Sticky sweet,
and all but complete.
I'll meet you out there,
and that's a promise.

The next time we meet,
we'll be struck by half-forgotten dreams of things that might not have happened.

Don't you forget about me,
and I'll remember you.

False memories we'll believe to be true.

Fields of bridges burn while I'm
waiting for my turn,
and she looks into my eyes while I
hear my feelings die.
Screaming loud and wild.
I pull them down beneath the surface
to drown under my silence.
My heart is blackened tar.
My mind's a searing furnace.
Your eyes are just a canvas for my mental plants to flourish.

Dream with me, and be my breath
Melt me down until there's nothing left
Then dive inside as we turn into
Something that resembles neither me or you

Carry me down to the river bed
Remind of all the things that were never said
Float with me through the current
We'll arrive bone dry at the water's edge

Dissipate these visions past
Drop the things you can not grasp
Take my hand and we'll figure out
What you and me have always ever been about

A dusty trail fades into the dark.
A comet strikes a villain at his core.
A simple-minded walker contemplates the stars.
These trees are all reaching towards God.
How could one want more?

A torn spirit leaves its blood-stained mark,
with an echo that echoes.

Drunky McGee,*
that's my nickname for her,
though lately I wonder
if it doesn't also describe me.

Oh mother, mommy, ma,
could you please not tell me anymore family secrets?
I'm not in the right mood for that kind of drama.
Not tonight, at least.
No, really though, not ever.
You've already told me more than I care to keep
back when I was a child and couldn't sleep.
It's sickening.
Facts and stories that went way over my head
told late at night while you were drinking.
I was just trying to escape the boogieman.
I always had trouble going to bed.
You were supposed to comfort me.
You'd end up crying instead.
Forcing me to comfort you over things I couldn't comprehend.
You just make the nightmares worse.

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.

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.

It's alright.
No big deal.
I don't even, I mean,
I didn't even . . .
Nah, really, it's cool.
Everything's okay.

Anything remotely stressful leaves you with the thought of "I need a drink."
You only say clever or honest things when you're hungover.
The taste of orange juice and coca-cola carry a phantom aftertaste of liquor.
******* forget about *****. Can't do it anymore. Drank too much of that **** when you were younger. Just the smell of it makes you gag.
Life only seems worth living if you're a few drinks in.
Three beers later, and suddenly every song is about you.
Sometimes, it's preferable to sleep in your car.
Certain words and phrases haunt you for reasons that you can't explain or  don't remember.
You wonder whether or not your friends even actually like you,
or know you.
Goals seem like fancy unobtainable things that you'll never fully commit to going after.
The end of your poems ****.

the notes rise up with the flames
And I smolder in the sound
Feel it shimmering
Warmth from inside out

As if we are connected
to everything around
floating with the fire
my feet have left the ground

and I burn

Play that song I want to hear
You play it oh so well
friends, and fire, and bottle near
I feel much better now

the glow will light our faces
This dark world will turn bright
Here we are for this one
We'll feel alive tonight

And I burn

I carried my memories like a bag full of bricks.
I'm over feeling nauseous and vertigo makes me sick.
Fell down some deep wells.
I've crawled out of the abyss.
They say it stares back,
but it's nothing I'll miss.

I've got a thing for steady beats and repetitious lyrics.
It's a sure-fire recipe to make it stick inside my head.
Strictly preferable to whatever insipid thing this person might have just said.

"I'm sorry,
I was thinking of something else.
Would you mind saying that again?"

If I fell,
would you catch me?
If I climbed,
would you follow?
If I spat out all my insides,
so that I was empty,
would you attempt to fill that hollow?

There'll always be a person behind the mask.
Even if the answers were disappointing,
at least we had the gall to ask.

Sometimes when I look back,
I'll smile or laugh.
No matter how bad it seemed at the time,
it all turns out to be alright.

You make me feel nostalgic for things that never happened.
You remind me of someone who I never got to truly know.
Random person in the world,
it seems we'll only ever be granted fleeting glimpses of each other's soul.
Then we'll lay it down to rest.
Some things are best left unknown.

Good God kid!
Now I remember all of it:
I was just a do-gooder passing through.
Like some sort of ghost, like a wisp,
amazed that I had somehow found my way onto the guest list.
No wonder I got so drunk.
No wonder I was constantly throwing up.
I couldn't handle it -
being in the midst of such intelligence.
But I was hooked.
I knew this was where true inspiration lives.

But it scared me so I fled into self-sentenced exile.
You knew she wasn't the one, you knew all the while.
I struggled and bled. I thought of things we had said.
I tried to lead a proper life,
but I felt already dead.

So I returned,
but in the wake of a irrevocable mistake.
Much like I remembered, but it wasn't the same place.
A shadow loomed over. Everything was changed.
And though you were glad that I was back again,
it was clear that you were devastated by the death of a friend.
I couldn't relate.

Still, I tried. All those that knew him; how they cried.
There I was, with just a broken heart.
It felt like nothing compared.
I'd never loved anyone who had died.  

But time goes by, and supposedly, it heals all wounds.
We were having fun again, feeling alive before too soon.
Then everything changed when you were going to move.
Afraid of what I stood to lose,
I decided to move with you too.

We got ourselves into situations with which we could not cope.
Communicating got harder and we began to lose hope.
The gap between one life and another can seem so vast.
I moved back home again and our lives took separate paths.

Here I am rehashing the past,
without you.

So where are we now?
Has it all gone so south?
Seems like there's more complaints than profundities spilling out of our mouths.
Where did we go wrong?
Was it our fate all along?

No.

No way.

Fate was always something we defied.
But I worry about you sometimes.
I thought about you today.
Why didn't you take my call tonight?

The magic word is "Hello."
The tragic word is "Goodbye,"
And the madness is wondering of who you'll think of in those moments right before you die.

The magic is in the present.
The tragic is in the past,
And the madness is in wondering if you'll ever find a happiness that will last.

The time has come to say "Good night."
That time has come to pass,
And this is no time for writing when all these thoughts are coming so fast.

The beauty is in the infinite.
The eternal is supreme,
But the most beautiful things are happening before I can figure out just what they mean.

Everyone loves a low-born story,
as opposed to the thematically villainous silver spoon -
unless of course they give up too soon,
and let themselves be consumed by the rest.

*Could've been someone,
maybe even one of the best.

Who are you?
Who am I?
Oh the world.
Oh me, oh my!

Who is she?
Watch her go.
Can it be?
I should have known.

Oh the world!
Oh me, oh my.
Drain the sea and flood the sky.

Who is he?
Who's that guy?
Can it be?
Oh me, oh my!

**** the world.
It's already died.
Here we walk now;
zombified.

Where are you?
Where am I?
Oh dead world!
Oh me.
Oh my.

Here it is now but soon it'll be gone.
I won't lament the loss:
I'm moving on.
Everything I've ever known has come back more than twice.
It's a boomerang effect, and sometimes it's nice.
Though sometimes I do I lose myself
in wishing it would stay,
but the night has got to end at some point.
Tomorrow's a new day.

I keep letting ideas of a poem I plan on writing about god slip out of my mind without being written down.
I keep feeling sick again and I've long since forgotten how to deal with it.
I read today that anti-depressants are changing the way that our culture is evolving.
I keep feeling like my head's about to explode and I can't remember the code to stop the countdown.
Which wires to pull.
Have I ever really known?
I keep allowing thoughts of her to keep me from getting proper sleep.
I keep washing my bedding because at night I feel like I'm being bitten by fleas.
I'm awash in thoughts of social constructs and god,
and yet,
I can't even pinpoint what it is that I believe.

I've been engaging in the sort of acts
that would give a person with less passion
a heart attack.
It was always beneath the surface and now it has
come to a head; caused a wreck;
thrown everything that never was completely out of whack.
I'm not apologizing for any of it.
In fact, I'm happier than I've ever been.
That is to say,
since before I ever met you.

I'm not sorry for anything I do

There's no going back.
It's all gone off the tracks.
My life has always thrown curve *****:
I've finally learned how to catch.

You're still fumbling over the fast ones.
Yea, good luck with that.

It took me a fortnight to figure out how long a fortnight is.
I'd been meaning to investigate ever since that skinny kid
who spoke in six dimensions mentioned it.
He explained it like this:
Floating spheres enveloped in a clear liquid
some clustered together, some separated from the others
each moving at a different pace
each with its own gravity
and sometimes a slew of unbound orbs will give chase
to one that goes speeding by
and sometimes two will collide, or three, or four, or more
somtimes two will spiral around each other
getting closer and closer while spinning faster and faster
until they nearly touch but then go speeding off
in opposite directions as if polarity had suddenly been reversed
sometimes two will spin together and burst
with more marbles spilling out from the eruption
some globes explode with a force of their own
taking out all that surround it
still others quietly blip out of existence
leaving behind nothing but a ripple in the clear goo
that binds them all together.
They told me he was crazy, but I thought that I knew
"You're talking about the cosmos, aren't you?"
"No," he said
then flicked his head
"I'm talking about people."

Freak out.
Sprint far from the start.

Realize you're just a caterpillar,
but then turn into a moth.

Attracted to the flame that's always been burning in your heart.

(But this is the part where the wings fall off.)

Walk the earth as a snail,
with your home on your back.
Leave a shining trail wherever you go,
but don't ever look back.

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.

Bitter heart.
Bitter tastes.

Broken parts -
Pretty face.

If your face were on the moon,
then the world would be nocturnal,
because you're gorgeous
of the drop-dead variety.

If heaven exists, then it's within seven feet of wherever you are.

You're what people wish for when they see a shooting star.

I'm going to come back to this one and write it when I'm sober/have a free moment. I just don't want to forget it while it's in my head. I'm just posting this now as a sort-of mental post-it note.

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.

What's going on between passion and peace?
Why do they seem to be mutually exclusive?
Can't they go hand in hand?
Like the calm before a storm,
or afterwards -
everything's damp.
Returned to a state of rest.
Cleansed.

I like to think they can.

I look forward to nostalgia twice as much as forgetting.

If you'd tell me what I told you when I was bolder and blacked-out,
I swear I wouldn't repeat it to anybody but my older self.

This is less a cry for help than a shout.

If my second-hand echo somehow travelled from your ears back to my mouth then maybe I could get to the square-root of all my compounded doubts.

It's less of an impossible situation than it is just a simple equation in which the only formula I'm missing is how to solve for ex.

Three chances to hit it big,
with trials of patience between them.
No time to relax, there's cash riding on this,
and you'll soon have to shoot again.
Don't lament over missed opportunities.
Three more shots can make all the difference.
You're due for a win, just stay focused.
Take aim then let it go.

Some people are too quick to tell you that you're being a ****.
Meanwhile, there are others who are way too polite to even think of mentioning it.
If you're the type to give a ****,
then this could be a real problem.

The Sad Boy woke up and thought,
"Something feels different . . . "
though he couldn't quite be sure what it was.
Whether a lessening of one thing or an increase of the other,
he simply turned the pillow over then went back to sleep,
wondering.

Do we all just come here to share our spirit of the stairs -
the things we wish we could have said
to the ones who don't care?
I wonder, what would they think if they read?
"Man,
what a freak -
so ****** in the head."

Do we choose to be poets,
or did it choose us?
If I told you writing is a roller coaster,
would you get a head rush?

Perhaps it's just that we care too much.
Painstakingly fretting over every word.
Is anyone even listening?
Tell me,
how much have you heard?

She told me to stay but I got lost in the echo.
Sometimes I can't help it,
I've just got to let go.
And she shined through the chasm like a sun's ray through clouds.
I always wonder what she could be up to right now.
But no, it's not me,
and loneliness stings.
Wherever you aren't is where I'll always be.

I gave her a sign.
Delivered it twice.
Her sympathy is boundless;
she was always so nice.

Hip to the trip as we both drop our objects.
Clumsiness is one way of saying I Love You.
Speech dissolved a long time ago; became an excuse for just staring.
I cannot seem to convince myself of no longer caring.

Medicine is all relative.
The trick is to find something that makes you feel okay by the end of the day.
I think I've found one that works well,
(with a slight side-effect of sometimes making the next one a living hell.)

But I've found an antidote for this problem:
Bacon, eggs, toast and coffee.
Though I can't have more than three or else I'll get all jittery,
and start saying really weird things,
which may drive me to self-medicate a little more the following night.
You know, just to feel alright about all of the weird things I may have said and end up regretting later on.

Luckily, there are medicines that can erase regretful memories,
but you probably shouldn't have more than six of these,
or else some really weird things may start happening.

Like remembering where you parked the opossum car in that one dream you had when you turned thirteen,
while forgetting that today is your nephew's fourth birthday.

Here, I got you this.

"Hey, I don't think that's really an appropriate gift."

"What do you mean? I would've been thrilled to've my own taxidermied bobcat's head when I was six."

"There're so many things wrong with that sentence that I don't even know where to begin."

Medicine is all relative.
Subjective, if you will.
If what works for you doesn't work for them,
well then, who gives a ****?

We've all got our own illnesses to deal with.

If you were grey,
I'd show you all the shades between white and black.

If you were suffering,
I'd be your heart attack.

If you were spinning,
I'd be the equilibrium
to right your world so out of whack.

If you were poor,
I'd barge through the door
with both hands full of cash.

If you were a pool,
I'd dive off the high-board
just to make a splash.

If you were dead,
I'd sell my soul,
just to get you back.

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've spent too many years trying to change the color of these streetlights to match that of my whimsy,
and I'd just as soon remain alone than to have you right here with me.

When an unseen breeze pushes these leaves to dance as shadows down my street,
I can't help from thinking:
This is beauty.

Backed into a corner.
Folded over four hundred times.
"I thank whatever gods may be"
for my indeterminable mind.

Thrown about like little Jack Horner.
I've never cared much for pie.
Christmas either, for that matter.
"If you are me then who am I?"

Somebody sent on a suicide mission.
Grand plans of livin' but doomed to die.
She smiled wide after I delivered that line,
and a small part inside of me died.

I'd be better off if I could get paid to cry.
I'll try not to be so stubborn about it.
In forty-two seconds I'm bound to forget.
Wait, what were we talking about just now?
How much of this have I already said?

If there's bliss in ignorance then there's sadness in truth.
I once loved a girl whose mother's name was Ruth.
It's a Biblical thing.
She was mostly Adam and I was niEve.

I sometimes get lost when walking down familiar streets.
It may not be the greatest thing,
but hey,
it's still pretty neat.

Here for one word and that word is a miss.
Forgone the phone and the **** and whatnot.
Things in the attic that drip through the floor.
Waking up in quicksand.

Connecting the dots of isolated spots,
like how our ancestors drew lines between stars.
Seemingly arbitrary and haphazardly placed,
yet somehow defining what we are.

Bouncing back and forth
with a slap or gentle tap.
Seems like a dance at first,
but it's just buildup for the attack.
The crack of wood on plastic.
Simple rhythm interrupted by a smack.
You got me good with that smash,
but I'm gonna get you back.

Bloodied noses.
Smeared makeup.
Reckless abandon.
Don't care where I wake up.

I danced.
I think I lost my ****.
I'm sorry you had to see that.
I'm over it.

Where'd I leave my shirt?
When did I get so harried?
Why am I covered in dirt?
Who did we bury?

panic attack.
Panic Attack!
PANIC ATTACK!!!

Foamed at the mouth.
Spat out several teeth.
Are we humans,
or animal beings?!

*****.
Swallowed it . . .
came back.
PANIC ATTACK!!!

I ate all the prettiest flowers in your garden.
Sorry about that.
I wanted to digest beauty.
Turn it to ****.
How's my breath?

***** fingernails.
Tobacco stains.
Coughs and gasps.
Phantom pains.

Who did I what?
How am I where?
Did I just now ******* . . .
fall up the stairs?
Why did you go?
I'm still wrong here.

Feel a solemn rhythm,
but please don't force it.
Clamor towards a common goal so you can value what your worth is.

Take a step back or two, or three, or four or more,
but there's no turning back from destiny after you've walked right through its door.

So take those strides with confidence, and even if your feet may falter;
they'll always be someone to worship at your designated altar.

Force the beat to match the feet of those whose are out-of-step.
Catch the break that falls from grace at the top of unfathomable depths.

Kick the can to show The Man that you can thaw the world they've frozen;
no amount of pesticide can **** the garden your plants grow in.