besieged by the sky,
my lungs have already burst.
never found the words.


i still drift nowhere,
first to find out I'm alone;
I would hate to hide.


the smell of honey
and lavender paints the walls
of mornings lost to...

Suffering is a hovering
mother ship made of cheap tissues
hardened by ***** spilled
in shame and shadow
by (fill in the blank).

It's a crumbling mobile home
awaiting the day it's replaced
by the space it defamed
with it's sloppy symmetry.

We could raze it with a lazy
string of syllables, but we...

We flicker; pixels on the screen
of a digital camera discovered in a yard sale
under the tyrant-sun of a southern summer saturday.
"I'll give ya four for it.", we mutter to the resplendent deity sipping her ice tea from amber pressed glass in a neon pink plastic lawn chair.

The ice clinks in her glass
and the cicadas answer for her
and I think to myself that this has to be a dream,
that the Japanese have a term for the sound cicadas make that is infinitely more fun than "crepitation".

zing-zing-zing.

I'm laying on the floor of some kitchen
ive never been in and can't here a ******* thing besides the electricity coursing through the endlessly twisting-turning wires hidden just beneath the drywall.

I'm actually not anywhere at all.
writing from a...

I like destroying what I create sometimes.
It's easier than never finishing something,
sometimes.

will love lost in unnameable night
be found by some summer eyed
couple stumbling and kissing
through the dark?

or the dogs?

you already know the answer.

two nights ago I overdosed
for the fourth time in five years.

I don't even know if I'm alive
or dreaming.
right now or forever.
write it down,
cords were severed.
I'm breathing either way.
I'm breathing either way.
but dreams can fade slow but they'll fade.
so either way,
I'm breathing.
either way,
I'm breathing.

attenuation,
all still nameless and beautiful,
his eyes were open;
the lamp and the shadows.

"departure from the night"
he said endlessly from below
the dark demanding
forgiveness anyway.

the boy in his bones
screams of ravens
on a scarecrow in a
snow-covered corn field.

past time.

the man in his head kneels,
always kneels.

first off,
no,
I dont think so.
so slow,
I'm throwing myself off a cliff
in an infinite number of other realities;
it's all gonna be alright.

slipping.

birds singing on wires
and treelimbs;
the house is burnt to embers.

we never learn,
we won't remember.

smoke shades sky still sadder
than any of us though.

measured worth
in bones littered across
every bit of this rock.

birds singing.

Truth is, I have only caught tiny glimpses of her.
Only pieces.

Perfume on the wind.

Silence always reaching.

"Set adrift by that woman's ..." is now a dead horse that in no way could still be called a horse much less beaten;
the flies play their ancient dirge in reverence and I see Her by an old Ash.

I wave.

We're screaming.

Silence.

Perfume on the wind.

Next time, maybe.

poems are not the maw
but the drool dripping
from it onto a "same old, same old"
protagonist realizing their fate
as they tremble trying to keep
the alien jaws at bay.

what should i do with that intel?

spin wheels with friends killed
in the fantasies they awoke in?!

im spent still with a grin in the
"you mad at me?' ocean.

oh **** is a cloak,
hope is a dagger in the back.

at least the ghost will be potent, right?

what was the German word
for "almost aliteriation"?

that,
is a one word tome.
my ego pours out
in the form of tears
and sometimes lines from
movies I think people should
see if they haven't yet.

I'm not crying.
I'm sideways on the interstate.
flying,
if you will.

if you build,
remember me
as gold in the afternoon sun.

please.

we don't believe in believing.
we believed in you and, well...

we have a reason to be all teeth
for any and all demagogues
dreamimg themselves into demi-gods
some weekend next February.

we are the stars that have been dead
for millenia,
but still make me feel divinely insignificant.

we are the new constellations
named by a future us.

we are the deepening ethos
which lifted them up to rot
in the lofty quantum myth of consciousness like the rest of us.

we are entangled with the ever-blossoming constant
we watch like a top spinning ad nauseum.

we are indifferent to your opinions and principles
and tired of your excuses for not "getting it".
we view that **** as background music for the apocalypse
unraveling before our collective nakedness.

we are ******* hostile.

we are clenched fists ****** to clouds
after a rousing battle speech
collapses into echos we weaponize
on accident like Mingus on a piano.

we are as colossal as the fossilized intimacy you lost
on the blackened avenues of past uses
of compassion as a mask.

we are starving for the space
inside of which you remain just to atrophy.

we are the cloven hooves of crooked
discipline dancing to sounds of
splashing gasoline.

we are the mushroom clouds crowning
our boundless potential.

before anything else, we are you.
you're worst-case scenario
unearthed by the prayers to float off
into the fade-away before a pretty credit roll;
unwavering.

we are catastrophe, but we don't have to be.

we know the world from
what we see on the back
of a tarnished silver spoon.

you could make an art out
of the polish, seeking the perfect
patina, judging the skill
of others; that grotesque collective gaucherie.

I say drop it in the dirt
and walk off into that
whirlwind of unsullied
strangeness swirling
behind the perspectives
we value so much.

do what you want.
it is in your hands.
literally.

poetry does not have to be
about love.
in fact, you punch-drunk bleeding heart sap-seekers
smother it like mothers driven to
madness,
pillows in your grasp.

my opinion.

let it be, breathe, dream, or feast upon
whatever it lunges at in the black night unraveling behind the eyes
of any who try lighting fires
for others to write by or cry to
or hide in.

for ***** sake, love that if you
must pry love from something.

just put the ******* pillows down.

knives in the dark,
an avalanche,
not being needed;
we are all boiling
in the same ***.
I have to keep
reminding myself
of that.

[laugh track here]

ive stolen a touch from Pablo,
Frida,
Dali,
even Korine's canvas
has touched my thumb,
but it's your cheek in the
morning I remember the most.

we were never good for each other.
I dont have anything better than that.

I'm sorry.

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.

Worlds will bleed before they sing.

Sorry to be the dying spider curling up
underneath your church pew,
but i’m not really.

This is a service of another colour.
Pays less, as well.

Again, what the f&%k am i talking about?

i grow weary of watching
the world sharpen it's teeth
with a rusty file
and trying to smile
at the same time.

who would want to measure
raindrops in a thunderstorm
when you could just feel them
hit your face?

exit stage left when you
want to stretch a minute
into infinity.

that advice came from a ghost
of a man and cost me a cigarette
and a can of Modelo.

worth is relative, i hear.

The hardest thing I have ever
attempted in my 30 years has been
keeping my grip on the serpent's tail
as it spirals up into infinity.

This candle that burns before me
is dedicated to the times it slipped
from my fingers and I was
reacquainted with the dirt I
had forgotten would embrace me
like my great-grandmother used to.

Wax in the bowl,
supple dark.

A single syllable slides out of somewhere.

Another candle.
Another heart softly beating.
until it isn't.

It's disgustingly unfair, I know.
But...

fungi sunshine ride try time
grimey-find me-blinding--house couch tv--remote variable-gruesome food spoonfed by joanna newsom
singing in the key of airplane noises--make-shape-exorcise fate from cups half full of lulls and binary--hi-bye--lycanthropic soda dealer guilt tripped by the full moon--cool dude though-fun crunch curmudgeon stuffing love into guts-upchuck-punch drunk-cousin to state vector wreckage-barbecue-hard to loot-heart over headaches--family-friendly--revelry-devil setting clocks back--watch-lost and boundless-child in a wilderness--eat-eat-drink-****-****-****-pistis-missing person surgery--blind forensics-thick skin---little bitty mystical-sit down

the locus of expanded
war or any armistice...

what that actually means
is something I'll probably
walk into like traffic
in the future,
at some point.

I think,
the way your voice
bounces around
your car is one
of God's hiding places.

[perspective]

far from home,
far from conscious,
a fall from grace
isn't as far from
greatness as
one would
think.

progress.
unsung,
fade to black;
fin.

is it though?
I've been renting hopes
like the rest of you.
centrifugal force;
I'm minimum effort
in your pivotal war.
miss me with the *******.
hit the mug with the honey,
[full clip]
that wool slips and let's the light in,
[that isn't funny]
im ******* trying here.

All is absurd.

"Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth"

I keep meeting oceans that only want to be the same lake of fire.

I is a lie that was fabricated by no one.

How does anyone catch a glimpse
and not melt into their own laps?

See?

Absurd.

the things you write
are so sappy.

that is not to say I do not
mind drowning in their
stickiness.

you should leave them in the sun
and see what happens.

remember when you played
that role in that one movie
about the end of the world?

that is how I feel when I
stay up drinking and reading
poetry by people who I will
never meet.

call it what you want.

I'll be reading in the
poetry section.

these million million molecules
between the things we hate
about each other
smother me in the night.

"mama has lost it,
hasn't she?"

I wouldn't think of blaming all of you.
ever.

the stray black lab that ran
around with a friend and I
was ******* fearless.

he was one of us.

one night he chased a football
into the street, directly
into the path of a speeding black
jeep and ended up broken and howling in a way
I still hear sometimes.

He was even more one of us then.

It has been three years since
the night I died.
Three years since *******
myself on the bathroom floor
while the girl i loved stepped out
to buy some smokes.

death didn't have a sound,
but it still echoes through
me.

we never named the dog.

flies swirling,
eyes are pearls
reflecting empty sky.

fragmented.
light imbibed elsewhere.
suspended end-of-all-things.

it all makes sense when it didn't;
didn't do the math right.

rite.
write.
left.
right.
we all march towards death
like it's our mother;
God waits anxiously by the
proverbial ****-soaked bedside.

pigment clashes with pigment
and I, the lazy tyrant, try to pull
a crown from their oblivion.

you asked.

today, i found mana in the corner
of a coffee shop and shared it
with your ghost.

cast me into the fire
of your future
unfolding infinitely
behind a whispered
"I hate you".
Prima Materia,
kindling for the Great Work,
entropy warping days
into centuries bored of the
historians misinterpreting them.

somewhere in all that
I am child chasing fireflies
and couldn't careless
that I'll eventually meet you.

I lose poems written
by the long dead monarch "me"
in the liquid hues moving
across cheap gessobord.

Call it the lost art of disillusionment
treated as dreams imbued
with defeat.

"Viva la revolution"
screamed from every rooftop
and useless street
by the youth who refuse to
eat or drink anything
but silver spoons full of ellipses
confused as spots where ink...

My eyes have been wide.

but what of the jilted lovers
cutting off their hair in the
proverbial backyard?

the dreamers learning to speak
through pillaged nights
like cheap tin cans on pink
and white twine?

are they with me in my
brittle bones while tomorrow
writhes in our collective
unconscious?

I writh despite the answer.

I'm not honest,
obnoxious.
I'm progress made for the sake
of having to say "stop this".
I'm boxes with the name of God
scribbled in blockscript on top of them.
I'm carpe diem,
unresponsive.
I'm learning dark age surmation while awaiting the moment the darkness has faded.

I'm a ******* art show all by my self.
I'm in hell.
I'm the hardship.
Harvest losses.
...only a part of it all is ever seen though.

birds are a theme of mine;
I pick up feathers off the street.

they finally settle on my altar
in a 87 cent vase
only big enough for a dandelion
or two.
or feathers.

hawk, turkey vulture,
raven, bluejay, mockingbird,
hummingbird.

however they lost them,
they play bouquet for love now.

like me,
finally.

today, my drive to do anything
is as dead as disco.

earlier, while drinking my coffee,
I heard disco ive never heard
before.

so I dont know.
tomorrow is a new day.

what is that strange other end
of somehow?

Zeno's favorite number?

it is all dead here;
the birds sing bones awake.
slow is the air
when the sky sleeps.
a fringe to hunger for
when the center dims
all glowing notes
is all we feed hope for.

escaping fangs lazily is
just wraiths scraping ancient
havens clean and leaving.

same old shape-changing...

see the bowl?
see the ocher?
this is us silently slumming
through the rush of present
flesh and far-flung mind;
derelict awareness shared
sparingly.

it's all love though.

three-hour window,
might play a Friday all night
on a Tuesday.

the night we escaped
transitional housing,
most people were
boosting time from
the backkseats of old
four-door Fords
parked on their streets.

yea, the same ones they lived on.

while we lived on instant rice
and the prospect of drunk at midnight,
they were foaming at the mouth
in front of static on a screen.

yea, the same ones they lived on.

these days are fiends for our seconds
and we've been reckless with them
so far,
so I don't know.

my deathwishes snap twigs in the distance,
still.

am i supposed to split my skull
on the white marble of your
throne room while you pretend
you hide how heavy your
fantasy sits shining on your head?

some wind whispers "please, live".
the wind is just reacting
to the sun. I'll live.

every line is a brush stroke.
every word is a loose hair
in the paint.
untold;
our story isn't even in the
crib yet.

[crickets]

crib death.

Stumbling down the street
whilst scratching your middle name
onto a shabbat candle is me
doing my best Phillipe Petit.

I'll try to remember to read by the light.

the word verbosity,
the words for ****'s sake.

those are some words
that come to mind
when I think
about your attempt at trying.

you either **** or **** later.
ivory towers turn
to chalk in the rain.

I'm exhausted with the stakes,
as well,
so don't take any
offence from this.