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

you asked.

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.

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.

what is that strange other end
of somehow?

Zeno's favorite number?

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.

not a soul can save the ocean
from drowning.

stop hoping.

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.

My protean soul transmogrified
on the altar of your heart;
what am I now?

I've watched homes construct
themselves from our past incarnations
and burn to ash in the same rainy afternoon.

You are forever unchanging.
You are change, forever.

They are the same;
the maelstrom I would smile and sing "Come Fly With Me"
to as it ripped the nuclei of my atoms from the electron clouds that obscure them.

I am static on the television that almost sounds like Sinatra;
a murmuration of starlings unaware
of the beauty in their intricacy.

Our gestation was cut short;
the television caught fire
and the starlings lay broken on an elementary school playground.

You, to me, are the silence that
replaced the staticky Sinatra or the wailing
children that find the murmuring ceased for good
by the monkey bars and plastic slides.

You are the reason for my loss of faith
in the words gorgeous, stubborn, and coincidence.

I am contented for the moment by just knowing I breathe the same air as
the flesh straining to contain you.

somehow, slowly sipping soju
through crazy-straws isn't seen
as art.

same goes for cyanide, somehow.

tough crowd.

gold falls from my ceiling
like fake snow on the set
of a ****** sitcom.

I’ve made a hobby
out of getting lost
in the apocalypse
blossoming in the "ad nauseam".

Dolly zoom on the obelisk
I’ve scrawled my nonsense on.
Jump-cut to my fist clenched
at purple firmament;
blood running down forearm.
Fade to black.
No credits.

Again.
Nonsense.

seen this more than sky.
the sky now, this life, I mean.
I am all things, dead.

and before, child,
delineation elevated
forlorn gambits;
however, it just kisses lovingly
most nights.
outside, plenty quiet resonates
solitude towards universal variability.
why xenography's zigzagedness
is
so
alive...
nobody knows.

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?

can you be claustrophobic
socially?

an ocean between me everyone
just doesn't seem to cut it.

[budget fx-whatever]

my monsters never needed
to be goaded into anything,
they have always been able
to make a show of things
all on their own.

A shimmering angel
glided in front of me
as I sat in the bookstore coffee shop
watching a documentary on
Pedro Manrique Figueroa.

What height had she fallen from?
How much of her brilliance was
from gleaming alabaster,
my divided attention,
or the loneliness I have come to call
colaboradora?

Obviously, she will never read this
and I will never know the name
which one could utter to bind
her to this lowly mortal plane
like magazine clippings to a canvas.

******* hell I need to get out more.

tell us all about it.

this hell was found
to be a stroll
through a park
on a rainy day
by some that may
have been insane.

so who's to say?

the mood is
The Great Wave Off Kanagawa
or Black on Maroon.

the moon is sugar cube
in Earl Grey.
the world waits
for us to fall asleep.

junk stock depleted,
the sky is now dirt and bones.
i wait in the void.


gravestones bathed in grey.
flowers dance in full spectrum.
i am lost between.


towers built to fall
are beautiful as rubble.
rising dust, their souls.


cracked mirror, bent sight.
everything was always like that,
explosions reversed.


nevermind that one.
cinematics are sickly,
if i let them dream.

Honestly, I'm just excited to finally
see the plutonomy putrify;
dead opossum on a highway.

I had a dream I was *******
over the balustrade of the arcade
at the top of the Scalla
in the Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo.
Venice's rooftops stretched out beneath me,
completely dark.
cemetery silent.
the only sound was my **** hitting
the calle below.
upon finishing, I turned
and told a shadow, as I
zipped up my jeans,
"let's go get espresso, I need a cigarette."

I hope it was prescient.
I hope the shadow was you.
I hope you read this one.

you most likely won't.
forever the shadow on what I do.

Hands for anathema
and whatever else happens to fall
from the sky in your mouths.

Mountains, valleys, fountains,
stanzas slung in alleyways
outside the houses of our youth.

As loud as the views.

As bright as an empty noose.

We were here before, remember?

I'm always drawing my best
on the worst paper
beauty is ugly
looseleaf in gold-trimmed
porcelain
read
mutiny as muse
spoon feeds
raspberries
airplanes
carry me back to that
bare faced Jerusalem youth
please
milk
honey
but no clue about Fukui
on Scenery though
yea no actually I think I'm good
fine with a horizon walk
illusory
lucid to Euclidean
viral fault
apathetic is sedative
dead end Oedipus
idiot
falling
laugh track
cash grabs
bill money
hit the plug up
medicine
unstuck and abstracted
built something still
ugly is beautiful
my .05 fine liner is empty
its all trash
thanks though

my head's in covers.
the daytime is enemy.
outlast it, please. please. please.

When people say “safe as houses”
all I can think about are flames.

I curry favor with my devils
on a daily basis so excuse me
if I think escape is futile.

When people say “amen”
all I can think about is the first time
I saw City of God.

My worries vaporize in the face
of my apathy and I feel you should
know these things only because
you’ve read this far.

I love you.

Thank you.

Somebody took Kanye West's music and remixed it all with itself.
Its brilliant.
It makes me think of feelings I've overlooked.
Makes me come crawling
back to my work.
Drooling for inspiration.
It's ok though,
I am fine with it.

A lot of it only ages well if it's
torn apart later.
A lot of it is ****
and I'm fine with that too.

We are at our best
when we are being rebuilt
by the shaking hands of others.

It took me awhile to comprehend that.
It's taken others longer.
Others have yet to even glimpse it.

On my best days I am all three people.

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.

plot twist:
the plot wasnt
ever dropped.

chunks of an ice cap
taking the plunge
into the frigid water
of the Arctic ocean
is picked up
by a microphone
off the coast
Papua New Guinea.

it's all connected.
it's all a lesson.

ive learned it
more times than
I could count.

erasing the outline
of a full moon;
I'm struck with how much
I couldn't give a ****
about this parralel
"reality"
losing it's whatever
the moon was to it.

casually...

Cut to tower,
crumbling.
Check the sun
every hour;
Im underneath concern always.

Something about this void feels
off this time.

who would laugh if hired to?
oh, constable of costly canvas
and lamb of dust;
his art, Nature, with centaurs for show or sale,
once the world has seen
God’s forced politeness
we will all lie to mothers drooling
while fools in their faults, gag grinning.
that sort of book displays a crowd without head or feet.
this is winning somehow.

poets all know a little mutual mercy,
making monsters from
gentle handshakes.

Exordium, sometimes tends to end, nonsense in lofty down feather,
the Thames may shine shipwreck
but dwindles Lethe whose wit is  troublesome.
the greater portion are led astray by labour,
following bombast.
too low to fly, satisfaction;
who engraves the woods beneath waves!

I even hate me,
thanks for asking...

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.

but the moment was so ambrosial,
like snow melting in gorgeous chestnut hair,
like Coltrane's Favorite Things for the hundred-thousandth time,
like the morning Sun shining
through Manuka honey
slowly dripping off my spoon into
the black abyss of my coffee cup.

I am present.
I promise, ya.

I'm indebted to the
wretched headtrips of "yesterday"
for never letting me do more
than whisper a single death wish
(thank you)
between labored breaths.
I'm deathless now.
just flesh stretched tight over bright smiling, and otherwise unbridled,
sunlight in love with just being here to lend the luminosity in the first place.

I only learn of grace
from kids grinning and ripping birthday gifts open in grainy VHS tapes I probably shoplifted from the local thrift shop.
Either there or on park benches
tossing seeds to flocks of pigeons
cooing at my feet.
Did you know they were brought
to this country by immigrant chefs?

Again, I'm present.
Honestly.
I'm as conscious of it all as it gets;
the God of the phenomenological slog
we all call "the now",
unbound from His vow of vigilance
in the watch-and-plot of all apocalyptic
loss of momentum...

my attention span is like
incense smoke curling out of
a monastery window somewhere
in the Himalayas,
like the hidden weight of a whispered "thank you",
like the half empty silver cigarette case rattling in Camus' coatpocket as he walks,
collar up and head down,
to Café de Flore for breakfast.
or lunch.
or...

I'm present.
I promise.
(thank you)
I'm present.
Honest to God.
(thank you)

I'm ******* nowhere.
no, thank you.

I'm present.

We cogs will spin until,
one by one,
our teeth break
and are reattached.

Then they'll rip us out,
melt us down,
and forge a new "us"
when there is enough
of us piled up
to bother with.

Rinse.
Repeat.

this mixed-media paper
curls every time I impose
my watercolors upon them.

I might be using too much water.
I'm definitely using too much water.

I don't care though.

I love the way the paint blooms
from the tip of the brush when it touches the water;
blood dripping into cheap pinot grigio.

as cheap as the word "I",
or family,
or atypical,
or grief.

I wonder what it would be like to
crawl into that hole that you keep
calling the sun?
only pigment blooms around here.

that was dramatic,
I know.

on top of a broken throne,
a hopeless ghost that eloped with control
and then leapt off a cliff when
he was supposed to invoke
all those happy memories,
sits uncomfortably.

half of his entropy flows from disasters detached from his history
and the rest is the wind through the trees grown from bitter seeds
thrown into the dirt of what was meant to be forever.

crowns melt with enough heat.
clouds swell above the heads of those condoning his death,
a true crown for the ugly...

off with his head!
off with his head!
off with his head!

he sees them seething and he forgives himself for being a fool
as their screams retreat from the growing light of oblivion.

all of these atoms,
in spite of will.
the paralysis,
a false inability to
alter the world's drift.

it makes me think of
dumbstruck faces pressed
against glass watching
the mechanical function
of collective helplessness.

all of these atoms though.

in your light i feel small,
fragile,
gossamer struggling with
the morning dew.
each bead is a word i almost
choke on,
reflecting tiny sky,
reflecting you.

where are the spiders that
spun me?
where are the gods that
molded you?

i couldn't care less if those
questions ever get answers.

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.

what about these broken bones
sings of love?

what about me sipping my coffee
slowly whispers anything?

you practice being starry eyed
in the mirror.
I sleep until noon.

there are oceans between us.

everyone,
scatter like opossums
caught in the headlights.

I didn't use that right.
the reason:
because I wanted to draw attention
to the fact that being mesmerized
by eminent death is akin
to being caught in some
cosmic trap.

I bring this up
and by "bring this up"
I mean to say it's all pervasive.

"save us" written in
what seems like driftwood.

go ahead, confuse drunk and stumbling
down **** soaked alleyways
with a victory march
ending at an aureate throne
that i would wager
looks as if it were set atop the dais by
the most righteously fickle of pantheons.

skydiving still,
put a comma where
you want.

I'm lauded,
better ask about me.
this is that "ah nah" ****.

ad nauseam.
bats in the belfry.

Tumbling down
the same hole, same rabbit,
blah blah blah

I promise I am happy.
         content.
                  content.
                           content.

   please, validate me.

where's the bellows at?
where's the bellows at?

I second the heads spinning,
slipping, still as the pond by
your parent's house
is in winter.
center of the spiral;
my fire is full, thanks.

was that the question?

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.

there is only now.
"duh" the void says with the voice
of my dead mother.

but why do we always have to be
writing to or at someone?

mirror talk.
cheer them on until stars die,
all of them.

i wonder if perspectives could be
even more slippery than they
already are?

mirrors shatter in our faces.
blood in the sink.

all of it in all of them.

halfheartedly;
artistry is vacuous.
acquiescence come after ****,
gotta love it though.
everyone is a judge with
not a care in their heads other
than
insurrection's growth.

oh ****
no bliss breathing between here
  and seasons forgotten about.

cattle corralled,
antlers on the raw wood, looming.

Iast on the lists, remember?
Ive never felt ok.
rarer with the hellish day,
agog at the god-head
coming apart like a
house on fire, where's the bellows at?

fade.