Far away, across the emptiness
and unbrokeness of the desert
a thousand
pebbles are strewn,
each one begging to be picked up.

In some eastern city,
a girl and her friends
wander, and laugh, and joke,
and jump, drunk. She looks
so good tonight. Her hair
wavy and long, her eyes
a thousand different wavelengths
of blue, green, amber.

In a room,
there's a bed,
a desk,
a dresser,
a bedside table.

The girl and her friends,
wandering darkening streets,
drunk, looking for the next ****,
next bottle to **** dry.

Outside his window,
the setting sun reaches out
for it's last burning grasp
of skin. Scorching all day,
now it relents, but it always leaves a mark.

There's a guy in the club,
all up on her,
and she isn't trying to push him away,
even as his lips brush her neck.

In the room, in the dark,
he goes subterranean,
spending hours staring at her feed,
at her notifications,
where she's been,
and who she's with.

The brushed lips are the first warm thing
in forever,
it seems.

Going even more subterannean,
he runs through and through
all the scenarios.

He goes back and forth
in his room,
looking for something,
looking for nothing at all.
Up.
Down.
Sit.
Stand.
Calm.
Explode.
Reassure.
Anger.

And tonight the most harrowing thing,
is those lips and the strength
of pain and sorrow.

He saw,
He saw the snapchats.

Emptied him whole,
right there,
filleted his stomach
and dropped some rocks
for his way down to the bottom.


All the rights he has now:
the right to the joy of betrayal.
the joy of being right,
and its incumbent wrongs all at the same time,
the comfort of madness.

The sun beat down
the earth today.
Beat it down, beat down
the cats stretching and yawning
in the horrible heat,
plopping in the shade lazily.

Fatigue rolled through the desert
a horde laying waste to motivation,
and replacing it with depression.

We shut out all light,
shuttered the windows,
locked ourselves away,
turned off everything real,
delved deep into our laptop
submarines. venturing deep
into nothingness, away from emotion,
away from the beating, burning heat,
away from sunlight and UVs,
away from all that which,
though it beats us down,
strengthens us,
and yet we despise the heat.

No more long, slow days
of pushing through
fatigue and boredom,
we've stagnated long enough
they say.

Now the wind kicks up a renewed warmth
that greets us in the morning over the white-capped mountains.
Now the sun sets and shrouds a cloudless sky in gold.

We hear voices, whispers
saying someday soon we'll go out
to ****
or be killed.

And it's scary how much it excites us
to fantasize about death;
about our role in catastrophe
and the empty glory.

Sometimes death hurtles through the beautiful
high, azure sky. And leaves
not a mark, not even a cool shadow on the ground
as it flutters harmlessly to the earth
bemusing us. underwhelming us.

Some weeks are so quiet
that we touch the nuts and bolts
of true nothing
too much.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
feel too little and lose sight
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
of our purpose. Lose sight
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
of the need
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000d000000000000000­000000000000000
for one. Lose sight
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
of memories of ******* by the fire.
Lose sight of what there is
to guard inside of us, to keep
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
whole and untouched
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
.
Lose sight
of why we're
guarding it, why
we're trying to, need to. Lose sight
of what the air tasted like back home.
We just lose.

Sandstorms kick up giant tornados
of dust, pebbles and sand
cutting silently across the burning concrete.

We stand
in their way,
constantly.

To keep busy
we tell
the same stories
so many times.

Now they dive out
of our mouths dropping weightlessly,
not even the strength to carry a wingbeat.

We barely believe ourselves anymore,
that's what we say.

The graying home.

The graying home,
night to dawn, dawn to hazed day,
back to dusk, to murky night.

The air is rife with the stench
of burning trash, pungent as a just-opened orange,
just as spicy, heavy as cigar smoke,
but dim, imperceptible.

The world turning, while we notice,
from our thrones in the shacks
where our discontentment brews.

Backyard brawls
and sunflower gardens.

Bezzled nights,
twinkling jeweled fireflies,
musky, humid air,
the tickle of rain on your cheeks.

Washed away,
down
the
drain,
youth,
gone and can't be recaptured.

Fistfights
in high school hallways,
tumbling in stairwells
with the beasts of our fear,
and the rolling thunder
of adulthood smashing
against our minds
like tropical waves against
arctic icebergs.

Youth, again;
mother's warm body
cuddling together
in the morning replenishment
on a spring mattress
that is continually sinking down abyssally
where boy and mother
cope with the aftermath
of the brokenness
shrouding their home.

**** drifting up to the ceiling
as we drank our full
of Everclear,
bought by fathers
who's lives had been beaten
down to a depressed mattress
in the corner
of
a garage
speckled by oil slicks
and draped by fiberglass
falling in curtains from the ceiling.

The absent smell of crack in the air.

Sunday breakfasts,
grandma in the kitchen,
mom in the basement,
kids farting around in their rooms.

Mom's curdling yells ripping the house to shreds,
as she sought peace,
in a quiet, and moldy sarcogophous.

There is a place where bombs
and mortars fly,
where a smile is as hard to find
as a mosquito in a desert,
and self-hatred is easy to come by
when regret blankets your mind
with every sand-choked breath.
And in this place, time crawls
by only springing to life when happiness
blooms, and idling when emotions
are sautered, and the search for feeling
is like waiting to get bitten.

But in this place,
there is a garden,
where youth and adulthood
collide, where the sunflowers bloom
once more, and the blood spilt
before the war began, gives life
to the seedlings,
and the soil is not so rotten
as it has grown older and tired.

The mind, finally centered
among the chaos, finding
its concrete horizon in the oasis
of a centered self,
centered finally,
in the midst of this brutal
and beautiful disaster.

What's left in the world
For the woman in the burning house
Except pain and sorrow?

She meanders through life,
Picking things up
Here and there
Where
Here is darkness,
There is nothing,
And tomorrow never comes,
And each new thing
Is something to hold
For just awhile.

She must watch
The house burn down,
While still inside.

First the drapes.

She clutches onto the past,
In the falling ashes and huffing heat,
And can't let go,
Even as her skin peels away.

Black tears stream down her face,
And the inner workings of her own soul
Become even more confusing to her.

The walls crackle,
The windows shiver and burst,
And the world rushes in upon her.

On the braided rug in the living room she kneels,
Holding her things underneath her *******,
Praying that everyone will see
And that no one will see.

Her life,
Ruined.

Her family,
Gone,
Long ago.

Her hope,
The match that lit the trashcan.

And now, flames all around her,
Her black tears a residue,
And the world watching,
She knows nothing.

She has nothing.

but
Pain and sorrow.

After falling
Off the wagon,
I ****** blood.

And woke up worse
Than hemorrhage
Suffering from a pain
I couldn't
Explain.

Pain troubling
Me thru the day
Knowing there were
Things I couldn't fix
Or understand.

Waiting for nightfall,
The shroud of darkness
And
Foggy light,
Knowing understanding
Would never come,
But searching for its source
In the sky.

While soldiers died,
Under a Syrian night.