It's quiet here.





It's always quiet here.


There's a background noise
I can't associate
Drones and fluorescent hums
Low registers caught in the dust

Silence

Voices
But I'm not listening

Or I can't hear

Is there a difference anymore?

Something said
Or maybe I'm imagining it
No ones here

I've checked.

Echoes of long ago
Echo thru the frames
Pictures, walls, doorways
Creaking
A story settling in its foundation


Bury it.

Burn it.




It's quiet here.
I think I heard myself breathing.

I wasn't.

I checked.

It’s another late night
(Or early morning
I can no longer tell which is which)
And I sit lonesome
In the darkened center
Of my writing room
Attempting to write something
Anything really
Of value or valor
But as usual
Nothing profound flows out
Neither my pen nor my mind
Seems to be working right
Perhaps they are in dispute
Struggling against me
Every step of the way
Keeping my words unimaginable
And the many verses of vices
Refusing to be written

"You’re worthless to me" he whispered in her ear.

The silky blondes of her hair touched softly on his lips and sent ******* trembles throughout his body. He groped his hands beneath her shirt feeling the intensity of her ******* becoming hard beneath his touch. He bit her ear causing a small shriek to escape her smiling lips.

"I know" she said as she took out the twelve inch butcher knife she hid earlier in the night beneath the pillow and began stabbing him.

She was laughing her child like laugh.

There was blood everywhere.

Watching thru the open window
There's a figure dancing
Or is she convulsing
Waiting for the right moment
She bite the nails on her fingertips
Eagerly awaiting

Me, I'm away from you
Me, I'm without you
Me, I'm nothing
Me, I'm everything
Me, I am

The steps creek beneath my feet
Careful as I am
To place them without sound
I wonder does she hear me
As I close the distance
Between her desires and

Me, I'm away from you
Me, I'm without you
Me, I'm nothing
Me, I'm everything
Me, I am

Watching her silhouette
Sway back and forth
Beneath the crack
Of her bedroom door
She's lit by candlelight
Just a slab of wood away from

Me, I'm away from you
Me, I'm without you
Me, I'm nothing
Me, I'm everything
Me, I am

Hopelessly I tremble
My hand reaches for uncertainty
The **** turns with a silent click
There's a pulse burning in my veins
Aching to be let loose
And then darkness surrounds

Me, I'm away from you
Me, I'm without you
Me, I'm nothing
Me, I'm everything
Me, I am

She dances
For a death that never comes

Waking up startled, to battering wind and rain.
Tide marks surging to great gasping heights.
Catching breaths stolen by the wind.
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
Watching idly by while pieces of you dissolve into the shadows.
I want those clouds weaving through my fingertips.
Their curious renderings like powdered ***** sugar.
Taste it and they fall heavy with gloom like **** death in the aftermath of such storm.

Counting the miles to the storm.
Ticking, tocking, and clicking.
The clock waiting in anticipation for the next thunderous sound.
Cold shivers up my spine like a thousand Carolina insults.
Your ghost still haunts and seeps into my pores lastly at night.
I taste defeat in the way you love.
It's like weaving clouds between my fingertips
Trying to grasp and hold onto every flowing motion of you pulling away from me

My cold, cracked walls are surged.
Towered over in their crumbling decay.
I want to taste your rain.
Your lips gently sink into mine.
Crushed velvet smooth and warm waking up the army of dead hearts ready for battle.
I am no warrior but there's blood painted across my sky.
Red sky in the morning, sailors warning, as I float on out into your turbulent seas.
Looking back on shore I realize that I'm finally home.

These seas roll uneasy.
Queasy.
Watching thru the mist towards our lighthouse that guided us to these depths
Trembling away like an afterthought.
The land has disappeared into the mouth of the shark.
Digested in the belly of a whale of angels.
Our sorrow holds us here, anchoring us to the tumultuous waves.
We battle our sea sickness with kisses of death lingering.
The soft pull of our exile turned oblivion.

Navigating with open wounds the silky expanse of midnight unwinding above us, within us.
Knowing us through and through.
An island of quivering vulnerability breaks the static horizon.
Lights, smog beginning to choke the sea air in my lungs.
Too long you've been left unkempt, grown comfortable.
That will change with new currents,
North winds bringing the frigid breath of winter.

Licking the sun off of the salty expanse of our sunburned red flesh.
The ****** of desperation lingers thru our moaning fingers
Feeling and pleading for our SOS call to be heard by anyone’s ears but ours.
The shores of this icy water leave my mind beneath the dredges of polar sleep.
We've grown strained, frost bitten, and distant in the few feet we are able to part.
The growling of hunger satiates our parched thirst.

I am rendered speechless adrift without you.
Hurricanes a coming.
Stand fast.
Secure the riggings.
Solaris brightens to light the way into calmer seas.
Those tepid shores of wonder and new beginnings fade into the horizon.
It's just you and me left to face the swelling tide.
Hang on.
The water is rising.
No one left to pull us saturated and insatiable from these waters of shadow and secrets.

The siren's song will bring us to our sharp shore end.
Resist the silky flow of nocturnal snakes wrapped around chilled flesh
Pulling closer to our aquatic hearts.
Hades and Persephone bond.
Glowing abysmal rage.
Holy grail veins.
Bleeding back into the orange crush dawn.
Night gives way to hollow rebirth
But once again we are inside one another.
Infinite.

These waves crash on overboard.
Trying to drag us back into the frigid depths with each ebb and flow.
With each crash of wave I can feel our resolve growing weaker.
The sensation of just letting go and giving in.
Should we let go and just give in?
Leave ourselves at the mercy of shipwrecks.
This hurricane dance we've perfected on the endless depthless ocean
Left us weak and willing to pull ourselves apart.
To taste our insides on the outsides.
How many times I've wondered have you noticed my stare.
The lustful licking of my sun blistered lips.
I want to taste the way you think and feel the warmth of your life to keep me alive.
The oceans call, I have heard, brings out the worst in sailors.
Always searching for the elusive siren to sing us a song.
A song from the depths of mythology to lullaby us away from our status adrift.

Our bodies collide in the tide once more.
Salted skin heated and torn
Latching on to something greater than just depths of starless prose.
You were a wicker man, weaved strong and whole.
I was a water girl, slipping straight through your bowl.
Wishes flow to and fro on tepid air laced with promises.
Our fingertips will never lose grip again,
the melody writhing between us like staccato heartbeats
Seeking solace on the endless seas.

*These waves rock us to shoreline.
Rock strewn and littered with the ribcages of whales
And the bows and sterns of shipwrecks long ago.
We pick up these pieces and hold them closest to our chest
Realizing the possibilities of a new home and a new start to this oceanic life we've drifted into.
We build a fire to warm our hearts and suspend our thoughts
Cradled and nestled in the crook of each others arms we leave our sea and our island
Soaring high into the clouds and the sleep we’ve begged for with our parched lips and swollen tongues.
Our dreams at night are the call of the sea begging to be drowned in our sand encrusted lungs,
To be one with us and our failures
The bequeathing cry of the seagull wakes us dully from our slumber
We peer out with sea salted eyes and realize it was all just a dream
We shout for help with all the voice we can muster
Letting in lungs full of icy ocean and dead crustaceans
Filling our bodies like bags of sand immobile
We’ve been sleeping with our anchors held closely
Down in the depths of the endless ocean rolling.

The slow saunter of charcoaled amber courage slithering down my throat, the old familiar burn of a love gone wrong and one too many nights spent staring at the city lights, wishing for that ******* pool of darkness to finally overtake the senses. It never happens. This place may as well be a brilliant hell-bent flame never dying out. Some broken swing jazz plays in the background, left over from an alternate time-line where life never progressed from the fall of the roaring twenties. A depressing state of depression, lost in gloom. Smoke hangs in the air like meat at the butcher shop, thick and over-powering, the somber stench of stale Camels, American Spirits, and matches burning down to the tip. Even the cool night air filled with the falling rain does nothing to move this smoke or smell away from the nostrils or eyes. It’s getting late but still the lights shine, the eyes burn, and the whiskey continues to be pored and drunk. A phone rings somewhere in the distant room, I barely make it in time before the last ring. I shouldn't have picked up. Not on a night like this...

My heart is breaking as I hear of her footsteps lightly walking away from the door, knowing the end of her walk was not much farther down the line. It’s too late to save her. A cop tapes off the scene of the ******, rain drenched and keeping reporters at bay, miserable in his line of work. But a man must earn a living in these modern times. A man must earn a living in these modern times. Her lifeless corpse lays uncomfortably on the floor, traced in chalk, with her scantly clad black dress slightly as-cued of her earthly surrogate, she looks like an angel of broken memories. Blood from her wrists and a suicide note that just doesn't seem right. The bruising on her neck looks fresh. Too fresh to be from any day or time but the present. Heavy boot prints lead on the concrete towards the streets, washing away in mud and continuing downpour. The world is on fire as the flame in my heart dies out knowing what must be done...

I sit lonely at my desk, scarred by broken glass and endless wars, sifting thru notes of tragedy that all blend into one bad noir movie repeating some forgotten enchanted quote about life and death and everything not meant to happen in between. It is what it is. It’s always what it shouldn't be. She wasn't old, just shy of some milestone birthday, but she lived hard I'm told by the few that knew her...

There's a barely audible knock on the door, heard only by the quite constant repetition of flesh meeting hardwood. I stand to open the door but before I can pull myself together to walk the some odd number of feet towards it, the door slowly opens and in steps someone I knew from a past life. There is not enough whiskey left in my glass for this encounter to be of any good...

I only come back to Hello Poetry to write
when I miss getting emails of people reading the crap I wrote.

It's been awhile.

Read this.

Like this.

Comment on this.

I might comment back

I might not.

It's nothing personal.

I want notifications.

{I suppose this is Hello Poetry equivalent to Facebook liking or twitter hashtagging... ########

But let's face it

Hello Poetry is much better. }








This has not been a
Poem instead it was just
Some stupid rambling.

I apologize
For wasting some of your time
With this rambling mess.

If it is any
Consolation I am just
As bored as you are.

If you are reading
This rambling mess still instead
of moving along

"I’m taking a sabbatical from writing today to honor the sabbath."

"But you’re not religious." She quipped back.

"I found God over night. He came to me in a pitcher of margaritas." I explained.

"You didn’t find God. You found a hangover. Now go and write."

"No, I found God in my drunkenness. The hangover is the work of Satan. He’s a mighty cunning *******."

"Quit making excuses. Go write. You’ve a deadline to meet."

"But God…" I had no response. I knew I needed to write. **** the blurred vision and the permatrails and the vice squeezing my head, words needed chosen and laid out and edited. Words I didn’t want to write but words that I had little choice not to.

"Ffffffuuuuuucccckkkkk." I whined and instantly hated myself for it.

"Look, we’ve been down this road before. Go make yourself a couple ****** Mary’s, sit out in the sun, and work on the next book. It’s easy."

"Easy? Fine you write it. I’ll be the agent."

"You’d **** as an agent, it involves talking to people."

"Yeah, ok. *******. Just make sure that when I do the rounds for this book you put me up in some hotels with a good bar."

"Yeah yeah yeah, I know you get paid in bourbon."

I laughed. She laughed. I hung up the phone, made some ****** Mary’s, went outside, sat under the sun and sweated out last nights drinks and God and Satan while adding to the days intake, and worked on the next chapter.

I try to write a happy romance,
          An epic tale of love,
   But someone always leaves,
          Or dies in the end;
        
        Thanks Hemingway.

I once had a dream that I went on a hunting trip in Africa with Roosevelt and Hemingway.

We each bagged lions the size of elephants and they each had large tusks that curved upwards towards the sun and mouths that opened as wide as hippos and were as tooth filled and hungry as a crocodile.

They charged at us and we did not hunt until the blacks of their eyes were on us.

Roosevelt shot first and hit his beast in the front right leg before taking aim again and firing, the bullet tearing cleanly thru the neck and the lion fell to the ground.

Next was Hemingway and he roared as loud as the lion charging him and with one shot targeted at the animal's heart brought it down.

As the wildness neared me I jumped into the air and landed on the back of the lion. I grabbed his mane tightly and swung my arm beneath his neck and, with knife in hand, slit the lions throat causing him to slide into the dusty ground and rolled me off into the laughter of both Hemingway and Roosevelt.

The lions were field dressed. The meat was fried, cooked, roasted, jerkied, devoured. What wasn't edible was left for the scavengers to pick clean.

Their heads are now mounted on the living room walls.

A kiss sweetly planted on the cheek
Moving slowly down the neck
The subtle tinge of hair follicles rising
From the soft brush of a lover's hand across the skin
An elicit moan escapes from a mouth
Hungrily waiting with anticipation
For lips to seal passionately against their own
The silk fabric of bed sheets bound endlessly entangled
As bodies sway to rhythmic dances as ancient as the world itself

There's a hole in my soul
I left it there for you
You filled it with wine
And we watched it pour blood

Now I'm stuck inside these fleeting memories
Photos you took on our anniversary
Of the day we never met
But I smashed the camera
When we gave our hearts to the sea

It's been a memorable summer
But in truth I'd rather forget

All these days 
they seem to run together
All these days 
we seem to run apart
All these days 
they seem to become one
All these days 
we seem to split in two

There's a tearing in my chest
I left it there for you
Remind me what's best again
And I'll lose myself in it

Now I'm stuck inside these unwakeable dreams
I knew what the secrets were
That you hid away in your head
But I lost the key 
When we gave our hearts to the sea

It's been a memorable summer
But in truth I'd rather forget

All these days 
they seem to run together
All these days 
we seem to run apart
All these days 
they seem to become one
All these days 
we seem to split in two

All these days 
they seem to run together
All these days 
we seem to run apart
All these days 
they seem to become one
All these days 
we seem to split in two

It's been a memorable summer
But in truth I'd rather forget

We played blackjack taco until the early mourning sun singed the obsidian sky into submission 

singling the onslaught of dawn rising like ravishing wildfire over a horizon of jagged glacier crafted mountains peaked with diamonds coal and gold

We flipped stacks and stacked flips
Pushed coins and collected IOUs
Spilled ink and broke pens

Too many hours in the Night Jazzing about youth and the repercussions of aging in a time when aging was an agonizing sin we cured with creams and needles

The table was deliberately a mess with scattered tea leaves half smoked sticky icky sticks full of inspired inspirations, drained drank empty wine bottles and other alcoholic deviances, and incoherent ramblings cauterizing the senses 

uncompleted poems full of scribbled and scratched out words poke out from anyplace not covered  by crumpled  origami cash resting like a weird paper green zoo of swans frogs and paper airplanes.

The suns rays manage to find that one area in between the window shades and curtains to shine brilliantly into our darkly kept stygian tomb

Illuminating a night of lexicon ******, broken handed betting, and passion only poets and writers aspire to conquer

We rubbed out our sleepless crusted eyes and gathered our ink stains and haunted dreams and left into the morning that we found in some skeletol low rent motel room on the side of this deserted desert highway...

These hands have not
Touched a pen
In such a long while
I think of all the words
I mean to write
And how they all fall silent
Before they reach
The page

This voice has not
Spoken a word
In such a long while
I think of all the things
I mean to say
And how they all fall silent
Before they escape
My lips

Break to sacrifice
Peel back the sight
I've always thought
In glitch and grind

Lay salt on my tomb
And bleed me open wounds

Serpent tongues
Solicit the verbs
Of ****** euphoria

Cut open my ribs
And cradle inside
I hold you tight
When the sun turns

I'll build you a home
Inside fractured hearts
If you split apart
And sever heaven

Lay salt on my wounds
And call me to your tomb

I'll divide you a house
Inside fractured hearts
If you spit on
And sever heaven

She lies next to me
In a twisted embrace
Slumbering eternally

Soaked bedsheets
Cling to every curve
Of her disfigured cadaver

I recall the purpose
In her last whisper
Was a pleading

To her love forever

Etched into a sordid memory
That scars the withering
Of my heart

Forced
Awake
Revulsed
Revision
The slipping
Unconscious
Buried
In ash
The being
Collapse
From nothing
To be born
From fire
We’ll wait forever
Treading
Dreading
Readying
Last light
Flickered
Into darkness
Snuffed out
Into darkness

You're in my arms with your head on my chest and I couldn't think of any way to spend the morning better.
You're hands trace the lines on the palms of my hands and rub my thigh thru my jeans and our lips taste each other like its the first time.
I can smell you even when I'm not breathing and I'm enveloped in these moments with you never wanting the comfort to end.
We watch ****** dams and pick up trucks blow up.
There's guns, prayer, and squirrel brains on the television and we laugh at redneck antics.
My stomach growls and you know the solution to quiet such a beast.
You fight sleep and I fight it just as hard because our time is almost up and I don't want to miss a second of you.
Lets pretend the clock is just a set of irrelevant numbers and lay here all day and be as irresponsible as teenagers.
Lets forget all these other moments for just a second longer until the clock strikes its over and we're back to being adults.

Endless nights spent flipping thru the radio dial to find a station worth listening to and settle the over talking of voices raging against the walls of my thoughts when the threat of silence permeates the thickening air and I'm sickening myself with the withering ashes of three too many cigarettes as the near empty bottle of wine laid hazardlessly on the carpet spilling it's last red drops of merlot taunts me into lighting up another smoke and grow weary of the song playing on the radio to the sound of my inner monologue screaming.