Irish eyes

she isn't lucky, enough
to have scars, that we can see
green with liberty
she is tall, held fire until it shattered

in '17, now she has flash backs
when men in black, held a pen
to her nose and clicked, now
she's just a rumor,

"I hear she used to represent freedom"

"I never knew her"

I believe,
if the statue of liberty had a voice;
and she does...

I believe,
if the statue of liberty had red heels;
she could run...

I believe,
if the statue of liberty was a mother;
and she was,

she would have died,
a loud, running, mother,
too young.

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.

I want to turn down our opacity
occupy the same physical space.
line up our hearts to beat together.

You have a million ways to leave me.
took all of them
your cellphone beside me
lovers away from me
in the distance you can't be touched
blaming of your mental illness
admitting you don't love me, silently.

were late on our anniversary, from ******* his ****,
it's not that I mind, it just measures your respect of me.
I'm not surprised when you can't touch me after
or look in my eyes

everything you do, is fine.
you only do what you want.
I am so lucky, for any time at all
for three days in a hotel room
for three days I wait, for you to look at me.
screaming at a window.

we wont admit the window is only when we look at each other.
when our backs turn, it's roses
isn't it funny.
a million miles between us, content with our illusions
two key cards, the truth too loud to sleep.
buzzing static in the space between our chests.
I want so badly to touch it
flies part when I swat.

You used to moan when I kissed your ear
your muscles tense
I stop kissing your ear
you used to blush when I would stare at your body
you change in the dark.
I stop staring, where you can see me.

I witness your new lovers
you tell me they force your head down, how you liked it.
if I tried that, the amount of guilty in me would tear me out of my body.
you would stay silent and guilty, I won't touch you
I am the one man who wont touch you
I am the one man you won't let touch you.
his pregnant wife moved out of his house
you would raise his baby, you say.
I cry through desperation
You ask if I regret my decision
through tears, deep silence
I say I am proud of you.

I am proud of you.
I know the love
the hope you feel.
it's not my place to stop it
only show you how it burned
Do I regret it?
it was the most wonderful love I could imagine
I'm not saying it will hurt "except the good parts"
I am saying it will hurt
Especially the good parts.
there is much to gain, in losing your childhood.
Please, don't stay a child.

it isn't fair to compare you to her.
you chose her favorite color
your new lover calls you the name of my unborn daughter
I can't stop it, but I cry sometimes.
you sound like her
the body language in your "****"'s.
did you know she hated drinking? until she could not stop.
I convinced her to take the first sip,
when you drink ***** I cringe.
she left her daughter for heroine.
when you tell me you want to feel numb, I worry for the baby you are leaving behind
as you foregeo your childhood

his pregnant wife left him because of you,
he hates children
you are 19.
he is 38.
yet he says he loves you, with his snake tongue
I have seen your body
I know it's siren call.

You are not a monster,
or safe in this skin you hate.
around me.

We are still in love.
you haven't left me.
I've been twisted by this vacancy sign in your lawn
I'm going to die on this memory of you raising the family I wanted.
You are some new version of yourself, in the same beautiful skin.
your limp old body draped over a children's empty bed frame
I am such a monster, I would **** it.
Just to be inside of something familiar.

while I sleep next to you in this hotel room.
you are wearing jeans.
my engagement ring.
and his cologne.

the gate locks behind us as we scuttleunder snowfall
bundled in peacoats and scarves
Coffee in our hands, so that they may not hold each other.
Gloves that hold no warmth, so we couldn't touch, in case we did.
We want to hold hands, but we're too happy with our coffee.
playing chicken, who's gonna be mentally stable first
driving cars at each other seeing who will turn.
but the roads long.
we pass open fields of ex-lovers
mountainsides of therapists
what started as a race, seems ike a leisurely scenic route now.
our white knuckles loosening,
Our manic tunnel vision, fading as we become narcoleptic
nodding off slightly as the cars pull closer.
Whenever we take our gloves off,
We'll be lucky not to have driven off road
collide with another field or mountain.
because we couldn't put down our coffee.
afraid of falling asleep
what if our eyes are closed, and we can't decide to be brave.
What if one day we made up in a hospital, in the same bed
two broken windshields.
Crashing, only when we fall asleep.
can we truly call it a conscious decision?

"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?"

-----

A Zippo lighter with a smoker's cough
propositioned to the Ladybug
one carton of American Spirits from Montreal.

the first time I saw a warning label scuttle.

"PERTE DE LA VUE"

you can always trust matches to light the neglected beetle,
clinging his chest.

we stumble, to entangle.

White birch wood weaving baskets from branches
caskets from canvas
red/black marble sloppy, from rose goggles.

I blot Rorschach ink from
my eyes, a blind linguist, lost
in messenger inboxes.

"Malakh"

"Maraszatal"

blind luck
killing Lady Bugs.

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.

Phone goes off
Like a gun pointed at my head
Dropped keys at my feet
Like teeth or pill bottles

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.

you, lips sewn shut
learned from it from your mother
raised a bible thumper
she loved her Jesus
you followed right behind her

one day you found
the man who unwound you
with his seem ripper hands

where did all your thoughts go
where did all your jesus go

stuffing covers the floor
soaks up all the blood
pour some more wine

might as well take communion
while you drown.

I'm clawing at your door, God
Don't you see the shadows seeping out from under your closet?
I see those shadows everywhere.
Let me be that for you, God.
Let me pull you in.

"How many licks does
It take me, to sleep at the
Center, Officer?"

If I had a pill for every time I looked at your photograph
I would finally be as numb and blind as you were.
You pulled veins through me
Chipped tunnels through my mountain wrists
Said: I won't give you gravity
you gotta pull that **** yourself
I did, pull blood through my own veins
I couldn't just let them collapse
It takes a lot of effort to scalpel a nervous system through solid ice
you wasted so much time numbing
when I always had frostbite
but snakeskin makes a great sleeping bag
and we left plenty of it around.
shedding epidermal scales can only get you so pink though
I confused the tiger stripes from your daughters first survival
with the lines left over from your last.
they tasted the same color of beautiful when I kissed them.
I still can't decipher the difference between Honeysuckle and venom

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

Trailer hyena

I was forged in the gutter

Too, I just got out.

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

Perhaps my story
Loving him and his wife was
Misinterpreted

I've invented 3 new colors since I last left this room.I've invented 3 new colors since I last left this room.
I've grown too familiar with the first 9
It gave me someome to talk with.
They never told me their names
But Lorde told me what they smell and sound like.
She has synesthesia.

One is a sweating cavern, howling sirens, calling on foggy hot rocks, smelling of sulfer but luring you with their chill.

One is a cracked crown, dropped from the luggage of a fallen king. Gem stones scattered on the dirt road, to the clomping hoof of his horse trotting away towards buildings that stand tall like pill bottles.

One is a flower blooming with a child in the pollen, crying. The childs crying grows quieter as it seems to lower it's opacity and fade out of existence.

These are colors,
just colors...

dandelion seeds look too peaceful.
delicate moth stems with fluffy hands, floating like whisps of cloud in the wind.
For something so poisonous, they sure look free.

I, like Pavlovs dog, hold my breath to pass howling lawn mowers.
fresh cut grass is out to get me.
I pray that man take the saw off the lawn
may grass grow bountiful but never watered
build a dome to block the rain.
out of lead, to blockthe sun.
I'll peak inside every morning to watch them brown and wilt.
we can't ruin the eco-system fast enough.
****** tissues and blood shot eyes

When you were sniffling today
It was not from the grass.
the blood in your tissues.
was from me.
I am your allergy.

I pray nobody waters me.

"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.

Under her left eye.
It had turned Black,
baffled the doctors,
But the fortune teller knew exactlly what it was.
she Told her it represented death,
Something precious.

doctors said If she let the mark sit any longer
She would've been cursed with
calloused eyes.
gave her ten years to see.
nobody can explain where it came from.
But By proxy she blamed god.

she traveled 6 months later
Against her will blinded by city lights
and lost more than her eyes.

No stars
Cracked like an eggshell
On the cold table.

Drove back broken and tired to
find not a man, but a theif.
With a manic smile,
blood glowing in his eyes.

she was so worried
about losing her sight.
she didn't see his spell.

he told her to choose
And when she chose him,
When she Limped into him, vacant and afraid
He left anyway.

I promise you.
every day.
I will describe the stars to you.
Paint every dog in the street,
pile of leaves, with my voice.
I will keep writing you poetry,
I'll bring your eyes around with me.

I wish I could preach the world was clean.
But you love
how human it all is.
you wouldn't let me lie to you.
about the constellations being out every night.
you know that sometimes, clouds play blanket for the stars.
the cardboard signs, on commercial street.
you always said they deserve to be read.
as loudly as any grandfathers story so i Will read them to you.
"Homeless, anything will help.
i Quit gambling, but I bet you can't hit me with a quarter"

But lover, you will never be blind.
You are
My oracle, feeling tarot in your heart.
guessing each card by the vibrations
three of wands, two of cups, the fool.
even now, when we can't see a future together.
you will never be blind
I will keep writing you poetry.
until I run out of blood, or ink.
and even in that silence.
if you listen closely
You will hear everything I see.

because when I'm gone, lover.
i'll find her for you.
tell you how beautiful she's become.
Tell you
How she has your eyes.

Provoked to pour concrete in my mouth
Teeter totter teeth on their final pink strings
In this dream,
a ladybug says "I know I am a spider".
circles her silk weaving shadow  around my honeycomb gums
tumblng through my fingers.
If sand from an hourglass,
My therapist suggests I'd clench my fist.

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.

"you aren't gonna just like... pick one?"

"Y'know... Christmas is gonna be real expensive."

"You're gonna **** someone nick"

"You're bi? sweet me too. wanna hear about the time..."

"What if she says she didn't consent and then goes to the police and shows them all those bruises. you're gonna be ****** Nick."

"Jesus christ nick."

"if you are under this roof you say he, or you say she, THEY doesn't make any ******* sense."

"nick, you don't wanna start smoking."

"nick, quit while you're ahead that ***** addictive."

"you don't wanna adopt her nick, trust me. you'll regret it. you're gonna break up and you'll be stuck paying child support for a kid that isn't even yours."

"Nick, that's a bad idea"

"Nick, don't forget the money you owe me."

"Nick you don't need ******* pills, they're just making you worse."

"Nick, get off the ******* pills, they're making you crazy."

"Just stay home, it's not safe to drive"

"Nick, it's a blizzard. just stay home."

"he does what he wants, there's no sense in convincing him."

"Check your oil when you gas up"

"remember to lock the front door, you're gonna give your grandfather another heart attack."

"Soooo which one is your girlfriend?"

"so like... which one are you gonna have kids with?"

"This the new one?"

"Nick, you're gonna **** one of these girls and regret this ****."

"that's ****** up nick. you shouldn't like making people cry"

"that's ****** up nick, don't cut people"

"that ***** gonna bite you in the *** nick. karmas a *****."

"nick you're gonna **** yourself."

"are you eating?"

"are you sleeping?"

"whens the last time you slept?"

"you need to get some rest Nick"

"Nick wake up"

"Nick wake up"

"Nick wake up"

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.

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.

I've replaced each color

Red smells of sulfer
a luring chill, howling sirens, silk mist clung to wet skin
YOU ARE MINE, OBJECT
  clouds cover sheep wool, that chars in heat

Yellow cracks pepper over itself
impact pops gemstones, vacant kings crown
Horses clomp toward them
MY CROWN! STOP YOU'LL CRUSH IT!
  pill bottles shake above burning cities

Blue of baby powder
budding from pollen, crying children
droplettes falling into a body of water silently
open mouths, dancing wet tongues,
WHY CAN'T I HEAR BLUE SCREAMING?
  I can't hear blue screaming

BLUE IS SCREAMING!
NOBODY CAN HEAR BLUE SCREAMING?
  color are uncomfortable

The snow fell a little late
we're both primates
let's get a little warmer while we jirate
at this rate, I'm a pirate

plundering a briney wet shipwreck
paycheck
set it on fire
the doctor gos next
cold again legs up, you know best

but god you're so gorgeous
we're at it again
doc walks in
gives a look like
"well now i know what brought you in"

count back from ten
it goes in,
the needle
not my friend.
well it might have been
count back from ten
3
2
thoughts storm in, it's bran
oatmeal
pop a pill again
you pop the pill again
I pop the pill again
You stop bleedin
I stop bleedin'
we stop feedin' our clocks
silence the tick tock
with rocks
I start bleedin'
you start bleedin'
we see him again

4/11/2017

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

Part time bartender
Full time escapist
Left to spare her daughter
From a life of engagement.

She'll never know
If her time here was wasted
Before the verdict
She Prayed for church basements

Nobody noticed.
Except the bar fly
His tab stayed open
She clocked out, out back
before he could close it.

A memorial,
he was outside smokin'
didn't realize he lit a candle
When the cherry was glowing

She'll never see it.
In the paper they read it
hearts bleedin'
like a wound they weren't treating
By breathing.

at the tip of a needle
wings spread like an angel
Wrote her name in hebrew
Left us a messege.

"malakh"
How much time you got
How will you spend it
She bet him on her life
That it's less then intended

If I could reinvest it
I'd pay for my sins
I'll be ****** If it
Wouldn't take every penny I have.
But I'll be glad for empty pockets
When I stop losing friends

I'm not sayin' her life was wasted
I'm just sayin' live.

I warn to not set expectations in the face of discomfort or fear.

Not only could it lay thornbushes like barbed wire fence in way of people who may want to help you.

The weeds may also grow instead of you. Not just around you.

A room with walls made of thorn bushes instead of barbed wire may look like a sanctuary garden. But with four walls that no one will touch, it is still a cage.

Don't silence a helping hand, because you're insulted that it does, or doesn't feed.

Just hold it. Thankfully.
Until you do not wish to hold it any longer.
And then let go.

A Zippo lighter with a smoker's cough

propositions the ladybug

clinging to a flannel pocket.


You can always trust a Tealight

to warm the neglected beetles

that cling to your chest.


This ritual of the staring contest

Eyes that shift the room temperature

behind your curtain.


With attention,

uncomfortable attention

when you blink at the Rorschach shadows.


Tell me, they are not mailboxes.

The spirits linger; we stumble into entanglement

birch trees weaving

baskets from our branches,

attempting to disprove the illusion

that ghosts aren't real


you aren't real

If you, ghosts, or ladybugs are real

I'll stare 'till death do us part


I must, stare...

I must witness all I love

to it's end.


To lose a staring contest to a ghost is to
never prove that ghost is an illusion.

Blinking, disturbs reality.


I don't need any
more obsessions that appear red
with black spots.


I used to stare at the sun.

It's bad luck
to **** lady bugs....


How lucky am I

to witness death?

Is attention a weapon?

Is attention a weapon?


I would **** more...

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

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.

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.