sell me benediction and be done with it

this isn't apathy
this is painting with the most boring black i can find
and calling it "like father like son"

im tired of searching
or better yet
tired of acting as if im tired of searching for providence

so again
sell me benediction and be done with it

blank stare at blank page
the Pit of Acheron stretching down
pray pray pray with my wretched mouth
for anything that makes me think of your face rising out of it

i still ******* love you

this isnt just feet on the precipice of deepening reverie
this is death of the best of me
please please please let me believe forever that your flesh
still regrets the loss of mine pressed close

my ghost really needs it

every morning i write "mea culpa" on my palm
with a cheap ink pen i found in a parking lot
while wandering around looking for something
to write about
little victories
rental history
past due
losing it
putrid
Euclid in a noose
loose cash for a cheap elote evocation
i bleed truth from my gums when im drunk and my heroes hate me

burdens

or murmuration mid-dance

perspective


im still learning that

all is mind
all is dream
all is all alone

there
the deconstruction made ever more elusive our moth eaten infinity
a labyrinth there was no need to stumble into
but stumble we did
over words
over stacks of books or bones or both
over lovers lost long before the longing for getting lost
in the primordial black of being

loss
the language of whatever god dreamed us alive before dying in her sleep

there
the unraveling reality i snarl at in the mirror of my soul

there
the end painted on the walls of our childhood homes

there
any place other than under the only cosmos ever known

black sun rising behind a pair of bone white pyramids

i don't know why i keep seeing this

the urge to thread my absurd dreams into the naked normal
is overwhelming
and yet
every single morning i dig graves for them behind my eyes

black sun setting
golden sand turned into a mirror meant for the grinning gods
of frenzied denizens of some dim and distant existence

my conviction has always slipped through my fingers

eater of worlds
beseecher of ends hell bent on getting new skin to kick rocks in
constant
unconscious
mach speed
god needs to ******* back to his rabbit out the satin magic act *******
full clips
cool kids pulling
cooler patterns to be enraptured with
slap-dash
dash away faster and faster and faster

heat death

we need silence in each and every vestibule

we seek death like a cheap ticket to a free event we know we wont even show up for

donation boxes overflowing with halfhearted suggestions
futures trading
praise be to praise be to praise be to praise be to
be to
be to
be you
be folklore
be old warrants served to bones beneath floorboards
go towards the morning as well as from where the dirges are drifting out of

incense smoke
the glow of a tv
white noise
no
you know you wont need me
ill float away hoping to find a bright void to anoint with dream-speak
en route to a deep dissent i intend to rent to tourists

you know

for the full experience

and if i must rip rotten fangs
from the gaping mouth of the day
i will do it in the night hours
where every whisper is a war cry
alone and aflame with regret
the regret of never having the strength
to crack my ribs and carve the names
of every single one of these ghosts
onto my beating heart
and show them smiling like a child
while their's beat too

they dance in my head to the sound of blackened canines
hitting the floor at my feet

at least they are dancing

scenes of gold falling like snow
eyes reflecting alien stars in the middle of their death throes
this is fiction of the cheapest variety

maybe ill write your naked thighs
into lazy afternoons ive yet to take for granted
and call it art

you will probably never read this
and ill take that for granted too
and nose dive into the prolix
and intone the name death knows me by
and
and
and
and slip on these ellipsis i keep leaving on the hardwood
i drip paint and candle wax on
long gone down holes blacker than the bottom of swamps
reflecting those dying stars in the croaks of its frogs
no hope of talk
no lotus blooms
just poets scrawling on cell walls about it
mouths sowed up like the industry that doesnt want me
holier than thou
hell calls often
try not to seem so astounded
these mountains i mold out of old guilt
wilt like the orange roses on my altar i pick from my nana's backyard
focus
scratch warnings in the form of black hearts on every desk
locus
elote beneath swinging street light
coyotes locating beneath cracked moon
cut to me eyes rolling out of my bleeding head
bedrock

lets get off the ******* carousel
share the wealth of being able to trace the way back
to the philosophical trap house
parallel to all apparent selves
melt
melt
melt

sell it

I'm threading the narrative.
Barely there, anyway.

chipping away the dead grey rock
around violent-pink tourmaline with sweat
dripping from our brows.
tick,
tick,
tick.

i read your name in my cigarette smoke and turned my phone off.

lost,
boards squeek beneath handmade imported rugs,
fingers brush polished brass candelabra,
bulbs burst behind locked doors.
tick,
tick,
tick,
tick.

phones never turn back on,
smoke stains cheap wallpaper,
and eyes were never windows.

i said “cicada”.
layers ******* everywhere.
getting lost in space.

all alone in a cheap hotel room
writing "gang gang" on the beige wall
next to the bed,
I've never felt so alive.

your ghost keeps whispering "oh well, dude"
every time I think things would be better
if I didn't say what I did;
I treasure any hell I won't abide in.

no telling when this feeling will fade away,
I'm bleeding out in every street everywhere.

My bailiwick is perpetuating
mania back on itself,
the radius is shaped
like canopic jars carved in the likeness of mad gods of hells
I've missed on trips through the blackened aftermath imagined
ad hoc in afternoons which we were meant to scatter like ashes, like truth,  like flattery, like rats..

Ladders to illusory
for proof of the usefulness
the numinous has in obfuscating
my *******,
past lives,
fugue states,
immune to the mutagenic malaise of this routine rebuking of being aloof in the face of futures yet to be hewn from the quantum foam.

Empty bottles.
Ghosts given up too indifferent sky.
Empires toppled by nightfall.
There is no "why” to all of this,
just a primal drive off the tallest cliffs we can possibly find.

This morning I cut off around 4 months of hair in the bathroom mirror I have watched myself wash my hands in since I was old enough to remember.
I thought about what happened in those 4 months,
what happened in those years outside of having staring contests with my reflection
while trying to guess the scent of the hand soap my grandmother had filled her ceramic seashell dispenser with;
it was different every time,
but somehow
it always smelled the way the lavender in the backyard did that afternoon I found out they had shut off your ventilator.

I only know that now;
hair trimmings on the floor
waiting to be swept up and
dumped around the rose bushes
so the deer won't try to dine on them
before they've had a chance to bloom.

Something like that.

I'm not mad at you for what happened.
Only mad at myself about how
the last thing I told you was a
dad-lecture about looking sloppy ****** up in front of people.
Mad that I only said that ****
because it was ******* up my high
and was too spineless to just be honest about it.

I think I might cut a few more
inches off in the morning.

Saints in the grass,
snakes in the red inked rice paper,
no stakes.

Paydirt to just dirt,
inertia,
stealing the first buds on your neighbor's rose bush
because you've earned them.

Worth is a burned bridge
glimpsed over a shoulder,
burgeoning burned already
lest we embed flesh in cold earth because to smoulder is a fate worse than rehearsing a death wish
in the cracked mirror of modernity.

Learned behavior.

These days the
development of a style
is like trying to translate
the leaves blowing across
concrete into Naruda
at his most heartbroken.

You either try or lie about what
is dying in the background
of every family photograph
yet to be taken.

Being well received is a gold star
sticker by your name written in
yellow crayon;
I don't want you to like me.

Wilmot in the park,
the dregs hurled at the world,
teeth stained red or falling out.

I don't want you to like me.

I want you to feel something.

The more the reader
is left to ask what happened
the more the mask slips
and the trajectory of this elliptical orbit I'm absorbed in can be
learned and mapped out.

Black clouds holding hands
with the laughing child in my chest.

Where's the threads,
the vein that runs through it,
the ******* point to it all?

You can't daisy chain clouds
with "I love you" whispered
in abandoned houses
and expect it to rip out hearts.

Patterns, patterns, patterns end.

Nothing matters anyway.

More masks,
less friends.

This lassitude is a path
I intend to stray from,
go laughing like a madman
off into the wild wild faceless
fade-away until I wake up
in another's afternoon.

Square one is etched in my light-body.

Masks, masks, and masks.

Sad poems stacked somewhere
between our past and the shattered
glass still scattering Saturday sunshine;
I think I've loved life enough, thanks.

Through the narrow window
in my cell I see the
sunset shading everything,
from sky to soil,
the color of watered down
merlot soaking into fresh white linen
and I wonder how much
you've been laughing lately.

You touched rolling clouds
without ever knowing there would
be no touching down
and that “good enough for jazz” ****
is ******* trash.
So, just come back.

The sound of me taking
drags off a cigarette
as all these mean dark clouds
roll roaring out all of your heads
is an award worthy soundtrack
all by itself.

and yes, I totally get why the skies look this way.

I just needed something to write about
and the climate seemed to have the
perfect amount of "meta" in it to...

All of these people gnashing teeth
over 2 months of an isolation
drenched in comfort takes my
mind to Thoreau at his cabin,
tending to his beans
and befriending bees
while the orchestra of the
afternoon breeze plays
the branches like a cello
to that brilliant gilded lonely he danced
with like a lover in a living room
or a child standing on his shoes at a wedding.

See, I've been eviscerating self
for the viewing pleasure of shadows
for 13 years,
in dark corners all alone
save for those souls holding black holes torn in reality who occasionally
came around to share drugs or a beer with me.

What I am saying is this isolation driving
you all to drink or sink teeth into anything
is my default setting.
I've been laughing like a lunatic watching a
mushroom cloud way bigger than my thumb at arms length rise in the distance for so long that it's become a feather-top
with more pillows than every bed
in every sorority house combined.

You ******* are less than amateur.
I'm the unsung tyrant king of this cancer-verse.
There was never any answers to any questions
or any standards for anything anywhere ever
and there never will be

**** screen.
Acceptance.

skipping rocks across still ponds,
the gods are comedians.

entropic,
my coffee is still hot.

middle fingers to a walk of shame.

you all get lost like bats in a thick fog.
so let me scratch my scrimshaw
in peace, please.

i write for the ghosts of my past lives.
that's why i leave ink anywhere but on the page.

we all want to see the dead body.

you might be thinking Im full of ****,
but look at how we pour over
one another's work;
so close we should taste blood in our mouths.

we need to stare into the bluish-grey face
of death so we dont putrefy in our
bathroom mirrors every morning.

we need desperation,
we need pain,
we need a tinge of the fight's futility
being realized.

most important of all,
we need to leave it where we found it
and never speak of it again.

we ALL want to see the dead body.

Cherish that being scared of the future feeling.
It’s just one snare hit on the drum track of some wack ****
you slapped together in mom’s basement on a 8 track sold at her estate sale
and bought by a soundcloud rapper who will just delete the ****
to make one of his lame *** songs.

Youth burns like the oil in old lamps.
Only ever slow clap when it’s the most out of place.
Fold up maps and toss them out rental car windows.
Laugh like a savage drinking blood of his cold axe blade.

It will be ok.
This isn't as much of a battlefield as you're painting it out to be.

Although the carrion still circle overhead though so...

This is all the narrative
of some disillusioned author
who conceptualized it long before
he started missing his deadlines
and drinking at breakfast.

All of it.

Everything.

Every morning I try to coax
the End Times out of a single second.

So far I've only managed to slip
between minutes lost to watching
the coffee *** fill to it's brim.

Little victories.

Fiddles played while any and all mystery
falls on bent swords,
you can hear the sadness in the notes
as they float between the oxygen molecules.

Solitude is an honest friend most days
while others it is another bent blade
awaiting my laziness.

I sleep standing up or running in place
so jokes on it.

Abraxas in the bathroom mirror,
I am not here perpetually.

Krakens in the coffee creamer,
"here" is a relative term.

Massive is the pile of things
I'll never get around to touching,
my relative's calls are all forwarded
to voicemail.

Worry is a meal all it's own.

Prost to the dreamers too awake
for their own good.

I see you.

These doors don't open so easily
so I drink when even the tiniest
of shafts of light are beaming through.

Nothing makes sense,
everywhere is a dark room.

I see you until my "one-too-many"
weighs heavy on my eyelids
and my glass dances across the floor.

I need to get out of here.

Give me the cup
and I'll fill it,
with guilt,
with blood,
with a future named in honor
of a nightmare that couldn't rouse
my tired bones.

I have found where all roads end
and laughed at the sky like a madman,
drinking the rain that fell into my open
mouth.

Give me the athame and I'll sharpen
it on my chipped teeth before
I plunge it into trembling earth
that smells of my mother's perfume.

I have knelt here before
but only now do I feel the bruises.

Only now do I love them.

Every other moment,
beneath my feet,
I feel the ground's metamorphosis
into open air.

Truth is a tightening noose.
Trying to syphon anything but lies
as white as the proof is deniable
is useless.

Spoonful after spooonful flying
into a smiling mouth;
no airplane sounds.

Missing the tentacles writhing beneath
the detritus on the Earth's surface
is as close we orphans can get to
being detrimental to a cause.

Claws marks on the inside of coffin lids
scrawl their own metaphor for the squall
that drifts slow and minimal
but ends at The All coming to a
screeching halt in the middle
of the walkways connecting
the land of the living with
the dreams of palms outstretched
for what we will never learn.

The days are becoming too many bricks
through one window
or too much hornet soju before hitting
the next noodle spot.

Old news like the petrichor.

The walls are screaming "pick up the pen"
like it's so simple to not sip the sickness
out of this distance and call it a friend.

Mentally melting,
sell it quick,
sell it quicker.
The market's on nose-dive.

Stuck and helpless but on a slow climb
to mindful of what "self-as-center" gets.

I guess this isnt idleness...

this morning you came to me
in a dream,
with your hair dripping wet
and wrapped in a cream
colored bath towel,
looking like the ******* image
of the cosmos collapsing.

right as i felt like God himself
i started crying like a child
alone and lost in some monstrous night.

i never knew i missed you this much.

If I'm not holding your hand
then you refuse to walk with me.

I wish that character flaw of yours
would find a porch to die beneath.

I wouldn't mind smelling the rot
for weeks before finding it.

you can hear them scream
"peep the soul glowing"
from the cheap seats
we need to keep the bones
just to throw 'em into stockpots
believe what you want
we wont notice
it's deep sleep or hopscotch over
whole oceans turned to vapor
the pay-dirt is favored over
that traitorous flavor you slang
at the end of your week
wait
who transcended the breeze
without leaving a dream-scape
say it loud
say it loud
my nose bleeds gold
no need to peep the soul
the glow and the punctuation are implied by the flow
plus the gumption fades quick
ive tried writing the folds out of the plot
it not ******* possible
say it loud
say it now
say it proudly
stop

Just a sip from the abyss
and then it's bed time for all of us.

Twisting words around sunshine
is a gun to the head of God
if God wasn't busy with the mystery
hidden in the entropy spilling
out of my pen.

Just a sip, kids.

This is just some **** for you to skip rocks to.

Every calm that has ever birthed
an epiphany for you was really
sheer ******* chaos you were
too blind to notice.

believing it was something
like a nice early 20th century
restaurant is convenient
now that i’m trying to write
about where “I” was before
the doctors forced me back
into my body the other day
at the hospital.

the clink of silver on porcelain
becoming the relentless beeping
of an ECG is imagery that does
all the heavy lifting.

of course, dissociation does come
easy to my generation.

we all do not wear watches either.

only more problems, right?

In the past I would pride myself
on resiling as stylishly as possible.

That Most-High hope climb
choked and died and now I'm here.

No idea why though.

Fossils pulled from the cold cold earth,
their dimensions
meticulously documented,
are locked in filing cabinets
some place way too eager to become the past.

Of course I know now though.
Damage done.

I don't write poetry.

I spill Paul Masson and Pepsi
out of styrofoam cups
on the floors of every theater
within walking distance.

Later, I call it heresy
and start the walk all over again.

But I really don't write poetry.

I fall deeper as I
watch her yawn in the sun.

There better be a fountain
made in her likeness
at the center of all this.

Whose voice echoes down these halls?

Who asks that question more than one
could otherwise stand?

Immune to voids and letting go,
paralysis precedes the fall from grace.

More turns.
More turns.

One could walk while they chase
if they absolutely had to.

I can turn a bright morning
into a nightmare as good as any.

it doesnt mean i want to.

so every moment not alone
is "too many cooks" to me.

it doesnt mean i want that either.

these words of mine
are a labyrinth

I've been floating
down rivers of questions
my whole life.

Picture ancient microbial life
resurrected from a glacier
quickly melting somewhere.

Floating on the thread between.

in lieu of a gilded rose
in front of a glimmering window
we have this moment
in which we disclose,
to you as much as to ourselves
a memory;
bones pulled from a frozen lake.

call it stolen.
call it entropy.
don't ever call it again.

no matter the path
you choose to crack microscopically
Saturn will still scream on a wavelength
that took 4.5 billion to even be noticed.

that's divinity.
blindly casting unfathomabilty
at the void all around itself:
king, queen, and the thief purloining
the centerpiece from the former's feast table.

so please explain to me why,
a billion miles away from Saturn,
closer to Sol,
suicide is something that exists.
especially since every truth is a myth
that, in the end,
was ripped from the mist of **** memories
remembered a bit differently.

so, is it stolen?
is this entropy?
are you married with kids?

whatever it's become for you,
love it.
as well as however it is you fit into it.

wine or blood?

either way, a window opens
and all I see is how the sheep
and the wolf share a common
enemy:
the shepherd.

blood it is then.