How much of my history can you read from my mouth?
Can you make some sort of sense of what my life is about?
"You ought to quit smoking.
It's bad for your gums."
It seems my teeth are paying the price for how I like to have fun.
I dread the sound of that drill,
but I'm here of my own free will.
Please don't tell me that I have a cavity.
Ask me about my flossing habits,
and if I've been experiencing sensitivity.
I have.
You see, I've been having these dreams in which I'm spitting out all of my teeth.
I looked it up in Zolar's encyclopedia.
It reads:
Teeth falling out = death.
It's been ******* with me.
I found some other sources which state
that losing your teeth in dreams is a subconscious way of expressing anxiety.
Sounds about right.
I've been waking up in hot sweats every single night.
With a weight on my chest that feels like the precursor to death.
I've told my favorite non-friend about how lately I've been feeling a sense of impending doom.
Like I'm headed towards disaster.
She didn't have anything to say about it.
I guess I've always had a flair for the melodramatic.

He says he misses the days when we used to do nothing.
I said those days are dead.
She says it's like a high-pitched whirring noise way back in her head.

Everyone's so salty now, trapped in a can of mixed nuts.

She says his stasis is driving her insane.
He says she's already wasted the better half of her brain.
I said it seems we're always caught between two extremes,
but I could give a flux.

It's times like these that I wish you were still around.
I could use somebody to keep me from sleeping on the ground.

Your worry spoke volumes,
but I've since grown deaf.

You were caught up in living.
I'm hung up on death.

The crows won't leave my cat alone,
so I punched one out of the sky.
Stupid ****** bird -
don't **** with my little guy.

Why do people write?
Is it because their thoughts are too loud?
Is this the only way they've found to somehow dim the sound?

Like a pressure relief valve.

The pen as a wrench.
Use it to unscrew that hydrant;
let it all pour out.

My friends don't seem to like me much;
at least, not as much as they once did,
so I've been ordering things online, you see;
sending myself these little gifts.
I try to buy them quickly,
and mostly on a whim.
That way, when they get to me,
I'm half-surprised by what's within.
I guess you could say I'm lonely,
or call it some sort of selfishness,
but I'd send gifts to my friends if only
I could remember any of their addresses.

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.

The prince and the pauper.
The princess and peasant.
Perpetuating old cliches,
because aren't the differences pleasant?

Romance needs some room to play.
Fill in those gaps of mystery
with grandoise schemes and complex games.

Everyone's a winner.

The beauty and the beast.
The ******* and the tease.
The sheltered ones who live in dreams,
and the streetwise kids who do as they please.

Everyone loves a mystery,
but old cliches only capture so much.
Why do we need a conflict of different world views
to pluck the strings of our hearts?

A liquid thing.
Somewhere between melting and floe.
A shifting thing,
separating sheets that shroud the unknown.
A spiraling siphon that grows as senses heighten.
A quickening pulse that gathers and glows.

"Man, I thought I told you the show doesn't start til eleven."

No man, the show goes when I do,
to wherever I'm headin'

He glides down the street on free swinging feet.
Slides through the scenes in this ballet of dreams.
The only audience he needs is watching from heaven.

It's a burning thing.
Somewhere between an eruption and candle,
with sizzling skin left behind by things too hot to handle,
and footprints singed into the sidewalk.

It's a shifting of plates inside the brain.
A breaking up of the saner parts.
A typhoon of thoughts and a flame in the heart
that hits the body like an earthquake.

When hope and home sound the same,
then you're probably nowhere near it.
I've commandeered someone's private plane,
but I have no idea where to steer it.

"Well hey there! How was your New Year's?"
Well, I sang a song and made a toast
To the fire in our hearts
I apologized to the host
For drinking and driving the last time I'd left
When I'm drunk I like to think that I know better than the best

I lit off fireworks with a pretty girl
We listened to James Brown while gunpowder spiders lit up the world
We took alot of shots
And sat by the fire
We talked of this, that, and the other

Later on I found my friend with his head in his hands
Crouched up against his car; crying over the dead
Lamenting that they couldn't be here for this event
And I cried a little too, because that kind of thing messes with my head

My childhood friend was also there
He had driven in from out-of-town
He was tripping on acid, and had me pinned to the ground
In an insane attempt to give me some sort of comfort
I finally got him off me with an effective headbutt

Then I ran down the street
While yelling, "I HATE EVERYTHING!"
Then slowed down to a walk after I'd gotten far enough
Smoked a cigarette and contemplated the true nature of love

So when you ask me that seemingly innocuous question
"Hey, how was your New Years? Did anything happen?"
All I can say is,
"Well, ha! It was definitely something!"

It starts with curiosity;
fascination,
admiration,
affixation.
Excitement and expectation.
Fondly falling for flutterings.
Paying too much attention to alterations.
Getting hung up on fluctuations.

It turns into frustration.
Feelings of inadequacy.
Indignation.
Self-abasement.
Fear and loathing.
Dread.

Followed by annoyance.
Re-evaluation.
Revulsion.
Remembering what's important.

It ends with indifference;
over it.
Free again,
thank goodness.

The best poem I ever wrote was written just for myself
The best movie I've ever seen; I shared with no one else
This is my life
This is my hell
and when it's all over, you'll just say "oh well."

And it folds so completely back onto itself.

I once knew a girl who said,
"All those little coincidences mean that you are exactly where you are meant to be, at that moment in time."
I believed it then.
Then I grew older, and the coincidences started to happen too often.
They became commonplace.
When she came back from the dead I told her so.
That "Our lives are all subjective, and the only reason that we recognize the coincidences is because we just so happen to be paying the right amount of attention to the situation that our minds currently find themselves in.
There is no such thing as coincidence.
Our whole life is but one big 'coincidence.'
The deja vu makes us feel crazy;
Makes us feel alive
We are divine.
Our lives are sublime.
They're not just coincidences, they're happening all the time!"

Disappointments, like mistakes, are a painful but important part of the learning process.

No more phony saviors.
No more unasked for questions.
No more forced behaviors or unwanted confessions.

No more false prophets.
No more second guesses.
No more burnt synapses or blown out thought processes.

No more ****** mouths.
No more bitten tongues.
It's finally over now.
Finally, it's done.

The End to Ups and Downs -
forget about "c'est la vie."
There'll be nothing more from You now;
all that's left is Me.

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?

Here's to you getting whatever it was that you wanted.
Here's to me never figuring it out.

My dad talks in his sleep.
He says the wackiest things.
My mom and my brother's fiancé  are on the back porch drinking.
He's asleep.
So is my niece.
She's on the couch next to me while I'm watching Louie.
This all after coming home from a party where the singer of my band tried to ****** me.
Before I drove home I did some drunken text messaging.
Sometimes, I swear,
I don't know what to think.
It's all so absurd,
yet charming in a way.
I fear I'm bound to go crazy.
I've got to get away.

Whip crack in the back!
Suffering from a heart attack,
Your face is looking pale and your jaw is looking slack
Go back, go back from whence you came
Once you enter here, you'll never be the same
This outpour
This rage
This fire of sage
Bush
Ignites in your brain.  internal organs turn to mush.
Of course discourse leads one off course
To slide face first into the blackened dirt.

Now work, now work.  As hard as you can
Break your back for the consumers and your soul for the man
You stand
You try
But your knees go wild
And your bowing once again
As if to be admired

I like telling you things that I won't remember saying.

When two cents become worth more than a dime,
is it a crime to only shell out a nickel?
We're still making some kind of profit.

Thirty different versions
of the same kind of person.
I'm sick of repetitious conversation,
so go on and call me pretentious.
I always find grounds for contention
when it comes to dealing with this thirty-fold type of predictable person.
It's just not worth it!

Now I'm the one who's wrong,
because I've heard your whole life played out
in a four and a half minute long song.
Just let three more foreshadowed words fall from your tongue,
and I swear to god,
I'm gone.

I know when you're young
surviving seems contingent on donning a disguise,
but I've spent the second half of my life learning how to take it off.
Meanwhile, yours has only become more latched on;
to the point where your true face and the fake are one.
All you've got left is that gaudily painted on expression.
I swear to god,
I'm done.

You're crazy alright
I can see it in your eyes
And I should know
Because so am I

You're clever, for sure
I've seen that look before
A face so bored with common words
It craves for something more

I'm smitten, I'll swear
I think I'd better beware
Because I'd do almost anything that you could think to dare

So let's swap rules
And play a round of truth
I think I'm willing to admit
That you are rude
And super cruel
And I'm totally into it

With those longful stares
And sideways glances
I think I'll take my chances

Cause I'm not scared
Of frightened faces
I live for doomed romances

Here's the thing about getting stung by potent bat-**** bees whose venom is full of both profundity and absurdity;
You'll spend the rest of your life recovering from it,
while simultaneously attempting to decide which is witch.

Headbutt a field of daffodils.
Uppercut a pair of shears.
Fall asleep on railroad tracks.
Throw a wrench into your gears.

Kick a chainsaw in the teeth.
Do a backflip into quicksand.
Take a bath in sleet.
Eat your own hand.

Sleep in a bed of cement.
Bash your head on concrete.
Throw yourself into a volcano.
Cook your own meat.

Swim in a tsunami.
Surf a typhoon.
Drown yourself in madness,
but please just do it soon.

Empty Girl.
Dead-eyed queen.
Cut her personality out of a magazine.
("How to Play Coy to Get the Boy"
- turn to page 3.)

Garish girl, way overdone.
Blank face heavily caked in makeup.
Paint on another fake expression.
Please,
don't make me laugh.

Thickheaded girl devoid of thought.
Owning nothing that can't be bought.
More like everyone else,
than anyone else.

I want a refund.

Did you have to work for your indifference
Or has it always come naturally
Because you're unnaturally calm
In the face of this catastrophe

Is one born with apathy
Or is it a lack of something else
Do you even have the capacity
To analyze yourself?

Do you have, at least, the tenacity
To process what you've felt
Because if I were you tonight, I think
I'd be foaming at the mouth

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.

I know how to grab your attention,
but I'm not sure how to keep it,
so I'll keep this as shallow as I can before diving into the deep end.

I know how to bob and weave,
but I'm not sure what I believe in.
Something to do with the conservation of energy, I think;
expending it in a dream-like series of experiences before eventually going back to being a part of Everything.

I know how to cut a rug,
but . . . well actually I don't think I know what that means.
Hang on while I look it up:

Don't pretend like it's all gonna end,
when it's right about to start.

And don't give in
to the "less than them,"
when they don't know the first thing about a heart.

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.

It may come to you as a shock,
but I've never held back.
Even when you were stuck on this.
Especially when you were stuck on that.

I'm not here to announce the fact
that there was something going back and forth.

I held your words in the palm of my hand;
blew on them for luck,
then spread my fingers and took a chance.

It may come to you as a surprise,
but I've never been afraid to roll the dice.
With you I always felt lucky.
I never expected to roll snake eyes.

Left the bar to run home real quick because I couldn't shake the thought that maybe I'd left the oven on.

I didn't.

Sluiced in the veins through a pinprick,
thick blood spills back with the remnants of disastrous destiny.
Telekinetics pour out through gaps in the brain with a voice that booms,
"You'll never get away from this."

But here's the part where it slips into the space where no one can contain this wholesome emptiness.
Here as one and all together in the void where we'll swim forever.

Splashed at the flesh with a wrath that can't be contained.
Wholesome emptiness sluiced in the veins.
A ripped up fate whose tattered remains blow in the wind
in a secret coded pattern that can't be interpreted without telekinesis.

But here's the part where it's all torn apart,
in irregular rhythms like the beating of your heart that stops and starts,
and starts, and stops, and stops, and stops.

Here as none and all of no one,
a thick void to drown in forever.
A voice that screams in scattered patterns:
"You'll never get away from this."

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.

Sub-human thing.
Unsubtle sting;
a barb that pierces.

My body sings a song that echoes owl screeches.
The moon, it gapes;
my one escape to the farthest reaches.

Out on the fringe, my fur is tinged by embers burnt into the skin
to be met with gnashed teeth and claws that grasp at meat within.

Sub-human form;
body transformed into a nightmare.
A howl that drowns out all and every modern trapping.

Run away and I'll give chase.
Red blood boiling through my veins.
Tearing flesh with filed fangs;
enamoured with the taste.

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

All types of schizos are my friends
And I'm schizotypal too
We get together and share the crazy things in our heads
But care not about how much of it might be true

They may be a bit rough around the edges
But they're a good bunch
We focus on action; the things that we do
And try not to think too much

Most people find it bizarre
But most people bore me to death
We can't help it; we are what we are
All in love, obsessed, with insanity's depth

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.)

Is that what the black-magic-matador is supposed to say as he pulls what's left of his cape out of the dryer?

Dyed blood red and riddled with holes,
but when you mess with a bull,
you get the horns.

"Alakazam," and it's out of my hands.
Stained white gloves hiding ***** tricks;
I'm washing them of you.

3, 2, 1 . . . now watch this:
I'm going to make every secret wish,
every half-expressed sentiment of longing,
every rabbit, dove, and remnant of love
disappear!

Hey you with your thinky pain,
your existential crises,
your broken bleeding heart beating in vain.
Hey you!
I say, hey!

Stop being a ****.

"I don't go to any university.
I'm a student of the Universe.
Life is my major."

"Life's a wave man.
You just gotta ride it.
Try to hang ten."

"The gnarliest of rides tend to be the most radical."

"That guy's caught in a riptide.
He's trying to fight the current,
but all's he gotta do is swim to the side."

"Sometimes a wave will crash and smash you against the shore,
and you get cut up by the shells and sand,
but you can't give up.
Just gotta get back out there and try to ride again."

"Save your highways and byways.
I'm a roadside diner where everything is served Sunny Side Up."

A patchwork quilt.
A square of some color.
One semblance of meaning;
What we meant to each other.

A rainbow coat.
One chromatic series.
A shade of you.
A tint of me.

Oh yea, that one is great
I think I'll buy it right now, and right here
Except I spent half my cash on cigarettes
And the other half on beer

And it's so faux tragic
And totally lame
But I can't seem to face the shame
These are nothing but my parents' bad habits
So I'll leave them to shoulder the blame

Because I'm still young
Nieve of what I may become
Even though I have the living reminders

It seems I've got piles of strong ear plugs
And a never ending supply of blinders

I slid into a time portal that turned into a home.
I hid the lessons I forgot to learn underneath a rotting poem.
I leaned against a no-one and found out who I was.
I did it all to feel alive,
and/or just because.

"Hooray for loners," said he,
Slamming his fists on the bar.

"Three cheers for loners," he said,
Feeling surrounded by kindred spirits who refused to join in.

"Here's to the loners," he repeated to the ceiling, while falling off the stool.

"For all loners die alone," he croaked from the floor, as he was dragged away.

Why is it always everything all at once?
I've rejected the world I had, and I've been rejected by the world I want
Nobody seems to like me much lately
I've embraced this "I feel things more deeply than you, and you don't understand" mentality
And yet I'm the one going around calling everyone else pretentious
That too, I noticed I've been saying "I" and "me" a lot more than I ought to
At least a dozen times by this sentence.
The irony always kills me in the end
8,
no wait
9
12
10

I once knew a man
who said,
"Invest while you can."
I told him I didn't have any money.
"Well, I can't help you then."

I once met this kid
who told me his sins.
I couldn't say why,
I hardly knew him.
"You've a trustworthy face,
and you're leaving tomorrow."
But I never asked to be burdened by his sorrow.

I once loved a girl
who became my world.
I clung to her every single last word.
Then she was gone
to leave me in silence.
I replaced it with noises of hatred and violence.

I once had a choice
to make something new,
but I still hear her voice
telling me what to do.

I once spent a night
with a spirited punk.
Willful and passionate,
but down on his luck.
We painted the town red
and made Down the new Up.

I once read a book
that spelled out my life.
A real page turner,
though I know it's all lies.

Someone once told me
not to live in the past.
"Be here right now,
the future comes fast."
But I often look back
to cry or to laugh,
and on nights such as these
I'll write epitaphs.

Kiss this goodbye
Somewhere beyond the clouds in the sky
Something is falling
Slower than I
Have fallen before
A monster hides on the other side of my door

Bid thee farewell
I am forbidden to tell
Of the place where they've hidden
Of the place I will dwell
Of the things I have found
My mind is still . . .
Reeling

Sliding, finding nothing now
The sky is north
The sea lies south
I open the door and try to get out
Open the door and try to get out
Open to try how to figure this out
A monster no more than two eyes and a mouth

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