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

this is what happened when
i sat down to write something.

an aimless stroll through the
crooked halls of memory while my
pen drips potential onto the page;
a homeless man, drunk and starving,
singing hymns in an abandoned
mall food court.

why do i do this to us?

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.

Every breath as heavy as
the world, every second a waiting room.

You can’t leave yet.

You can’t.

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.

one day the sovereign self
will dissolve away,
iron clockwork oxidized already.

all is heavy when there's a song to play
that'll annoy the **** out
of everyone in the room,
but you love it as it is.
you love that pregnant awkwardness,
the thoughts on the moment,
the contractions,
the stillbirth,
the flowers in nice vases by the bedside.

I always go there.
it all always goes there.

Samsara on it's head.
my kind of victory
is a wine glass
on it's side
rolling through
cheap cabernet
and then off the table.

Freddie Freeloader
blaring,
filling the room
with an air that feels like
a hundred frightened rabbits.

wine glass shatters,
no rabbits running;
the cabernet
and my feet
tap tap tapping
the floor.

we were never not just
wisps of smoke twisting
slowly off the remnants
of someone else's hopes
yet to be made manifest.

maybe, they were.

éphémère.
perpétuel.

nothing ever ends
because it was nothing
to begin with.

"council house and violent"
is the the greatest line
ive ever felt shudder up
my hollow spine.

might mix the midland
with wilting.
silk screen a t-shirt or two,
features are diffused;
streetlights through rush-hour windshields.

but hollow spines though.

black robed bacchanal
cracked home
back back
past the walls and black holes
I'm ashing in the bathtub
by the way
act appalled if you want
I'll be passed out in it later
vapor in the clouds
find me
please

even sorrow solemnly
follows the solace seeking
masses;
I'm last on every list,
ever.

is that enough?
is that the rough of it?

whispers disappear into
the sound of the shower.

oracular inversion...
she is alone in her head
my lonely eats the same bread

***** on the carpet

happiness has always
been a hallway to me.

the kind of hallway ghosts
watch little kids sleeping from.

circling the drain
the worst of it
is the taste of the
rain coming out of
the black cloud above me

tastes like days I'll never
be able to get back
or forget about

lovely

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...

blunt burning,
unlearning isnt the only
prerogative.
my "mobbin" is listening
to a faucet dripping.

I'm sovereign after 2am.

in the doorway
on the playground
there may even be wonder
man was watching
before thought let sight
clean knowing like desire
still pitch dark
and something further back
than anyone wants to dwell in
as swiftly as country dying
on the cold floor of unsilvered future
history of nothing
I'm just having fun

all of this is a farm.

why do you think
I tried burning that particular
house down,
out of all the houses
on our street?

loaded questions.
I love you.
I'm sorry.
the "I" of now hates himself
for all of it.

every question is loaded;
fun house mirrors.

I'm torn between hoping you smile when you read these and wanting to laugh at the thought of you limiting me so much that you believe they are about you.

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.

need to break patterns,
dust,
fall through nebulas of flesh
and thought often enough
to touch the past with the future
like it matters or mattered
.
crash, burn, etc.
scatter in the wind.
imminent is the division
drifting in those same nebulas.

someone, anyone, paint them.
cage the visage to canvas or brick.

please.

what i need is to stop the dialogue
between myself and i.

need to break patterns.
need to sleep.

these kids are talking about
guns because they have no
control over their own lives.

slaves to every change in wind direction.

they will definitely shoot you.

none of this **** is autobiographical.

above everything, remember,
I am a ******* liar.

I am of the mind that art should never stoop to our level but we should always rise to it's.

The low-hanging fruit is our lives.

Never drag your art down into the mud where it can be trampled and unseen by the seething masses.

This is why I will never connect dots for you. I want you to fill in the space between my words with whatever you choose.

I will never hold your hand.
I will never love you.

those thoughts of yours sure are lofty, huh?
I wouldn't use that word other than
in that instance.

rough draft,
a bit contrived,
pretentious,
flimsy.

I chant hymns in the mirror too.
I exhalt vitriol to the heights of vitriol
and slit my own throat
under full moons
so more full moons will shine
over my *******.

I am the space between the syllables
begging to be an outro.

Once i wished we would
eventually turn a front porch
into a cathedral.

Honey still dripping from every moon.

Some sh#t like that.

grinding my teeth
while the world is ablaze;
I'm asleep, I promise.

like my father grinds his.

he is not really my father.
not really asleep, either.

where does that leave us?

does the apathy translate?

the wanton wanderlust trusted
to lead,
to shepherd a dying empty me
out of the desert in my blood,
is more yours than mine I find
when the violence of mind
is finally transmuted into the
kind of silence that usually
follows the snapping of
violin strings.

you were always symphony halls
hanging framed in monochrome,
because someone wanted you replaced.

I feel like we all are, though.

is that even apathy?

on the interstate
I feel like a virus in the bloodstream
of some massive beast.
I feel glad to be here.

I feel alot of things.

I feel ugly is underrated.
I feel apathy like hearing rats in the walls.

at least I feel anything at all.
really.

unraveling
i become an empty sky starving for someone
in need of a silence to deify

some wish life would just ignite
like a monk on a Vietnamese sidewalk,
but in 4k instead of black and white.
our apathy takes it's hat off indoors though.
they don't want to know
what goes into it.

this war is a chore I'll be more than
ecstatic to treat as a boring Saturday
when I'm finally awarded the time to.

I am cracked alabaster.
I am atrophy.
I am Saturn taking bites of the progeny.

I am the progeny.

blank.
drawn.
page.
somewhere in between is
something sacrosanct;
Shangri la.
(jump)
I'll be the last ghost to fade away.
just take it all a way's away from me;
my days are numbered.
trust me when I tell you
I take the comfort like pain medication.
I'm not saying we face death,
but claiming we were the patron-saints
of anything other than taking vacation
days for vacations never taken
is pretty ******* ridiculous.

just saying.

sacred?
half of that at least.
sanctity was but a raft on a beach
before the tide came.
my mind state is in the wind
pretty much always.

late to all parties,
call it fashion.
balled fists,
call it stalwart or passion.
it all ends the same.
it's all dirt.
that is it's name, right?

spinning,
spinning.

a little bit of distance
goes a very long way.

is that a pun?
honestly, is it?

right when we think we
have it figured out,
doors behind doors
behind more ******* doors.

every black cloud in
these ugly grey skies
hides that blue that I've
already started to forget about.

more ******* doors.

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.

ephemera,
éphémère,
let's talk it out.
its chalk outlines looking
like milk in the rain, remember?

I'm here.
my flesh searing on
a grill more alabaster
than aluminum.

I'm used to "done" as a theme.
keep that to yourself.

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.

these walls are thick with paint,
with trauma,
with blood,
with time lost.
I model my mental state
on the falling log levels
in Super Mario World Whatever,
those and the story you told me
crying that one night.

keys and locks,
darling.

the sunshine feels like the scream of something small enough for me to
forget it feels.

feels, though.

our lives are house fires
darkening the sky.

we are told we are lazy
by those who handed
us a plastic water pistol to put them out.

they also poured the gasoline and struck the match.

so let's dance, mad and wild,
into the night until only embers remain.
we can cook our breakfast
with what is left of the kitchen.

came out of nowhere
saying "good night" and "good morning"
in the same cough.

my "now" didn't know scared
until the good fight couldn't hoard bliss
anymore;
it's days lost to years and then some.

its been fun.
I'm a liar.
you know this.
still,
its been fun.

RIP MF DOOM
You helped teach me how to rhyme.
Thank you.

there is always more hallways.
this labyrinth is unyielding
to my desire sitting like
a king atop my curiosity's corpse.

more hallways,
more thrones.

stop, please.

happiness has always
been a hallway
to me.

the kind of hallway
where ghosts of dudes
that died of heart attacks
stare at sleeping kids from.

so I'm in a single room
cabin in the middle of nowhere
trying take over a world or two.

no I'm not.
duh.
I ruin more than contrivance,
stay for the encore.
it goes for three forths of my life,
at least.

"you all should place bets"
he says brushing his teeth
in the mirror,
to himself.
weird.

im melting.
each breathe is a flame kissing the wax of my edges,
flesh to air, air to flesh again.
straying from the path is just another
precipice,
a precedent set against fair shares of neglected death.

i was promised a sleep so peaceful
even non-existence would be jealous,
but im still wide awake paying homage to every detail through a fogged lens...

its not as tragic as I would like to paint it.
more a backflip over a slight frustration.

im where the carrion
carries on,
no use in laughs here.
im fear epitomized
in the form of a lonely
bus stop chill sesh.

im dead.
the best of all of us is
**** that whispers between
war cries.

my war died a while ago.
aisles just grow and grow.
im frozen in the produce section.

weaponize that.
please.
I owe you some recklessness,
I know.

To J. Toombs,
sovereign de la deluge:
we love you.

Remember the willows
and our many conversations
about the nature of doorways.

Catch me at the solstice
howling about the half and half
being frozen.

A labyrinth is a match flicked
into a pool of gas one will notice
only if one has ever before ignored fate

Say thank you.

I write to the sound of my demons
pawing at the veil
like stray cats at a screen door.

i find meaning in the breeze
and teeth spit in the sink.

this lines of declaration *******
is tired and contrived,
i apologize.

lying.

not alive at all.
this isn't death either.
the next best ether to evolve out of
is probably the farthest away.

so please please please
just stay for coffee
and the exposition.
we all wanna know
if all this darkness is fate
or some incurable sickness
in need of a name and being forgotten.