This isn't going to end well,
but it's already over.
Just another thing to dread
if and when I'm ever sober again.

But then and when I fell again,
I know I should have said something,
but I didn't.
I stayed silent instead.

Whether you're in her way, or she's in yours,
she'll be sure to apologize first.

"Oh, so sorry!
(I'm just so sorry to exist.)
No really, you go first.
Of course, I insist."

There's something so depressing in it.
Couldn't you just quit?

"Don't be. It's fine.
No, really. It's okay."

*I just wish you'd find something less depressing to say.

Because we're still alive.
Because we still write even though we've lost our minds.
Because we still breath, still struggle, and try.

All the while,
we smile the same way at both virtue and crime.
(Because we're wired to think in rhyme.)
Because we've got such short lives to live,
and need creative ways to bide our time.

Because we're insane,
but don't want to die in vain.
Because we want (just once) for someone to understand what we're saying.

We each sculpt custom-made trophies for the weekly readings,
then award them to the ones we admire most openly.
Because we keep no secrets.
We're against privacy.
We're against conformity, contentment, and sleep
(because we always lose count of all those sheep).
Because we've got all this fur and such jagged teeth.

Because we're interested in exploring what's underneath.
Why do you think the way that you think?
I think it's because of this,
don't you disagree?
Ha, that's a laugh.
Now let's have a drink.

Because we celebrate victories and failures the same.
Because we elevate sorrow along with anger and pain.
There's something to be said of all these fireworks in our brain,
so let's give it a good effort in trying to explain.

You can join too, if you'd like.
It's really quite easy.
You've just got to write,
and every now and then,
recite.

While everyone else is leaving,
I remain seated.
This song keeps me in my car for far too long.
It begs to be repeated.
I'm listening.
I'm listening.
Aside from this music,
**** everything.

I am stretched out
in an effort to stretch out a moment.
To stretch out a feeling;
to elongate a sensation of lingering longing.

You can be the thief stealing the blood pumped between heart beats.
You can be the queen of unfulfilled destinies.
The one to slay the tyrant king and bring peace.
You can be the promise of everything.

I feel ya strutter.
(Don't you dare stutter on my name.)
I feel your presence in sporadic bursts of **** near unbearable pain.
(I can take it. (I can't take it.))
Neural connector fireworks igniting in my brain.

Sear my flesh.
You're the worst and the best.
Watch how the blood gushes right out of my chest,
and get wet.

I can take the pressure.
I am a pressure ******.
I don't participate in anticipating the release.
I get off on the anxiety.

(Don't ever let me go.)

Let the pressure build and grow forever upwards,
like an asymptote.
Eternally rising down and falling up;
our figures are irrational.

I can feel your digits all over me,
but this plane has no ejector's seat.
I've been flying this thing manually,
and now it's crashing into you.

There are bones in this bed;
abandoned teeth and torn out ribs.
If one were to sleep in it,
they'd dream of falling into a bottomless pit.
An endless abyss.
A pool of tortured spirits who have long since been devoured by it.
They'd have nightmares of bared fangs
and bled veins
to wake up drenched in sweat -
swept up by a river of tears;
to live the rest of their lives suffocated by inexplicable fears.

Her bed is the whale.

Divine light.
Holy grace.
Such a simple thing;
one moving face.

But a blind man sees,
a drowned kid breathes,
a heathen drops down on his knees -
an atheist believes.

A deaf mute sings.
A cold soul bleeds.

And in the middle of a dried out desert,
hope springs.

"What you need is a true friend.
A girlfriend/boyfriend.
Someone to play house with and make pretend.
2.5 kids and a white picket fence.
A dog and/or cat - you can't forget about that."
(I see a red door and I want it painted black.)
"What you need is a woman,
or maybe a man."
I took the **** prescription
and threw it into the trash can.

Beat the walls to fill his cup.
A crumbling mass of gypsum clumps.
Drank it up then sighed at the beauty outside.
The hole he had made was to thank for the view.

The guerrilla poet is of a peculiar sort;
he engages in impromptu recitals of his work just for sport.
Whether he's waiting at a bus stop or standing in line,
he'll completely out of nowhere start spouting out rhymes.
His spontaneous public monologues tend to garner attention,
as they can often be quite scathing and cause much contention,
but nine times out of ten, he'll get to the end
without so much as a glance from the strangers standing by.
They either ignore him completely,
or pretend not to mind,
or dismiss him immediately
as just another crazy guy.

Golf is a funny sport.
I mean, you've got this assortment of sticks
and this tiny little ball
whose goal is a small hole hundreds of yards away,
and in between the two are a few obstacles.
In fact, there's a whole treacherous landscape.

But I'm obsessed with the swing.
Mainly, the mental process involved with bringing it down.
Fear, doubt, confidence -
it all plays a part in it,
and a hope that you've swung well when it finally hits.
(Bear in mind, of course, that this all happens in less than a second,)
but the reward or disaster comes immediately after.
By that, I mean, during the upswing.
That's when the golfer sees the trajectory of the ball as a result of all of their prior feelings.

I've never even played golf, really.
I just like it as a simile.
By that, I mean,
how it applies metaphorically.
There's a lot of depth there,
especially with the upswing.

I may not be a golfer,
but I play darts and throw beans on occasion,
and the upswing holds the same kind of persuasion in all these games of accuracy.
You see, there's this feeling that comes soon after the release;
almost like a premonition.
As if knowing beforehand that the thing is or isn't going to land where we want it to.

And that's all I mean by the upswing -
that I've got a good feeling 'bout you.

Perfect is boring.

A feeling can be fleeting,
but what about the source of a thing?
From just one seed,
roots can grow deep.
Though the leaves of a tree may change,
and some branches might break or fall off,
there is one part that always remains,
grows stronger;
the heart.

When I was very young,
my biggest fear was of being possessed by a demon.
Once I realized that demons are just a superstitious figment of a self-loathing imagination,
my biggest fear became of going crazy.
Once I realized that "crazy" was just a political term used to categorize those who live outside the social norm,
my biggest fear then became of dying alone.
When I realized that I'd always carry the memory of everyone who had ever made an impact on me,
I found out that life is profoundly beautiful,
and I'm no longer afraid to die.

Is that they believe everything that their preachers say,
and nothing that anyone else does.
(Trust issues much?)
It's called brainwashing.
(You see what you do,
because it's what he wants you to.)
As if one silly antiquated book could hold all the answers.
As if one person's interpretation of it could be more valid than another's.

There is more than one mind.
There is more than one book.
There's more than one set of eyes,
so take another look.

Where is this seemingly bottomless well that you draw strength from?
Has it always been there?
How did you find it?

Years ago, when I lived on the coast,
I made friends with this kid who was a salesman at Sears.
He once sold a coworker his ****.
He was very upset when he told me about it.
(That's the thing about regrets,
they're the type of thing one never forgets.)
We used to hit the bars,
but it never went very far.
He quickly lost interest in it when he learned I wasn't into chasing skirts.
One night we ended up on the beach in our best shoes and shirts,
and he told me how his father had drank himself to death.
It's the type of thing I'll never forget.

Guess what I did after your dry wedding.
(Get drunk.)
Guess what I did after I met your kids.
(Get drunk.)
Guess what I did after that thing happened that I didn't know how to deal with.
(I'd be more specific if I could actually remember it.)

I don't even care if they care.
Just give me a pair of eyes to stare at while I improvise lines.
A couple of ears to hear some sorry excuses for rhymes.
I'll recite them all for less than a dime.
I'm just hoping for another free Corona.
(Please hold the ******* lime.)

Wait, you mean I have to actually relate to these cretins?

You give me hope when I have none left.
You fill my lungs when they're out of breath.
You show me how beautiful it is to be alive,
despite the impending weight of death.

You give peace to my troubled soul.
A value that's worth more than gold.
You trip me out,
you fill me up,
you give me more than I could ever want.

You catch my thoughts when they're out of bounds.
Everything I've lost has suddenly been found.
You make me want to sing Amazing Grace,
but I'm struck dumb every time I see your face.

And in the silent spaces between,
I give thanks.
Thank you, beautiful.
Thank you for saving me.
Thank you for existing.
Thank you for everything.

Smooth it out then shoot it off.
Launch it like a cannonball.
Sue the summer.
Sink the surf.
Wave goodbye to the waves and sky.
Drown the sun in tides of fun.
Spring break never dies.

There goes dinner.
There goes lunch.
There goes breakfast,
and forget about brunch.

(My diet is absurd.
One can't survive on just words.)

Nevermind health.
Nevermind peace.
I forgot how to eat.
I'm just feeding off sleep.

I'm not afraid.
I'll do **** near anything I deem worth doing,
but I won't do that.

I'm not restrained.
I have no struggles with refraining from unleashing the feelings I'd rather not contain,
but I have none left for you.

I've already killed them all.
You're dead to me.

Getting lost between the pages.

When I was younger, I tried to freeze the world.

I just deleted forty lines.
I haven't snorted one in ages.
I tell them all I'm high on life.
Can't tell the difference between criminals and sages.
Not to stake a claim on anything.
Not to shake a leg or anything.
Not to say I'm not really here,
but just dreaming.
Somebody pinch me.

The creepy crawling tingling sensation of taking a bow to an audience of one.
Even subatomic particles change direction when they're under observation.
Human beings, on camera, pretending to be someone who they're not.
Caricatures of who they might be if their life's story were just a plot.
I'm trying to connect the dots.

Circles coinciding with one another like a venn diagram.
Taking different perspectives into consideration;
a visual representation of colliding world views
with some hope of a middle ground that we could all pass through.

Puppets with their strings all tangled up with each other.
I can't dance properly with your knee in my back.

He'd probably say,
"*******!"
Then follow it up with,
"Not in my father's house!"

You funny.
I can be funny too.
I've got a functioning funny bone,
just like you.
Watch me hit it on this thing.
Ouch!
Hey, wasn't that funny though?
Didn't you see?
Let me tell you a joke:
There once was this guy who set out to type a joke,
but halfway through it his funny bone broke!
Ouch.

This one time, I traded cigarettes for jokes with a few of the homeless folk who live in Orlando.
I was still in high school then, but I can still remember how they went!
Well, actually, I can only recall two of them.
They go like this:

"If you have fifty ***** and fifty politicians in the same room,
then what do you have?"

"Um, I don't know."

"A hundred people who don't know **** about ****!"

Hahahahahahaha

"What do you call a *** on roller blades?"

"Hmm, no idea."

"Rolaids!"

To think about the same things in a different way.
(To think is to play with meaning.)
And to be struck with a heaviness that makes me sink through the ground,
only to find that there's nothing but air underneath.
Gaps between layers of earth.
I can dig down to another one.
I can run on the surface of one ad infinitum.
Or I could float.
I can fly between two then push off with both legs from the bottom of one to burst through the top of another.
I can clench both fists full of dirt along the way to spread them spinning around me in the empty gap above.
I can watch it all bloom,
surrounded by beauty,
and feel filled up with love.

Eyes closed;
shuttered windows.

The first thing I can remember is that I was sitting at the table.
I couldn't sleep that night. It was very late.
Then I heard the sound - that deafening boom.
As if the skies themselves had been ripped apart.
I mean, I guess that's what actually happened,
more or less.

They stopped throwing their annual ***** nearly a decade before.
No one really knows why. A whole crowd was ready to climb those ladders that year, but they never came down.

Then a sound like thunder,
but louder than any thunder I'd ever heard before.
It shook the whole house. Then the earth started to shake.
It was from the rubble, of course.
Those massive stones falling to the ground.

Rumors began to spread.
Tales of romance, jealousy, scandal, adultery,
******.
All hearsay, of course,
if not entirely fabricated.
Truth is, nobody had any means of communication with the castle.
They stopped sending the pigeons when they stopped lowering the ladders.
The whole town was simply left to wonder what happened.    
A death in the family was the common consensus.
  
I remember being knocked off my chair from the impact of the first one.
It landed right out back; right there in the garden.
Then more came. Just a few at first,
but then the the sound quickly became constant.
A never ending barrage of thuds and quakes,
and in-between those,
the awful cracking sound of a building being smashed to pieces.
Screams could be heard after that.

The cause of the explosion remains a mystery,
just like everything else about cloud castle.
All investigations yielded nothing but wild theories,
and of course, there were no survivors.

I ran out of the house and into pure madness.
I've seen many a battle before, but none of them compared to what I saw that night.  
Death and destruction all over.
A house would get hit and burst into a thousand pieces;
splinters of wood and brick tearing into anyone unfortunate enough to be too close to it.
And the people -
they were running in all directions;
screaming, delirious.
I saw families huddled together trying to figure out where to go.
I saw many of my fellow townsfolk get crushed right before my eyes.
The whole gruesome scene lit up by the ghastly glow of that cloud on fire.  

Powder charges, atmospheric pressure anomalies, black magic -
even dragons. All have been proposed;
none can be proven.

I ran.
I could barely stay on my feet for the quakes,
but I ran nonetheless.
Through crashing stones and crowd -
through shrapnel blasts and the wails of death -
I ran.

When it was all over,
very little remained of the city
and countless were dead.
Those who lived through that night never came back to it.
Nothing was rebuilt.
That flying fortress had made that town,
and when it went down,
it took everything along with it.
It's nothing now but a graveyard of rubble;
haunted by the souls of corpses never buried.

I looked back only once.
I looked back at where the castle used to be.
I saw nothing but flames.
The smoke from it blacked out the whole sky above.
No moon or stars to be seen.
That's when I saw her;
a shimmer of white falling from the sky -
like a wingless angel.
It was a nightgown of sorts,
long and white. It flowed around her as she fell -
a cloud trying in vain to fly.
I thought I could catch her.
I wanted to catch her.
I turned back and ran toward where I thought she was going to land;
in a field behind a farmhouse that had already been smashed by a stone,
but I was too slow.
She hit the ground with a faint thud.
I was only several yards away.
When I got to her, hoping against all hope,
I saw that I was too late.
She was already gone,
but she had this look upon her face:
Serene.

I was sharing whispers with the dark,
and it told me dreams are charged with white light shining through the farce,
and if only everybody else could see;
then maybe everything would be illuminated.

I was having drinks with heathen's hearts.
They told me everything is what it seems but all is naught,
and if only I could glimpse the setting sun;
the moon would shine with forgiveness for every person ever wronged.
I forged alliance with the asteroids on our path.
They said, "everything is falling and that now is just a fact."
I found a seer with one eye.
She said said the whole world's going out of wack and that we're all gonna die.
I told her everyone has got a special sense;
we've gained our super powers through the loss of innocence and if only anyone would challenge us.
How quickly have we learned to turn our substance into dust.

I held a fork with hopes of finding a fit meal,
but sustenance only ever comes to those who proper learn how to steal.
I swear I've had my fill.
The world is nothing but a sharpened knife
and I've no blood left to spill.

Sure as ****, we'll deal with it.
It's only as bad as its ever been.
Filled to the brim -
we'll take sips to keep it from overflowing.
Whatchu know about it?
Sunk in soiled circumstances.
Interconnected systems perpetuating lifestyle choices
boiled down into easily digested commercial advertisements.
Yea, I've been craving for that thing for reasons I can't explain.
Subconscious whims leading me to succumb to it.

Sure as sin,
we're all doomed to fail before we begin.
The only saints left are singing long forgotten hymns on forsaken street corners.
I could give two *****.

Add them up.
Divide by the average number of birthday wishes that could never quell the flames.
We're all forsaken.
We've only ourselves to blame.

Started but unfinished.
Built up then diminished.
Transfixed by astral bodies
on their way to undetermined destinations.
Dilated. Validated. Consecrated and interred.
Discovered cavern never entered.
Nothing and always all at once.
Everything is everything.
Still dreaming after being woken up.
Anything as everything.
A beginning and an end.
The journey taken in-between;
that's the key:
Existing.

I'll black out the windows if you pull down my drawers.
Slip on a ****** and lock all the doors.
I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
I'm ready to go,
what are you waiting for?

I'll debase myself if you'll meet me in hell.
Swallow us whole -
the seed and the shell.
The holy unknown along with the rest.

I'll fill you up if you're feeling empty.
Say hello to your hallow.
I'll play your notes on my frequency;
caress the ******* underneath feigned sympathy.

"You complete me."
These and other clichés.
I'll fold you into countless shapes
that contour to fit my insecurities.

Slide through another phase of identity.
Subconscious characters carrying out chores of clarity.
What could be simpler than the contours of your body?
I rest my case.

Amber rays shine on a hand that weighs the pros and cons
of an ace of spades against a flush of hearts.
Trade one in to get it started.
A three of clubs leaves me brokenhearted.
Deuces wild;
meanwhile, I'm delaying tricks that will leave them convinced
that I've still got their number.
Stacked as such,
drawn into a straight pulled right out of my sleeve.
Your queens over kings ain't got **** on me.
Ante up.
I'll put you all in.
I only ever play for keeps,
and I always win.

My older sister grieves when I tell her about my favorite movies,
because she realizes, in every case, that I relate to the protagonist.
(They're almost always tragedies.)

Life can be so rich.
Dig enough holes,
and you'll find they're all connected.
Dig deep enough -
past all the **** -
and you just might hit a mineral vein.

A mother and son standing at the edge of it.*

"What happened?"

"Some say it was a fire, but I don't believe it."

"Why not?"

"Well, a fire that big would've left marks, but there's no scorched earth or anything."

"Then what was it?"

"Poor engineering, maybe. Or some great storm came and knocked it down. Maybe a combination of the two? No one really knows for sure. What do you think?"

"I think . . . I think it just fell in on itself. They built it too big. It couldn't stay that big like that. It just broke apart one day."

"Hmm. Well you know what?
I think you might be right . . . "

He spends a third of his time with a cigarette lit;
Comforted by the slight weight of it between his fingertips.
His head is perpetually surrounded and scented with smoke.

Last night, I woke up to a coughing fit;
The hacking sound of thick sludge from deep within his lungs trying to find its way out.
He spits globs of phlegmy mucus.

Every now and then,
I'll catch him putting two empty fingers up to his lips,
as if it's automatic;
nevermind that he doesn't have one yet lit.

I think he's comforted by it;
The smoke that encircles him like a phantom embrace -
There is someone whom he can't forget.

Lung cancer took his wife three years ago;
He's determined to also die from it.

Everyone knows magic dolphins don't have dorsal fins -
it's a well documented fact.
The Bedouins who discovered super salmon have done extensive research on that.
Every mating season,
they swim up the sides of a tsunami
to rain roe upon unsuspecting salami salesmen.
It's a hard business to get into,
unless you're from Genoa.

That guy out there doing his own thing:
Yea, he's my hero.

Let your shining beacon lead me to this foreign shore;
the sands are unfamiliar, but I know I've been here before.
I can recall the curves of this roof as if they were the ceiling to the heights of my own dreams,
with the layout of rooms teasing the deepest parts of my memory.
I've this thing for remembering details -
shapes and scents in particular.
Struck dumb in the shower as a long since past scene takes hold of me;
picking blueberries in the sun.
Playing on the swing set that still yet stands,
as if some ancient monument in a half-forsaken land.
We've both grown a bit rusty.
The chains creak from the strain of my weight,
but nothing ever truly gets forgotten:
I have before and always will belong in this place.

Nine million maniacs scribbling nonsense on the wall
in a mad but noble attempt to make sense of it all.

I look forward to nostalgia twice as much as forgetting.

I've spent the majority of my life developing the body while ignoring the mind.
Wait, I mean it's the other way around.
I get confused sometimes.