tall grass, broken glass
tall grass, broken glass

Shredded soles
Along the slate shoals
Shredded souls
Oh, where my heart goes

Tall grass, broken glass
Thorns aplenty
and dust to ash
Rotted bodies
Of water and trash
Thorns serrated-
sulks in the grass with-
broken glass, ash to ash

Still the rivers flows
Over rocks and stones
And washes away,
every smitten day

Begotten mud forms
Compressed into stone
or primordial bones
with a spirit on loan
nevertheless

We will have our tall grass
We will make our broken glass
And as the mountains burn to the ground we'll shrug and state "ash to ash."

All those fights and bad qualities about you start to fade
But I still have the screenshots of how many times you bade
My existence in your life, that we'd give it once more try
That you're sorry and your sorry and you hope I'm doing fine
And then change your mind
As you harass and beg
But those times didn't happen
Don't speak ill of the dead

Now all our old friends are texting and calling
Sympathy overwhelming as my heart is falling
Down to my stomach to boil in acid
"have you heard"
"Are you ok"
"have you heard"
"Are you ok"
And I say I'm sorry
I don't know how to feel
I'm not even sure if any of this is real

I didn't know him any longer
And how much he went through change
Living in his family's prejudice cage
He ran into traffic in a drunken rage

Now I look at my past
And the messages we exchanged
How he begged for me back
And said his life wouldn't be the same
That he dreams of me every night
And how he'll never find someone like me
I remember our fights and how this all came to be

I remember how his family would look at me
With love and with pity
How I was so handsome, it was a shame I was gay,
How I was a bad influence on their son and how I "made him this way."
I remember sitting every holiday alone
while he went to family dinners
the weight of them explaining my relation to the family was too much to bare
I won't be at the funeral either
I'm assuming that's only fair.
They never wanted me there.

One day I'll visit your grave
And ask the tombstones "why?"
And get a response similar to yours
Although a little more dry
I can't cry

Maybe he is watching me,
I think about that a lot
In my new life
It's been 5 years on the dot.
He still wasn't over me
"I don't think he ever will be."
said his Nana under the old oak tree.

Israel was fallen
By a GMC Sierra
As I watch from afar
This ending of an era

“I am free”
My icy wings tearing through the dark blue sky, the
permafrosted landscape below me getting smaller and
farther away and the Sun, its warm, amber rays glistening
on the horizon, beckoning me with its warm touch.
I look back-
Every second counts
I look back-
I see your cold eyes
Frozen pits of mud, obsidian, sparkling like diamonds and
just as hard.
Body of steel.
No blood,
No life,
Uncaring
Unfeeling
Scorpion.
Froze my wings with your poison tail, your vicious words
covered in sugar, stabbing.
Stole my heart
Oh how frail I was.
I look back-
At the small castle we built, the fireworks, the rose garden,
the old dusty freight, the dim light of the bar where I asked
you to be mine, the bamboo princess (I still have your
pillow), the food trucks and that homeless guy who is
probably dead, the pictures, the mix-tape, the color yellow,
No Doubt, the empty movie theater, the Moon in
Sagittarius where we held each other so close and you
said I smelled of patchouli and that caused me to feel
happiness because it is one of my favorite scents and I
was so glad you liked it too, the warms nights in your cold,
cold room and your hands, your hands…
Will never freeze my wings again.
I look back-
I became human for you and you acted as if I were just
some pigeon or robin or pheasant, you acted
As if our castle
Was made of sand,
Meant to be dissolved.
But how would I know?
The language you speak is all ones and zeros,
The feelings you feel are all bones and marrows
And I am blood
I am skin
I am emotion, Venus
The beauty within.
I look back-
-at you Pluto
Not even a planet
Cold and frozen with eyes of granite
Wires and copper made up your soul
And unfeeling data rules your flow.
I look back-
I asked you how you felt and received
An error four-oh-four.
That process never mattered to me,
Yet always left me craving more.
I look back-
Were my emotions not obvious?
Or were your feelings ambiguous
Intent so dubious
You viewed me as frivolous
Yet you’re continuous
With your cold touch so ferrous
Incompatible
I could understand…
I look back-
Scorpion, you’ll be okay.
As you sit in your world,
All alone, just like you intended,
You let your past rule you.
I look back-
How could we be friends?
Lovers to friends
From seeing the universe inside of someone
To just hanging out once, maybe twice a week.
No, we cannot be friends because that’s just weird.
I look forward-
The Sun has set.
My wings so cold
They’ll thaw and heal in time
And then, Scorpion, maybe we’ll see each other again.

Today is one of those days
when your throat is sore for no reason
and your voice scratches its way out of your esophagus;
like an old CD, skipping, and stopping at certain intervals.
Overcast, the sky is an apathetic shade of dolphin grey
The pressure of the inevitable rain, pressing;
holding you with the weight of the sun hidden behind.
Today is one of those days
when you cannot drag yourself out of sleep,
even though you’ve slept for a day and a quarter.
A day where you don’t want to eat,
but you’re still shaking from the hunger
and coffee and cigarettes are all that will do the trick.
Sitting on the pavement, damp and wet.
It hasn’t rained yet but we still never forget
the way the cold feels against our jeans;
smoking cigarette butts, discarded dreams.
With old LCD screens out scratched phones shine
signifying how broken our view of the world may be-
but, clearly, we still see.
As we take random pills we found and pretend we are high-
we drink cheap liquor and curse at the sky.
Sitting on the curb, in the literal gutter,
Loitering’s a constant when you have nowhere to go.
Walking for hours
in rain, heat or snow,
our lives in a bag,
wearing the same clothes.
Showering in a gas station sink,
shoplifting to eat,
the parks were our bed
the bleachers our dining rooms.
The shelter kicked us out for fighting that old guy
and the soup kitchens didn’t feed us
because we didn’t have the proper paperwork.
Our skin is grey and pale as the sky,
our eyes are full of light
as our brain starts to die;
but we are free,
and we fly-
                          “wild birds.”

The pixilated light I hold in my hands

I prefer over the rays of the star we orbit.

 

When the sun falls down, to spread its golden shine to a different plane,

Mine glows brighter still, ethereal, clean and white.

I cover my head, my soul, as I **** out my insecurities, like a dog marking its territory, all over the virtual forest of broken lives.

 

Screaming out coyly for attention to rescue my mind from the insolence I perceive my reality to be, behind ironic wording and new age grammar, I wear like plastic garments, leeching toxins into my infected blood stream

 

Sweat stained dream

Ripped seam

Digital gleam

Internet fiend

 

“Why is the world so mean?”

As the world rotates around our star,

We constantly forget who we all are.

we mask our bodies in plants and rocks

we blanket our minds in lights and thoughts.

to exclude out feelings-

from the desperate days

we smother our lungs with chemical haze.

thoughtful healing.

wishful thinking.

tears fall from these human eyes,

smiles form with the muscles on this face,

carved into the blood filled clay.

sculptural ideation

manifested by the soul

that swarms around itself

that covers this plane

that is the air between us all.

craving happiness

one experiences sadness.

craving fulfillment

one experiences emptiness.

craving communion

one experiences solidarity.

and while craving life

one experiences death.

black and white

both equally as beautiful,

but duality causes anguish

when one fails to view the singularity,

one ultimately causes

ones own distress

“I AM the monarch of all I survey” a great poet once said.

Completely desensitized

from growing so sensitive,

bombarded with violence

hate and fear.

My eyes are scars

burnt and seared.

 

So self centered our society stands,

you cannot attempt now to make amends,

after the fabric is ripped to shreds.

 

None of us, will make it out alive,

stuck on this rock in space and time.

We were birthed to die

and we grow to perish;

our experiences all and all

is what one should cherish.

Death is sweet, abundant and free,

a beautiful thing

we regret to see.

So tragic in truth,

depends on your perspective,

we usually forget this world

is cognitive