...

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Vacant pleas for union fill the muffled ears of oafs and tickle these text boxes with futility.
How do I find the courage to write out loud?
To speak to people,
without prompting?
To laugh and cry legibly,
once I know a lover's
listening?

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.

Ah, you are anxious today my morbid rule-breaker;
Forever and never sound much the same when your mouth is full of questions.
Our lives were once dull and sober, now we’re littered crooked bastions,
But no such fairy-tales are ever uttered to an unconvincing faker.

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.

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.

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.

******* 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.

Backstage
I dance
With circumstance.

And
             often
                       lose

                                                 my footing.

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

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

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

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.”

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.

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.

You confessed your cares for me last night,
Whilst I was soundly sleeping.
'Twas it merely in my mind's nocturnal flight,
Or was't a concession worth my keeping?

For, our dreams I often speculate
To be incarnate of night's air,
Wherein the confessions of our hearts await
To be inhaled, and by osmosis, made aware.

If this interpretation be so true,
Then our dreams have left us intertwined
As metaphysical lovers in a cerebral rendezvous,
To which, as long as she's around, we shall be confined.

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.

Inspiration resists my morals’ Plea
And I penalize the madness spilling forth from pen in hand.
Revoking my passions to save a lover’s skin,
As I hold my heart under wings spread reluctantly.
Innocence was cast into Time’s sand,
Alas my passions win.