"It's always sunset here!"
she said with an airy laugh.
"Like a land of infinite twilight,
or a place where the golden hour
persists forever. It's like a dream!"

She turned and smiled at me.
The golden rays of the frozen setting sun
turned her hair into liquid bronze,
and I marveled at the visage.

"I'm happy you like it here"
I said with a bitter grin.
I saw my reflection in her glimmering eyes
and the taste of copper flooded my mouth.

Blood on the pillow.
Bit my tongue in my sleep again.
It's dark in this room,
blankets all askew
and my teeth are dry
from snoring.

It'll be tough falling back asleep
because the dichotomy between
reality and my dream
is too vast.
Too great a divide.
I'll be imagining
That dream
all day long.

Well ain't the glass rained down
on an idle Tuesday, downtown.
Greeted with a tinkling,
shattering sound,
I slide into a booth and let
the rain soaked hat on my head
just drip.

What was that old guys name?
I think it was something like...
Uh....
****, I can't remember.
I remember it was odd though,
the kind of name that really
sticks with you throughout the years.

Right...

Anyway this dude turned
to face Lukus and I,
and called us a pair of
"controlled knuckleheads."

We were drinking at some bar
in Phoenixville, it was the night
that Lauren ditched us
and we had to walk like ten miles
back to his dad's place.

It was my fault she ditched,
but it was my fault that
she was there in the first place.

I miss Luke.
Hope he's doing well for himself.

Spend enough time
feigning stupidity
and it'll end up
becoming true.

Everyone spins,
you spin too.

Everyone sits and stands and frets.

Everyone sees and listens
to the cooing of morning doves.

Everyone is so God ****** beautiful,
and life dithers between
reality and imagination.

I want one sharp enough
to cut through this garbage import porcelain,
I want one sharp enough
to cut through god.

Ain't even hungry yet,
just desperate to cut
something uncuttable
into beautiful pieces.

Poly grip feels good
in my aging hands,
are you sharp enough
my shining friend?

Serrations are preferred,
whetstones and gravel.
Gimme something to slit.
Something to bloodlet.

Something whole,
something begging for
division.

Something to flex my arm into.

I love you silly
with your jaw jutted out
and your lips smushed up
and your eyes crossed.
I love you silly,
when you make me laugh
you also make my heart sing.

The road of indecisiveness
is paved with dead squirrels.

They watch me,
at the counter.
In my car.
Under bridges.
Standing in line.

They watch me,
watching movies.
Playing games.
Visiting family.
Checking the time.

They watch me,
in the field.
On the freeway.
In the plains.
Out to sea,
they always see.

Glass lenses
are always watching me.

I'm not worth the mention,
tell me:
How are you doing lately?

It's my fault.

Always has been,
always will be.

But I'll try my damnedest
to come up with a good excuse.
To push all the blame on to you.

Jacketed in scale.
Wire wheel.
Self-etching primer.
New seals.
One coat,
high temp enamel.
Paint it black,
hit the track.

Blessed fragility.
My grandfather lost his religion,
somewhere along the way.

Not long after Mom passed
he gave up Sunday mass
for long and unrequited naps.

I wonder what dreams are seeded
by the ever present soundtrack
of Hogan's heroes.

The virtuous voice
of father time
is singing
bittersweet lullabies
that I don't
even recognize.

My ears ring,
and I squinch up my face
in revulsion.

Deciding what it is that I want
is more difficult
than just wasting my life
being indecisive.

Waking up thirty years old.

Dying free
of family.

It's selfish
and it's cruel,
to tell you
that I'm thinking about you.

So I'll just go to bed.

Quietly and alone.

Touch me.
Don't wait,
don't make
me say it.

Where do the lights go
when they leave your eyes?
Do they waft along through the rafters,
do they linger on long after
love has come and gone?
Do they illuminate darkened rooms
with a subtle radiance,
like seeing heat on the horizon
that sunny afternoon I spent
speeding down I80?
I saw a mirage mirroring your vestige
and my flesh rippled with goosebumps,
my thoughts had been on the lines
right as they began to blur.

Bear down on what it means
to be in-between
the dawn and the evening
of my life.

Feels like grit in my teeth.
Sand in my sheets.
Burning coals under my feet.
The glint of a knife.

Silence echoes,
yet it sounds like laughter.

Wide open.

The throttle.

The tap.

Whatever.
Whatever analogy floats your boat.

Let it flow,
let it
roar.

Watch the numbers shrink.
The gifted numbers,
the heirlooms,
the legacy of ancestors.

Watch the needle race from
full to empty.

Watch it all swirl
clockwise
down the metaphorical drain.

Find me sprawled.

Hungry.

Fiending.

Find me when it's all gone
and you won't even recognize me.

You'll look down,
pitiless,
and I won't even notice you were there.

Finally.
Ahh, this again,
it's what I've been craving.
This sense
of brutal satisfaction,
of severe attraction,
laced with indulgence.
I'll watch it turn blue.
I'll drown it in purples,
I'll throttle it with a deluge
of various temperatures.

And when.
When you're dry
and spent.
I'll cover you
with hard love.
Like nothing.
Like long yearned for
dribbles of feral
ecstasy.

My friends all talk to each other,
sometimes they address me.
Only every now and then though,
and usually to try and sell something.
My friends are voices, voices in the car.
Voices in my apartment,
voices coming from afar.
My friends are always there,
always willing to talk.
My friends don't really know me,
but I know all of them.
I know them well,
they share everything.
My friends are the voices,
I listen to them so that
I don't have to listen
to myself.

There's not a thing in the world
more liberating than
not holding it in any more.

Just letting it go.

Taking a massive diarrhea
while standing in the shower.

Don't believe poetry.

Positive

Tap into a new state of mind,
there you may find
something worth your time.

You've said that you just don't know
what it means to see growth.
It's rather slow.

I missed
the good and the bad,
the happy and the sad.
They passed me by.

But these walls still
whisper your name,
it's becoming a game;
staying ignorant.

Honestly not much has changed.

Just little things like
rodents uncaged.

It's tough deciding
whether I miss you or not.

It's a lonesome matter,
and I'm just a selfish ****.

I don't miss the mania,

I don't miss the mania.

What defines it?
Is there an innate sense
of purpose
grafted into the drywall?
Is it an undefined longing
for solitude,
for a little time?

I'll find it.
Coated with pine needles,
desperate for fresh lumber.
I'll find it buried
beneath seven years of therapy,
slathered in liquid doubt.
Dripping.
I'll find it dripping.

I ain't looking any harder today
than I was yesterday,
but I swear that I'll find it.

It ain't the trees,
ain't the grass either.
Ain't the cityscape
or the skyscrapers.
It ain't the movies
or the fancy music.
Ain't the games
or any gadgets.

It's the sky.
That's what I'm in it for.
The blue
and the white.
Fluffy and infinite.
Gradient and stolid,
whether rain or shine.
Vast and welcoming.

She's the sky.
She's the blue,
the infinite.

She's the,

the...
well...

She's the sky.


I wander in her.

Buy as much paint as you want.
Everyone will don a coat of rust.
It ends up stylish, dark,
red and robust.
But,
buy as much paint as you want.

A paltry show of effort,
a slight scent of something rotten
wafting in through the breezeway.

When you thought it was finally over,
did you close the book shut tight?
Where do you write the rest of your story
if there are no more pages left?

Do you wane
in the face of
such shame?

You were true
to you,
I remember that much.

Now no one knows.
No one can tell just
where the road goes.

Life paints it's story
in broad brush strokes of light.
Sun rays, incandescent bulbs.
Fire.
I know colors
are just light.

While I slept,
you went away,
and brilliant light
filled the place
where you used
to play.

I need a war.
We all need a war.
A real war too, not this
falsified and opaque war
on terror or whatever the ****
we've been doing for the past
twenty years in the desert.
Give us something bigger
to ******* ***** about.
Give us good verses evil.
Something more meaningful
than this curse called the internet.
Give us something to die for,
in a violent and ****** rage.
Give us some meaning,
give us a new age.

It's, smiling.
It's so gingerly soft,
it's singing along to a favorite song.
It's the enjoyment of buying a new toy.
It's the guilt of spending money.
It's the joy of sunshine on my face.
It's melanoma.
It's a Sunday morning drive.
It's running out of gas on the interstate.
It's an epsom salt bath.
It's a bug on the bathroom wall.
It's a bug on the bathroom wall.
It's my skin beginning to crawl.
It's my skin beginning to crawl.
It's a hidden breaking point,
it's waiting to feel a mental snap.
It's taking a deep breath of the spring time air.
It's a gnat flying into your nostril.
It's the sound of chirping birds in the morning.
It's the woodpecker drilling into my brain.
It's
It's it's it's it's it a I ts it's I ts si sit ti sti ist st it it's
It's me.

I expected to wait my whole life away.
Never thought that bird would return home.
What if.
What if she didn't have meaning
tied in a note around her leg?
What if I was happy
to have some anguish to relish in?

Do I tend?
Pick something up off
the floor of my memory?
Do I find something new,
yet long gone,
to ascribe my longing for?
To apply my doubt to?
What if anguish has always been here,
untapped and brimming,
and I just keep picking things
to soak in it.

I fear it was never the bird having flown,
that brought me to such depths.
I fear I've been living in these depths all along,
and just finding reasons to persist there.

In my dream, I'm coming home.
Footsteps echoing in the foyer
as I climb the nineteen stairs.
Keys and tumblers.
The door swings shut behind me
with a soft little snik.
In the dream there's a dog
asleep on the floor of my apartment.
I'm frightened when I see it,
the blonde fur intimidates me.
In my dream its tail is curled,
wrapped around it's body.
It's facing away from me.
My emotions ramp from frightened
to fearful as I step towards it,
and when I reach out a shakey hand
to touch the blonde fur...
I sharply inhale and retract my arm,
the dog is ice cold.
It turns it's head and looks at me,
and where it's eyes used to be
are now only two tangled, knotting messes
of writhing maggots.
In my dream the dog speaks to me
just as the scream that's caught in my throat
has a chance to escape.
It mutters something gutteral as I begin to shriek.
I never hear the word it says, though.
I wake up sweating.
I wake up again.

Pour it.
Don't want to taste it
anymore.
Just pour it right
into my heart,
funnel it into my soul.
Flood me with it,
my head is swimming.
Pour it.
Vacuous vessel,
my body and mind.
Filled to the brim,
marinated and brined.
Sopped up.
Wrung out.
Pour it.
Pouring.
Down the spout.

If only I could crack open my skull
and feel the spring sunshine on my exposed brain.
If only.
I wonder how that would feel?
A light breeze, golden rays and warmth.
Dry.

Dry.

I'd keep you like this
forever,
beautiful and naked.

The collector in me
sees you
wrapped in plastic.

Behind glass,
top shelf
in my curio cabinet.

Not to be played with,
only appreciated
from afar.

Twine eyes
wrap me up,
back and forth
is good enough.

Bound to look,
love is tied
with your two spools
of blue twine eyes.

No microphone,
just a stick in the dirt
but that doesn't mean
it's all she's worth.

Writing in circles,
spinning my wheels
in the loose gravel,
in the muddy fields.

Bound to look
into knotted pines,
******* visions
of your blue twines.

People want you to believe
that happiness should come easy.
That life rains it upon you
like a brief and pleasant rain
during a hot summer day.

They want you to think
that if your life doesn't bring
those little drizzles of happiness,
something must be wrong.
Wrong with you,
wrong with your life,
or that other people
are oppressing your happiness.

What they don't tell you
is that happiness takes work.
It's a conscious decision,
it's constant maintenance of the mind,
it's a light in the attic,
it's a reminder to not look down,
to not look behind.
It's an internal war.

Happiness starts with a decision,
and it only gives up
when you do.

I was so ***** the other day;
I cleaned my **** off with a vacuum cleaner.

Y'know it don't have to be a squirrel.
A rabbit or even a cat works fine too.
Let me tell you, if life grows mundane
all you gotta do is find something dead.
But if that doesn't quite do the trick
try being the one who kills it instead.
Life is littered with hidden speed bumps,
it can be good to find them, my friend.
Life begets life, or so it is said.
But a tiny taste of death will remind you
to beget while the getting's good.

Sometimes there's nothing more beautiful
than a rotting carcass of a squirrel on the road.
Petrified, hollow-eyed, stiff as a board.
Sometimes you need to see something dead
in order to really appreciate life.

A third of a fifth a night
is three sevenths of my week,
which is two fifths of my month.

Shine in my eyes,
how that ***** sun does rise.
Light bathing the skies,
color comes in a disguise.
Ain't painted,
no surprise,
how that ***** sun does rise.
Shine upon my brown eyes,
let me make a choice with pride.
With consideration I decide
I ain't a saint,
no surprise.
How that ***** sun does rise.

Maybe if you weren't so pretty when you cry
I wouldn't feel compelled to be so cruel.

*** of needles,
all held together with a rubber band.
Baggies and cotton ***** and
a spoon with a blackened bottom.
A length of rubber tubing.
Shot up and nodded off,
she seemed happy that way.
Even sobbing, she seemed somehow happy.
She didn't want my help
and I didn't have help to give anyway.
She wanted blue lips
and the peace of the infinite.
She'd gone cold
and I never was a fire.

Can't help but wonder why.
The sun floats across
the clear morning sky
like a piece of dust trapped
in the fluid of my eye,
and I just can't help
but wonder why.
The same old song
is stuck in the back of my mind
so I hum while I work
in rhythm and time,
but I just can't help but
wonder why.
I watch myself whisper
little white lies
to keep you safe
and to keep truth disguised,
and I just can't help
but wonder why.

I stepped on the clutch and shifted out of neutral,
flicked my headlights on and checked my mirrors
then eased out of my parking spot on the dark street.
The morning was brisk and damp with precipitation,
I enjoyed the rhythm of my intermittent wipers
and reached for the little unbreakable comb that I
always keep in the tray on top of the dashboard.
I combed the snags and tangles out of my beard
as the oversized tires beneath me ate up the road
in a grumbling monotone hum of rubber and asphalt.
I combed you out of my beard and replayed last night
in my mind, the dim lights and low music wafting
through my memory like a breeze through a window
that rustles the curtains and shuffles papers around.
I smiled at the sunrise peeking over the mountains.
The naked mountains, the purple-pink tie-dye sky.
I smiled at the sunlight in my eyes, at the instinctual
way my eyes squinted and my hand reached up for
the visor over my head and swung it down just right.
I smiled at the prospect of the day, at the implications
of the previous evening spent swimming in her eyes.
I smiled at the idea of tomorrow, and the next day,
and all the months and years I've yet to experience.
I smiled while I drove.