Blueprints of future eloquence
drawn up in the mind.
Manufactured moments played out in real-time.
Accidental actors
improvising memorized lines.
None can be the wiser to the grand design.
It's all for nothing if it feels too contrived.
Make sure to leave enough room for all those little
unknwons in life.

When it pans out how it shouldn't,
when just the right amount of things go wrong,
it all comes together in one incredible instant.
Profound.
Beautiful.


Gone.

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.

Some people like to break **** when the mood hits them right.
Go back and fix it in the middle of the night.
Set up a date with that person you hate.
Meditate on all the things you can't wait for.

Some people's kids end up as some people's parents.
Some of them never grow up.
Maturity is strictly overrated.
Fill your cup after you've finished your chores.

Some people are neither here nor there.
Most of them have no idea where they are.
**** fancy cars, I want to ride shooting stars.
It's not my fault real life's a bore.

I'm neurotically yours
It's impossibly true
All of my alter egos and I
Are madly in love with you

I'm crazy about you baby
The voices in my head tell me you're the one
(Of course, they also tell me God is in the numbers,
And that Doctor Oz is Satan's favorite son.)

I love you so much it's bad for my health
My reflection says I should seek professional help
But he's the one who ought to see a shrink
I never have any idea of what he's talking about

I can't keep track of who's said what,
Or when, or how, or where
Sometimes I talk to you out loud
Even when you're not really there

It's all those smiles that drive me wild
And the things you do with your hair
And the deep understanding I see in your face
As if you may actually care

I love you more than a narcissist loves himself
More than a poet loves words
I love you more than life itself
Baby, I'm neurotically yours

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.

One look.
A stare.
That's how this all began.
To end it,
I swear:
I'll never look at you again.

I've been repeating rhymes since 1989.
Writing my letters backwards - still can't draw a straight line,
but I could paint you a pretty picture of a troubled prince.

I wasn't old enough at the time,
but I've been partying like it's 1999 ever since.

Doing what I can just to feel more alive,
because I've always had trouble sleeping at night,
so I look for adventure wherever I can find it.
I've gotten lost a few times but can't say that I mind it.

When the things I've picked up along the way come back to stake their claim;
I fight it.
I'll be alright.
I purge.
I writhe.
I write.

I've been recycling lines since 2009,
but getting more sleep ever since I lost my mind.
Almost two halves closer
to achieving half-remembered dreams,
but can only imagine where I'll be come 2019.

We could be lovers,
or we could stay strangers,
but we can never be friends.

Chain smoking and drinking ain't poetry -
it's just a swollen brain leaking out thoughts.
I've been thinking a lot lately;
I'm not quite sure how to stop . . .

Thin walls.
Ear plugs.
Windows.

Whatever, do what you gotta.

Shut it out or let it in.
Bring on the feast:
Let the games begin.

Say it isn't so,
and maybe it's not about me,
but I can't help but take it personally though.

It's the type of thing;
Some people call it a disease,
but it's the only one that people can (justifiably) hate you for having.

Please believe me.
Please allow me to make these words ring true.
I want all of it.
This and that and everything;
Just tell me what to do.

Third round on Thursday and waiting for hearse day.
Rehearsed for this moment;
Forgot what I was gonna say.
She says it's all the same but in a different way.

"Styles are incarnations of something that stays constant."
I disagreed with it and caused an upheaval.
They said I'm no good,
I told them I'm evil.
Often the devil takes hold of my tongue.
Stringing words together in a way that feels fun:
Astonished five flowers with burgundy scents.
Fell to the floor in a fit of nonsense.
"are you okay?"
That's an understatement.
Just give me four minutes to be born again.

Warning signs can't be read from inside the womb.

Long all you want to go back to that warmth and goo,
but your stuck out here for keeps.

Don't worry though;
Life is brutal and cold and ends too soon,
but for now just go back to sleep.

Don't judge me, Nefertiti.
I ought to turn you sideways.
It's your profile that's famous -
Not so much your face.

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.

Y'know that sinking feeling you get when you discover that the author of the strangely fascinating book you've been reading like a mad man for the past few days committed suicide at a young age?

My love for you is quite substantial
Just enough to get us by
When I'm with you, I never panic
My stomach knows no butterflies

My feelings for you are adequate
I kiss you like I do my mother
Politely, cordially, out of duty
Plainly and unpassionate

There are no ups and downs
No disbelief at what I've found
Our love is completely logical
Solid, steady, and sound

My love is understandable
Laid out, and well defined
My love is clearly tangible
No need for even trying

My want for you is sustainable
And well under control
My desire is easily satiable
Like a dead tree that no longer grows

I'll love you this way until I die
Or until the day you leave
And on that day, I will not cry
Nor shall I ever grieve

Because this kind of love is lacking passion
And without true belief
It's the kind of love you're better off without
It will never satisfy your needs

I'm cool.
You're cool.
We're cool
It's cool.

We're cool.
It's cool.
I'm cool.
You're cool.

"Hey dude,
you alright in there?"

"Yea man,
it's cool."

These poems are for posterity (because mind-loss runs in the family.)
I dedicate all this poetry to my progeny, but most importantly,
to the one and only Future Me.
That old guy who's worn out and world-weary.
The one who's losing his memories,
and can't keep track of what he thinks.

These are all for you.

I'll record the lowest lows and highest highs.
Presented for the perusal of his (yours, my) rheumy eyes.
I might embellish at times -
I might even lie.
I just want to be able to look back and realize:
It's been an incredible life.

Sometimes, when my friends kiss and tell,
I just want to punch them in the mouth.
I want to find every girl that they're talking **** about,
give them a hug, and say
"It's okay. You're still lovely anyway."

Don't call me a genius,
because I'm just a drunk.
Don't tell me I care,
'cause I don't give a ****.
Don't say you'll be there,
because I'll just as soon leave you.
And don't you dare say you love me -
I'll never believe you.

Not curious.
Not even a little bit.
I won't spend the rest of the night thinking about it,
or wondering, "what if?"

What if I'd said this instead?
What if I'd acted differently?
What combination of behavoirs would've lead you into bed with me?

These are not the thoughts that will go through my head.

Not even close.

The tide reels back from the shore,
as the water reflects the setting sun.
Grab what treasure while you can.
We've been here before but will never again,
for I am not the one.

Take it all in stride,
and run your hardest til the end.
Accept the ribbon but see no trophy.
At least we can still be friends.

Grind the gears until they quit.
One last trip before we're done.
I apologize for however many tears might be shed once you realize
that I am not the one.

Go forth into the future with dry eyes and a hardened heart;
Nipping love in the bud before it ever starts.
Steering clear of everything that even remotely resembles the foundations of a building that can one day be blown apart.
Living beneath a glass ceiling reinforced with steel beams that encase you in a state of untouchable mental well-being,
with only the moon and stars to console you and the occasional confused bird to keep you company;
To rot in a graveyard of memories filled with lovers still alive but dead to you, dead like the eyes that were once so full of hope and promise. Eyes that met their demise once upon a time on a beach long since gone.

Fate is the cruelest of beliefs.
I am not the one.

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.

I'm broke like a joke that ain't even funny
I'm pretty good at everything except making money

I never cared for its garish symbolism
Its incongruity between power and weight
Or the increase of gravity you get with the more that you make

I endeavor to remain just as light as a feather
But if you feel obliged to give me some
Why that's all the more better!

I asked my manager this during a rough week on a day when I was terribly hungover:

"How the hell did you survive your twenties?"

His answer:

"Video games. Lots of video games."

In a twisted way,
it's really rather romantic.
Both too stubborn to ever give in to each other's whims.
Two old dogs refusing to learn new tricks.
They never knew too many in the first place.

They seemingly hate each other.
No love is clearly apparent,
but there's this obdurate will;
this obstinate sense to stick together through thick and thin.
They really must have taken those vows seriously.

It's like two gnarled trees that grew in tandem.
Trunks and limbs twisted towards the light of some shifting sun.
Any attempt to remove either of the two,
would surely result in the death of the other one.

You don't even live in a world that I visit.
Seen only on postcards,
and heard through second-hand descriptions.
I think I saw a commercial for it once on television.
People were splashing and swimming in crystal blue water.
The kind that makes you want a drink
when you're not even thirsty.
I'm fine where I am, thanks.
Go ahead and desert me.

He walks in through the front door;
a slim jim in one hand,
a four pack of beer in the other.
He looks at the tv screen to see a blond teen crying.

"What are you watching?"
he says as he crosses the room.
"Intervention," she says from the couch,
with a cup of beer on the table in front of her.

"OOoohh," he says with sarcastic interest.
In a way, it makes sense.
"It makes me a better person . . . " she says quietly,
almost to herself.

But he heard her.
"Watching a tv show makes you a better person?
How the hell does that work?"
His words full of doubt.

"Well, because I've had two husbands who were addicted to drugs, an-"

"And you're not? Ha!
Alcohol's a drug too,
sweetheart."

"Yea, but . . . it's not like I get drunk every night."

"Denial," he says, as he makes his way to the fridge.
"That's the first stage," he exclaims, as he pulls a beer loose from its ring.

"You're one to talk!" she yells from the couch.

He says to himself,
"Yea, well; takes one to know one,"
as he walks out.

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.

It may sound strange to you,
but this is what we do.
After dealing with ******* all day long
we come here to tell the truth.

You may not understand why,
but this is how we get by,
and it may not make much sense,
but it makes us feel alive.

You may think it's all we know,
but this is how we grow.
Go and shove your "normal"
To us, you're the ******.

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.

Someone had to say it.
That gray area between black and white is so full of those lost in contemplation.
Without a doubt,
someone had to dig the moat that divides this sandcastle from the ocean.
The goal isn't to keep the water out,
but to let it surround us in a symbiotic relationship.

Someone had to do it.
Allow the sun to burn their skin in order to determine the value of a brand new tint.
A stint of concentrated consternation never did anyone no good.
Someone had to bite the bark to test the quality of the wood.

Somebody, somewhere,
traveled through light years just to glean a glow on a mystery that had always been misunderstood.
Someone had to go there first so that the rest of us could know.  

So here's an ode to all pioneers;
the bravest,
and most bold.

Lover of Disney.
Connoisseur of fairy tales.
With stories of lonely-girl-turned-princess
and wooden boys swallowed by whales
(just longing to be real).
Ever a believer in Happily Ever After.

I thought I could be your disaster.

I raged.
Hurricane gales with lightning and thunder.
Earthquakes and landslides.
Stormed into a blunder.

I thought you were frail,
but you're corrugated steel.
A bastion, a bulwark; impregnable.
A stronghold made up of shining white stone.

When the rampage was over,
the only foundation destroyed was my own.

All my hopes blown away in a cloud of smoke sent up from the bathroom floor.

Heretofore forever to be well and constantly ignored.

If and then there is a justice to the semi-constant roar,
you'll find me waiting with my shades drawn down against everything that causes war.

That's not to say I'll go away on some single-sailed white ship.
My flag is not the kind of flimsy rag to get shattered by the wind,
but if and when I climb back up from these jagged steps that broke my back,
I'll carry you all with me.

That's a promise and a fact.

Hear me two twelves and I've displaced my shirt.
Pollinated four elves with crystallized dirt.
Syllables betray what a symbol is worth.
Twenty metaphors plus five ****** make three kinds of birth.

Crease in a place where no grease can escape.
Forty times corduroy equals one face.
Applied nine seasons to spice up the taste.
Cardboard ate silicone then left in great haste.

I know that these words don't make any sense.
The greater cost of my mind has already been spent.
Somewhere between Easter and the beginning of Lent.
Jesus Christ threw a fit when I couldn't pay rent.

Caved in on the heads of the poor in a mine.
They'll eat it as long as it's in common time.
This line is just filler to set up the last rhyme,
but **** that ****;
I'm a nonconformist.

Staying up all night looking up lyrics to songs I'd heard and liked.

Stealing beers from my parents and drinking them as fast as I could while sitting in the bed of my dad's white pick-up truck. (With my nose running and thinking it was so gross but doing it anyway for the fuzzy fluid feeling it gave me.)

Walking around the neighborhood at night with headphones on, listening to songs whose lyrics I had recently learned. (Sometimes singing along depending on how well I remembered the lyrics/how many beers I'd drank.)

Giving a knowing wink to the houses whose windows glowed blue from television screens. (A habit I started after having read a certain Ray Bradbury short story that I'd liked.)

Making weird images in MS Paint (always with the slanted-line brush tool) after coming back home from a late-night, music-infused stroll.

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.

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.

Come one!
Come all!
Come have the time of your life!
The Modern Human Zoo presents:
A Creature of the Night!

Watch him angrily pace his cage by day.
Frustrated and oppressed as he's forced to earn a wage.
But at night, my friends, that's when he really comes alive;
(Midnight showing tickets cost at least twice the price.)
Feast your eyes on this beast's desires.
His rapidly unwinding mind.
His constant need for things unfathomable.
Constantly seeking the undefined - inevitably denied every time!
Stopping at nothing to find but one thing that satisfies.
Nothing ever satisfies!

Come see our finest display to date.
The pride and joy of our collection.
Our latest and greatest prize!

Windows into other lives.
Don't climb out;
You'll fall and die.

I keep having wacky dreams
followed by false awakenings in which
I'm telling the people who were featured in them about
the things that I've been dreaming
and then I wake up for real and realize
that no one's even listening.

Bad black widow;
The yo-yo queen.
7 different flies tied to 7 different strings,
attached to the end of 7 different legs.

Here's one bug that got away.

In a week's time it'll all be fine
You won't have to work so hard
In another life things might turn out alright
But this one feels all wrong

And I know you never wanted any of this
But we don't get to make that call
Now here we stand on a tower of sticks
Just waiting for the fall

But please,
Please
With all the new things you'll see
Don't you forget about me

In a week's time it'll all be fine
He'll come to take you away
I wonder if I was capable of it
If I'd still try to convince you to stay

And I know you never asked for any of this
But he just can't resist your charm
Now take a final look at the place you won't miss
As we walk down the street we grew up on

And it's true
It's true
Despite the things I might do
I'll never forget about you

We both always knew you were destined for greatness
He's got the ticket to take you there
Leave me here to pick up the pieces
I'll try not to think that life is unfair

It seems to me that one gets **** on,
and the other does the *******.
(Not directly you see;
this ***** exchange is done through a third-party.)
One swallows his pride for the sake of relief,
and the other is proud of the way that he stinks.