as your grace tries to stretch it's wings
in that rusted cage he glues plastic gems on
i am besotted by the elegance of the plumage
falling to a floor i would give anything
to sweep.

the night i proclaimed my love for you
i made an attempt on my life,
the rationale was of the "if i can't have..."
kind, blended with other poisons,
and entirely half-assed.

only now, i understand that
whispering into tin cans and writing
poetry with hand-made quills is far better
than the inky black screaming oblivion
i almost slipped into.

We have a bad habit of scavenging
through any distant tragic
for any and all anecdata.

Brand it Dada,
if you want.

But please miss me with that
"mystically a misfit" shtick infinitely.
It's pushing 2020 and no body is blind
to being persona non grata,
given that it's written on every bit
of our skin like the insignia
of some designer product
we'll forget about before '21 hits.

Brand it post-romantic,
as long as you get past the ****.

Picture a match flipped into gasoline.
Static on a glass screen
destined to crack.
Etcetera.
Etcetera.

Rabbits dragged out of hats
only to be stashed in better ones.

Brand it neo-whatever,
if you absolutely have to.

Im not paid to care.

Eternity loiters outside
the corner store trading
conspiracies for loose cigarettes.

I give her 3, a half empty
Clipper and get ghost as quick
as winter in Qaxaca.
There is air to steal,
bones to pick clean.

This city is a scourge
and I have no plans to change that.
Only the compulsion to
throw my trash on it's burn pile,
pour my salt over it's fields,
and somehow stay numb to the wiles
of the smiling wild down every street
while it all lasts.

That's the only other charity
I'm willing to dredge up.

Don't make that face at me
when the only difference
between us is that you
do the same as I do
just wearing nicer clothes.

We are of the same ilk;
the militant disillusioned
awaiting the next spoonful of anything
that'll turn memory to mist and future to myth.

So ******* back to your routine life
and I'll do the same.
Haven't you heard that mutinies
are useless these days?
The currency of a failed nation.

I wonder what dark plots I could've
feasted on had I not been in so much
of a hurry to leave that corner store?
What forms of wickedness I could've glimpsed slithering; me and dirt covered eternity, just children flipping rocks to watch
centipedes and spiders fleeing from
the heat of God-on-high deeper into
the Earth...

Only the light polluted sky
will ever know the answer to that.

treading water,
pen gripped,
attention a fluttering
gold finch.

i seem to only author
plates, once spinning,
now shattering across
the kitchen floor.

let me drown.

i should maybe write
that down.

Scattering when the caterwaul
shatters the silence
has been the modus operandi
since band tees became mandatory
for imparting a personality.

I'm a casualty of my own inability
to mask anything except excitement
for that same silence.

This is all over the place,
I know.

Art, artist.
Form, function.

It's whatever.
It's nothing.

But I'll still harvest the stars
out of any hardship
like some lovesick punk
drunk on the assumption
of the eternal life of his forgettable darkness.

"if" is no longer
in my vocabulary.

effect then cause.

waveforms to particles.

sliding backwards is
a casual stroll towards a future
i've been wearing like a crown
all along.

that blazing divinity
you wear like a hand knitted
scarf is blinding.

so i bow my head
as i offer the only
things i can;
a palm full of wild honey
and a weary soul.