Come all ye married, all seasoned and old.
Come all you fearless, you young and too bold.
Come all your summers and winters and falls.
Come all who've no clue and those who know all.

Come along now, let's go.
Yes, you come too.
We've got assignments, and so much to do.

Come all you old haunts and come all you new.
Come all you Christians and heathens and Jews.
Come all your falsehoods and half-lies and truths.

Everyone's waiting, there's space for you.
Scrape up your courage and lather in glue.
Roll around the table, we'll eat what sticks.

Come all you ******* and come all you *****.
Kick off your trappings and get down with this.
Cinnamon scented candles and ****.
Nutmeg caramel melted down to the wick.

A year's worth of longing come to an end.

Can't have a party without ******' ****.

This one is better.
That one is worse.
Constantly measured.
What are they worth?

Gauging the other;
bonds can be severed, tooled and re-worked.

Stats can be padded, embellished and torqued.

Doomed from the start,
or gifted at birth?

Crimes can be trifled, hidden, obscured.

Nothing is certain, but one thing is sure:
Romance is dead, and couples are cursed.

Misspoken broken half-truths and lies;
Classic.
The dump button glows nearby;
ten second delay.
Let 'er rip and kiss it goodbye.

The lifetime spent before it writhing in sheets,
hastily erected schemata with guts knotted up;
misjudged calculations and justifications -
not so easily dumped.

Tripped over admissions and half-felt surprise;
Classic.
The eject button lights up nearby,
hovered over with shaky digits.
Hit it quick and let 'er rip.
No time for goodbyes.

Count the secrets that you keep.
Fingers crossed the roof won't leak.
Took a chance and caught a peak.
Count your blessings and be careful what you seek.
Test the waters.
Talk is cheap.

Stolen dance with mistaken feet.
A lit up button to admit defeat.
Hesitate until it's too late to get away.
Classic.

It's like being writ into some melodramatic hit show,
playing the ******* who just can't commit no matter how far she's willing to go.

Check the thirst pic. I'm only here to give ****.

The epitome of undesirable megalomaniacal hit-it-and-quit-it,
I'm-only-in-it-for-the-**** type ****.

Not interested in a relationship.

When you say things like that, it has no effect.
I can't feel any of that.

We can wine and dine first, if you're a traditionalist.

Just setting the stage for the main event. Give it 'til she gets it so she can tell all her friends: best I've ever had. **** like your poor with demons on your back. After curtain call, skip the bow and exit stage-left.

What bae wants, bae gets.

Tbh, idk what do we call each other.

Her body is covered in marks, symbols, phrases in different languages. I trace the coils of the snake on the back of her neck as she sits between my legs in the bath tub.

Style above everything else, arced over a faced half-sun dawning above her *** crack.

"You're into fashion," I said, as I re-position my shaft from P to R to feel some friction below the horizon.
She wiggles her bottom after the gear shift.

"Yes, very much."

You can call me whatever you want.
If I told you I ****** a girl last night, would your feelings be hurt?

Did you?? Be honest.

Side by side in bed, breathing heavy, sweaty, spent:
"Nihongo ga benkyo . . . I want to learn more Japanese so I can talk to Japanese girls. Nihon josei . . . is it josei?"

"Un, Nippon josei. Japanese women."

"Nippon josei ga kirei desu . . . Japanese women are the most beautiful in the world."

She said something I didn't understand, then,
"like dolls?"

I shouldn't have said anything . . . I just don't want you to get too attached or to think that I'm your boyfriend.

Ok.

Omoshiroi
is what I said, after too many seconds of staring,
offered up as a solution to what seemed to be causing such confusion.
This was before I'd learned the word sukebe, which, in hindsight, would have served better.

Nonetheless, she agreed. Omoshiroi, hontoni.
Surely, an interesting turn of events, indeed.

Youthful, virile energy, at this time of day, in this kind of place,
with one such as she, with such a wizened face.

Omoshiroi, she said, after I came;
partly in relief, partly in disbelief.
Iku, iku, iku, she'd said, while we were in bed,
and I still wonder if
it was just flattery.

omoshiroi,
she said, once again, as the elevator took us down,
her cheeks turning red.
hontoni, I agreed,
before walking out into daylight
pondering the limits of vocabulary.

Broke the surface with the provided bucket.
His face followed shortly after.
Proud as a father
of the fortune contained therein.

Gold-plated doubloons and dyed resin jewels
planted there by employees that very morning.

Side by side,
rows and ranks, cow hide, leather flanks.
Hard to the bone.
Tough to penetrate.

Don't go thinking any connection is a thing.
Don't go justifying would-be mistakes.
People are people,
even when reduced to a number.
(Especially when reduced to a number.)

What are the odds of this sum equaling one?
Nevermind.
There is a mission,
and work to be done.

Blue marble,
lifeless eye.
Rotten cherry scented earth.

Nuisances poking up,
being pulled out -
composted for new dirt.

Don't you go getting sedimental on me.
Grains of insignificance ingratiating themselves in want of new life.

Rotten blueberry orb.
Fermented fungal stink.
A world in full decay.
Eyes that cannot blink.

It's an odd feeling,
being proud of someone for completely removing you from their life.

Play a song they know,
behind smiling faces, having a great time.
Making memories.
Having a night that will result in a story.

By the time you realize you're in a bad situation,
it's already too late. The damage is already done.

Smiling, laughing in the sun. Passing around drinks, with the logo facing out.

Party favors you make believe aren't the whole reason for your being there, for the gathering in the first place.
Partaking until you can't feel your feelings, can't hear your thoughts, can't feel your face.

By the time you find out just how ******* you are, there's already no escape.

With too much fun, comes the twisted fun-house mirror, reflecting something back that you refuse to identify with. ****, rusted and stained.

Horrified. Alone. Afraid.

There are people suffering in the world,
(You could call me a *******,)
but there are people protesting it.
(I'd totally be into it.)
With socio-political religious divides,
(I'm into negging.)
driving confirmation bias.
(Choke me, beat me, bruise me, please.)
Everybody is just people,
(I like that you don't like me.)
and everybody deserves to live.
(Tell me again how worthless I am.)
Let's stop weaponizing our hatred,
(I just came when you hit me.)
and embrace each other as brethren.
(Death excites me.)

Yep, they're drinking again.
Hardly a surprise.
If I were a gambling man, I'd have placed the odds at 1:9.
I bet they'd pay no mind if one or two of their Budweisers went missing tonight.

Red and white can tightly gripped in each hand. Slide a couple up from the back on the off-chance they notice.

Awkwardly climb into the bed of my dad's F-250 (this was back before it got stolen.) Drink the first one as quickly as I can while the second one is losing its cool. (They taste even worse when they're warm.)

Nose running two-thirds of the way through. Cold-ish beer on a hot Florida night.  Gassing myself up for another hike. (Can you still call it a hike when you live in a place with no elevation?)

I put my wired headphones on (was it still CDs back then?) No, wait. I had an Ipod. First gen. Bought second-hand. Thing was a brick. Twice as thick as a present-day cell phone is.

Arrogant Sons of *******; that was my go-to. Them, and Radiohead. Sometimes, I'd even belt out the lyrics. (Some half-drunk kid stumbling through the neighborhood, singing like an idiot.)

But the music was only half of it. The rest was - well, aside from putting actual physical distance between me and the place that I lived - to work on my stride. An attempt at swagger. Finding some kind of rhythm to carry over into the next day.

So that I may face my peers without shying away. Without staring at the ground. So that I could stare back at those mysterious, vapid, judging eyes while screaming internally: You Don't Know What It's Like!

In the beginning, there was a sense of adventure. Strolling down unknown roads, trying out the names of novel streets on my tongue (they were all named after Mexican cities: Guaymas, Toluca, Mexicali.) Several dozen times later, it was less of an adventure and more of a pastime. Still, I wouldn't call it asinine. I had my favorites, predicated on how certain trees would break the glow of the streetlight, peculiar lawn or car hood ornaments, the scent of jasmine and oranges.

Now, two decades later, I'm still indulging in this old habit. Only, half the world away from where it started. The landscape, the houses, down to the sounds of the birds and insects, even the characters that make up the street names, all so strange. These walks feel like an adventure again.

But the reason behind them, perhaps, still very much the same.

Barely a decade under the belt,
and burying a barely felt sense of self under layers of bedding.
Sweating, short on oxygen, over-heating: it should have been the opposite of comforting.
What was it all about?
An attempt at returning to the womb
or trying to shut everything else out.

The funny thing about finally finding what you've always wanted is seeing how long it takes for you to lose it.

I'll deflate myself to gas you up,
because my end state is devastation,
but you could be happy/healthy/etc.

The pilot's off the wagon and on the sauce,
leading his pod to rot on the rocks.

She said I'll see you later and I said why not.
Steak dinner, body massage, whatever gets you off.

Short of breath and out of my depth.
Low on cash and I don't want what's next.

Wrung out, tapped dry, limped ****, heavy sigh.
Asking Gungan questions like, "are we gonna die?"

The minutes of the hour, day, week, year, decade, lifetime . . .  
grains of sand slipping too quickly through a hand trying desperately to hold on.

For what purpose?
To fling into the eyes of our enemy?
To add to a castle that will wash away in the tides?
To feel like we've got some semblance of a grip on this intangible thing called life?

We're all just holding on to a fistful of nothing,
and we're holding on too tight.

There's always someone waiting in the corner
with only shadows as company.
A blind spot in our vision.
Breath we convince ourselves to be wind.

Nebulous shapes in the darkness,
eyes playing tricks again.

We close them and rub to erase any trace of a glimpse,
only to look again and be enamored by figures moving in light.
We gawk wide-eyed, panting, grasping out as far as we might.

He wears a cloak of invisible voices,
wove from the frequency of silent screams.
Ruler of the space between waking and dreams;
He is the Yellow King.

Fear not what you can't remember,
though His kingdom is obscene:
A place of waste and decadence
trapped beneath perception,
sewn with hidden seams.  

He takes his toll,
unbeknownst,
at the liminal space between asleep and awake;
collecting your soul,
bit by bit,
inch by inch,
until there's nothing left to take.

His words are pretty.
His words contain worlds of swirling color and sound that swell up to drown out doubt and uncertainty in those who hear them;
sweet to the point of toothache.

His words are performance.
His tongue —a contortionist—
bending unnatural ways to produce sounds that soothe and calm and placate.

But don't be deceived by such pretty things,
for his words are poison.

The craziest thing about a bridge is how it connects two things that have no business being connected.

It's interesting, the informational and cultural exchanges that result from such a bridging.

("Interesting" is an antisemantical word: void of meaning. Just filler, really. It doesn't mean anything.)

A bridge is a tool of conquest: allowing one land access to another, so that it may be subjugated.

A platform for seemingly well-meaning goats to impale and destroy any gatekeeping trolls.

I read amateur poetry,
while drinking cheap port
and listening to Chopin
(accidentally; Youtube algorithm took a strange turn,)
but still, I fancy myself classy.

Some schlub in sweatpants on a Friday night, drinking alone,
critiquing a long dead artform with wild scrutiny,
thinking I know better just because I've been here a thousand times before.

Just know, if I say anything that offends you,
that this is where I'm coming from.
And I hope that will incentivize you to let it go ignored.

The dreamers still dream while their dreams are still there.
All bold and naive - few nightmares to interfere - with a dream that compels and compulses, persuades and convulses the veins of a dreamer to never slow down; to never slacken the pace.
Running after their dreams as if in a race.

The dreamers still dream while their dreams are still there.
All young and naive and bold enough to dare
to chase after their dreams at a breakneck pace
through insult and injury and shame and disgrace.

The dream shines on like a finish line in the mind of a dreamer.
Transforming the intangible into solid, graspable things.
Transforming fear and doubt into fuel to propel themselves towards achieving something thought impossible by all the non-dreamers, the non-believers, the bad teachers and ex-dreamers who've crossed their fingers in hope that the dreamer will fail.

Because why should they succeed when they've already bailed?
They gave up on that dream. It's impossible, you see.
That ship has sailed.

But the dreamer knows better.

Through sheer persistence and force of will,
the dreamer dreams still,
and finds a way to **** the naysayers' doubts and come out on top.
Staying true to themselves and belief in that grand thought:
that they can make their dreams a reality.

And when they do, the doubters will drop their jaws,
stand up and applause,
shed tears at the fact that their long abandoned dreams are now staring back at them,
intact.

And they'll realize that what they saw before as foolishness and naivete,
was really just the courage they lacked.

Even some of the darkest things can shine differently in the rose-tinted hue of the rearview mirror.

Especially when it reflects the roads that aren't even there to drive down anymore.

I've sworn before, that I'll never venture those paths again.
But sometimes I find myself wandering aimlessly and then,
lo and behold,
here I am,
parked in front of that same old oak and thinking about only God knows when.

Random tidbits of ragged laundry hung out to dry a century ago.
And forgotten about,
until just now.

But it's hard not to say, that I miss the way those old threads clung to my body. The sway they held over me when I wore them. Way back then, when I slid through them everyday.

Everyday, just spent sliding away.

And now I've come back.

Twisted guts while trying to pretend to be someone that I'm not.
Excusing myself after a Freudian flub.
Retreating to the bathroom to throw my guts up.
Hoping no one will notice me lying in the tub.

Draw the curtains and close myself off.
I'm not the person I wanted you to believe I was.
Now I can't leave because I've overcommitted to the cause.

Sleep in porcelain and dream of what I've lost.

Future hermit reconciling his (albeit short-term) commitment to a career in mass communication.

Every obligatory conversation, every concern to extend the web of networking, every not-so-subtly coerced public interaction feels like an embedded knife being slowly extracted.

How exactly did I allow myself to be contracted into something so antithetical to so many aspects of my own personality?

What in the hell could have possibly possessed me to do such a foolish thing?

Foolish me.

I knew what I was doing, though whether or not it was out of some well-meaning ambition to round out weaker abilities or just one giant masochistic way of up-ending everything in a giant '*******' to how I'd been living remains a mystery.

Forcing myself to live a life outside of my comfort zone, I find it exhaustingly, unendingly -and altogether understandably-uncomfortable.

Am I learning something?

Undoubtedly, but I'm not necessarily thrilled about the insights that've been endowed on me.

Oh you Salingers. Oh you Brandos. You Plaths, DFW's and Garbos. You Fischers, Goulds and Hughes.

You lonely and abused. You gray, black and blues.

You at least left legacies before retreating into solitude.

When you get into the mindset of
"I'm going to write some poetry tonight,"
you start thinking in lines,
and,
if you're corny like me,
you end them all in rhymes.

But then, while you're doing some innocuous thing,
like peeing,
you find yourself thinking of something
that you think might sound pretty great.

Then you sit down to type it out,
but they've all gone away.

Like a flock of birds,
as soon as you sprint to catch one,
they all dissipate.

You're left there empty-handed,
wondering how you're no longer comprehending
some amazing string of thoughts that had flown through your head just moments ago,
now so far beyond your understanding.

On paper, it seems,
like little more than a non-event.

Sure, I mean, there have been a fair share of extenuating circumstances in the interim. Novel experiences. In-office romances. A plethora of deserved and undeserved advances. Premature deaths.

Hell, maybe I've got it backwards. On paper, it seems much more exciting than it's been.

Truth is, when it's happening in the moment, it just feels like drowning. It's hard to distinguish between which wave is which when each one is just contributing to a collective denial of your next breath.

But I'm breathing now.

It's almost overwhelming.
My lungs are telling me to keep it this way.

But my mind is telling me different. It's saying,
"This is too much. Shut it down."

I used to spend so much of my time
thinking of clever things to say (and in rhyme)
So that I could await the day when I'd find
someone who understands my kind.

They'd come along and say,
"You're fine,
I totally get it - we're of the same mind."

We'd hold hands and frolic in the sunshine,
but I'm exaggerating - a habit of mine.

Certainly that's all a bit idealized,
but when I think about it,
I begin to realize
that this has already happened.
In fact, several times.

And it makes me happy,
and reminds me, besides,
that I have wonderful friends
and we'll be alright.

I could tell you about my life, but that would ruin the mystique.
Poets seem to pride themselves on being dark and deep.

See beneath the surface,
and the first thing you would think:

Here's the epitome of failed friendship -
definitely one I shouldn't keep.

They're pushing you to do it-
To finish what you started.
They're giving suggestions and making edits.
Performing audits.
They're saying,
"Maybe if you just changed the wording here, the theme there, the meaning throughout, added more heart to it."

It's clear, and to be honest,
They care about it more than you ever did.

There's a difference between being with someone, and loving someone.

There's a difference between having a place to sleep at night, and having a home.

There's a difference between being lonely,
and being alone.

In and out of it all night.
It's over before it begins.
Supposedly, there's someone up there right now
keeping track of all our sins.

Let's give them something to stack the pages with.

So when it's read back to us at the end,
we can convince ourselves
it was a hell of a life we'd lived.

A truth was told.
The world wasn't ready for it.

A truth was folded and filed and tucked away for a later day when it'd be needed.

An urn was molded.
It was turned and kneaded and glazed
and filled with the burned ashes of a truth the world never needed.

A tour was organized.
A collection of scholars in things eclectic and obscure
observed things they'd never been privy to before.

They took notes and wrote essays for graduate programs they'd never be accepted to.

They wrote about deep-seated issues that drew connections from me to you.

But they never got published.

Like trying to find where you'd put all your ****
days after cleaning up the place
while you were drunk,
I've been attempting to relocate
the various pieces of my forgotten heart.

I warned her at the start.

"Let's take it slow,
because I don't even know
if I can still do this,
after being alone for so long."

Lately, I've been stressed.
Hard-pressed to convey how I feel,
because all I feel is immense pressure to suddenly perform this boyfriend role.

Even though,
for the first time in what feels like forever,
I'm the one in control.
The scales are finally tipped in my favor.

But I take no solace in the fact
that the shoe is on the other foot,
because the longer this goes on,
the harder it is to ignore,
that when it comes to this kind of thing,
someone always gets hurt.

When I lived alone,
my biggest battle was leaving home
to do the things I had to do in order to feel some sense that my life was my own.

Talking to you
is just some necessary evil that I feel obliged to do
in order to feel like I'm part of the world.

Because the alternative is
a certain kind of insanity that I've
spent the last decade trying not to associate with.

To put it simply,
I don't want to end up like my parents.

And I do what I have to do in order to convince myself
that loneliness is not my fate.

I know a man who says the phrase,
"Just one more,"
every time he orders another drink.
And he always gives me a smoke, if I think to ask.

I have a friend who I once called a coward.
I can't remember the context,
but it seemed warranted at the time,
and it must have stung him deep.
Because now every chance he gets, he throws the insult back at me.

Maybe I should've apologized.

(I've recently admitted to him that I can be a difficult person to be friends with at times.)

I know a woman
who seems to think I'm the greatest thing on two legs,
and I keep finding excuses to keep her away.

I don't really know what I'm trying to say,
but lately I've been feeling crushed beneath some immense, vague weight.

So here I am.
Reminiscing again.
Drink in hand.
Writing.

Attempting to understand.

It should come as no surprise.
Everyone who lives, one day dies.
Whether it's by freak accident,
Or an elongated courtship with
the agents of death.
Why then,
do we always feel so cheated when
we take our last breath?

Far up
Far out
Dive in
Jump out
Win-win
No doubt

I can taste the wind in my mouth

I'm this
You're that
He what?
That's wack
I'm good
They're bad

Tell me I'm the best you've had

Who's vain?
Not I
You'll jump
I'll dive
They're dead
we're alive

And we'll do it again sometime

It's one thing to not look a gift horse in the mouth,
but it's another thing entirely
to admire the horseshoe as it knocks your teeth out.

It's as if everything that happens only matters if
you can somehow manage to incorporate it into this
Over-arching narrative
that's meant to be your life.

So that when, and if,
you're hard-pressed to explain it to someone,
you have these convenient bullet points to hit.

"So then that happened, and it was traumatic, so then I did this to deal with it,"

And the scary part is
when you stop caring to weave it all in together, when apathy sets in,
and the actions and events just stay random nonsense.

Just chaos.

And I know there are those who don't struggle with this.
Where everything that happens to them automatically gets justified into this narrative of who they are, and what this is, and they're surrounded by people to explain it all with.

But I am not one of those.

And I can only ever make sense of it after the fact.
Put it into context,
after time has passed.

And I can only ever do it alone.

Yes, now that - this - is a mood.

You know, I just realized I've never asked you about you.

How do you spend your days?
What do you do?
What goes through your head when you hear something like this?
Does it put you in a similar mood?
Because I can't help but wonder if we'd get along well,
mellowing out to the same tunes.

Then I remember why I never ask.
Because these moments mean so much.
It's too much to lose.

He tears petals off flowers with a limp wrist,
hoping one day he'll hope for something more than just another tryst.
But his hope, like his desire, is lethargic.

He wastes no pennies on a wish.

He's convinced a seed was sown long ago,
when he let a stray emotion get the better of him.
But he's never let the water touch the soil since,
for fear of what would grow.

He resists having to tend a garden born from a whim.

Just a snake wearing a farmer's skin.
Too distracted by his own hiss to hear the promise of kisses.
He pinches his pennies with off-green thumbs held close to his chest,
and he wastes none on wishes.

Meet me in the place where time and space end;
Where aether dreams split at the seams.
That's where I live.
That's where I'll be.

When this scene is rended by inevitability, and everything that could be, is, and ever has been bleeds together in a tapestry of shreds.
That's where I've been.
That's where I live.

I hope to see you at the end of it all.
We could hold hands, and stand tall.
Our shadows elongated and melted in Styx.

The king and queen of oblivion;
Swirling in flux, unfixed.
That's where I am.
That's what I've been living in.

We'll rule over all of this nothing when you get here.
Over all of this emptiness that weighs infinite tons.

I'll meet you in the depths of this pit,
just as soon as you come.

At the end of the day,
it's not my own end that I contemplate.

Those thoughts are so yesterday.

My situation has changed. The world has changed. People are changing. My outlook can change too.

At the end of the day,
I think about tomorrow,
and how I can begin something new.

Some people are beautifully abstract movies:
enlightened visions of an idea come to life through cryptic scripting and inspired cinematography.
Slow burns full of brilliant dialogue that leave you thinking about them long after you've seen their open endings.
The kind that only the intelligentsia could ever truly appreciate, with a poor audience score but universally loved by critics.
The kind of movie with a cult following that comes up in late night conversations amongst hipsters sharing their opinions on the pieces of art that have made the biggest, longest lasting impacts on them.
The kind that takes hours of scrutiny and analyzation just to feel like you've arrived at some vague sense of what it all means.

And then there are people like me,
who are less like grand artistic visions of profound cinematography,
and more like reality tv.

The kind of thing a working suburban mother tunes into after a double at the local diner/supermarket/pharmacy counter.

The kind of non-committal, light-hearted viewing that never comes close to demanding your full attention. Just a myriad of characters brought together with a loose premise and slightly coerced tension.

The kind of thing you could have a conversation over, and walk away from and come back to, and still know what's going on, because it's just all so obvious - it never requires much thought.

The kind of show where the actors have every viewer convinced that they're something that they're not.

Love is a fiction being written in the moment and read in the past,
and it only lasts for as long as both parties involved believe it to be true.

Sand sticks to me and you, like little pieces of memories we can't be certain of ever being true.

Like something half-remembered from a dream.
The way your body glows in the sunlight reminds me of a dream I once had of you.
The way our bodies press against each other while the waves wash away the fragments of what we've tried to forget for so long,
it's just like a scene from a dream I haven't dreamt of in so long.

Back on the shore, we're drinking beer and rehashing the past.
Reliving things we swore we'd never think about anymore.
The kinds of things that never last but show up unexpectedly at our door,
right around midnight.

One last moor before this ship sails for foreign harbors.
One last meal before we shed our shells.
One last dance with the ghosts of our former selves before we drown forever beneath the swell of the ocean.

The distant waves beat down on the beach like the dreaded mundanity of tomorrow's realities.

The moon's glow slowly steals the spaces where the sun once shone down.

The persistent ocean eats away at the land until it's all gone.

Maybe it was never even there at all.