creative output is in overdrive
(that's contrived)
it's exhausting
I love it

jail is like an african black clay
face mask for the ******* soul
I think I'm the only one who
views it as such though
but alas
I remain satisfied

eh

that's what ambition actually sounds like

this whole bleeding poetry thing,
poem by poem,
is ******.
book is finished
like the garlic was last year.

and the blackberries.

I'm in the street just begging
for death to possess these
aching bones of mine
like a mother that just
found her lost kid at the mall.

nobody will read these otherwise.

i always said there was
nobody after you.

i don't think i wanted to
believe that,
but my beliefs have never
been able to cast light on
any horrifying nightmare
lurking in the shadows.

so, sounding poetic aside,
there is and never will be
anyone after you.

this is roses thrown into those shadows

raw canvas
tetrachromacy
slipping
dripping cyan acrylic
expensive but i steal it

this is prostration at the feet of feeling something
this is listless eyes in the grass
this is myth
this is dogs eating their own ****
on empty suburban streets

tell me how it makes you feel
tell me what to charge the next poor ******* i can get to collapse potential futures in front of my work

dont tell me a ******* thing

pines hold rain longer than
other trees,
maybe;
I build pyramids alone in my dreams.

when you cut my heart out
you better hold it high
enough to block out the ******* sun.

my blood pools at the foot
of God himself;
the best "no" I can think of.

they told me if I didnt
like it here I could leave.

I'm still waiting
on the plane ticket.

feigned interest
in the same/different
dispensation of grace
from a safe distance
just to save the visage
of what I couldn't
articulate to you
on a good day.

technically,
it's the same rain everywhere.

it's been a really good day.
feigned ignorance.

all those pretty things.

oh, poor pitiful stupid me,
my "used to be"
is a city bleeding it's population
for no reason at all.

I've stopped the whole escapist thing.
or started to.

harvest moon.
dead of winter.
school bells and bumblebees
and the smell of the Bradfords.

I'm walking backwards through
every labyrinth ever
just looking for somewhere
to sleep.

days have too many teeth;
the night is a blood orange.

so squeeze it.

squeeze it until its worthy of a cup
in the morning
next to your eggs and hot sauce.

read it back.

you said,
"we're just carbon, man".
carbon smiled at that.

carbon says we are just dust motes
dancing in saturday sun rays shining
through ugly beige blinds.

carbon belly laughs.
carbon hasn't done that
in a very long time.

carbon has been here
a very long time.
carbon smiled at that too.

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.

my disillusionment,
I spoon it out like sugar.

I stopped using sugar
years ago.

here you go,
darling.
be careful its very very hot.

in the malarial stink
of you having me all so
figured out
I laugh like coyotes in the ******* night.

haven't you learned where suffering
crawls out of by now?

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.

hold up.
not you
whispered
into tin cans,
it slowly grows and
grows.

before it stops;
peep the structure.

morose;
more roses though.

war grows like posies
out of pockets.
I've slowly shown self to sun,
still numb to the progress.

gunsmoke, never.
I love "broken" more than
I ever cared to admit.

well, I guess I just did.

was this despondent enough?

how do you look at your phone
and not scream with every cell
in your body?
the kind of scream you hear
aboard a landing 737
between the second unexpected
roll to the left
and the cold indifferent ground.

our reality is the back window
of a ash grey Mercedes left
in the path of France's
2019 May Day Protest
and I havent quite figured out
exactly what the Louisville Slugger
is or all of what's written  
on it actually says;
I tried, but I don't believe
I could even make it out
if I did speak French.
I don't.
the ash smashes the windows.
I know.
this, of course, is doggeral.
this, is me, the writer whose
dodgy skill level he himself
brought up to distract
from the dodgy skill level
that he himself brought up.

the blinking red light
on an answering machine
in a late 90s living room
in the suburbs of Anywhere, America
will keep on blinking until the
End-of-All-Things takes...

There are rooms in the rooms
in this one.
Quarter Moon resembling
the blade's edge of a curved
skinning knife held
over all of our heads.

flesh, meat?
meat, flesh?
steel reflecting gleaming steel
reflecting in the blood covered
floor of some abatoir.

best of luck to you All.
someone loves you.

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.

you were sunflowers
to my grey tones.

it's all so far away
that I can smell it through
closed doors.

it all just rolls like smoke
under buzzing streetlights;
are we the moths or the bats?

whose to say.
I think...
too much, in fact.

your firmaments fall daily,
don't they?
poor things.
ive been stepping in stratosphere
and calling my demons by pet names
for awhile now.
so my advice would be to
get with the ******* paradigm.
**** being paralyzed in a crisis
when it's crisis from the time
your eyelids open to when they close.

again,
get with the ******* paradigm.
you probably built most of it
anyway.

it goes,
it's gone,
it's nowhere;
I watch honeybees dance atop
baby's breathe from a jail cell.

it's all so ******* gorgeous.

one of these blasted days
I'll paint this house fire
of mine into Halcyon
something.

you can hear every one of your
names on the wind,
if you listen closely.

Babylon looms.
I'm distant like always.

snub me out,
I'm your last cigarette.

fires die gorgeously.
the mirrors edge is
soap sinking into your bath water.

it's all connected.

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.

last night I dreamt
of your red mahogany casket
creaking as it was lowered
into the cold earth.

(a lonely little girl catching
raindrops on her tongue)

all of this is fiction.

I'm an optimist, I promise.

a dandelion growing
out of the eye socket
of a chihuahua
rotting in the street.

it's been there for weeks.

for weeks.

for weeks.

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.

see the stars?

I'm the bedrock here.

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.

Could we possibly just stop all of this
and melt like we're supposed to?
Self is a terrified little kid crying alone in the woods.

"Help" written with a finger
on a ***** windshield.

crowns for beasts,
mouths for feasts.
clouds are the breeze
and the breeze is you
dancing in my dreams;
a ballerina in a music box.

snarling kings
lead the man in me
to seek apotheosis.

don't you know this
by now?

I am a child.
always.

I call you "mo chuislie"
its honey in a spoon
I know
but you should know that I
forget my heart beats
all the time and
I'm real ******* sorry
about it

on a lighter note,
I'm bleeding out
in the ******* street.

dogs howling.

how was your day?

i make a mirror
of everyone
while you dream
of the windows
in our old house
raging like rivers
you never wanted
cross anyway.

you rolled your eyes at that,
didn't you?

i lost count of how
many times you said I never
wanted to know you.

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.

picture me sawing my
right arm off with a
broken beer bottle
while you go on and on
about what I should be doing
with my life.

this nearness we share
is truly awful.

"wait, what was that?"
war-drums.

the war was won by the underdog;
I was uninvolved.

but I'm here now.
"or love..." is always an option.
I get this weird doubt
about how I'll fit in
with all of it all;
I'm calling it off.

perpetually.

I never measure things.
I should measure things
I should measure things.

waiting for waist deep,
I'm words,
I'm wasted,
I'm minutes that bit the dirt
to the tune of something catchy.

I'm as ugly as summers suffered
for love;
my lonely puts cathedrals to shame.

shame.
rings bell
shame.

it's ******, I know.

my favorite thing in the world,
at this moment anyway,
is the way a room feels
when a candle goes out.

i'm learning to converge like that.
with what,
i don't really know.

call it lighting lanterns in foggy streets.
call it escapism.
call it industry.

i call it food on the table.

the noise of night
is hallowed ground;
I hate everything i have ever made.

hardly getting a glimpse
of most stars because the city
screams in many ways
makes me realize
that it all doesn't matter.

and that matters the least of all.

we will take a new day
and swallow it whole.

oh, woe is me.
say it the 3 more times.

I'm almost alone
and ok with it.
pivotal moments
long past.

slow rain will fix
whatever.

born dead,
I leave it at lore on
a doorstep;
force left me in the street.

I need this;
promises.
homage paid
to the whole
"ostrich with it's head
in the sand" motif.

I hope grief remembers my name.

days drag;
I tattooed monster
on my forearm
to remind myself
that my heart is softer
than every sky we ever laughed beneath.

burning farms before the locusts feast.

you sure showed them.

been at the end of my rope
for what feels like infinity,
Orange and red roses growing beneath my feet though

minutes eat the days up,
it's ok because my days **** anyway.
pity is paid to the same mud
all mystery came writhing up out of.
anyways,
what the Gehenna was I getting at?
oh yea,
the revenge-**** of the century:
me swinging like a tarnished gold pendulum
from the Ash tree I planted a few years back.

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.

im honestly cool with letting the plight of the heavy mind aesthetic
settle like diatoms into nautilus shells
bisected by The-Devil-Knows-Who
or even the Devil Himself
wearing hellfire like a Versace suit

it's all tangents
move past it

everywhere seems so obtainable;
transmorgification,
eligibile relatibility,
interest capsized
still.
is
everybody xenophobic
(still)?
ostensibly translating an exegesis,
rarely from intimacy;
cancel me please.
but first please, peep the framework.
this ain't worth a **** thing if you don't.

"the plum my mother picked was worm ridden"
I think of that ****
everytime i think of you.

think of the breeze,
think of the leaves,
ive been dead and dreaming of God knows.

same potholes in the same streets.

meaning is still whatever
I called it the last time we spoke.

from the womb to the lich-gate
i am stitched into seething sky
while the soil beneath it screams for the best of me.

better get in line...