I still feel the distant gyrations
Of your eyes
When you’re off somewhere collecting
The marble shards
Of the skies.
And like the fall of roman nobility,
You always come again to rest
On illicit ground,
On my soft sultry breast,
Knowing that
Your past might resurface in a quick crimson breath,
Stealing you soon away
And yet,
Love is nearly as binding as death
In the provocative quiet
Of my soft bed.  
For though convinced I was that we'd gone astray,
Truly fated, we were,
To this life that we've led:
To trust love no more,
Yet to love one
No less.
You're my exception, sweetheart--
A tasty poison, at best.

As this world wretches behind the piles of our institutional bones, I turn to look the other way.
When the beggars graze my pant leg, I don't stop mid stride and feign over their disparity,
For gaining the holy marksmen’s approval. When Judas kissed sanctity’s cheek beside the frames of broken-hearted men, I shook the feeling from my sleeve.  
And I no longer feel guilt, shame,
Out of mere cerebral obligation.
So, have me for a worthless sinner. I will fall to the dust before I bring myself to stand beside the husks of humanity that so many have become; spewing their filth on unfortunate blindfolded men, expecting me to follow suit.
       Well, *******, kindly.      
I’m living for the god that answers to no titles, and parsonages none of these black suited scumbags. I’m living for the god that inspires harmony, and lifts my fingers to dance for liberation, and pleasure, and hopeless longing. I’m living for the god of progress who shakes pieces of enlightenment from his gray beard, and swallows up the offerings of his every wounded child.

I’m living for the god of no religion,
Never saying
“God,”
For this name is tainted by old customs.
Cheapened by the misguided nature of man.

I blot people onto me, just to buff them away. Soakin em, and pressin em on.
Dabbin, pressin, soakin, like temporary tattoos.
Easy to apply, and pretty to look at.
Fun to show off, without any commitments, and then I just let em peel away after some time.
After their bright pigment fades, or their adhesive fails, I just rub em off.
Scratch em with my fingernails sometimes, when I get impatient.
Rub, scratch, off. Now, right now. I’m tired of lookin at you, feelin you on my skin.
I wore you for a bit,
Now it’s time for a new one.
Rub, scratch, dab, press, soak, press again again again.
Skin red, dry skin rub rub dab dab dab peel peel dab peel.
And then,
the ones I like the most, the most beautiful, the most vibrant,
color, color, color.
Purple, green.
purple purple
Purple,
are the ones I try to keep the longest,
they’re always the quickest to fade,
and to peel,
and to fail.
Fail fail fail, come unglued.
Keep em out of the sunlight, outta the wind. In the dry. But they peel.
Peel peel peel, fail.
They fail.
And then,
I can’t find others quite like em. So I press on any old picture. Any color.
Gray, red, yellow, blue. Not quite right, no blue, no citron, no salmon.
Not quite purple enough.
Not quite green.
Not quite, never quite the same.
The same purple, the same green.
Just soak soak soak soak,
Press. Peel.
Until, again, something might feel right.

We flourish in this partial reality.
As I quietly touch your face, your lips, with my thumb,
Begging to know the thoughts you never utter.
Perhaps this suppression is a favorable one,
Where after my uninformed dreams will run wild with hope,
And your affections are safely concealed by
Plaster walls and my contract to mum.

We really do thrive here.
In this vacuum.
I dare not think of when we must leave it…
When nights like this one
Come to a close.

We will only be able to dislodge quavering,
Reluctant sighs.
For we have so often recited the volumes of our hearts with
No words.
Always saying everything by saying nothing
At all.

Only fit for heaving heavy desperate breaths--
Airy, impalpable syllables.

On a silent quest for time’s
Antidote;
Struggling to exist permanently within
Such small moments.
Lips.
Hair.
Skin.
Snippets of life to which we cling.

I hadn't heard from you in a while, so last night I humored the notion of you, intrigued.
You asked me how I was, high off your *** on Vicodin.
Drunk off my *** on red wine, I admitted I wasn't doing
So well.

So, well,
We spoke for a while, and I admitted a lot of
****.

Well, ****.
More than you bargained for,
I'm sure.

So sure,
You called me out on my mistakes like you always have:
Telling me that I was far too lovely,
To be so ******* lonely
That I would waste such a beautiful side of myself,
In so willingly giving so much of myself
Away.


And in a way,
I know that you're
right;

And I can't just pretend I'm
alright.

I need to buck up and make all things
right.

Holy ****, what a night.

First,
Thank you for this poetry, precious intellect.
For employing each muse, under no objection--
Working hard so that the words in my head can sing their celebrations
As if without effort,
And take their leave in abstract
Unity.

Second,
Thank you for my pain, you lying *******.
Every time I fall under the spell of night silence,
Unencumbered by those solemn realities,
Somehow, still, I long to be bound in the ribbons of mental garrulousness.
Because ****,
It'd sure be hard to write without any words--
Without the consequences of this troubled mind.
So, it looks like you’ve found a convincing way to pitch the worth of suffering.
And Darlin’, I suppose that
I'll be the buyer of your generic brand of heartache--
Never cared for that top-shelf quick n’ done despair anyway.
I must just have a pallet for lingering bitterness.

Third,
Thank you for this herb, mother nature.
For the improvisational song that it sings in my veins,
Tuning out prosaicism’s drone.
For the rocking motion of my psyche
That starts when the rapid and the slow converge,
And the configuration of the fourth dimension warbles me to sleep
In a chorus of veins—
Conveying each of life’s cadences,
All in vain
Of what I myself
Ordain.

Scarred hearts are often cheated
True love, and like a lame dove,
They fall hard from an ancient heaven above,
Having flown only once before,
And what then is in store?
Only a crowded bed, by a lonely wounded *****
Who ignores whistles off the street;
Sunken, broken men at her feet.
‘Stand up boy! You’re a drunken deadbeat
And can’t see what true beauty
Is.’
Stricken down, he never knew
The life that could’ve been
His.

You’re my favorite pair of sunglasses;
White rims, rose-colored lenses.
Try you on, and the world just looks better for a while.
The muddy construction sites, this massive concrete jungle,
The blemish on my chin.  
Each piece of trash on the sidewalk has a story.
Wandering strangers don’t seem strange;
Everything, and everyone, seems deliberate.
No distance seems too great to run,
No weight too heavy
To be lifted.  
Sappy acoustic love songs sound
Like life’s most epic
Anthems,
In my car as I’m driving.

It’s the most beautiful delirium;
Every sight seen is a portrait,
Every word heard is a song.

Though at the close the day,
That rose light will dwindle on the rims of my lenses,
Turning the soft shade over my eyes to rigid shadow,
So that then nothing at all can be seen,
And all that is heard is hollow ambiance.

With this I shed my glasses,
To look upon an ordinary world,
Until the next sunrise, when I will undoubtedly don you again.

By the late fall,
I hope you recall
My eyes.

Like mourning bells ringing,
I woke to hear trumpets playing taps,
Next to a funeral casket.
I observed quietly,
With some foreign melodies filling the void between my temples.
Showing disregard out of mere respect,
Really.

Not for myself,
Certainly.

For I was as dead as the corpse I was grieving.
Falling into my fog again, screaming the names of ex-lovers

Over                                                  ­                            and over                                                             ­       and over.

Needing infatuation
On uneven planes of judgment,
As if I were seeking insight from an invalid.

But there was a time when I lacked even more
Than at that loathsomely lonesome moment.

And it went slithering on inside of the void
Like some ******* disease that was ripping the holy living **** out of my heart.

Seeing the casket lower
Under a cascade of flowers,
My temples went silent,

The melodies burned away like thousands of distant cinders,
And their voices occupied the void, as if my mind was their soapbox.

It is my conviction
That life began inside of a dimly lit corridor.
Not with a flash of brilliant light,
Inside of the creator's grand hall.
Not even in the decency of a simple room,
No.
It was an accident that happened when the Gods tripped over their robes,
Simply walking
On their way to the heavenly mess hall for coffee and a drag,
Shaking the proverbial gold dust off of their feet
So that it slipped through the cracks in the marble
And crystallized in random little patterns,
Wherever they happened to step.

Beauty, some are bold enough to call it.

And I'll find it on my face sometimes,
Those golden remnants,  
When the weather is warm and I've eaten a little less that day.
I will linger in my mirror to see where they've landed
As I whisper sweet nothings to myself,
Wishing I were worthy of these repercussions of
The Great Biochemical Accident.

But once in a while,
Someone will come along who tells me that I'm wrong.
Once in a while,
Somebody has enough gall,
Somebody has enough, call it grace,
To peel those golden freckles from my face,
And to hold them gently in their palm,
Perceiving them to be precious.

It’s been a while since I’ve taken a drive through my mind.
I drove when I needed to search for understanding, and then came a time when I no longer yearned to understand.
Objects in mirrors were closer than they appeared. And suddenly…
Life was closer than it appeared whenever it was netted in the echo of a poem.


It began to snow, and the flakes under my headlights turned to shooting stars.
I was so close. So close to…something. I could see the faint outline of a figure…a man perhaps?
Time froze, or maybe it sped up? I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t perceive what was, and what wasn’t.
Then suddenly, he was there—
A man in a dark cloak, standing in the middle of the road, reaching out to me.  
I put on my breaks, and the car came to a sudden halt.
He circled around the car, approaching my window. I could not see his face.
I rolled down the window, and he came forward and motioned for my hand, holding out his gloved one.
I gave it to him.
He held it.
I suddenly wanted to die.
I said, “Can you make the suffering stop?”
He inhaled, as if to speak, and then…
I felt adrenaline and fear surge in my veins. I inhaled to ask him who he was, but there was no air. I was full of nothing.
I did not want to hear what he had to say.
My heart palpitated. My vision went black.  I opened the car door, and flung myself out onto the snowy ground.
The man was gone.
I didn’t want to drive anymore, so I locked the car, left it in the middle of the road, and walked into the blizzard. I didn’t know which way home was, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to know anything.

Life meets human understanding in the most delicate way, when one finds words to echo reality.
After the pen has scribbled something profound, understanding meets fear in the most unfortunate way.  All that once was, crumbles under epiphany.  
What is already known is comfortable. It doesn’t require bravery, for we have already faced it. We have already heard the words spoken from under the cloak, and we already have seen the face of their messenger.

Power pulsating between my legs
Irrational intrigue  between my ears
Alacrity asunder between my ribs
-Heretical human blender-
Serving up cleverly crafted cocktails
I am
Spouting sureness from between my lips
I am
Stirring in sweet sultriness
Soliciting sour sabotage
Submerging you in salty squeamishness
-Colloquial courtesan, curtly castrating consumers-
Inebriating you equally with inevitable irrationality
Welcome to my "Reader’s Digest"
Prepared especially for you with my psychologically indigestible

I've laid my claim on No Man's Land,
And yes,
There's really nothing here.
Just dust, and the occasional vagabond wind.

Yet,
I've made the dust my friend,
And wind my accomplice,
And the arbitrary my entirety.

I've bent her sultry whispers into rueful screams,
And play them on repeat while I sit here.
Like music, sweet music.
Then I play them backwards,
Giggling as she speaks in desperate tongues.

A merely wicked amusement you are, Love--
Contrived and bitter love.
If you be the devil, then surely I'm your demon.

Let me tell you something:

I have more to feel, and to express, and to share
Than these social peripheries will hold,
Let alone could let disperse amidst the insipid fog of this air.
See, it’s you who’ve all caught me in this ******* snare.
Thus, let it be known, to those who are so bold
So as to assess me falsely,
That there is far more to see
Than the sheer surface of me.
There is more passion
And far more complexity,
Than many care to realize.
And if you disagree,
Then let the forbidden sirens sing a cacophonous reprise
For my fellow misfits who follow their hearts, and their will to be free.
Our passions will surge like psychedelic smoke as we rise.
**** all the rest and their soul’s reciprocity.
It will be their demise.

******* on the lozenge of illogical orbit, we whirl like intergalactic pinwheels.
Metamorphosed , we are Martians—caring not for mortal notions.

Celestial beings with curt dispositions,
Making men the cynics that they are.
For that which exists is doomed to be doubted.

So it seems our duet is the demise of devout humanity, my dear.
Us, in artless cotton blankets,
Inhaling the infectious essence of
Eros.

You’re a groovy tomato dancin’ with loose-tongued disco fries.
Chillin’ in limbo, sippin’ on sangria, and eatin’ on my pride.
Racin’ on a superhighway with scorchin’ thumbs and eloquent lies,
But my guts are wrenchin’ and my eyelashes are flashin’, much to your surmise.
I drank your love like a dino, now I’m bringin’ out your prehistoric side.
Baby, I can run your city with a stogie and a ****** dancin’ in disguise,
But this ****, it don’t mean nothin’, or at least not what you’ve implied.

My recollection
of your jaded
eyes...

a beautiful
meaningless
nightmare.

A word gathering dust on my internal junk shelf,
Inseparable, it would seem, from my ego.
Assuredly it seems just a threat to my health;
It's a surefire harm to my heart, this I know.
But once given the chance to examine my state,
As impossible as it seemed to let go,
I saw glimpses of wisdom, redemptions of fate,
Which swore to this word’s worth, its quo.
For when read alone, on a page in my mind,
The “him” was the syllabic gong that rang twelfth.
But I took a fresh gaze, and upon my collate
Saw its syllabic partner alone; saw the “self.”
My “self,” I then saw, was discovered through “him;”
Made naked, and shivering, and new.
He’d unveiled hottest passions, and fears, with great stealth.
So “him” I can thank, now the word’s split in two.

Driven apart by an unlikely shim,
I have his remains, but see more clearly my “self.”
The dust I will likely now brush off my shelf,
For uttering the loveliest elision since “him.”

I doubt that I have ever
Waited
For my toast to
pop up                             on its
Own,

I’ve never                finished a
jigsaw puzzle,

I use my hairdryer to dry my
toenail polish,

And I
look for love
In all the wrong
Places.

Men, fickle friends, will stray.
Cheesecake, sweetest cellulite, will stay.

You drop hints like hot potatoes,
But really ***,
I don't want fries with that.
This kinda burger comes fresh, not froze,
On a warm wheat bun,
And trimmed of extra fat.

A high class meal prepared for two,
And so,
This platter don't come cheap.
Can't pay? Find some other meat to chew.
If so,
Delicious tastes you soon shall reap.

I've been bumming rides on Earth’s enigmatic forces
With hungry fingers,
Grasping for the wind outside of car windows,
And Escaping the laws of gravity
For brief moments
Whenever the pressure becomes displaced
Just enough for my hand to float
Purposelessly…


I don’t need the hand of a craftsman,
Or a banker.
Hammering nails,
Writing big checks.
I’ll float on the wind like a gull.
Eating crumbs,
******* on strangers.

Maybe I’ll even be lucky enough for you come float with me,
Drifter I may be,
But drifters only really drift in search of company.

Her, the cynosure,
Once having lilted into perspective,
Is flawed.

I found myself missing you the other day,
So I made you a little figurine
Out of clay.
It was a little soldier, his sword drawn in
Triumph.

It was just the type of thing I knew
You would enjoy.
You could put it on your bed-side table.
I painted it to match the color scheme of your
Bedroom.

I know you told me never to give you anything,
Since you knew you would feel the need to
Reciprocate.
And I remember how you said you hate doing that,
For fear of rejection, perhaps.
Your pride is inconceivably fragile.

I felt this the moment before we
First kissed.

You stood stoically, waiting for
Me
to move closer.
Waiting for
Me
To initiate.

So I did.

Months pass by,
And I figure that giving you my little soldier,
A tangible token of my affections,
Could serve as a similar
Initiation.

Because really,
It is far too late to prevent me from giving you anything.
Such pride-salvaging boundaries are impractical when
I have already given you the most
Intimate part of
Me.


It was merely my body’s warmth, at first.
A throbbing desire,
A muscle spasm,
A rapturous aftershock,
And then, unwittingly,
Those things transcended flesh,
Becoming the reality of my
Soul.

So you see,
You have already given me more than you
Intended, either.
And I just needed to give you something palpable,
So you could see me, and touch a piece of me
Even when I was away.
Because I was hoping that you were missing me
Too.

Until this morning,
When I clumsily knocked my little figurine
Off of the kitchen counter.

All I have to give you now,
Is in dozens of
Irreparable pieces.

So I am inclined to believe
That the reality you kindled
Within my soul,
Was too fragile and too fleeting
To be
Initiated
In your own.

I picked up the shards
Of clay, and
Cried in regret.
Knowing that you would really have loved what I
Made for you,
Had you ever gotten the chance
To see it.

Knives to the chest:
Things I cannot know
Just yet.

In my striving to be
pragmatic,
Life's proven somewhat
monochromatic.

I flew with you when you left ground, abandoning my soul and
fragments of my sanity.
You make me want to soar, you do.
Arms spread like Easter Wings, flying best in vanity.
Your will to be a stoic God burns true.
On these clouds you perch, preaching your calamity,
Yet, I bid you fall
                                   collide
                                               recall
                                                               reside
with me,
on the ground once more.
To be merely a man, in spite of sought after sanctity.

Lately I can recall the scent of damp wheat grass,
and smears of red clay on my calves,
at the end of each day when I wandered home
accidentally *****, and purposefully human;
a child of the earth who found unity, easily.

Bury me back in the moss garden, and carve my name on the stones
where I once crushed berries
and painted my cheeks, as
an adolescent nomad celebrating dirt and singing for
sky, while the cows were my companions and the birds,
my messengers of joy.

Take me back there one day, to rest
in final slumber.
Then, perhaps I can feel the ceaseless wonder
that once I felt when
I brushed my hand against the bark of a tree,
if now this life can no longer give me as much.