Leaves
Wilting
Falling
Drying
Sogging
Leaves
Leaving
Their trees

Were mirrors to melt,
I'd set them ablaze.

I'd laugh
at my molten gaze.
I'd smile
at the puddle.

Twenty thousand years
I'd watch,
as the glass
slowly forgot.

Give me
pride,

I'll love
again.

Have you got 600 grand
invested in Haliburton?
Or maybe Raytheon?

I do. I support war.

I love war.

More war, more money.
I'd vote for Cheney
if I could, but
a vote for Harris
will have to do.

Governor Shapiro is signing bombs,
he should sign every bullet.
If his name doesn't fit
he can shorten it
to "$"

The whale carcass of our country
is still warm to the touch,
but we will feast upon it
until there's nothing left.

Our bunkers will be our tombs,
lined with dollar bills,
soaked with blood.

I want war with Russia,
all out, no more proxies.
Save the remnants of Ukraine
and send our children instead.
I want war with China, war
with Korea.
I want war,
I want more,
I want money.
I want to watch the night horizon
ablaze with future archeologist's delight.
Vote for Cheney with me.
Vote for money,
I want MONEY.
I WANT MONEY.
YOU SHOULD TOO.

I can think of twelve hundred good reasons

to drink tonight.



In the back of my mind

they all feel like

shallow little lies.

When the feelings
of some people
are more valuable
than our way of life,
well, then
we've lost the plot.

If I traveled
somewhere far
and foreign,
I'd do my best
to conform to
wherever I am.

I don't find that
expecting that same behavior
from people who come here
to be immoral.

I refuse to feel guilty
for who I am,
just as I refuse to let pride
dictate my mindset.
It's two sides
of the same coin.

Guess what?
I get to decide how I feel,
I get to decide what I think,
how I behave.

I get to judge you.

The golden rule still applies though,
thus I conduct myself in a manner
which is expecting of judgement from you.
If I'm ******* up, shame me.
If you're ******* up, I'll shame you.
This is friendship, this is civility
at it's most fundamental level.
I want to respect you,
I want to be respected,
but never unconditionally.
I want to earn it,
I want to be deserving of it.
You should want that too.

Your feelings aren't holding water,
and we're all being flooded
with the repercussions.

Don't drown us.

No, actually,
We're not going to let you drown us.

Ignorance is bliss,
and we live in the information age.

Dude sometimes I rub my eyes
and it feels so ******* good
that I just can't stop.
Both eyes at once,
knuckles just twisting away.

I can drive with my knees,
can you do that?
It's difficult with my stick-shift
but I've gotten pretty good.









Anyway, I've been getting into
a lot of car accidents lately.

Happy birthday Mom.

I smell like dog farts
Stinky little pffts
Whisper quiet dog farts
Stinking up the room

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

Wheels of time
spin on
and I'm
nauseous.

It's easy to explain, really.
If never a father I become,
then never shall I be a failure at it.

*****.
Half-man, boy-child.
Weak.
Immature.
Unfinished.

All of the above,
sure... but,
not a failed father.

Again wheels start to creak,
and I'm already knee-deep
in empty cans of WD40.

What are you
supposed to do
when your best friend
won't play vidya with you?

Whispers in my ear,
memories like ghosts.


Mustn't be present.


Anything to not
be present here.
To not be present
anywhere,
anytime.

Fill up my eyes with monitors,
my ears with buds.
Fill up my mind,
brimming with brandy.
Keep smiling,
maintain an IV drip
of distractions.
Keep laughing.
Keep on
keeping on.

Walls mustn't falter,
I must not be present.
Not now.
Not ever.

The temperature is turned too hot, but,
it feels good for now.
I lean my face into the falling water
and let it just douse my entire world.
I start soaping myself up and,
with a subtle pang of regret,
I wash her scent from my beard.

I hear the door click open.
I smile before she pulls the curtain aside,
she's naked and climbing in with me.
I smile and pull her in, pressing myself
up against her and kissing her cheek, her neck.
I smile with the memories of how
my beard picked up her scent last night.
The brief pang of regret from earlier
is gone as I imagine doing it all over again.
I smile as our foreheads press together
and our soapy bodies slip against each other.

I smile.
She smiles back.

I wash her back.
She washes mine.

There's a car behind me
on the stretch of old interstate
between Artistes and Centralia.
Barren road besides us.
Rub my eyes, check the mirror,
and just like that
they're gone.
Relief, I can slow down a bit.
Hate holding folk up
in this old Peterbilt.

They never play sad songs
on the radio anymore.
DJs are emotional doctors
prescribing me how to feel.
I miss the radio,
seems it don't miss me.

Still trucking,
but basking
in that ringing gold.

Lone open road,
I'll get there and
there ain't nothing
wrong with that.
Though, tomorrow I'll wake
and not want to start again.

Every morning.

Never want to start any more.

But once I get going,
well, it's not so bad.

Flip the radio on
and just be begrudgingly happy.

I fancy the fierce fog,
backlit by the morning sun.

Burn off, slowly.
The day has just begun.

Mouse in the toilet,
drowned in the night.
I ponder, how long
It managed to keep swimming?

I ponder how long
I could've kept swimming.

Maybe three...
Four hours?
The porcelain walls
Slick as ice.

I ponder the precarious
Balance between
Exhaustion,
And death.

Cramping legs and arms,
Needing a quick break,
Breathing water,
A black tunnel.

Was I an hour too late,
Or just a few minutes?
Had I not hit snooze,
Would the mouse still
Have been swimming?

Treading the balance?

Would it have feared me?

Would I have even saved it,

Or ****** on it?

Would it have saved me?


I need to ****.

The milk goes first.
I'm tired of being ostracized by the cereal-firsters.

I've watched these freaks literally fill an entire
bowl up to the top with cereal, then try to fit
milk in. They get one solid layer of crunchy goodness
then have half a bowl left of mushy, soggy garbage.

And yes,
it's a soup.

*******.

A concrete island
Adrift upon the asphalt sea.

Come and sit with me
In drunken reverie.

Do you resent me
for such a hang up?
What am I supposed to do?
Oftentimes I'm torn,
frayed and tattered
along my edges,
trying to dance between
what is right
and what I like.
The stretch of space
between those two
have only grown more vast
with age.
Sprawling wastes fills that void,
wider and wider and
I'm always left reeling from my choice.
Indecision is the ghoul
that haunts my soul,
telling me to
avoid these feelings all told.
For when I do decide,
I can't seem to pick right
and I'm always left
reading the bones.

Ah,
uncaptured thoughts.

There's seldom a prospect more frightening to me,
thus I don a notebook & glorious pen
as my sword and shield
with which I'll tirelessly defend
my ever wavering memory.

Bouts.

It comes in fits
and tantrums.

Intermittent
bursts of
responsibility.

I'll **** the place up
for two months,
then in one day I'll
clean everything.

One time Mom got sick of me
not picking up my room.
I was eight.
She turned into a whirlwind
and tore everything off my walls.
Ripped everything off my shelves.
Upturned my garbage can
and my tackle box.
She dumped everything
into a big pile
in the middle of my room.

I cried and
in my first bout
of responsibility,
I cleaned it all up.

Just to start all over again.

Rose petals in the bathroom trash bin,
fervent phone calls in the morning.
Little bits of lavender stuck to my feet.
Debt. Balancing two lives into one,
sharing.

It's difficult, sure.

Were it easy,
it wouldn't be worth it.

No such thing as perfect.
Even if there was,
I'd still prefer it
the way things are.

I, but a blessed lamb,
but aren't we all?
Sent forth dithering
into the gaping maw of life
as a sacrifice to
uh,
the um....
What's that word
that means
doing something
for the knowledge of everyone?
Whatever,
family dies,
and life goes on.
So yeah.
**** is funny.

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.

A vast and unending realm
of thoughtless regret.

My face drawn
once again
to the book.

Countless pages of doubt,
scrolling through the past.

Where are they all now?

Where am I?

I'd better contrast
and
I'd better compare.

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 wanna write a poem
about the silence of falling snow.

...Voila!

Awakening
Cascading time
Crashing over the edge of oblivion

I swear
Two weeks ago
I was just turning eighteen

Last night
I was almost
Twenty five

This morning
Is edging close
To thirty years old

Awakening
Not to a new day
But to a decade long gone

I'm ingenuine.
Disingenuous.
...whatever.

Diner.
Dinerettes.
Grace me,
I'm your
favorite.

Serve me, I tip well.
Now show me your *****,
I won't tell.

God I want
To taste it,
to dip
into you.

Confucius say,
the deeper the tread on workboot,
the harder it is to remove dog ****.

I don't know how to type, so
last night
I started taking free lessons.

The learning isn't hard, but
the forgetting
is going to be a struggle.

Twenty five years
of bad habits.

****.
I could apply this
to anything
in my life.

My body heat
in a bottle.
Camera on the floor,
balance empty Mr. Beam
atop its lense.
Did I hit record?
**** it,
I gotta let go.
Bubbling up, man,
protein in my ****.
Yeah yeah yeah.
I'm dying
sure,
but so are you
and you
and you.
Outta room.
Pinch off
and save it for later.
Stop recording.
Another thing
that I'll never
show to
anyone.
Great.
Just
great.
Good job Justin.

She reaches behind her
and spreads everything,
her head presses into the comforter.
Duvet? Comforter? It's argyle,
whatever you wanna call it.
Green and light teal, the colors
of the blanket and pillows
match the curtains
hanging in the unfocused
background.
I turn the volume down
as she moans through
the initial insertion.
That's my favorite part.
The rhythmic slapping
of flesh coming together
begins like the beat of
some primal, animalistic drum.
I notice the furnishings are
seldom, a single dresser
with a large mirror
is the only thing I can see.
It has a light finish on it.
Interesting.
I would've gone with a dark walnut,
or maybe a mahogany.
Is dark wood furniture out of style?
I look around my room,
at the dark stained wood desk
that my computer sits on.
My **** isn't even hard anymore.
*** slowly dribbles out as I finish,
mostly unsatisfied.
Unsatisfied with my paltry velocity,
and further unsatisfied with my
terrible sense of interior decoration.
Oh well, I'll go again in an hour.
Maybe I'll get some ideas
for my kitchen.

I was eighteen
when Henry was born.
I was mostly gone back then.

Mom used to say
it's like she has two only children.

I still say that when people ask.

He's getting older
and I'm further now
than I've ever been.


I would say that he
thinks about me
less and less
these days,
but maybe that's okay.
Maybe that's for the best anyway.


...I bet my dad has had that same thought.

"Maybe it's for the best."
"Maybe that's okay."

Maybe not, I don't know.. but
it makes me feel better
imagining that he has.


Gotta call Henry.

Guess what?
People ******* change.

Poetry is dumb.