On our way into
Santa Anita one day,
an old man had tipped
over in his wheelchair.
There was a pool of blood
beneath his smooth head.
I was with my Dad.
He was around the same
age as the poor injured man.
I was 12.

Seeing that man, and watching
the blank stares of the apathetic
crowd gathering around the
man, and the blood, and the
fallen wheelchair, I knew that
nobody would win, and the
horses that ran were the luckiest
of us all.

worlds are collapsing, rising; dictators exhale,
entangle the veins of world
some ideas preserve salty streets like janitors of the dark
summer keeps the score of perfumed nights
I indulge in the womb of heat
wounds are retreating in sequestered spaces -
the seeds of the future.
there is a chill in the air, dread strikes near and far
light flows like the dance stuck in my bones
everywhere the pulse of time, dreaming

You got a good name, good height, everything alright
What you turned inside, is emotional oversight
Incredibly twisted, any word is tiring
You overthink everything like you are competing.

Competition is with whom, the older you?
The truth is so loud, but sometimes beyond true!
Because the complexity turned infinity
With all unreleased sores, you choose indefinitely.

Picking apart all the plucked up parts
You dream of designs something off the charts
The reality hits, stings incomprehensibly
This danger looms always grievously.

Seriously you have bright future, but you wear shades
So everything you see is dark tinted
So much for innovation, the heart finds problems
We will always think about unused items.

Looking into your vacant eyes now
switches the lights off
leaving only your silhouette
curled up in a storm
of stained pink sheets

No, you don't sleep anymore
except for when
you don't seem to wake
stuck in a trance
which smothers you

Everyday you choose tomorrow
to bet on
No, you haven't won in a while
silver gleams the moon
through your window
silver crinkles and breaks
when you press
on the plastic enclosed fog

Can barely stand
to hear you speak
when you've got nothing to say
the same stories
and unspoken worries
till they corrode in your memories
and disintegrate on your lips

Until the comfort of nightfall
coerces you
to spill your soul
a milliliter at a time
a puzzle I try to piece together
when sleep doesn't come easily

Everything is cumbersome
you hesitate
to move your limbs
over your bed
stuck between four cold walls
that draw nearer

As time flows between your fingers
the ceiling feels higher
the chasm beneath the floor infinitely
wider
hungrier
easier

Than the night illuminating your back
as you watch the stars
too bright
too high up
to remove

Heart ache like sandpaper slowly eroding away giving up whats left of me day by day.
Memories of people and places i once knew fading, as the flow of life keeps erasing and
re-shading.
Who was i and who were they? What will be left when everything fades away?
Some people gone and some just pushed out of reach, makes me want to build a wall that you cant breach.
The ache of loss can drive you insane. Loss of others, of yourself , of hope… its hard to maintain.
Weak and weary from the push and pull. Feeling desperate to see something meaningful.
Pouring myself out like water on the ground. Feeling absorbed and not profound.
Asking myself  why? what is it all for? Trying to be less and then trying to be more.
Life is a vapor a whisper of smoke. We try to make it more and then we choke.

these people

I can’t see them anymore
I don’t want to see them anymore
I have no desire to see them anymore

I never think about
phoning them or
messaging them or
stopping by to say “hi.”

I don’t care about
what’s happening
in their lives or
who they’re dating
or what memories
we had together

yet they insist, they demand
that I visit them
that I sit down with them
that I talk about nothing important
with them

and I can’t say no

because I know how it feels:

during those times,
when I was down and out
and needed someone
to turn to, to talk to
but there was no one around
I felt the terror & the darkness
constricting my cold and lonely heart
as all the vitality and connection was draining
from my ventricles of ire
like blood from a stone

and so much of that
over a lengthy period of time
has made me a lot stronger,
more independent from people
and maybe even borderline aloof
from all human interaction

I no longer need them
I no longer want them around

but I can’t let anyone
feel that same way
that I felt

so long ago.

pitiful.