I want to build a rocket ship, but this full moon blanket,
keeps me tangled up in bed.
Maybe a sun shower ,will birth a rainbow,
and I could build a bridge with that instead.
A walk with the weather, may be what I need,
to clear the clouds above my head.

The soggy sounds of rain, strum the chords,
that sing a song inside my brain.
A violin or guitar riff, to untwist the tornadoes,
my heart’s stuck with.
Who needs the stars, when I’ve got the sun,
to shine for me when bad times come.

My sandy feet always have the waves, to wash away,
the darker shades of cloudy gray.
These lonely lips even have a kiss, and the warm caress,
from her outstretched fingertips.
I want to build a rocket ship, but today,
I’ll just exist.

Where hides my creator? All these open doors only lead me to nowhere.
Outlines of memories, like furniture that once sat at the center of this empty, dusty room.
Sun-soaked curtains project shadows, of all I once knew.
With each gust of wind, the projection rewinds back
to places I had forgotten I had ever been.
A twinkle through the glass presents her ring, but before an answer,
I become the shadow of a kid again.
Sitting alone with my only friend, a pen, playing pretend.
Lucid dreams of my past being viewed from the future.
I place a quiet hand on the shoulder of this passing shadow.
A silent gesture,
for all the wrong turns and cloudy climates awaiting ahead.
My frigid touch only feels a crumbling wall, and the one building up
inside the child of this past life. Never blind to hindsight,
I trace the wounds life has left me.
Self-inflicted regrets trapped inside this dingy room.
I burn it down and leave no semblance of remembrance.
Memory lane is just a pastel retell of an empty shell.
Be yourself.

How do we spend the days of our lives? What slice of the pie do we leave,
for our parents eyes? Add the time spent driving,
going to and from. Divide that up and, you get
about three hours every six months with the ones you love.
Imagine that.
                Life’s a laugh track
Like a re-run sitcom that will never get its air back.
That’s why I spin in circles at the square dance.
If the water is wet,
Then I am diving headfirst and swimming laps.
Rivers turn to roads and,
there ain’t no coming back. I slip out a straw and,
Sip the sun.
Inhale and expand my lungs until I float above,
The streets. Here lies the stoop kid,
Who became a balloon on the breeze.

I remember cooking for two. Last Sunday afternoon,
the stove light hit the fritz. Same bulb I ******* in the night before you called it quits.
By Tuesday, the burner I simmered onions on
had begun to rust away.
Wet metal tears,
as I sacrificed the dish we loved to the microwave.
Round and round it went. Watching, as the plastic peeled and bent;
remember treating you with the same contempt.
Left with soggy slop and goo; starved for love,
I eat my heart out with a spoon.

My lucid sleeping has drawn the gaze
Of these dream demons that scheme against me.
This time of night, even the monsters have slinked away
Back inside their closet.

You have not known fear, rational or otherwise,
Until you lie powerless to the paralysis
That the dream demon wields so elegantly against me.
Like gripped by a vice, my body is held stiff.

My eyes wide open, or so my mind is led to believe
By the amorphous foe playing tricks with my deepest grief.
Contorting memories into the present moment,
A bedroom near identical to my own.

Hospital white walls, and the same clothes strewn about.
A faceless lady lay next to me, curved in shadows. My hand
Reaches out, but hovers just shy, as if set in stone.
Why can’t I move? One more attempt proves of little use.

The faint rustling of hands through silverware drawers echoes
Off a cold kitchen floor, bouncing off hallway walls, and
Slipping through my ajar bedroom door. Little hairs
Render salute, as the sound crawls like ivy up my spine.

Just then, I am stabbed by six figures seven times and burned
Alive, but yet I do not die. Oh how I struggle to move
An inch or two, but this formless force denies. I demand
The demon speak to me, but before the thought can make its move
The loop repeats. I never die, but I always bleed.

Each day is a face with two sides
      Do or die
Failure is an ointment
      Swarmed by flies
Lies birthed from larva
      Contempt bred from pride
The caterpillar cocooned is consumed
      Blind to the future
Either monarch or moth
      Led astray by the flame

Hope here is dead. Man in a box, Cobain in my head.
Court me some love and spin on my throne,
Of brittle remorse.

Sick in the womb, the silver spoon pollutes.
Tiny tadpole in the pool, grows to patrol the Black Lagoon.
Devouring the newt it once knew.

Fearful men, conceal their worries, in tall tales of courage.
Ironclad, Iconoclast. Kings and heroes alike,
Plant their flags in fields of ash.

As a man, I contemplate my thoughts just beyond the boundary of breaking waves on the shore. An endless symmetry stands before me. The ocean with its crash and calm takes any and all forms. Yet though it morphs its shape, its nature always remains. To be life and to contemplate life. A mere thought that has enchained the minds of greater men. In the grand symphony of time, we find ourselves in the 21st Century. Where there are those who postulate the Theory of Illusion. Each of our own odysseys reduced to the hallucinatory will of my brain. Tell me then, how does one illusion contemplate its own existence from within? My gaze refocuses out to the endless blue horizon, and I imagine the shape of it all. Though we take many forms, our nature prevails. Social animals some would say. I prefer a different metaphor, shepherds of knowledge. Though our collective knowledge flaunts many costumes, our true nature perseveres unfettered. Through the ages we carry all human ingenuity, meanings, and purpose inside some unspoken tome. It does not erode against the battering winds of time. It can not be sunken to the depths. It endures in this very contemplation. My wandering inquisitive mind cannot help but wonder what abstract thought will be captured in this very spot a thousand years from now. For some this conjures a mysterious existential dread, but I can only stand and smile. My mind lets me step outside the binding flow of time and watch the world unfold. Campfires under the crescent moon to villages etched out on verdant ground, and here now to the grand gusto of modern cities. Endless forms and shapes pushing towards our ultimate nature. To understand that purpose in the universe if left by our boot impressions on the mud. The cosmos is our endless ocean. Out there; waiting, for our contemplative minds to shape it.

I sometimes think of growing up
Waking early and brewing cheap coffee
Pouring it in the same old half washed cup
Exchange a cold shower for a couple bucks
Trade happiness for a crooked smile
I could walk to work, but I think I will drive instead
Traffic is soothing
Job security
Misery becomes my amusement
Local radio 8am
Woman won a thousand medallions
Two burnt down houses
Stop short, *******
Now the coffee is on my trousers
Half past nine
Parking lot is packed
Six block walk and twenty minutes of life I will never get back
Hey look its Tim
Tim is divorced with two kids
Grown up stuff I guess
I’ll just follow him in

Baby, it's me who taught you how to love
Out by the docks. On the Puget, where we found Sound
For all our secret thoughts.
               Deep into the night, slurring silence, sipping wine
               We let our feelings talk. A disheveled bed
               Was heaven then
The door was hell, comin' round the bend. Baby,
It was me who taught you how to love,
And it was you who taught me how to stop.

Feeling used up.
It all started as a way,
To suture oozing wounds and band-aid this pain.

Caught in the middle,
Of abuse and feeling myself again.
I create and I shake, like an earthquake of two dueling fates.

An artist and dearly departed.
Both tugging and pulling,
For a monopoly of my mind.

I quit and I writhe. I take and I shine,
Like a princess diamond set high upon the sky.
Sunshine from the outside; always setting in his eyes

Only here till’ morning, so the night’s an open road and,
the beaten path only leads to mourning. An off-road traveler,
who escapes the chase of a pursuant sun.

Slow walking through river reeds.
A cupped handful of running water reinforces his state of being;
all but free.

Marathon of miles between, the first date on his gravestone and
the last number his mother reads at the bottom of his eulogy.
The hyphen shorthand for life and,

Missing the meaning through the seams, that connect his first day
to the day he leaves. An often-bereaved purveyor of shattered dreams,

Who stops to smile at every waving tree because,
even in despair he found belief beneath
the bared teeth of the machine trying to syphon from his peace.

A flower born from concrete.
Escaping through the cracked city streets;
out past the horizon line.

The red sun rises, over this hopeful land of second chances.
Deposited from the darkness, out onto the desert sands,
I soak in the silence like a thirsty dish rag.

My calculations had been compromised
By a malfunction deep inside my sickened mind.
The wicked ways of the self-depraved,
Mutated my world to Papier-mâché.
A mirage of vanity and technicolor blooms.

Folded and twisted, while my motionless eyes were mused by the mist.

Oh,
How much I have missed, of life and of love.
Even these sands blossom with their own granular beauty.
And I am here to bear witness, to myself,
And to the many footsteps that wait before me.

Intensity is the underdog story
Wild soil to a champion
Flame out, and maybe
Fell to the drink

Consistency is two years without
So much as a batted eye or a blink
Ten steps ahead, maybe half an inch per week
Books with battered spines stretched across coffee-stained sheets

Intensity is ***, or
A free trial for a week
Gold plated words
Tin can actions underneath

Consistency is the love, and
Knowing I know I will never know enough
Unconscious heartbeat
The very breath that fills my lungs

Faint(adjective)- (of a sight, smell, chance, or sound) barely perceptible,
Like the beating of a broken heart being drowned out by
Screaming behind closed doors. The redness that circles
Around the crying eyes you use concealer to hide behind.
Faint as the sun shimmering over your receding silhouette
As you pass just beyond the horizon line, away from me.
Faint chances of survival, when fifty yellow-gold and black
Rosary beads hang free around the necks of those who surround you.
The tinge of iron you smell as your blood pools in your mouth, but
The will to never faint, as in fall to the ground in front of thirsty crowds.
Faint thoughts of happiness that arrive like butterflies, though
They never land long enough to wrap your arms around.
A faint pulse after chasing a feeling through a needle.
Faint, like the beauty of life being burned away. Ever faint
Are the screams of smoldering redwood trees.
The faint spinning of the globe, balanced on an invisible finger.

I got Jack Kevorkian in the trunk of,
My 911 Porsche Sport
With a leaky transmission and
Lighter fluid in the oil pan to,
Set myself ablaze
          because
I'm the hottest killer in the game
Just a poet
Who pulls his threads of passion
From the sickness in his pain
The ink is blood that
          leaks out from my veins and,
Scribbles musings so desperate on the page
My mouth is like a leaky faucet
           but
My hearts a busted watermain
           Flooding and empty room
Drowning out the poor excuse of
           The boy I was
In my wasted youth
A denizen of ***** diner booths
            With napkin rhymes that in my mind
Create the grand design of wasted time
That draws pencil lines
            Sketching out
This life of mine

Alone on the threshold of liminal space;
I come across all my broken parts.
Floating and thought misplaced;
They gravitate as I pass, and circle back to me.
All these years lost in a sorrowed haze;
I had forgotten the creases that create my happy face.
The careful weathered etchings,
Of the years where pleasure always bested pain.
My eyes see clearer now, but how much of me remains?
If enough to scrawl, these reflective letters
Then enough to walk, out through the hallowed halls
That entomb all the past attempts to rid the dangling darkness
From above my waking world.
Enough to run; towards somewhere, and not away from

Who will cherish me,
              When withering autumn leaves
              Are stripped of their golden gallantry
By the biting winter winds.

Writer and reader alike,
               Chasing streams of contradictions;
               Like our will to death, fighting for life.
Am I here at all if I am not here to stay?

Points of purpose in shallow moments;
               Ripped by tides and dragged away.
               We mind the depths,
So to never dig up our dead;

A fading
Remember when.

Time: our great captor
               Tattooed on Earth by currents
               Forever outpacing the fruitless lives of men.

Unearthed and submerged,
               In the instant between
               The angel opening their eyes,
And the tired who resign to dream.

Northern moon and quiet cold days
Are broken by the thunder's call
She walks barefoot on the banks
Dressed in her moonlight shawl

Whispered voices and starlit talks
Are safety from this weary world
Kiss your breath and adorn my heart
Amongst the clouds I don’t feel so small

My saving grace and calming rain
A hanging lantern inside my dark
Her cradled arms chase away this pain
And forces silence from the banging voice that haunts my thoughts

Everybody passes the buck. We pass it to politicians
They pass it to private owners
Who pass it right on down back to us.
We’re too lazy, nobody wants to work.
Flippin’ burgers at McDonald’s isn’t worth
More than a couple bucks. Give us your life
Give us your labor
We’ll give you death; once we finish
Using you up.
Condemned in the womb of your windowless room.
Attached at the brain, phone chargers like chains
Keeping you lame.
Double click for your fame, lay to sleep all the sane
As they point fingers of blame away from their face.

No man is free that speaks from a cage.
Choke chains spiked to the dirt,
Sweat feeds the fields like rain.
With calloused hands,
The nameless toil away. Fed a morsel,
From a fistful of grain.
Praying for clouds to shelter the sun;
If only for a day.
A famine of hope. Straw cities of the voiceless,
Screaming silence.

Breathe in
Now count to ten
Ready your fingertips
Now softly stroke the pen,
Across the page

Don’t write the words
Paint for me
Falling autumn leaves a slight mahogany
Create the sky
Show me the technicolor dreams inside your mind

Call for thunder on stormy seas
Cupid’s arrow one snowy Christmas Eve
Make me believe
Now on my count,
Breathe out

What is our society if not a copycat catastrophe
          A cold-hearted calamity of blind hindsight
Severed chains reforged in the flames of minimum wage
          How we herald the heretic

Free is the slave who detaches their arms and legs
          To gift kings their reign
Jeweled towers of bone reach to the sky
          And devour the progress of our connective open roads

What is prosperity absent a shared purpose
          Like a brain held apart from its own heart
Human history imprisoned on a page
          Ink-stained chronicle of our original sin

Thinking we can get where were going
          By forgetting all we have been
Each obstacle a handcrafted impediment
          Dinosaur dynasty doomed to irrelevance

The sunset awakens the lonely dreamer,
Who gives no deference to the day.
Early mornings meet late nights on a one-way street and,
A late June crescent moon
Becomes a suitable seat,
To watch the world spin below my feet.  
I cast a kiss from way on high and,
Watch the wind carry my intentions
To the window of her bedroom.
It doesn’t stop and stare, it changes its shape.
The bluest of birds; perched, sings for her to wake
From the silence of her sleep, where somewhere down deep
I imagine that,
She was thinking of me. The lake through the trees
Where we waded waist deep, skipping our stones, together alone.
River of souls, to wither we go.

I’m slipping slowly down the drain. The night is dark
And the face in my reflection, doesn’t look at me the same.
Cold disdain; no recollection of the last time I heard my name,
Spoken with grace. My faith is misplaced.
Not even a narrow escape through these castle gates would find me saved.
Only open plains await; with pain pouring down like acid rain.
These fields,
Will never flower. Just rest my head on a feathered bed,
As the world drowns around and drags me down beneath its depths.
Sand and shells in this silent hell. Darkness rings her dinner bell,
As sunken souls grab their hold, stripping my youth.
Used, abused, weathered, and confused; they never taught me the rules
Of how to save you
From you.

Dirt dried and cracked upon my weathered face
          The black hole in my soul
Covered only by the carefully stitched fabrics
          Of my two-day old clothes

          A man out of time
Handprint impressions
Depressed in my mind
          Sing to me darkness
Shed the weight from these eyes

Quiet is the lullaby
That cradles and rocks me to sleep
Somewhere down deep, I call out to you
In silence you speak
          Peace

A one-eyed sun peaks at me
Through the silver lining of thunder clouds
The coming storm is predicted
By the tightening of my weathered bones
My odyssey for eternity has led me to the precipice of our world
Where gluttons feast on famine, and
The rabble have hourglasses for eyes

Each grain of sand slips through their idle hands
And falls lifeless at my feet
Poor souls charged interest for borrowed time
My research only serves to carry me on a current
Closer to an unwanted conclusion
That death is the escape hatch from life’s grand illusion
How many submit to suffering to hold on to something
They are destined to lose
No, this will not do.

Lips of an angel
Carefully stitched
Upon your kiss of death
            
            Here I am again
            Hedging my bets on your every toxic breath

Heart of stone
Carved by the jagged edges
Of my own broken bones

            Here I am again
            Your wicker man

An eternal effigy
Burnt and blazed
Windswept ashes
Scatter all that’s left of me

The world is words so seldom heard
Cries for help ignored, misspelled
Silent screams from those in need
Dying pleas can not be gleaned from mute TVs
Opulence by any means
Poverty penned as the new disease
Truth, the circus freak
Meager, meek, sad is weak
Rinse, Repeat
All that history speaks
Unheard echo
Beneath the flesh and bone
An unread poem

I see your reflection in the glass
***** mirrors distorting visions of my past
Lonely, naked in the rain
The wind baby, always whispering your pain

Corrosive thoughts slowly poisoning my brain
I was broken long ago
A silent sickness
Steadily driving me insane

My conscious mind refrains
From falling out or giving in
I will go without
On the strength of that which lies within

We are all immortal in our own time. Today I feel the warm caressing touch of life across my beleaguered face. Death does not escape me, but in this moment I am alive. One is immortal if one has yet to understand what it means to die.

So come sit with me and listen as life plucks on her string. Purchase a moment and together we wither. Time, good friends, the great veiled indominable figure. Our last breath denotes the bigger picture.

Death never quells
The tin ringing of its wedding bells.
Our own flesh, betrothed
To dirt, and consummated
As a glossy wooden box penetrates
Beneath the surface of the Earth.

How we tailor time to match,
A fitted formula that suits our thoughts.
Trails of missed connections,
Lead like breadcrumbs to
The fraction of a second, when you spoke too soon.
Your moment is lost. Words spoken
Forever emblazoned on the stone slab
Carried around as personality.
What you always meant to say,
Only ever reads as regret. We never count the steps
Between triumph and catastrophe.
Life is a burnt-out church house. A one-man quire
Singing sorrow, match in hand.

Walking on a windy, late night crooked street. I call to my city,
To play that soft bassline beat. The one that captures,
The red shade from cheeks. Tonight, I step with ease.
Fresh oiled springs,
Bring a bounce, back into my knees.
Full moons are a flourish for the freaks.
Yet in this dark veil, only loneliness presents a hand,
To dance with me.

I bow at the honor. Emptiness is just the face I need, to imagine,
A smile that never takes its leave. In this heartbeat of a dream,
Moments mirage, and recreate my most cherished scene, from
Our midnight movie marriage, when the space between,
Was only the frills of your dress and,
The stitching on my jeans.

A brokenhearted boy dangles his legs over the edge of his pain-soaked bed
Pulse slowing as angered rain thunders down below him
Acid sadness erodes his calm devotion

An absent hearted boy pens his name as Hopeless
Swallows’ days in minor doses
His river ******, and doomed to meet no ocean

A weary hearted boy seeks to make amends
Trades his soul to suffer silence from a friend
The sun for him, hides itself just around the bend

A truehearted boy never minds the hole inside his chest
He writes his story in the flesh
Chords of open wounds he plays his music through

Even when the days, are the darkest shade of ash and gray
I’ll find my way
                          Even when black holes, swallow up my summer sun
                          I’ll never run
Even when winding roads, leave me lost and all alone
I’ll always find my way back home
                          Even when my veins, are coursing with numbing pain
                          I’ll never forget my name
Even when love, is emptied dry from my cup
I’ll raise it to the rain, and watch the world fill it up again

Oval emeralds peer through a man made of glass.
Casement windows carry the crash of turquoise waves,
From the coast of Costa Rica, through the verdant green
Jungle trees that surround us.
Two shoulders slung with Capuchin monkeys.
Crystal waterfalls trace UV rays
Around the blonde, attached to every neuron in my mind.
Precious moments render me blind.
Lost in the liminal space between
Two doors in a hallway.
Before and after; the passing chapters
That flip away like calendar pages.
Ticking seconds of the present, present us
With all we can own.
The nods and winks miles from the beach.
Bereft of worries about what’s left.
Unbound
From the doors we choose to walk out.

Dancing with my ghosts, on a midnight summer’s eve
A cacophony of determined footsteps
Mirrors the melody played
On the last night I spoke my piece

A candlelight vigil for time wasted
Buried is the boy, who once lived inside my waking dreams
Now bereaved, the man forgets all the boy has seen
Trapped inside of photo albums, in an attempt to resuscitate fading memories

The Christmas lights seem to twinkle a little less
As if synced with the fading fire
That once burned bright inside my chest
Maybe I'm blind
Maybe I'm blessed
Maybe the time just came and went
Maybe its me
Maybe I'm the reason
Every trip and every stumble
Every smile
Every love you
Each minute missed
Maybe this is what it feels like to not exist
But I dont trip
And I could never cry
Because maybe this is what it means to be alive.

The ice from the sun
Paints frost upon the roads

The sun is different here
          Far more glimmer than shine
Dangling conveniently from a string

The sky wears its blemishes
As each passerby stitches their heart upon their sleeve
          Bloodstained fabrics
          I stand naked on the street

Exposed
          Or maybe,
Free

Costumed faces
Pay no mind
As the birds fly south in Spring