Theres black filth congregating in the crevice of every ninety degree angle in this building

The woodgrain in the floor invites me to melt into its stream down the hallway through the cracks into the grimy kitchen below

There are ghosts cooking there

Ghosts pacing the hallway where their corporeal form bade them farewell

Ghosts outside lifting weights and running calisthenic circuits

As though there were any merit in the shape of their supernatural form

As though the taste of chicken tenders and french fries still satiated their desire for self destruction

As though the world was still waiting for them, hand outstretched to

Wakeupeatgotoworkeatbacktoworkeat

Pay your bills

Sleep

This is no life for us ghosts -- we soon-will-have-beens -- we memories-waiting-to-fade -- we destined-to-be-soon-to-be-forgottens -- we clinging-to-what-is-nows

All who will not have ears one day had better listen.

As gravity is the boundary between the ocean and the shore.

As the eye is the boundary between light and darkness.

As a book is the boundary between religion and the religious.

As ideology is the boundary between the nationalists and the foreigners.

As weapons are the boundaries between the politician and his politics.

So these words are the boundary between you and I.

Every month or so he would stray from his narrow path, carrying a shovel. He would wander back into the forest--far enough to forget his path but not so far that he couldn't find this place again. He would take his shovel and dig up one single clump of dirt. When asked about this peculiar habit, he would profess his love for worms and filth but we all saw the bigger picture. His hole is big now. He climbs deep to the center of the earth for every pitch of dirt he claims, and I'm a little tired of climbing in after him.

Sunshine

Rainbows

Unicorns

Copulating

Microcosms of childhood fear

Wonder

Wonder about sunshine and rainbows
Wonder about whether or not mythical beasts procreate
Wonder about your childhood fears
Wonder why I would be telling you to wonder

We can be wonderful together

It was witching hour three sheets to the wind and a blinding high beam now spinning out of control into a ditch contorting cemetery fencing around the windsheild at windpipe height and I think to myself, "That's almost poetic."

In light as dim as truth I sit
A space where I can not exist
For fear of being that which lies
'Twixt color and the canvas.

In light as dim as truth I'm bliss
A space where you can not exist
For I am here and you are tricks
Just colors on the canvas

I knew this woman once, and I got her alone.

She asked me who the real Leo was, so I told her I was a poet. She said something like, "Aw. That's cute."

I looked into her eyes.
I looked into her eyes and saw that her poetry was the vain pursuit of a lost americana. Her poetry lived where could-be cartographers coddled their craft in closed-minded communes.

So I took it upon myself.
I took it upon myself to explain.

I said, "My poetry is when you find the dreams that your television set sold you -- while you're chained to a hospital bed on life support."

I said, "My poetry is when you're starving on the side of the road and a stranger gives you a sandwich -- only to die of malnourishment later because the sandwich was hardly enough to feed your tapeworms."

I said, "My poetry is when you find Jesus Christ -- while you're lying face down in a ditch in your hometown because you just couldn't make it out of that place alive."

She said something like, "I need to go. I forgot I had a thing."

I know that I haven't seen you since, but I want you to know that sometimes I pray, and when I pray I petition your god too keep you from finding my poems.