Did you think that skimpering was for scared little mice?
Did you think that shutting down was for children?
Did you think I'd never drop sub-zero and break up the ice,
Dust it off and aside?

bruxism--
another year of drug addiction.
abcess, recessed, sunken in
feeling like a ghost, walking through the house
hungry but not eating
hopeful but still leaning.

Learning.
a bright red box goes maroon
a bold and serious gray sets in, around
if hold your head steady,
imma milk the cow
keep a clear radius
and i won't worry about the moon
watching me sleep.

stomach's pulling for a hole
mind, pulling for
everything, everything
going around the bath tub drain

The tide pushes my arms and legs outward
Reaching for it
The tide's name is
Something's Missing, Something Incomplete;
Need.

the external shimmers and reveals itself as you,
the needle-beak of a hummingbird makes plunges for nectar;
a middle-aged mess smokes cigar behind a gas station.

but i am the thing i'm missing.
chaos swims with the face's discolored
lumpy and insane
swollen and directionless
loverboy recycled around the sun again
scotch-taped dreams and jagged eyes.

open enough and you'll find the pearl
or stay at home
and you'll never know

girl

I am impaled with your style,
Struck by the lightning of your sin.
I am touched by poison,
I am filled with myself.

I am changed by your chemicals
I was born in space
But I was brought a letter
Detailing all the ways you'll love me til I die.

And I did,
I thought it was soooo sweet.

Across the valley
Sitting in the cafe
Listening to you speak
I felt a loose piece of flesh,
Forming a hole in my definition

I'm hearing the howl of broken airlock,
Or entropy's grating nails on my skeleton,
As the lions of your life
Crash into my eye
They come out with your words

You are not a proud person,
But the universe is proud for you
Naturally, when you get up to take the day.

You can stay on that track
If you take this step by step,
If you're very careful with yourself.

(Down to the river to pray)

Strike a clear chord in my ear,
My theory's been pulverized.
Not by any blunt force but it twists and ignites and is generally unreliable
So take my twisting fingers in the palm of your voice
When I know what you are is good
Without a single doubt.

Damming myself from the silent omen
That slips off the skin of the brave and broken
I miss the way my skin was last spring
I miss the things I'll never be
I twitch in the sunlight and stare
I will never be a king

Hang love up in the open air,
You were never meant to be just a wall
On your windowsill,
Chips of bone and broken teeth from last fall.

My son was born to be a warrior
Busting through time
Woven from nothing

--CRACK--

i have nothing to say to you anymore,
only harmonies of happenstance i have to offer.

Education, let me lead you
Bellwether black
Into the corner
Into big brother
Into thrashing in upon the self,
Frustration

I'll peel back my mouth to show you my bleeding gums
When I'm stammering
I'll ramble on about why they're bleeding,
One of those crazy stories you slowly nod your head to.

This is where the certainties of the collective and individual crash into each other and twist like a demolition derby,
Where they compile upon each other until nothing makes sense,
Just a confusing, pixelated image

This is where there's nothing you could have done,
Where the good die young and old
And you look up at the sky
And it's a dungeon with an unreachable ***** of light up there...

Unreachable, hell
I'll reach it when I die

I got plastic in my blood,
It hurts
Just plain old thumbscrews wouldn't work
In this universe.

Early one morning I woke up ready to go
Threw on my work uniform and dissolved the moon into my tea
Went out back, smoked burned some herb under the cloak of early morning

I feel the hard monster pushing on my back bones
Like the cardboard baler at work
Trying to normalize my life
The sunlight trying to keep itself simple,
Simplification crushing,
Business monster with roots in all the buildings
With roots in our nature,
Please let me out.

I know I've had misgivings
The look on my face is called misgivings
Where I hope heaven has a string that's pulling on my brow,
Because if I'm just holding up this arch for nothing,
I'm gonna collapse way down,
Way way down without a sound

The fear of this becoming me stalls me out
Grows tumors of similar stories
And if I can't be king,
Then cut it out.

Let's get illumination curves.

I don't wanna bear witness to this whole scene
Without a taste of the real thing.

I fell asleep in the wasted west
The sun welled up in its present and disparate springs
And revealed a current form.

I'm at the finger-twisting river's middle
Never mind the sweat on my brow
As I fret that I do nothing but roughly contemplate some path of action
Waiting to strike out, how?

Never mind that now,
Gotta find a way,
A better way out.

Some truths hold the mind hostage
Holding their gun of an empty infinity
And asserting themselves to the universe,
Despite its constant ignorance.

Like a smooth black pebble in a garden
Giving undeniable accents,
Playing music that was surely heard.

You twinkle black, like me
And I like that.
I'll drop your black song on my black tongue
Like a black throat lozenge.

Scenes that cracked my world apart--
The pieces were drawn back together by heavy sobs
The tears make their dust more malleable
And the sun bakes a house out of mud and sacrifice.

All you've gained by pressure
Makes you a treasure
In the world
For someone who is
Falling apart.

Her skeleton was never a birdcage,
But between her legs there is a flower
For all the hummingbirds
Or just one
However she prefers things.

Stop banging on the walls, there are none;
Don't walk off the edge of the world-- I love you.

Another record turns--
The clay reunited with the riverbank.
She folds back into herself--
He puts a cigarette out on his shoe and walks back into warm dive bar *****.
A leaf shivers for fear of autumn's blade,
Its impending doom.

These things don't just happen,
They consume you.
They swirl into your dying-hungry pupils and make you as vividly insane as the world that pulled you out of it.

They cause your spine to sway like the heavy bird that has landed upon it.

To the data analyst,
The outlier is a fringe scenario,
Worth less than a slice of time.

But to the outlier
God is just as real as ever.

Carefully tend to your embers
Burning in the open atmosphere
Give fuel and form for solace
And cherish them above your fears,
And when we get together
We burn within our temples
And I fell in love
With the music that I heard from yo-ou.

I see the trees turning
I see the topography of the old man's face,
With rifts and cracks
With gold and iron
Still in the old hills

The rolling of the planet wears everything out,
But its rotation scatters the shards of eden
They gleam like the eyes of a sad, old face.

Freeze and thaw,
Freeze and thaw,
Like god squeezing a stress ball.

Glinting ore shines on the skin of my arm
I'm squeezing a stress ball
Trying to find
A way to get the deepest taste of eden
With rifts and cracks
With rifts and cracks
In my jaw and spine

I'm a
Total
Alien

Dumb boy,
Why you write such bad poems?

Life is so awkward when you didn't get kicked out,
You just banged your way out of the house

When you wear black eyeliner and carry everything on your back into the woods,
No not at the same time.

When you don't give a **** what people think about you but you struggle with your speech
When sometimes you cut like sooooo deep

When you lash out bash out crash out just about anything for no apparent reason
Other than to say I'm suffering
But they wonder why you said that.

When your reactions seem obvious but look strange,
Life is so awkward.

Life is so awkward since you did all that.

Let's see
If we can act differently.

...

It's hard.

What if I'm the one
Sipping at the garden
In a golden chalice?

What if it's my fault
That everybody dies
And it's all ****** up?

I wouldn't be surprised
If I was the antichrist
I sit on my throne all day
And cry, cry, cry.

I want to let the moon melt away my worries
Like it's a big pill and the sky is my mouth
Just because it's there, hypnotizing
And I know what it is

Actually,

I'd like to go there
Live on the far side
I'd take a summer vacation to watch all of you
But always I'd go back to my secret cave
On the far side of the moon.

Because the moon doesn't melt,
It just stubbornly hangs there,
Leaving my worries untouched
Never rescuing me from a sick mind or a lazy eye.

I'd like to drag my big bag of those things off,
Let the rot set them to sleep
Because I think my heart is weak
Because I think my heart is weak.

I'm dead,
Exploded bits with action potential sticking around
Always dreaming of some stallion that I'll never be
What do I do for humanity?
Nothing.

I'm pulling at straws

I'm a funeral pyre,
Recess all day.

Your devil and advocate,
The only way.

I can't help my past
But that's all that I am to you--
That's all you are to me.

I'm old light,
Even by a little.

I'm bud light,
Aqua vitae.

It's lost on me,
If it's gained by you--
I'll take it back again.

Torn from the wild
A civilization seeps
Torn, because your spiral staircase
Abstracts my face

Mother of pearl dreams
Don't wait up for me
She's sleeping on me softly
I'm sleeping on her chest

And I can hear her heart beating
True, true to me.

Seeping like me,
I never wanted the tight center
I broke off into the world,
Faithful to it.

I want a taste of that edge,
Your hot razor has seared a civilization in the universe
Where minds know what operates beneath them
The only ones through to the point of understanding biology
What we are is amazing,
And I turn my mind to the things we have learned.

Your fingerprints and footsteps make music in the disparate caverns,
Spaces where you have grown and continue to feed and prosper.

The rich can afford to play themselves little symphonies,
Describing to themselves something singular and secret,
Divining a way through the sacred vows that root them nowhere here now.

Full consequence envelopes you
Yes, sometimes with convenient skins of black,
Manufacturer plastic covers clean what keeps coming back
Black velvet gloves that feel so nice
Behind a lover's back.

Shovel dirt onto that grave and settle down with what you are,
Be a snake or an orphan--
Take care and be well.

Eyes frozen awake glaze over and rot yellow
Newborn buds are fertile in the spiral spring
Off to the side, let's go, let's die
We'll watch them rise and live new lives

I'm sorry my poems are so miserable when life is so beautiful
I'm just sad because I feel like I lost my mind
Did I ever really have it,
Did it come with holes
Did I just pay them too much mind?

I have missed my mark by far
But mixed resolve with fate or fear
Will tighten up a sagging life
Off to the side, let's go, let's die
Take your place in the order
Fall to the side
Close your frozen, buzzing eyes

dizzy boy falls all over the place everywhere he goes
pretty faced dizzy boy bug eyed dreamer
knocked off a couple IQ points
you can lose your mind and get it back
you can have a little renaissance

scans items for customers and engages in conversation
feeling like he lost time and missed opportunities
trying to figure out how he fits with his girlfriend
trying to figure out love

tearing off chunks of flesh and cursing at his reflection
throwing those chunks at him
they slide down the mirror with blood
he's disgusting

suckling pleasure's golden ****,
is he playing with poison?
i don't really think it's that bad.

i guess we'll see
i guess we'll see what time holds for our insane friend
his fiddling hands spark magic
his mind has some smooth curves
i guess we'll see

i know the universe works mentally
mentally, i know the universe works
i know mentally the universe works
i work i know the universe mentally
i know i work the mentally universe

kendrick lamar told me

haha

i feel things that make sense for a human to feel
within that context
all of those things are crazy,
some of them are not.

with shades of grey.

all the way to the center:
where does experience come from?

you're a node
part of harmonic series
are you serious
i know
i know everything

you know nothing john snow

how far does this thing go?

i think it's time for bed

a flower can't be black
but a prophet can be concrete
its disciple might be your back

or your ***

death is coming for all of us
but life is not
so touch all the right woman
in all the right places

for me,
that is how it seems

deeper draughts,
deeper goes some dream

reeling, spinning out from my hands and eyes
farther than i can throw some rock i picked up
and yet watching me from the bushes
in between the leaves

and under my fingernails

breathe into the open womb
really feel that breath leaving you
and glow, bead, along that musical string
concentrate. style yourself well

or let style leave you wild

i am not inside with you
i am apart, another thing
you are your only friend
with fingers inside other lives

that is like death, isn't it? forever,
being apart...

I let my eyes float around my skull
Like eggs in a noodle soup.

I don't know where to put it
I'm so basic
I see other people in charge
They know what they're doing
Sometimes I probably seem that way too

But I've always straddled that border
I don't want to anymore
I want to be in charge,
I want to beat a drum.

Is it too much to ask,
My silver son,
To drive a little more carefully?
To take your girlfriend's hand
And hold it tight--
Feel her pulse for real
Or else walk away
And be a man?

Stop smoking cigarettes,
Don't drink every day,
And don't act too cool for love.

Why have you done this?
Some girl,
Years ago?

There's no excuse.

Start living like a man...
Or is it too much to ask?

I'm in a chemical bath,
A swell of activity
Where science touches itself dotingly
Beneath where it peels off skin obsessively

Drink, drink the water
You *******
Stop and smell the roses
Take a minute to whine about your life
And let the sound come back to your ears,
And tell me what you taste--
Tell me what you hear.

On a street my mind's gone down before,
What moves inside the night's thick shade
That wandering minds would pass and miss,
That plays upon a whitened eye?

I found us on the other side,
Conspiring with a stolen Kiss
A street I had walked down before,
But nothing could prepare for this:

Two melting silhouettes that twist
And turn with such a burning bliss
That watching it, I followed suit
And reached out just to touch them

My lover, total ecstasy
Her friend--*******
Sexing her
Your long hair in between her legs
The night we set on fire

Two silhouettes against the moon
Are something to admire
Their bodies throwing light
Like all the clothes flung to the floor

It just leaks,
Right on through.

Orange sun--
Melt like a wafer on my tongue.
Keep me warm around the bend
Rope me in with all my friends

Hold my youth inside your face
Shuck its hate and save its grace
Looking strong into the end
Help a body to defend

Holes that tear across the sky
Will not frighten us tonight
Drop your light into the sea, but
Store your might inside of me

The slightest touches give way to the deepest swells,
Flooding out the fractured hells
In so many minds
Across the world
Like rock and roll could save your life.

Incessant strife, take this knife
And cut yourself loose in the open air
And feel the thrill
Of winds of fate
A note I found by heaven's gate:

The moment's yours
So treat it well
Ring that old and broken bell
If here you're found
Then there you stand
Coursing blood inside your hands

discord, i want to reach in the ***** mirror and tear your guts out
i want to hack apart your face with the axe of righteousness
the axe that would be someone else's life
someone else's time
you've gone astray
there is no fixing you today
i want to end my reflection
i want to waste away

i see my ugliness but i can't change it
i'm pulsing in the world's corner like a disgusting maggot
i revel in the gift of sunlight laid before me
i sicken myself but i feed and feed and feed

i drink tea, i make myself
cups of coffee
like i wish you well
and do things sweet and political

the truth is unavoidable
i am a crooked freak
some days symmetrical
but with wires fraying all the time
and tasting death on my tongue's poison tip

A cascade from grace is visible across my striped visage
Buried beneath layers of flesh that wanted hope
The gray body piled in time
Constricting me,
Compounding itself.

My hopeful eye juts out, odd and lingam-like
Crazy hair wraps around my head and makes a question mark
A smile leads her to the exclamation point
Echoing, echoing, echoing through time
Of everything action stemming gravely from me.

Your heart
Pumped new life into me
Through colorful veins, connecting
And winding into mine
With motions of love, digging
Warming what went cold
Discovering me.

But my decayed tissue stuck to me like cold mud,
Only unable to be washed away by the constant pulse of your working blood.
I cut you out of my life with a rough blade and there was blood everywhere.
I don't know what happens from here but I hope you find love,
Somewhere out there,
And that your caring nature guides you to the right place
Somewhere you can call home.

But I am not your home--
I can't be the one you want.

My brain is rocked.

I feel it listing,
But it's mad confusing
With so many sides in the sea that float
And take on water.

And take in beers,
My motivation crouched inside
Trembling with fear.

When life makes me angry,
I want to rip a hole in my jugular
In the center of my hometown.