How content
     Could it be
That in this life after death
     I grow again as a willow tree,
Standing weak to
     Dry wind blowing calm,
           In a grassy field,
           High on a hill,
     Alone against the contrast
           Of the sky
     And together with the symmetry
           Of existing just for the sake of it.

She felt herself
Maudlin and a
A stitching that
Too often came
Undone,

But she what
She could not see
Beyond her angel wings
Was the light she made
While sunken in her grave

Surrounded by a ink
That spread through her
Veins and poisoned
Her brain and tinted
Whatever fluid
Sloshed about
In her eyes piercing green
On some days,
Hazel brown on others,

Enveloped in darkness,
Shaded by trees,
The leaves sung for her
And the grass danced,
But she felt wrong
In her own skin
And tried to cut it off.

Did the self-encasing ice
Ever melt enough
To reach beyond,
So you
Stretch your tired fingers
In the cool spring air,
And flicker your eyes open
To the mid-morning mist,

Breathed in just shallow enough
To soothe that rain-like pit-pattering heart
And coo the aches of chilly soul,
Hushing the wisps of winter wither
Beyond the mind and somewhere thither.

I'd let myself
     Burn up in every last sunset
If it meant
     I'd become part of the sky.

I was looking at my fish today
And couldn't help but wonder
"Is he lonely?"

That's silly, of course,
Can fish even get lonely?
Sure, he's swimming in that huge tank,
Back and forth and back and forth
All hours of the day,
Entirely by himself,
His only company the algae hugging
The over sized and over-exaggerated rocks,
But can he be lonely?

Do fish have thoughts?
Does he swim back and forth
And back and forth
Wondering when the glass will tap
And flakes of food
Float down from some gleaming world above,
With nothing but fish-thoughts
Running through his fish brain,
Contemplating his existence:
Why is he here?
As a trophy?
As a center piece to give simple aesthetic to the room?
Is that all he is?
Aesthetic?

When he dies,
What will be remembered of him
Other than being flushed down into the sewers,
And replaced by yet another
Extremely unextraordinary fish?

But still, is he lonely?
Surely, as am I, he must be something,
Because maybe we are both here just for the aesthetic of being alive,
Swimming back and forth
And back and forth
With of fish thoughts
Waiting for nothing more than to be fed.

Listen to my words,
For once they speak
Without hearing themselves,
Bound by no self-realized gravity,
Buzzing around my fingertips
Like a moth lost in the
Flickering fire of a forgotten
Candle wick,

Listen to my praise,
As t................................................................­.................................................................­.................................................................­.....................................this
feels
better,

and i can speak easier here
in the white
empty
everything
of a screen
not cluttered
with scary words
of thoughts i wish
weren't fake


and just typing like this
very small
very..... free
feels so good
just being the pile of leaves
not the spectacle of a fountain is might surround,

false flows of flowery water
tainting my rusting mind
with haphazardly crafted
anecdotes of a reality

too elaborated to be real

...

i can sleep here
with one eye open
to peek at the world i fall through

like observing softly
the dancing sheet of fresh linen
riding the curves of wind, hushing
through windows half ajar

Unsettling thoughts
Raise and swim much like
Misappropriated sand with
An anchor running through it
That never quite catches,
Despite the various mounds
Of sand and rock
Chiseled into the Earth
Using all its good form
And time that couldn't have been
Wasted anywhere better.

All the while, as I stare up and think and attempt to make something of the thoughts swimming in my head like fish who cannot see, and the mouth of the everything full of so much nothing that surrounds me spews back not a single hint, you, the girl whose hair is licked a charred brown from the crackling fire of passion swirling from your inners, you, the love of my life, all that may have been past and all after ones too, you are the anchor of my imagination, the stone to hold down my wonder, and keep it from floating off into the vastness of the loneliness that consumes everything that is not here, in your arms, against the soft breeze of your touch, and then I know that everything is well, and all the unspoken beauties of the Universe only mean for me to wrap around you in way of mind and soul and body and laughs we share beside a city without lights, five stories above the world and soaring ever higher.

The frigid sigh of winter
Has all but passed,
But it is the rust behind my eyelids
And the slush in my head
That keeps my window open
And chills me so.

There seems to be
     A sea in me,

And my ribcage is beginning to leak.

it's a late night drive
down a foggy street,
completely empty and
illuminated by the
soft glowing sign of an
underhead street light.  

neon juice
flows through your veins.  
the world
forgets how to spin.  
the trees
are still and
the engine roars.  

somewhere,
everything falls into place for someone.

She compared me
To the sun,

And I felt nothing
But warmth

So it must be true.

good piano music
lots of oatmeal

warm and good

eating lots of oatmeal
yum yum **** yea

oatmeal getting lower
bowl getting lighter

do you ever feel like a bowl of good oatmeal
running low on oatmeal

piano music dying
piano music sad

oatmeal almost gone now
reflect on good memories
of plentiful oatmeal

scraping for last pieces
music getting loud

ow it hurts my ear
**** where is all my oatmeal?

It feels like
The days pass faster
Than there are sunsets
For me to catch,

Because for so long
    Have I strived
To chase beauty,

But endlessly I seem
    To forget
That perhaps capturing it
Defeats the goal
    Of experiencing it,

So now I find myself
    Like a fly trapped
Between the glass
    And the screen
Of the window to
    Some outside world,

Doomed to burn up
    In my self-generated
Heat, born from the
    Friction of my struggle.

The patterns of
Glimmering light
Refracted in the bubble
Droplets dangling
     Off a glass pane,
A rough skirmish
     Of splintering wood
     Stained by age and
          The sea
Washing in still waves below,
Neither of which reflect
The brilliancy of
     White washed sheets
Baked in a vanilla scent
     And a tidal quiver
     Of fingers shaking
At the anticipation
That they may
Caress skin half silk
With patches of sand,
Warm in the sun
That looms behind
Gray fog over a pale
     Blue, seeping from
The cracks that
Scatter about a space
So infinitely random,

Lips bruised from
A night needing no moon
     To shine away
Dusk creeping up
     From pine-needled soil,
Kissing with bare
     Chests and thinking
     With flickering eyes
That so seemingly
Match that of a candle's
     Shadowy counterpart
In the enveloping
Elegance of a deary
Dance to the world
     Soaking wet,
While darling,
We lay amongst
     Boxes of sheets
In our chests
And days without
So much as the rest
Of the beating amp
Inside our ribs,
     Shaking our hair
Bedazzled with milky
     Morning twilight
Dispersed through an
     Array of sleeping giants,
Gently weeping away
The toxicity of daily hustle,
Cotton legs and
Arms made of satin rope,
     Wearing the indifferences
     In the fibers of pasts
     Evaporated and sprouting next spring,
Flower crowns and fireplaces,
     Murky waters and the shiver

As you trace your fingernail
     Across the peak of my collarbone.

The house was flat,
But filled with
Shivering candles
Licking away the dark
That lingered like
Broken lovers
Kicking dented cans
Down the foggy road
Beneath an October moon

So warm in its
Lovely illusion.

The curve of her jaw
Does not fit into
The palm of my hand
Like yours did.

As a poet,
I am gifted with
The graceful knowing
That in the midst of something
Beautiful,
I am living inside
A poem being written.

I can feel myself slipping again
And I'm so tempted
To let myself fall.

Let's live together
     Like a poem
Written from our frosty breath
    Dancing in the cool moonlit air.

A smile a day
Keeps the rain away,

But sometimes
I just want to get wet.

A rope tied
Me to her
While everyone
Else pretended
To sway,
Connected with
Dotted lines.

She is a black spot
Much like ink on a white
Sofa, a mark of insanity,
A truth that smears

More and more at every glance.

I remembered today,
Waiting for the endless
Drone of cars
To slug down the
Crowded streets,

The brushing grace
Of your cheek
Against the inside of my palm
As I held your face close to mine,

The flowers you
Stuck in your auburn hair
Radiating bright and loud
Against the huff of blue
Summer sky,

The flash of your smile,
Brilliantly seeping
Out of the corner of your lips
As your eyes darted
To meet mine for only a moment
Suspended forever in time,

The way you whispered,
Something so gentle
I never imagined so heavy
When you lingered
"I love you"s against my lips
And pushed yourself closer,

And I remember,
I remember the way my fingers
Would tangle in the strands
Of your hair like fire,
Keeping me warm once,
Now only burning
In my memories,

And your hair was
So full of color,
But something drained it away,
Matted it and made it dull
And twisted me up in the process

Because here I sit alone,
Screaming in traffic.

I've seen the sun,
It's shimmery glow,
And felt it's warmth too,
And yet,
I still swim deeper,
Without knowing why this
Is what I do.

I'm a broken bottle,
And I'm holding all my pieces together
Without any glue.

While my body bathed
In the awful waves of
Aching, numbing sand baths,
She reminded me that there's
A whole wide ocean out there,

And I need to worry nothing
When her velvet covered arms
Held my head,
Sang me to sleep,
And let me drift away
To some other day,
Perfectly in between
Never knowing
And knowing she'd make it all okay.

The tides of my time
Turned over themselves
Again and again
As the trees of thought
Rotted in the night of my mind,
And I was lost and without
The will to raise my wings,
Blind to the fact
That the sun might rise again,

Only she who wore
Those moonlight eyes
Washed with the blue of the sea
Could sharpen the horizon
And expose its potential
In her milky twilight glow,

For the moon hung lazily
By some rusted hook in the sky
Wavering with a subtle chill
From the quiet wisps of evening wind,

The moon was silent and seeing,
Overlooking the stillness of it all,
Perched atop some invisible stand
Cemented in the stars,
Untouchable by hands
Far from greatness,

Forever strung from the heavens
By some apparatus of fishing line,
The moon listened to my sorrows
And cradled them gently
So as not to damage them,
And let me cry away
The carvings of indecency
I had etched into the loose
Fibers of my being,

She was my moon,
Grandly lit in the ink of my mind,
So desperately trying to light her own,
And she called me her angel
Whose feathers were always ruffled,
Soaked wet with the weight of our dusks,
But it seemed to me
Her brilliance never flickered or dimmed,
Never blurred or shrugged
Until the day she sighed,
And rolled her eyes
And cut my wings away.

You seem like a thing of the past,
Like a book I've read years ago
And forgotten most of the plot to.  

Though a vague structure of the events
Remains cemented forever in
The corners of my mind
More dark and unkempt,
The details that once made it hurt
Have withered into dust,
Now only scattered
In small concentrations
Across the ledges of my days
That I forgot once carried the weight
Of my adoration for you.

I eagerly await
To walk with you beneath
The shine of this summer's sun,
So maybe just then
You can feel a heat
Only rivaled
By the warmth
You bring to me.

Our nights only sleepless
     Because our love never slumbers,

Whispering sweet nothings
     Better named "sweet somethings"

Because my yearning for you
     Is anything but a chasm coated with sugar,

But rather it's the draw of a future
     Laced with the hope of a content forever.

She was the kind of girl
Worth dancing with
     In the middle of the living room
To the music
Of late night television.

She was the kind of girl
Who made the sky dizzy
     Whenever it looked down at her
Because she was
More vast than the sea.

She was the kind of girl
You wanted to kiss
     In each and every snow drift
Because her lips
Were warmer than any jacket.

She was the kind of girl
Who held you at night
     And whose arms lingered
Because when she was gone
You still felt her around you.

She was the kind of girl
People drag themselves
     From their beds and walk to work
Because they needed to care
For a necessity like her.

She was the kind of girl
Who made you trip over
     Words you wished were nearly as lovely as her,
Because she was the embodiment
Of all you ever wanted to say

To swoon the stars and put the moon in your back pocket.

This morning
I woke up
Next to a stranger,
And when I found myself
Picturing your face
Instead of hers
I'm not sure if
I was more
Terrified
Or relieved
When I felt exactly the same.

The best way to **** someone is to tell them you love them, then walk away.  You have a chance to revive them from the dead and save their withering soul each and every time they call, but you hang up.  You have a chance to stitch together all the chipped off shards of their heart each time they knock on your door, but you draw the curtains and hide in the dark of your "empty" home.  You have a chance to kiss their lips not with love but rather with the acceptance they desire so deeply each time they mail you a letter, but you burn it over the flame that brews your tea, a flame that burns hotter than the passion you faked so slyly for them.

The butterflies inside of me have something to say,
        But I can’t let them speak.

They’re strung up in
        Some tangled mess of mesh
And mutter muted melodies
        From behind some scratching,
               Screaming screen
        Knitted from my fibers of fear,
               Or maybe manifested void of muse
                       And licked with the salt of uncertainty.

The butterflies inside of me have something to say,
          But I cut off their wings.

They sputter and swirl and sweep up
         Dusty remnants of chipped paint
                Inside my chest,
         But because I’m empty,
                Barren and dull,
                Cloudy and cold
        And cracked and crazy,
        Their tiny shrillness
        Of struggling wings
                And straining strings
                        Of voice tainted with winter
                Hits me without impact,
                        No pressure in their phrase,
                        No sincerity in their praise,

The butterflies inside of me have something to say
        But their colors aren’t bright enough to read.

A dash of dust
Unwilling to settle
Coats the pink insides
Of my lungs
As the butterflies
In my stomach
Scream,
They want to get out and I don't know how to let them out anymore
Because I threw away the key
Thinking it was tarnished and needed polishing
But really the only thing
That could polish a rusty key
Is to keep it in the door,
The door I so foolish locked
And slammed shut
Without so much as saying goodbye.

And now here I sit,
Dazed and confused
By the flash of my fingers
No longer taunted by inhibitions,
Trying to scream the butterflies cries,
For their wings so same
Are cutting me up on the inside
Like no butterflies before.

What a cruel cycle
     That the cure to
           Suffering
     Is the inevitable shine
           Of beauty.

The day the magic goes away,
The day life dulls and
Your eyes forget to see
Vivid laughs of color
Is the day your childhood is over,

The moment you can no longer feel
Something you've never felt before,
Like a warmth inside your head
Or in your chest
Without some form of drug
Or film or book
That brushes off the dust
From things you thought were forgotten,
This is the moment your childhood ends.

But sometimes,
Like love for the first, first time
All over again,
Your soul remembers how to breath
And gasps for a split moment
The air of young
Before the waves of today
Flood into your chest once more,
Drowning,
Drowning,
Little bubbles dancing upward,

One last ray of sunlight
Peaking through the current's whisper,
Swimming softly enough
Just to graze the tip of your nose
Before the black takes over.

Death is not so bad;
I died long ago
And didn't realize it
Until now

the cool, mid-afternoon breeze
flowing through my bedroom window
turns my heart to honey and
my feet into flowers,
rooted where I stand, though
I'm still not sure if I'm grounded
with the revitalization of defrost
or buried in unforeseen melancholy.

There is a man
I notice sometimes
From classroom windows
Across the school
Who rides a raging
Metallic beast
With a razor reach
And craving for cuts
Of grass that never stops growing,

He’s soaked in a midday sun
Peeking around a sea in the sky
Dotted with whispers of white,
And drenched in his thoughts
As the hum of the engine
Shrugs off the blurred haze
Of traffic close by,

And he ponders:
“Does this grass feel pain?”
As his blade sweeps away
The shagged green fingers,
For sometimes among
The clean straights he trims
And behind the static of
Mindless television too late at night
He imagines the grass
Sprung from the ground
To be himself,
Lost among a crowd,
Nothing more than a hint of color
In some dizzying hue,
A hair on the Earth
No one would care to lose,

And while he sighs
Once every week or so
And shifts into gear
The lawn to be turned slick
And shiny,
Well kept
By some unsung hero,
The subtle acknowledgements
Chime in hushed admiration
To his unhearing ears.

Maybe,
It’s not about finding
The light at the end of the tunnel,
Maybe,
The tunnel doesn’t even
End, and the light isn’t
The warm glow of a
Sun so high above,
But the dim illumination
From a floodlight, dusty,
And draped with cobwebs,
And maybe,
The floodlight isn’t there,
It’s shattered and its pieces
Bury into the skin of your
Bare feet as you step on them,
And continue to trek forward in
Darkness, towards the next light.
Maybe,
That’s a good thing.
You’re in a tunnel after all,
You can’t drown in blackness as
Easily as you can the sea.
Maybe,
The extra darkness
Makes the next floodlight
Brighter, and you’ll
Stop, and bathe in it a
While as your aching lings
Finally rest.
Maybe,
If you’re brave,
You’ll think you can
Live under the light,
Unaware that you’ll
Lose your knowledge
Of the darkness,
And when your light
Finally coughs,
And shudders
And dies,
You’ll get lost in the dark again,
Turned around,
Heading away from the new lights ahead.
Or maybe,
You prefer the shadows,
Carry a bat,
Or a golf club,
Or whatever blunt weapon
Catches your fancy,
And you smash each light
You pass,
Cutting the feet of all those
Behind.

Maybe,
There isn't a light at the end of the tunnel,
Just an endless string of floodlights,
Bright,
Shattered,
And lost.

Why is it
That just as my skin begins
To feel the coddling warmth
Of the emerging spring sunshine
That I long for rain?

The way she sat
Perfectly poised
Against the breeze
Of the world
And the tears of it
Melted my mind
And  made the hairs stand up
All over my arms.

While she may not be perfect,
She glows in all her attempts.

I used to be afraid
Of eyes deep and fierce,
    Frightened that if I
    Looked too close,
They'd melt my skin
    And pierce my throat,

But a gaze from you,
    Sturdy and built
    Upon a lip biting
         Tension practically manifested
    In the cool winter air
         Between our noses I
    Wish were touching,

A glance like that
    From eyes like yours
Begs me to yearn
    Your permission to
    Lose myself in them.

The war in my head
Rages, like: "De-Dun, De-Dun",
And I'm not winning