How hungry you were
Sinking your hooks in deep,
cracking open my chest,
looking for more. But
I've felt this before.

How hungry you were, those
sharp fingers tearing at my skin
and leaving me sore,
Cracking ribs open like toothpicks
after a meal.

How hungry you were.
Craving my healthy heart and
blood. Lapping it all up
like some depraved thirsty dog.

How hungry you were
to satiate your pain,
to toss yours away
and replace it with mine.

Oh how hungry you were,
when you found me empty.

Within the dark capsule of closed eyes,
the soul seeps its way through,
and one becomes two.

A twisting, intangible face within organic casing,
detached and pulled from physical being,
falling upwards against streams of

watery blue and mossy green,
losing fingers and feet along the way,
failing to grasp at the invisible silvery cord
attached to its belly.

Plunging face first into a pool of cool gray,
Sound dulled by the wet hum of nothingness
flowing through starfilled ears.

Utterly embraced,
Transparent, transcended and weightless.
Floating calm amongst the outer waters of consciousness.
And for a moment, finding itself
free.

Within the sanctity
of my middle eye,
I watched red turn blue,
touching the hue of someone I knew.
A glimpse of the past,
somehow tainted along the never ending journey
of self-discovery,
spiraling into charred shades
of colors that couldn’t be dreamt,
watching everything it knew
catch fire and burn away;
a soul withering and warping
like a suffering leaf
against the red heat of insanity.
Presently dowsing itself in icy teal auras,
steaming amongst the grey mental balance,
smiling.
Is this who I was?
Someone I left behind?

When matter reflects on itself,
consciousness materializes
into something more tangible
and realizes all of existence
is floating above its head.

Matter turned and governed
by gravity’s hands.
Spun and pulled by
creative fingers,
shaped into round colorful bodies and
tossed into blackness
to dance alone.

Some are given partners,
little moons to set their mood,
to spin their silvery light around them
and sing their songs at night
to put their children to sleep.

Some stay awake for the song,
some watch their slow dance,
and some look up at the milky sky and
wonder if matter thinks about them back.

Crack on concrete
Losing his feet,
slipping on sweet
sweaty poison.

Man's head down
blood on the ground.
Phone's background;

a daughter's face
smiling behind
shattered glass.

Red tears
make their smears
on creased cheeks

as he looks back down
to the phone on the ground
unable to make sorrow's
humble sound.

He looks around
Broken down
and stuck to the ground.
Ankles cracked and twisted as
he's lifted by three strangers;

lost souls
who forget their woes
for just a moment

as they sit him back down
on the ground,
and watch him cry
as they call for help.

Photograph

I looked at a face
no longer there.
A frozen smile,
familiar and warm.
Once young,
now old.
Gone with time and
long forgotten.

Eyes lingering on  
pasty ink
paled by rays of sun.

Cradling a frame of a
foregoing time,
fingertips brushing
against a landscape once familiar,
now faded.

Foundation of existence
an exponential presence.
Gravity’s graceful hand
glues us together
like wet sand.
Presses us into spheres and
let’s us fall where we may.

Molded from mud and clay
Born of the Earth and falling
along the bend of space,
lulled by the face of the sun
and dizzy by the spin of the Earth,
we fall in love
along its starry string.

The foundation of existence.
we fall and then
fall again. Dropped along
gravity’s bending string
we fall and spin
Faster and faster
Desperately searching for meaning
until.
Some part of that string to holds onto
us and calls us their own.

We fall in love.
Tying ourselves to that fleeting string
so it may stay.
So it won’t fall away.
So caught up
We glue our muddied hands
to disappearing strands.

So caught up
we lose ourselves to gravity
and fall at the speed of life
so fast we forget to slow down
and look around.
So fast that we might miss it.

She’s wearing it again.
Hiding behind its porcelain green glare like some
righteous shield.
He wants so desperately to just peel it off her face
that he cuts off his own.

He’d lie and smile.
Show off his new mask and
Crack a joke about the broken pencil, a
pointless **** poor flavor of humor
reminding them where they went wrong.

She wouldn’t notice anyway;
Too excessively engaged with the
idea of a lonely low-priced studio.

He knows this, and remains perched in silence
like a mute bird. Staring off into space
and recounting mistakes;
Feeling the colorless
truth bleed from the corners of grooved eyes
down to the edges of blue lips
that he so regrets unveiling.

Knock knock
Who’s there?
The boy lying
in ambush with a camera,
pining to dig up shiny smiles of the past.
How they laughed at such jokes.

At times I wake in dreams.
At times I’m the observer.
At times I don’t remember.

There was a time waking felt like nothing.
There was a time living was observing.
There was a time days were black.

Time walks on.
Time will move its legs and drag you across the floor.
Time won’t look back and tell you things were missed.
Time is merciless.

This time I’ll fill my eyes with color.
This time the black will come alive.
This time I’ll live.
This time I’ll wake.

Has it been that long?
Since your gray eyes first met mine?
Since I first saw your smile?
Since I first heard your laugh?
Since I felt your hair brush against my face?
Since I heard beautiful words come out of your mouth?
Since I watched them fall onto paper?
Since I last looked into your eyes?
Since I last touched your hand?
Since I last heard your voice?
Since I last saw your face?
Has it really been that long?

Black glass
Hugged by plastic.
A rigid, shiny stone,
Holy and smooth as silk.

It calls upon you.
Its dark face glowing with glee,
its still form
trembling in tantrum.

Eyes gawk eagerly while
dexterously trained fingers
Slide their grease-stained trail
across its blossoming surface,
trapped in vanity.
A technological marvel,
one might say,
it’s glistening roads worshipped and
Truly wondrous.

All the images: moving, smiling, addicting.
The knowledge of the universe, packed into
a tiny, plastic cocoon,
festering, growing, evolving,
eager to be eaten.

Endorsing gluttonous laze, and
Unmasking humanity’s
unseemly colors;
it lulls you in with its
digital spindle embrace, the
sharp strings of data
reaching in through the eyes and
touching the optic nerve.
Neurons swell in ecstasy, pupils dilate, the heart screams;
matter of the brain catches fire in
its electrical storm, and
cascades into chemical ******.

Satiating a toxic lust.
Brilliant glass
turns to black,
stuck to your hand like glue.

It rained when she left.
I didn't even love her.
So why did it rain?

Consciously unconscious.
Thinking about everything.
Thinking about nothing.

Every time I close my eyes
I see a face,
clear and perfect. Yet

ever changing
like a memory
fading and morphing.

I don't know this face,
who they are or
where they're from.

Why they're in my head.

And at night, those
images morph themselves into dreams,
and I see her again;

her lost blurry eyes
in search of something
they can't find.

And then,
in a brief moment of clarity
they meet mine

and I somehow feel
found again, like a piece
of my soul has been given back.

Every time I try my hardest to hold on,
desperate to stay there with her,
scared of waking up lost.

Sometimes I think
she's just another lost
lonely soul

in search of
an old friend
who she's known forever.

Sometimes I think
she's out there
wandering the world

and that maybe
with some patience and luck
I'll meet her one day.

I

I taste it daily.
The salt of consequence on the side of my tongue,
Burning my mouth.
Punishing me.

Love is lost.
Shallow and low,
Like a pool of water
Two feet deep,
Predictable and **** flavored.

I taste every answer before it’s heard.
But I deny it just the same.

I dig for the unpredictable.
Muddying my hands in search of
A new flavor.
Drunk as I am at 4 in the morning,
I ask for an answer that I’ve already tasted,
Hoping to be surprised.

I’m not.
I’m given an answer that I already know.
But I pursue it just the same.
I send poems to lost loves,
Knowing they won’t answer,
But I do it just the same.

I find myself alone.
I’ve accepted it.
But I crave companionship,
Just the same.

Like the grass in my pipe.
I crave it.
Love it.
But it kills me.


II

Don’t make it awkward.
Don’t say it.
I’ll see you tomorrow.
Don’t say it.
Don’t make it awkward.

You already know,
I say.

No I don’t,
She says.

She’s lying
I know it.
I taste it.

She lives in bliss.
I live in fire.

Don’t say it.
Don’t make it awkward.
I don’t know.

She says this to dampen a blow
That I won’t feel.
I’ve felt it too many times.

Maybe she didn’t know.

III

I’ve lost the sense of caring,
I say it just to say it.
Knowing the answer.
Just to see what happens.

And again I’m forced to move on.
To know that it’s unreciprocated
As it so often seems to be.


Insufferably predictable.
Six months I knew,
Yet I hoped to be surprised.

IV

Somehow,
Confidence remains,
Or perhaps it was born.
Resilient as the day it fell out of the womb.
Unphased by negative response,
Simply frustrated,
Urged to move forward and brush off the needles
Poking at its chest and temples and tongue.
How can a heart die if it has already been pierced?

V

I’ll keep digging,
Searching for a new flavor
Until something sweet sticks.
Until some light shines through the cracks.

I’ll make it awkward.
I’ll make it weird.
I’ve been pierced enough.
I’ve been numbed long enough.

Stab me again.
Try it.
Pick a vein.
Try it.
I hope to feel it.
I want to feel it.

VI

True sadness
Is something that can’t be described.
For some,
Fresh and temporary.
Others,
Old and rooted.
Experienced in different ways
Left to ferment
Through a curious cathartic flavor of isolation.

I’ve fallen into that deep void
before.
Seeking companionship where there is none.
Only to be stabbed in a living heart,
countless times
Until it finally stopped beating.

I’m watching the trees dance under
paling sky’s thick cerulean shadow,
wondering if they’re like me.

                 Wondering if the bioelectrical fibers
                 twisting through the trunk of my neck
                 are like the gusts of wind braiding their branches.

                             Wondering if it keeps them awake,
                             or if it lulls them into enduring slumber.


I’m losing hours behind my circuitous strides through
conscious coma,
pondering those incessant curiosities of
permanent sleep
that so often plague the restless furrows of my stormy mind.


She’s looking at me like
I’m broken again, following me
out the door and impulsively pining
for a fix she couldn’t understand.
For sanguine is the nature of this
four-legged creature so stubborn
and at my heels. Striving to help
as she so often does.

But I’m not broken. No.
I’m comfortably subdued by the soothing
song of sinuous water cascading through
calloused toes, and the weight of
the stained notebook resting on my lap,
whose pages cradle the words of
psychological shadow flowing through my
murky
     streams
              of
                 consciousness.

These are the words that release me.
That so seamlessly pair
the id with the ego and put me to
sleep atop dew-lit grass.
The words that purge me of insanity, and pave my path
to self-discovery.

She knows this too,
Her primordial mind somehow
knows it and yes,
Yes it fixes me.