another wasted battlefield.
ground smoking,
haze-choked.
bright afternoon zenith
crowning the only victor—
war.

sunlight skates
across the maze of bodies,
dried blood,
dreams ripped open like unsent letters.
it glints from the angle of death
and dances a shuffle
to music from a silent plane.

what am I to you
now that the wind
carries this stench?

a promise wrapped in vengeance.
a rotten kiss
pressed to your lips
passed down the bloodline.

the crowd roars with laughter.
ghosts foot the bill.

the water table rises
to meet the candle flame—
a younger sibling
finally getting their growth spurt.

I am weightless in the flooding,
drowning in fire,
burning in the afterglow
of a thousand dying engines
cooling to the rhythm
of hell-soaked hearts
spent on passion.

I am you
in the longest shadow
of the face you hide.

I am the violence of survival
strutting its stuff,
proud as the blood-soaked mane
of a lion.

I am the beast
that preys.

ahh,  men.

weight.
that’s all I feel now.

the weight of silence.
absence.  
thoughts like boots
stuck in mud up to my knees.

thirteen thousand nights
pounding out of my chest like a riot mob
choking on my life
and staring down twenty thousand more.
****.

the searing void
of an ancient sugared kiss
sends tears down my face
like tiny iron weights—
a silent guillotine.
you’re so far away now.
or maybe I am.

dusting off dreams
like they’re old pictures
and setting them back on the shelf
in this violet desert.
mirage or memory?
who knows.

I’ve become a warm corpse
mumbling “no”
to the tired lives that want to ride me
like an old horse
one limp away from being glue.

who is there to tell?
who the hell would listen?
who’d step foot
onto the interstate of my heart
dodging semis
and roadkill potpourri?

doesn’t matter.
the dreams look clean again.
and that’s enough
to keep the lights on in the cell
for another thousand nights.

so keep that duster handy.
go back to sleep.

these nights are hungry.
and they’re not going to eat themselves.

a severed branch in smooth moonlight
adorned above an open gate—
does it lead out or in?
does kindness wait beyond the blind corner,
or something severe
lurking in silence
to devour your life?
something wild with eyes for the dark calls through the night.
an inkling that this night may be your last,
and you’ve already forgotten
the gentle light of the rising sun.
death teases the truth behind the illusion
but never gives up the ghost.
maybe not tonight, but someday—
it will come,
as unavoidable
as the waterfall is to the river.
but you are not the river.
you are the sky, my friend—
vast and open.
do not mistake yourself for your life,
which is but a reflection
on the river, briefly.
let it fall away, as all things must,
over the edge,
into the unknown,
into the mist.

In the shadow of water
I know your true face.
not in the shadow
but in the feeling of
being in it.

…do you understand?

there’s a coolness
that wraps around me
just right,
like when evening comes
and the southern sun
finally relents its strength of illumination
to the unknowing of night.

through the shade of a wave
opaque enough to dilute
the intensity of the light
but not enough
to stop it from reaching me,
I recognize you.  

who are you
that you should linger
in my inner sight
like a sunspot
staining my vision wherever I look,
changing colors
behind my closed eyes?

a stranger?

perhaps I’ve known you
in other lives.
maybe we were lovers.
maybe we were almost lovers.
maybe this is our dance.
we circle each other
like leaves in an eddy,
a brief swirl of proximity
before we’re shot back out
to the flow of the river
like children on a slide,
laughing in our innocence—
in our ignorance.

then comes the
inevitable separation,
the distance,
the peculiar ambiguity
we wear like a skin—
like a camouflage.

but I still see you,
from time to time,
behind the eyes of a stranger

and

I still feel you
whenever I am in
the shadow of water.

the trees branch as they grow,
the wind cuts through the forest,
the sea breaks into itself eternally—
this is cleaving,
this is creation.  

cells split,
shadows stretch long and thin
over trimmed grass
as the light returns
to the other side.

and now the moon floats
in ghostly meditation,
hinting at what’s hidden
and how close
it all seems sometimes.

I was never far from myself,
except when I was,
and writing this doesn't
make any sense—
why should it?
who’s keeping score?

who’s the grand cosmic judge
of all artistic expression everywhere
across all
dimensions and time?

nobody.
that's who.
nobody cares.
that’s the point.

it doesn't matter what
I say on this page,
even if it's terrible,
even if it’s rotten,
even if no one reads it.
it felt right
to let it flow freely in the moment,
to spill it all out.
that’s what matters—
the spilling of it.

there’s a sweetness in that.
in the clean slice of the razor
and the blood it draws—
quiet,
quick
and true.

drip,
drip,
drip,

all over the page.

I’m not good enough to write
this poem. these ******* words
won’t come. here I am, feeling
like a dried **** on the grass—
all hard, white and shriveled
obstinately sitting there, surrounded
by all that lush green.
this resistance is a real *******,
sitting on me like a sumo wrestler,
smiling in its power over me.
looking down on me
and controlling me effortlessly.

“you can’t write poetry,
you’re a nobody.
a real lukewarm leftover special.
no one will ever love you.
no one will ever like you.
no one will ever see you.
no one wants you to succeed.
no one wants to read your poetry.
don’t waste your time doing
something you’ll never be good at.
you’re not good enough.
you’re not strong enough.
someone like you could never
be someone like that.
someone like you could never
do something like that.
someone like her would never
love someone like you.
you’re gross,
nobody wants to look at you.
stay home.
don’t do anything.
don’t even try.
give up.”

I mean, this guy’s got a million
of these bumper stickers
and he slaps them all over
the inside of my car
all day, every day—
that is, when he’s not using
my chest as a seat cushion.
it’s gotten to the point where
I now can’t see out of my windshield.
I just wanna go somewhere
but he won’t let me see
where I’m going.
he won’t stop talking.
I can’t hear the music anymore.
I don’t know where I am.
I can’t breathe.
I just know that this car feels
more like solitary confinement
than freedom and the a/c
stopped working a long time ago.

I think I need to stop the car.
I need to open the door
and step out into the light.
I don’t even need to take
off the bumper stickers,
I think I just need to walk
for a while—
move at my natural rhythm again.
like children do before
we start in on them.
before we start building their car
around them and teaching them
to believe in it.

this is you.
you are this car.
except when you’re alone,
then maybe you can leave
the car but never in public,
never in front of other people.
this car will protect you from
them, from the world—
from yourself.
hide in it.

well, I left my car
on the side of the road
some ways back
with the keys in it
and a full tank of gas.
the door’s open,
take it if you need it.
hell, take it if you want it,
I don’t give a ****—
just don’t try
to pick me up in it
if you ever catch up.

                      signed,
                                 ­ 
                               nobody


P.S. watch out for the fat guy in the diaper.

my writing is a blunt hammer,
a white void pounding
at the keys,
breaking off little plastic
bits of life.

this room’s full of them now,
the debris of dead thoughts,
ancient relics:
dinosaur guts,
fern dust,
fossilized failures.

the sun’s clawing its way
up again,
after all this time.
what a *******.

can you wait
for morning to sink
its teeth into you?

can we
stand five feet apart
and still meet
each other’s eyes
without flinching?

can I write something
that outlives me?
sure,
that’s the easy part.

but writing something
that lives
without me?
now that’s the trick,
isn’t it?

silk canisters and
ribbons marching like fools,
a casket dressed
in bright roses—
pretty little things
for the spigot,
the *****,
the inevitable hole.

wait another year.
or ten.
or twenty.
hell,
spend your whole life
waiting.

go ahead.
see where that gets you.

it doesn’t come.
it never does.
not like that.
never.

stop waiting
for:
someone,
something,
some sign,
some break,
some moment
to crack open
like an egg.

stop praying for it.
stop hoping.
stop wishing.
stop.

the work,
that’s all there is.

live for it.
breathe for it.
burn for it.
die for it.

if you have to believe
in something,
believe in that.

I don’t know
what that thing is for you,
but you do.
and if you don’t,
then maybe it’s time
to stop,

and ask—
what the hell’s stopping you?