Complications
In the morning
Tangles in the brush
Are just accents,
Not even really dissonance
In beauty.

Upon closer examination
The cords and vines
Were united in harmony.
Even choking death is just another plant,
Ravens and mockingbirds unite
In this ultimate symphony

The harvest will only yield so much sympathy,
Lovers and losers
Brothers, abusers--
From the altar of the morning,
Watching the brush breathe
A little more than it tangles.

It's a teleological fantasy
This is getting out of hand
To love sweet Dis
Was all I could think

With purpose draining out of me
With purpled eyes that barely see.

Ah, purple! The color of royalty!
This fair spring air is choking me.

Each bead of magic,
Faetal symphony!
I lost this poem
Unto the sea

And you and I were just a dream
I'm self-defined,
Eternal reach.

Tight green youth gives way to age
The very beginnings of autumn
Are opening up throughout my body

The winter wind makes my peering eyes bleak
But under ***** of skin they hold strong

They hold off the fall

Taut vocal chords begin to loosen up,
Growth is over. The plateaued body, now
Only weathers and wanes.

I still believe in scarring muscle tissue
And the marvelous plasticity of the brain.
I know
Our love has streaks of green the whole way.

So bask in nutrition,
And love to maintain.

But I know it is right,
That black Death sidles its way between me
I don't know if it's good
And I don't know when I'll die
But that's the way it goes,
And I think it must be right.

Soggy thoughts of human currency
Faulty braces to hold up my face
Years coming too fast down the assembly line.

Accusation-men with electric rods restrict my motion
Tears I buried in the pit of my stomach
Faulty braces holding up the sky
That... eternal smile

I know the evening news has you on edge

But I swear to god I haven't given up my pledge

It's a work uniform, a work uniform
and shoes
So heavy in my backpack

I am riding my bike to work

It's not a gun

It was your mind that commanded me.

It was the combined music of your neurology
That sang siren songs to me
Through your voice, through your body
Through your mannerisms and ways
Your thin hands touching me,
Pulling streams from a guitar.

Higher than high
Your room was a place of honor
Your bed, my passionate altar.

Your lips curled so at the introduction of my strong meaning:
The whole world was you,
Convulsing and reaching for the wound-up greatness in my young body
Giving me what I could not give to you.

And it was your mind that made it rain poetry,
Your mind that jumped like a fire from place to place
Your mind that loved to play

Your mind that built a wondrous castle
In which you seduced me like a drug
Left me staring at the ceiling in such heavy awe

Oh, you send out little shoots
Oh, we're all just screaming at the sky
But you're a giant and they sound like cute little cries

Oh, and you're not wrong
But oh, just look at your big toe
It could turn me into mush and you'd just wipe it off and sigh

There's a big rod of silver
Reach across the sky
I've got a gold made from liver
Isn't that why?

Isn't that why we stay up too late?
Me being me made you so great.
'Cause I needed you
Not to feel alone
When I die, solid stone
To stand upon.

I have certainty about me,
even when it doesn't seem
To resonate so well
Throughout me

Elements forsworn to construct each other
By negation do arise within me
And they become me.

And what will I become?
All that is around me!
Anything abounds me,
Even my own death!

An observance which is sure to cease,
Esteemed by one human being
Called "truth" by him, and called again
Just to call! ...Well yes, I would oblige
A certain deconstruction
It truly seems required.

A notion were I even to fight,
Ride my bike and exercise,
Eat salads and believe in my... self
Tout God's music as my own
Just the same, well...
I would die.

tendrils swirl from me and collapse
licks of lazy flame lap at the ether
for now, i feel defeated
doused by the dream-killing waters of eden.

no law says my body will find its cove,
only its cure
i want to dock my vessel in your shore
the fine and smooth skin of your sands
feel the ecstasy of your thin blonde hair running over my face,
hold onto your hands.

*** you in my sleek and emotional way
put pure desire in you, watch my fire in you
one weekend we'll have our earthly heaven
but for now,
i am a lonely boat.

Shuffles awkwardly, buffeted by headlights
The highway won't slow down
It's break time and he is getting coffee
The leather jacket tucks in his body heat from the cold
The stony pit of his stomach wrapped in doubled skin

She is an unknown
Professes her love to him
And he is just uneasy
He wears it in his eyes
The mind running through scenes and places it shouldn't
He is like a ***** cell unsure of *******
Shaking too much for love's vacation

Instead it makes him tremble,

Maybe I'm better off alone.

The several elements,
All things through and through and through itself
There you are in the middle
No, off to one side
And you're nowhere
Navel-gazing at your veiled intestines, no...
Pick them up off the floor.

No convention is necessary
It shatters, erupts in flames, turns to ashes
Gets passed along to itself
Cycles black or ultraviolet

We need to come together and act weird
Drawn and quartered by gleaming cities
Like an ancient Picasso beneath rubble that's not here yet
Nothing will happen,
It will be fantastic.

I live in a dug-out hollow
I ride on a worked-out groove
Corpore hominibus alterorum
Dropping giant Clothespins

Hae res manuum
Little flowers
Balloons, sized instruments
Living in The Shire

It's so nice in the summer

We built a cute little habitat

Shame on us for being anything
But quaint, happy beings!

Where'd all the sunshine go?
My life has gone flat and weak
My eyes peer out
Flickering, bleak
I scrawl these words as on the inside of a cell wall
A cell I'll never leave

The law is heavy and wrong
The world is a rolling machine
Just watch your neck
And lucky is
A hand that stays clean

But what about me?
I've tried and tried and now I'm tired
Older than my years
I just don't know if I have the strength
To really pierce my fears

I stayed in today,
the sun shone its brazen yellow light on the world
things glistened, birds flew
but I let the prison companies keep me inside

I let them swallow me in a flat and stagnant dream
Like a gray mucus that surrounds my usually lively spirit
This is about more that them,
I stayed in today

September dances lightly outside
But my parent's house is a coffin, with a bay window
And I died with riches of mind and spirit
And all the people around went on living,
Not knowing how great I was
Thinking I was the desperate wreck I'd become
That I forced into their vision, waving angrily
Because people are stupid, and they would miss something
Right before their eyes

They value the wrong things, and are sensationalist fools

But I love them so much, all their different stories and colors

Anyway I wish I could get a job
And I wish I knew when my 45 days of house arrest would start
For this DUI I got 2 years ago
I wish I hadn't spent most of the past year in jail
I wish I was able to access the mental health services I needed
I wish I didn't do 6 weeks for smoking ****
I wish my grandfather hadn't died while I was in jail
I wish my probation officer would just get back to me
And tell me if I can work
But I did this to myself
It's my fault
I stayed in today

What is it that gets you off the most
About me?

Destiny has pulled us tight at the waists,
Your flames are fine, and hot
The taste

It's the way your eyes, those jewels of fate
Contrive heat from deep within me
Your voice is cool, an ancient friend
Of inferno's roar
In the deepest hold of my body

Do you like the way
My body shapes the fire?
You called it here
I'm watching your altar
Reach higher and higher

Until your face curls with the tension of ******
Until guitars scream in your head
Then the cadence is reached
And the lights fall like angels,
or stars
to the ground.

It's wishful thinking
Western life
The rigid machinery of social constructs

So where do I place my limbs
So that my heart and head swim?

East coast shoulders
Chip and wear
From carrying the blues, on and on.

That music swells us up
And pulls asunder.

It's the bold and ancient
Sound of thunder
That reminds me of what I should be

So how do I stake my happy fate
In the loudness of the modern state?

East coast blues
the Lansdale average
I guess they're right, and that's just life.

So find a warm spot,
Hold the night.

There's no such thing as me
Spawning such brilliant memories.

I swear I've lived it all before
I have been noticing things.

But you say that makes me sick,
And I don't disagree with it.

I guess you could say
I've been noticing nothing,
Nothing at all.

So there's no such thing as me,
Why even write about it?

Spawning such dark memories,
Why burn so bright about it?

But we've gone critical now
We are just chemicals now
And now there's no such thing as me
At all.

And now I'm nothing at all,
At all.

I have learned to wax my apples,
A simpering salesman
Awaiting your final visit.

Business could always boom,
But I just hate waxing apples--
I leave them naked by the bushel.

It wasn't prudent to leave you that way
Frothing and ugly
All the nice people
All the cozening beast
Turned from me,
A passing freak

I began clawing at the wall
Instead of writing poetry
And they came rushing in with guns
And treated me like a threat

A strange creature started eating my time and flesh
It said confusing things about why it had the authority to do this
In plain English
I had to sit still
I watched the creature's blood-letting ritual heal some
But it made me feel dizzy and weak

I miss you, love
When you were young--
Now it is me who is 23
And she who is 19
Only I wasn't cool enough to snap her little heart
That is for young men and is not kind to do to girls

I miss you, love
But you're so far
Got everything you wanted
I could never sing straight
I could only hit that note when I was alone
I am not like Brendon Urie
And I am not like Soupy or any of those people

But I can try

I am dizzy and you went straight through me
I am scrounging for scraps
I am listening to my thoughts telling me I will be venerated and having to snap out of it
You're crazy

D d d
We're gonna die one day
But small things are beads on an infinite necklace
And these wons were woven in with a solemn, steady hand

I sit down on the couch in the lower-level den of my house
and I think once again about all the things I don't know.

I'm thinking about
The back of my head
The bottom of my heart
The backs of my hands

The top of my lungs

I'm thinking,
Okay. I am just a man
And I need to figure out how this body works best for everyone
I don't mind it, let's just dance

there is a grey wall
and a stare
and there is not much more
of an answer right now,
what is the meaning
of life

Green eyes, forest eyes
Plunge through the undergrowth

Bright red blood keeping us alive.

The music Animalia enthralls and ignites
the legs to run, dancing over roots
Seeking fruit to survive.

Finding strong brown branches,
Perfect to climb.

And picking sweet citrus
From the clear blue sky.

Sometimes I pretend I am the essence of all that's good to be,
One with this work of art we breathe
And I look down through the clouds
From the moon,
And through them watch myself struggle to find sleep.

I watch the artist struggle there,
Swatching shades behind eyelids
And turning time for me.

I watch a seed in the soil
Work its only way
To me.

I see the broken part of you,
Which is like a shattered heaven
Spilling black blood between everything
That spills into the night sky.

But I guess I was always
Somewhere between.

We hate a man for all things he's wrought,
But never stop to think could he be imprisoned
With all his choices laid out for him?

Okay, but we still have to deal with him.

We hate a woman because, essentially
She is the death trap creep we're stuck inside
Unmanageable and at times allowing no good answer
Wielding impossible powers over us?

Okay, but she's still abundance.

Has the forgotten life of you
appeared outside your room?

The monsters that we fear as children,
the death in far corners.

it is very real

You appeared outside of doom,
but it won't be long,
and your head whirls round.

the grim cosmos devours us all,
fool

and the monsters just mature, just age with us
folly

the very cold and forgetful universe
your own complete absence
visits you in nociception and negativity
but you will find yourself again
you always do.

that spark or fleck of dust,
another metaphor for my love!
your glimmer must be a hallucination.

i just have a problem.

but maybe my problem is that i met you
when i was yet a green colt
(something i know you treasured dearly)
and did you see in me, something glimmering
any hint of the future man i'd be, the one
who, shaking his head and wiping his brow,
lopped the overgrowth from the Way
and paved the road for dainty feet?

but to speak of your soul, sweet-
heart, you walk upon this earth with a womanly power
as i have never seen, and it turned me on
to the sky!

or maybe my problem is letting go,
old sparkling fleck of dust.

maybe long the time is past
when i should trust you to the wind, entire
and dance-less shadows cast.

i'm too far from that special fire,
so bring the garden ashes from
that cold and restful pyre.

Misty moon
Light sharp through the glass
Window standing over the piano
Midnight finds a shadowed man

The digits limping over keys
They paint in rhythm, a beautiful melody
Nocturne-- darkest navy with twinkling white
Swirling black like pools of night

Up rises a wave of that heavy ink,
It sinks
When quelled
by periwinkle breeze.

The man, the grand, the coffee
Table--
The moon, the breath of Gabriel--

The wordless swathes were lyric to him.
The woman, years and miles between
Her blurry prospect racked that brain
How like sweet time!
How like his bones...
And I can feel them scraping one another.
Making music, against the will of God
No, with it. No, against it.

!

The devil, creeping through the floorboards
Giving chase to peace and sleep
Pulling him down from his right form
Writing confusion into his blood.

Finding himself love again
In every little pebble on the path to the shed
In the grass and the sun
In the smell of the summer
And the simplex formed by his feet and his head.

Oh, what a wretched and beautiful thing it is,
To be alive tonight.

No **** my reaction was out of line.
But if they think they had it right,
They're out of their minds!

Juvenile hall for truancy,
Are you kidding me?
No one wanted to listen,
No one would ever listen to me.

I came from a nice suburban home
But I couldn't disagree with my parents like a sane adult,
Because I was a bipolar kid.

And then when it all comes crashing back
Back to the place where I couldn't deal with it right
Dragging back a gut full of ulcers,
And I got caught driving under the influence,
You tear me apart

You whip me on my knees,

You do not help me learn
Or help me to my feet.

In emergencies I admitted myself to hospitals
On fire, I put forth earnest trials
When I make a mistake these vultures turn on me

Except for the saving grace of a court program
Volunteered by a good judge

Still, you make me into a second class citizen
You weigh me down to an exasperated state
I could be trusted to help myself much more effectively

No one wants to listen,
And I do not deserve it.

A sloshing soup knocks against my skull's interior as I make my way down the stairs
Today, I am tired
I have tried and tried and tried
And I have the seeds of positivity in my pocket
But I just feel tired.

How many secrets do we walk past every day?
Sinched off pockets of life,
Their contents affect the cosmos
Like invisible knives.

With just a word or a couple flicks of the finger,
You can reorient the stars
And all the sailors in your tiny sea will start to sail by them...

Ah, but the stars were scattered anyway
And it's good to sail the sea
I never navigated anywhere
'Th no knife turned on my e'e

///

So if only for the thrill
I pull back the skin from my neck
And bear my jugular to the world
Only holding back decisively,
Always wanting to tell you
Everything.

intro
(here it is, what i've been trying to say,
telling you my story, ranting away
giving you the details of my runaway life
so anxious all day, so buried in strife
how tragic it is that we have unique stories
but upon sharing our fears and experienced worries
it comes out in words that seem hackneyed and common
until we articulate it right,
that's the life of a human)

body
Trust me. You don't want to be doing this.
Wasting all my time, you said I need to prove it.
But that's something I've struggled with,
Long time coming
I've made my mistakes. I'm sick to my stomach

Because the cops are convinced they're doing this right
And the jails and the lawyers, they're all right
You don't want to be waking me early for buses
Taking four hours away for a drug test

You act like I'm dangerous, think I deserve it
All the time that you're taking is time I could work on it
You've misinterpreted me,
And hurt me badly
I'm glad I can balance, but not everybody
Has the same resources.
And check your sources!
Mad corporations are unwholesome forces
And I was a brick in an unholy fortress.
I think it's sick that I slept in their purses.

Trust me, you don't want
To sink claws in my sleep
I'm working too hard just to make ends meet.
And when winter comes and the snow fills the streets
You would punish me, hard, if I slipped on the sleet.

Trust me because you *can
I can't prove to machines
That I love my life, that I love my family.
That I want the best for my community
That if I had the money, more people might eat.

I've had this dream of a responsible West
I sense a stubborn preoccupation,
Enslaving the rest
I want to be a model of compromise
Between privilege and giving
A bridge for the lies

A bridge for the lies to cross, if they choose
And put our love to better use

And even if this dream never really comes true
I wrote these words in worldly view.

Spun rocks out of gas
And slung through the sky
You and I
Just particles in a cosmic dance

What a chance,
What a mystery
That turns on our eyes,
Rhodopsin receptors,
Take off your pants

You harmonic chamber of animus
With resonance that is infinite
Fill up my cup with your love
Let me drink it in well-severed kisses

They are sharp points of the softest element
Raindrops of human elegance
Falling from heaven
Landing on the fields and the fires of my heart
Making it grow,
Making it hssssss.

You, the return of Noah's dove,
Me, looking for a place I could chill
You found my finger and gave me chills
It can be hard to find love in the storm of my skull
But to find a lover like you,
Love itself would ****.

what if the dusty taste of straw
could waft up the Appalachians and roll down
American highways
in a little red car?

what if the cute, expectant start! of a young dog
could be bundled up and tucked in the pocket,
and brought against the cheek,
for when times get rough?

what if there was an elixir to melt worlds (starting with the mind
then... trickling down to your heart)
and remind them to gaze in awe
at the fine twenty-something girl, sleek and blonde and so ****
long legs flashing, one from behind the other as she walks
coy little smile on her face
well i can only think of only two places in the world
that elixir exists, i've seen it

what if i saw you again?

what would i even *say...

I don't want to get another job
I dont want
To be part of the machine

I'll just walk out again

You were never very good
At guitar

I fell between the cracks
But I am still making noise
If the angle chanced you, you would see
The glowing ember
That is me

If time chooses to ***** me out
In this tiny damp cave in the floor
At least I saw my light play tricks on the walls
At least I watched my life burn faithfully til the end

But if fate gives me fodder
I'll be an orchard of fire
In the mode of a phoenix
I would take to the skies

I was in between being young & being right

I felt the pain and knew the scourge,
The sour anger, bilious and burning holes
In the selfish assumption
I was made of sugar

No, I was coated in sugar

I sought refuge by day
But by night it was revenge

I was trying to tell them how mad I was,
How alone I felt, my parents,
The police, the probation I did for accidentally trespassing
The juvenile detention I did for sleeping in

But I tried to tell them with rocks
And broken glass

So they set heavy weights on my limbs
And subjected me to things I didn't need or deserve
And it forced me to be still, because
I couldn't see the black tendrils of the private prison corporations at night
I writhed and I writhed and eventually forced myself still
Because I still believe.

Because I see opportunity...

And without selling my true self I have grown and accepted
That I was wrong, that I was a flawed youth.
On top of these slighted bones, I am building a man
True to himself.

But you, sir, have some gall to rescind
And my country, amok
Has a monster to disassemble.

It's kind of
Hard
To get over
Someone
Like
You.

You're
A piece of
Every sunrise
To me

And it's not
Just
what I learned

It's also...

The nectar
Of your smile
The sharpness
Of your stature
And the adventuresome spirit
With which
You've graced
The world.

I feel
A nervous turning under my skin

My eyes feel too large;
A facade curls across my face

My heart feels purple and sick
It is the skeletal stuff that feels strong

I envy so much in my sight
I cannot turn it off at night

Some of the time:
I turn and turn and turn
But I never arrive

i am not sure just how insane
or what type of insane
it is, how i still obsess over you,

i am not so sure
that you and i
will ever even talk again.

but i will fall over dead
you've been burned into my Eye

///

gravity,
our two stomachs in the same room,
here in this room even pull
just at the thought. levity,
your smile pulls my chest up
towards the sky.

My soul he sits in cementcell
Playing action figures with broken gods
He stoke at a coals gone cold long ago
Why, he do not know

sometimes it seems like my brain mush slips out of the corner of my mouth
a senseless jumbled stream of conscience
with no real meaning behind it
false feelings come out,
i just spit nervous impulse at the keyboard,
it's been that way for a while now
in this moment i'm hoping that i stop

haha

When I step out into the world
my shoes kick up suburban dust and it glimmers in the sun.

And the dust is impressed,
it looks glad to have touched my feet.

My face is steely against adversity
It holds back your memory and loneliness.

I strike my vibe down into the place where I stand

I weave a quiet legacy through streets on the bike
I am confined to for now, but it's freeing
Because I am making battle plans.

The ghost of my past follows me around
And the glimmer of my potential sleeps in me,
pieces of it in those who know and love me.

The tension is real, and the girl loves me.
She knows I am not lost forever--
Far from it.

my full and true semantic
can only be illuminated by the lonely moon.

i try to draw it out into the air...
so that your ears might embrace it, but
it crackles and fizzles
and sputters out before it gets there.

ellie's parents are dead.

i was adopted 23 years ago by two people
that have loved me in their own true way
which i try to pin down as selfish, and
who is right
and who is wrong

i've learned to let go of those battles
but some days they still fracture the sunlight
break its bones, break my heart.

ellie feels she has to rely on her druggie boyfriend
who is in and out of jail
she says she really loves him
but the people she is living with are suddenly moving far away,
and now she needs a place to stay.

she can't move back in with her sister
and when she was accepted to college her sister replied
how are you going to pay for that?

i've only been able to get through my legal troubles
because my parents have helped me
driving me to drug tests and to work some days
a recourse i brought on myself with temper tantrums
i should have outgrown

but forget subjunctives,
if the police could open me up, if the law could unfurl my soul
they would feel bad for putting me in jail
and placing this onus on my shoulders.

they would.

but my full and true semantic can only be illuminated
by the lonely moon
as i bike home from ellie's house
we shared beer and cigarettes
and "Champion" by Fall Out Boy blares from my Bluetooth speaker
which is a keychain on my backpack...

i said in a low voice, passing listening houses
you don't know me
because i have gone at least partially insane
with my loneliness.

only not. and the suburbanites who think they can assume things
the law who thinks they can properly judge me,
they CAN GO **** THEMSELVES.

i have good intentions.

i am a brilliant person.

i have an ego.

and i sink into humility again.

and i think about ellie

and i think about everything, a child with cancer
a child with malaria
and i think
i am ~so~ beautiful.

did you stop to think about what 'so' really means?
of course you didn't.
i could spend all day telling you things
you missed about my beauty.

that's how vile and vain i am.

you don't think this poem is perfect.

it deserves to go down in ******* history.

I know that life is open-ended
Just look at all the stars just hanging out in space.
But there's only one way we can mend this fall,
And they're following or wandering a way

I've tried to change up my perspective,
Just look at all the ways that I can see those stars.
But I cannot find a comfortable position here on Earth,
I guess I'll move to Mars.

i am a hot lover.

i am so full of color,
dark purple bruises on my conscience
a sick yellow manic feeling
the cool blue waters you can always trust
that steady stream is inside me.

i go around my magic circuit
tuning and angling instruments of love
trying to summon a feeling like no one had

i am excited at my own music,
so don't leave me alone with it

let us meet in secret places
and pass different words for love between our lips.
we could talk about anything

the world can make revolting lurches around us
but we are safe here tonight

I might not have liked
The Beef stroganoff
But at least it was food

I might have vocalized
That I didn't enjoy
The flavor of nutrition
But I had energy to utter the words

Getting a little ahead of the game is up to you
But it's good to remember it
When you have three
Square
Meals

it's a psychedelic experience
she stands in front of you
like a set of speakers
blaring this new song you're digging
only the song tears a hole in the fabric of the universe
revealing a mesmerizing display of radial symmetry

and when she exits the stage of your eyes
you remember the song
you hum it all day long
it melts into your guitar-work
her residue on your lips
and in the words you speak

and when she enters again
you'll see into her colorful world
will she become a fixed planet in the firmament?

Rosy for no reason...
Bicycle-pierced misery
Petals fall to puddles,
Reason for no roses.

Bloom before you choke.
See what you can see!
Pedal through that sea and cut
A handful for your love.

Whatever is your bicycle,
Get on and pedal hard
You'll make it safe to work, and dear
Next year you'll buy a car

Chase the gray away like birds
Cutting through the rain
Rise atop the hill and plant
A flower for your pain.