solitude marks the height of my contentment
no agreements to make
I don't have to see faces
nods smiles masked aggression
I don't have to act
I don't have to trade facade for facade
with my peers
do I even have peers?

at night, I feel a stillness
so deep, so harsh, so honest
I don't have to live this lie
explain why I'm fine
why everything is fine
because, it's not
nothing's fine

I am a million clashing universes
filled with endless dying stars
and I reach out
to the other universes
and shrink back
  back
          and at night
I fill the stillness
  the stars collapsing
every synapse bending
toward destruction

no want
               no need
                             no crying out for more

at night there is no other
no one to say my name falsely
and when I sleep
the ocean of my subconscious
carries me to sleeping cures
takes me away for years
to great expanses of colorful
living worlds
where I feel
where my emotions are tangible
solid
and
       they keep me company for
a millennia
         I wake to this doll world
where a friend asks
how are you doing
and she's doing it out of obligation
                                                and there's no color
and I have no emotion
and I feel nothing

Life is the waiting room for the exploration of that dream world

and every night
I taste it
I touch it
I breathe in its vibrance
and the only want
is to never wake
to this grey world
to never have to answer

"fine"

again

in the desert
a spider traps a mouse
a woman cries
I feel her hot tears
on my head
they drip drip drip
I look out over my balcony
wondering, why?
what is the point?
a man lives alone with his goldfish
he hasn't seen a woman naked in years
he reads a novel and laughs to himself
I hear his laughter
It crowds my mind
I feel its hands and elbows poke my sides
I walk into work
I walk out
somewhere downtown,
a teenager is trying marijuana for the first time
I feel the warmth
the guilt
I feel endless

the world carries on outside my apartment
fighting
drinking
laughing
sleeping
a girl finds a flower
a man drives to work
a woman eats some green beans
a soldier wonders why he signed up
for this
a fat law maker *******
and me
I sit
and think
sometimes, cry
don't know what else to do
summer breathes hot air down my neck
and somewhere a baby is born
it is cold there
and her father is dead

It's Thursday
If it were Wednesday
It would be the same
again, you are not here
So,
     I think to call someone else
and have regrettable ***
and forget you for a night
but I don't
I'm tired of it
I'll be alone
So,
I think I'll sit by myself
drink
    and talk to the gods
they don't exist
but they are nearer than you

a man runs down the road
exercise brings comfort
but who needs comfort
when you have
beer
cigarettes
and a summer afternoon

It's hard to meet new people
they're so foreign
they do things like wear hats
and play baseball
they listen to bad music
they like crossword puzzles
I don't like to hear them talk
but
      at night
when I get very cold
and sometimes it hurts to breathe
I'd like one of them next to me
or I'd like to hear them talk
anything to make me warm again
I can't have it all
but sometimes
I want it.

It is late,
and the beer drips down my throat
                                                          ­   goes to my head
meets the silence
            tomorrow is too hard to think about
                                                           ­           but tonight
my youth dances with the alcohol
                                                         ­  they aren't good dancers
but no one is watching
and tomorrow is late

my apartment is empty
except for me and my fat cat
he is good company
but I wish he could talk
I like to wonder what he would say
             got any whiskey?
where's the nearest pool hall?
I haven't seen my woman in
8 years
            and I'm lonely.

Me too, I would say,
lets smoke and drink all night
                            lets conquer
                            these blues.

black coffee
and
the radio
    and I'm still battling
    my demons
shooing them away
        "give me a break, I'm so young"
        I say
They argue amongst themselves
loudly
                                and  come to no decision
black coffee
and
the radio

trickling down the walls
the thick red blood
of a dying thought
drips onto my head
drip
     drip
           drip
all I see is red

at night
the sound shifts
and in the low hum of voices
I hear a silence hiding
a flower growing in concrete
laughter and sadness live
in this place
beacons, shedding light
on darkness
and how the dark
        will break your bones
        and turn your stomach
without the silence

The up side
everyone knows your name

The down side
everyone knows your name

When I dusted off the counter today
I found something that was lost before

Jesus was there by the sink,
sitting down right next to the toaster
he looked at me and asked for a coaster
he and the cherubs were drinking diet soda,
and watching the ants eat my sugar

I asked him three questions
and hear what they are
why are you sitting by the toaster?
why in the hell would you want my coaster?
and
didn't I ask you to leave last summer?

Jesus said he wanted to live in my heart
first the counter
then my heart
what's next Jehova, my first born child?

yes actually he said, before he snorted and growled
I really do want your first born child
would you like a brochure for heaven?
its pretty wild there, and the bread's all unleavened

No thanks
No thanks

cold cement under my feet
contemplating a deep colorful galaxy
humming to myself the tune we love
you are not mine
as the breath within my lungs is not mine
I take you in, and then you are gone
we are worlds apart
a century between us as we embrace
the soft night air is our home
adrift on a sea of doubts
lovers and friends
and at last friends
the universe expands
and you float away from me

I smoke a cigarette
at 11:30 p.m
it is cold
even with your absence
I am alive in a world that is home to you
that is enough

I sit and wonder if it is all
ending and if it is meaningless
and I can't see the reason to even
try and then I hear a voice
echo within me that says
you will see, wait for tomorrow
you will see.

If I ever get a chance to
have the kind of love that sits
on the opposite sides of a bench
like two book ends and smiles
into life into death into the black
I will hold it to myself so closely
careful not to smother it, and
I will make it a part of my core
and it will never grow old

sitting in a coffee shop
a man is grinning while
he stares at his laptop
the light from the screen
reflects off his glasses
and his eyes are great
white orbs and he
smiles and smiles and
all I can think is
that I will never
hear you sing again

sometimes the sky is black as hell
and there is nowhere to go to escape from its infinite void
and sometimes the rain drips down
from its steady black gaze and all is
wet and dank and the ground is
cement keeping feet
hostage and
a deep red pain
steals from you the light that once lived in your soul
and throws the light in the sky
so it will no longer be dark
and sometimes a star is born
but sometimes
                           its not.

So the nature
the dirt of the past
is crushed under
the wave of the future
old relics of freedom
stuck in the sands of time
and an army rises
from the ashes of coffee
and newspaper stories
heroes and nightmares
metallic eyes
arms tied to strings
pulled by those
forever gluttons
in power since
the beginning
however silent
they pull
on their little
dancers
and we forget
our saviors
in this ocean
this new sea
of indifference.

I used to bow my head
and fold my hands
and close my eyes
the rules were very important
                 the game was to play by the rules
to watch your mouth
                       wear shorts under your dress

never lie
                never yell
                        
        in dreams
                             that bearded menace
sat on the Golden skyline
                               and wrote down
what I had done wrong
                 the rules I had broken
and screamed my sinners song
into small ears
    that night, I climbed the staircase,
        I would fly,
                         I had planned to fly.
        every cell lifted me to the top of the
       staircase with the eagerness of the adventure
I got to the top
            stood on the rail
    balanced like a swan
                          and as my young knees bent
to leap to the sky
                             above the black lit dark,
  I heard that law mans
                                    booming dissent
Jillian, don't play God
                                         and I didn't.

shirelles
monday night
alone in a big house
light the candles
another one of my rituals
born one hour,
dead the next
to make room
for other
prayers
postures
pen tips
but the way candles
flicker in the sweet
soul
is not another ritual
warm life
to the tune of golden
notes
swimming through
once bleak
     once empty
once impure
       air
and suddenly, I am baptized
more than I ever was
in that sterile, dead
chlorine
    more than spent hymns
in drafty cathedrals
       so, the sound lives.


my bed would tilt
           at twelve years old
I'd wake
               startled of the
                       psychic death
spread like bodies after
            a paid for war
I'd scream like the cats
              fighting by the window
at my aunts house
               I would huddle with
my childhood
                     hiding from the puberty
that stalked me
like a jungle cat
               the mind reeled with
my spent pulse and
                 at night
                        under shamed
                   covers
                                 bitten fingertips
the white light
           on the street
                              looking on

and when your babies were born
you named them for the stars
but the backyard was all they ever saw
when your mother got the call
the world was obsessed
but when we change the channel
you'll still feel him inside
you'll still feel him

so that summer
we fell in love
all of us and none of us were ever the same
and how the music filled us better than any
meal we had ever eaten
and how the smile of a friend was the
only success we'd ever needed
and how the first kiss was the best
but every one after was as soft or hard as
the love we thought we'd lost when the
lies they told us lowered our eyes
and how I thought I knew it would never end
and how I knew it would
and how the music filled us better
than any God

Oh dear, she said
there comes a time
when all things
they cease to shine,
and looking up at frail moon's fade
she lost her way
she lost her way
ever toward an inner light
ever toward  a mundane night
you cannot ask for want of asking
ever toward the soils crashing

oh dear, she said
there comes a time
when all your dreams
will lose their rhyme

and so on past
the child at play
and past the girl
on bridal day
an further past
the humming hag
until she reached the grave at last

oh dear, she said
there comes a time
when all things, they cease to shine
and looking up a frail moon's fade
she lost her way
she lost her way

I grieve you
the way I grieve my last cigarette
knowing I'll have another
and another
and another
but I grieve him
the way I grieve the very last
knowing I'll spend eternity
searching for
just
one
drag