The woods are wonderful dark and deep,
but really I should get some sleep.
The patterns in my head are gold and red,
but really I should go to bed.
What dreams may come aren't always kind,
but don't be afraid to close those eyes.

Life's a mess but nevermind.

You take life too seriously,
and it's really quite a shame,
because life's too serious when taken that way -
it's better to play it like a game.

You should get a tattoo.
Something whimsical and fun,
like the Keibler elf riding a dolphinicorn -
Man that would be so awesome!

You take yourself too seriously,
and I'm pretty sure you do it on porpoise.
Listen: just because you got a dumb tattoo
doesn't mean you're worthless.

That's where I found it, but it's not where it was,
so I'll pick it up and put it somewhere else just because.
This is what it looks like. This is how it walks:
like a quarter machine capsule on a pair of chopstick legs.
Cup it to your ear and you can hear the ocean lying.
Lie down on the sand and you can hear the mollusks dying.
A storm is just a bunch of sad clouds collectively crying.
This is the part where you float away.

I've never had the most solid sense of direction.
I've this bad habit of getting lost;
first in thought and then, well,
literally.

But I've written things this whole time,
and every line is an arrow so that I can find my way back.
Back to some kind of bliss.
A state of mind that I can no longer feel,
but I know that I miss.

But isn't there a part in that story where the bread crumbs have been eaten by birds?

I can't remember.

"I can't say," he said.
His whole body shaking.
"I can't. I uh. Oh, ****. Ah,"
while his teeth pulled out of their sockets.
His whole frame dissolving to pieces.
Eyes popping like squeezed grapes.

"Time," said some giant with his hand full of dust,
"is just slipping away," said his echo, as he clutched at what was lost.

"I'm sick of clichés," she said, after reading what he'd written.
"'I'm sorry,' he said, said he, before curling into a ball and weeping,"
which were the last words he ever said to her,
while hers to him were:
"I'm leaving."

If this train went off the rails just as I was saying, "I love you,"
and the clanging noise caused you to hear, "I'm so far above you," instead, would you then go on to die regretting every previously treasured moment of our lives that we'd collectively spent on the off-chance that I'd been a pretentious ***** the whole time?

If I went broke before you could cash the check that I wrote in order to fix your broken childhood home - the one that your parents still live in and stand to lose if this check doesn't clear - because of some completely unpredictable market fluctuation/bank identity theft error,
would you hold me accountable for it?

If you counted every syllable in every sentence that I spoke on your half-birthday and it didn't add up to your age divided by one-third of the time it takes for your ruling planet to circumnavigate the solar system, would you then find our relationship to be some kind of gross horror?

If I walked away right now, while you were in the middle of asking me some ridiculous out-of-context question with no consequence, would you think it's because of some kind of insecurity or cowardice?

*******.
Holy ******* ohmygod where the **** have you been my whole life?
Good gorgeous holy God.
Is this really happening?
Do you really exist?
Do you mean to say that you really actually genuinely exist?
This is incredible!

How have you been here this whole time and I've just had no idea?
This whole time!?
It hardly seems fair,
but I don't even care anymore;
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter because you're here now.

Turns out that life was only pretending to be cruel and unjust and ugly before.
Turns out that it was all just the the set-up to the biggest and greatest revelation that anyone in the history of the world has ever experienced.
Turns out that every disgrace, every bad choice, every ache and pain endured was all worthwhile;
For your face.
Your voice.
Your smile.

The perspective that paints things in a positive light
is the one that most often escapes me,
though I chase it through chasms and tunnels and towers and trees.
I swing through a perceived collective consciousness in a desperate attempt to grasp what's most relevant; missing nearly every branch.
Trying to convince myself that I'm not a solipsist.

If you were me, then I'd be you, and I'd choose to do the same things that I'm doing now, which I guess isn't all too surprising.
All things considered.

Twenty times two is twenty-two;
I've got all of five years on you.
Please paint me in a hue that pleases your palatte.
I hope you brought enough blue.

If I were here,
before I got here,
then I swear I arrived on accident.
I think I'll leave before you get me to believe that this is all just a concraxodent.

"It was bound to happen eventually,"
said the high-flying object
from the ground.
"Something so full of holes can't stay afloat forever,"
said the sunken boat
made of Swiss cheese.
"Save me! Save me,"
said the dead man.

To climb is to fall.
In time, the ladder bends.
The hand reaches too far and grabs
a fistful of nothing.

I'm having a devil of a time trying to define the stars around your eyes,
but hey, I'm not a cosmetologist.
I just thought maybelline we could dream about pretty things,
and make up lines that coincide with our collided fantasies.
With puffed up lips and fluffy language as safeguards against sudden incites,
tonight we'll finally smash our parts together if only to discover that we don't even like each other -
not even a little bit.

is that one day you might miss it.

Two cents anyone? I've got two cents here for sale.
I'll sell you two cents for one cent,
now have we got a deal?

If that's not enough, then you can have them for free.
They've just been burning a hole in my pocket, no but really.

Still you're not interested? Well you drive a hard bargain.
I'll pay you to take them, now that's what I'm offerin'.

Two bucks and two cents, that makes $2.02.
Just listen to me for a second,
hey now just won't you?

I miss being a kid
and strolling through rows of books in a quiet library -
scanning titled spines and waiting for some divine revelation;
a serendipitous instance of the sudden realization that
this is the one, I can feel it!

Slipping it out of its place on the shelf slowly,
as if it were a sacred and fragile thing.
Reading the dust jacket and thinking:
Yes! This is it!

Opening it slowly, (is it weird to say something about savoring its scent?) and reading a few scattered sentences, enthralled, before closing it quickly and clutching it close;
head scanning left to right to make sure the coast is clear.

*No one must know that I've found it.
They all thought I was nuts. They called me crazy,
but I knew it'd all work out if I continued to believe.
I've finally found the most magical book in the whole wide world;
the one that's been written
just.
for.
me.

Only instead of staying up all night talking on the phone,
I spend it writing to strangers.

We're here'd,
we're weird.
Get used to it . . .

My body is a home.
Our limbs are bent tree trunks writhing in a storm.

Your breath is wind I bend to swallow.
My eyes are black holes that pull you in.
Our tangled limbs are frozen forever on some forgotten event horizon.

He kicked the can before any of us had even been frozen,
but it was full of his in-law's dip spit,
and so in his mid-sprint he slipped on the tobacco slick and accidentally slid straight into Elizabeth, who felt sick from the sudden hit to her stomach, so then vomitted all over Kent's apologetically bent head.

Realize that there's no such thing,
then give up on resisting this nonexistent ideal of being,
then realize that by even fighting this invisible thing in the first place
that you were really just rehearsing for later-on confrontations where you'll end up either having to stand up for personality traits vaguely resembling nonconformity or joining some bandwagon whose riders are all non-admittingly terrified by traits in a person who they find to be just a bit more than vaguely disturbingly off-beat, or at the very least, too far off from their own safe and comfortable sense of normalcy to be considered worth hiring/keeping/promoting.

Do you know what I mean?

Cracked the only egg left in the basket.
You really shouldn't plan your whole strategy on something so fragile.
There's a question left unanswered but I'm afraid to ask it.
The yoke of old folks is their fear of change.
It's unfair to blame them for it;
it was ingrained at a young age.

I have no friends,
and all of the ones that I do have
don't like me very much.
Maybe it's because I go around telling all of my friends that I have no friends,
which is probably a **** move.

I had a dream that I was rollerblading
in quick sand,
on a treadmill,
down a never ending tunnel,

Head over heart into some distant fading darkness,
being pulled back into an almost familiar abyss.
You lost me at the outset,
but now I'm finding myself in this.

Your intent is to drown me, I know it.
I've told you far too much.
Placed every key inside your outstretched hands,
and now you're breaking all the locks.

Did I mean to let you in?
Is it too late to bar admission?
Is it even possible to get you out now that you've gotten in without permission?

You're not welcome in this place:
Intruder. Alien. Imposition.
But I'm so glad you're here right now;
please save me from this prison.

Parked the part of myself I'm not so hot about
too close to the part of you that gets fired up
by the proximity of an engine in heat.

Oh, what a suit;
what fine noble thread,
below blinding pearly whites
and such a nice hair of head.

"Lose a little now to gain twice as much later.
Don't be a dope," (schmuck, fool, sucker.)
That's what he said through sharpened teeth.
I should've known better than to believe a single thing.

A wolf invited himself inside and talked me into buying his sheepskin suit, but it turns out that he was a fox disguised as a wolf in sheep's clothing, and so I bought the wolf's skin too.

"A two-for-one deal,
whaddaya say?"


I can't believe I fell for a walking cliché.

I can't remember where or when or why, but I do remember thinking
"if only I could be like that,"
"if only I could have that kind of life,"
"if only I could behave and act in such a way that was a better reflection of my own deep down as-of-yet unfound ideal personality type,
as a better version of myself; the me I want to be but can't even imagine being:
then I'd be happy."

Come to realize that I have become that version, but just as I've changed, so has my own ideal version of what I could be (which is to say, that despite achieving vaguely recalled dreams, I'm still not happy.)

It's like running a race against yourself,
surrounded by wraiths of what you could-have/once-were/will-one-day-become running in the other lanes.
The trick is to close my/your/our eyes and meld them all together;
the key is to maintain this pace.

I cleaned my room today.
It started with the closet.
I tried everything on, and based on the fit, decided whether or not to toss it.
(I mean, donate.)
I filled two boxes.

Then I went in a clockwise motion from there, attacking and reorganizing everything I came across.
I took **** near everything out of my room so that I could mop it.
Then I put everything back in,
got drunk while watching Netflix in a very clean room,
and eventually wrote a ****** poem about it.

The moon does more than pull the tide,
it pulls on insides too.
It twists intestines into knots while causing monsoons on the other side of the world;
a swirling pool in the stomach of a girl.

I wonder how many books you've read on creativity.
Have they made nearly as much sense as your writing does to me?
(In that case, it's probably not very many.)
I often wonder what it is that makes one poet better than another at poetry.
Is it something in the ability to let go?
To feel free to type wildly regardless of judgement/ego/typos?

I doubt it.

Like a thing hanging from the branch of a tree that's really just a bunch of atrophied limbs,
standing oh-so-ever still in the middle of winter in July,
and adding just enough weight to break the twig;
now we're watching people die.

Just by hearing you think it,
but I swear I'm seeing a whole different story
hidden between the lips that you're telling your stories with.
It's not enough to spill the beans that've been circling your width.
Semi-solid liquid rulers are difficult things to measure thickness with,
but this cake's so bulmically thin that it's destined to make whoever eats it sick,
and I just lost my appetite anyway.

Can you help me find a remedy for this swollen heart?
She says it's just a side effect of all the alcohol.
"If you let me have my way, I swear I'd tear you apart."
She says I'm getting my aching organs mixed up,
and it's the liver that's in need of a detox.
****'s all out of context.
I told her to forget it.

"One of these mornings will be the loudest you'll hear,"
but my head's still ringing from the echo of ten years spent ignoring alarm clocks.
I can see the too-bright light at the end of the tunnel,
but I'm getting off at the next stop,
and I can keep hopping these cars ad infinitum.

"A long time ago, we used to be friends,"
but I've broken half-a-hundred promises since then,
and I'm in no condition to up and replant these seeds of doubt that my family tree dropped nearly three decades ago.

This ain't the song to end it on.
And these aren't the words either of us ever wanted to have to regret not saying,
but why can't you just say what you mean?

"We met one day in wet cement,"
and our swollen hearts have been slowly hardening ever since.

The bars and stars and cars and races.
The dates and states and quakes and phases.
The quirks and shakes and guilts that stack like spinning plates.
(Not everybody makes it.)

When they come crashing down, just look for a broom.
If you use your hands you'll get blood all over the floor,
(and we don't bleed over lost causes anymore.)

Make peace with the thing you fear most.
Make love to your Self and dance with the ghost.
Make amends with the villain and **** your heroes.

And in the morning, make toast.

The twisted carpet entangling toes.
The overgrown paths that lead to places no one ever goes.
The odds and ends of where-to-begin's and stammering out the sentence,
"Nobody knows."

I have a hand and somehow all five digits are still intact.
Clutching at thin attempts to make an impact.
Slipping through fingers.

Won big to lose bigger and now the whole thing's a forfeit.
The ones who were in the back are all moving to the forefront,
and the worst bit is that I don't give a ****.
Not even a little.
In fact, I'm glad to be rid of it.

Please don't be pretty,
please don't be pretty,
please don't be pretty,
please don't be pretty* . . .

Hi, it's so nice to meet you.

*Ah ****.

I fell in love with a dancer once,
back before I'd come-of-age.
I was sitting in the audience with my family,
and she was up on-stage
along with five other dancers:
two couples and her partner.

The guys all dressed the same.
The girls all dressed the same.  
And yet this one stood out to me for reasons unexplained.
It wasn't just her pretty face -
In fact, all three were pretty -
but something in the grace she moved with,
as if she were the epitome of beauty.  

They wove in-and-out of each other in a spiraling ballet.
I strained to keep my gaze trained on her form,
as if she were the pearl in a gypsy's shell game
and I had my life-savings riding on the outcome.

The steps grew more dramatic.
The partners recoiled from each other.
The lights grew dim, for a second,
then the music crescendoed,
and with a grand flourish each couple reunited then froze in place.

A look of horror on my face as I realized the loveliest dancer's partner had made a mistake:
the hem of her skirt had got caught on the hand that was now on her waist,
and a black-leotarded wedge between her legs was on display for however many glorious, grueling, stomach-churning seconds that pose was held for until the lights went out.

The performance left me feeling a mix between elated and tragic,
and I sat staring into that blackness transfixed, as if
by some kind of magic.

How exhausting it must be to be the enigma.
To mean everything and nothing at once
to everyone and no one in particular:
To let them down just to pick them up;
to make everyone go nuts.

To pull away and fall apart,
like a cardboard box on a kite string.
In a meadow full of wild daisies,
with a truckload of duck feathers tucked inside a couple of chicken-wire cages;
leaking.

To lie awake while dreaming of escaping.
To sweat out every fear.
Crawling through the little door in the painting just to fall asleep again.

You know that ringing in your ears?

You've been gone so long,

That "Eeeeeee?"

and the ache's grown so numb,

That's the sound of the ear cells dying,

that I can finally stand to listen to these songs again,

like their Swan Song.

but they sound different than I remember.

Once it's gone you'll never hear that frequency again.

As if there's something

Enjoy it while it lasts.*

that I'm missing.

Break it.

What's a beautiful piece of shade like you doing in a wasteland such as this?
I wish I'd've found you sooner.
Would you mind if I rested here awhile?
Me legs are tired from desert travel.

I saw you from a distance,
but I wasn't convinced that you weren't just some phantasmal image.
You know, like a mirage?
Lemme tell you:
I'm so glad that you're not.

Thanks for the respite
and the breath of fresh air,
but my search isn't over
and my fate is out there.

I've spent an alarming amount of time just sitting in a car
while parked in some front yard,
beer in hand,
jamming out to favorite songs.

Every point you try to make will never get made.
Everything you say will be twisted.
Before long, you'll realize that you'd been better off never having said anything at all.
After it's too late, you'll spend the rest of your life trying to correct this mistake.

By "that," I mean your current negative emotional-dependency attachment, and by "healthy," I mean neurotic and exhausting.

If you feel impotent in a world that doesn't move in the way you'd prefer it to; a world that is progressing at a rate that you can't keep up with. That it's spinning on despite you, and you see it as a personal attack, as in that it's spinning just to spite you, and this makes you feel desperate and alone and bitter, and these feelings swell up into a boiling hatred that makes you want to commit ******, in order to make yourself be heard in a world that ignores you.
Please, do the world a favor, and **** yourself first.

I fear I might be here all night,
tuned to this droll channel of jokes' echoes and the laughter of dead folks.

Tomorrow they'll find me in the dawn's gray light,
(chair slowly turning around on its own,)
face skewed and awry;
blank eyes staring inside my skull.