Ignorance is bliss
a Christianity driven pool of lethe she said
I really don't need this

you have wanderers’ eyes with
impossibly long eyelashes
high voltage in my lips
my teeth jitter with each word but
i have nothing left to say
i wish I cared more but
damage control
matters more

When I taste tequila
He says the burn is okay and normal
the caveats of my tongue are pressed with the bitter solace
You don’t know how bad I need you
you are my Irish cream, my guilty pleasure
Dancing with the devil but instead dancing with you but is that the same thing
the moshpit of our own twisted minds and our consciouses are two twisted sweaty bodies
whiskey and red wine and champagne and all that
Why do I write about males
Hot commodity
I will pretend before I admit and admit before I realize
i can hear my pupils dilating

Specificity is the mother of my demons and I live my life
like A vague ascetic
the gap between expectation and reality is where the pain is

Strands of hair down the drain
Passive aggression yet active complacency
Boil it down to numbers
Quantify the confusion and the
Sounds of the scare underneath my pillow
Magnified by the very thoughts I choose to fabricate
Lucid yet absent
I am the maker of my own fate yet I cannot bear the thought of control
Like sifting through shades of denim
A superficial choice with consequences of turmoil
Instead watch the strands of hair congeal
And clog the drain

Mother and daughter sing as the antihorizons close onto the green sickly hills
A ground of smiles and acceptance as eyes wander across a familiar landscape
Homes for families and food for crowds
The concept of time has evaded us and we are forced to gaze at the frozen perversions and dwell
I’ve grown too much for my stream of consciousness to allude to tranquility that rattled my eyes
Like a pinball machine
Or a bag of avian bones
Hollow with ease but hauntingly lightweight
The very static presence
That I was promised is
Laden with stark and dangerous afterthoughts
The antipasti of my existence but the full course meal is not complete without it
I let time trail through my fingertips like honey oozing from a diseased honeycomb
It has escaped me yet I feel no
Burning desire
To fundamentally and systematically ***** my—
My brother told me round the coffee table
You see I’m shooting for the moon but you’re painting me in indigo

If we were to get into ur ****** accident prone car
And you would put your hand behind my head rest as you backed out of the parking lot
where would we go
Where could we go?
Well we could go to the lake
I said I’d jump in with my clothes on
But we both know I would never
I would joke about how ur socks didn’t match but I wouldn’t really care
just needed to make conversation
But it wasn’t awkward
We watched as our shadows plunged into the water
As the sun plunged into the horizons and paint splatters of stars in unpolluted skies...
Maybe you would play super rich kids
When it got so dark that I could close my eyes and see sparks
And we could sing the lyrics satirically because our monetary value was nothing
We were simply children thinking it mattered
But it wasn’t supposed to be awkward the way it was

I woke up and u were staring straight into my eyes
You said
You took the funk out my soul

On a blisteringly hot Thursday afternoon
I could feel tiny ***** dripping down my calf
Underneath my dark jeans
My sweaty palms lubricating the balance beam of summer I was teetering on
today I walked briskly in the same direction as men in suits
Away from the city
And in the opposite direction of kids my age, mainly girls
******* clad in clothing reminiscent of decades prior
Heading to one or two of several bars
That just happened to not care how old you were

Every day I would ask myself what stopped me
From conforming to what I thought I really wanted
I could very simply turn right around
Lose a few layers
And play dress up in a magical city I did not know my way around

I used to think I wasn’t alone, just lonely
but for weeks I was truly alone
But I was not lonely in Boston
I was alone but I sure as hell wasn’t lonely
I fed on the city I drank up every glass building overlooking the charles river
The stench of homeless men pitching camp in front of the world’s most prestigious university
Every ****** museum that looked the exact same as the last one
The rain felt different on my skin and petrichor snaked through every car on the train
Masked the smell of armpit and business and medicine and education

One day I promised myself I would sit cross legged on a stool
At one or two of several bars
******* clad in clothing reminiscent of decades prior
And order a whiskey neat
Or on the rocks or whatever
And wait until I became lonely
For real lonely
So that ordering a whiskey neat the second night
And the night after
Was okay

My mother would say many things to me
Not particularly nice things
She’d call me impotent and ungrateful
Big words with little meaning
I knew she was wrong
But deep deep down
I still knew she was wrong
You thought I was going to say she was right, right?
Wrong
I would never speak back
Because I would say things
I wouldn’t necessarily regret but
Things I would understand that she wouldn’t
And I felt bad
I felt shameful for playing a game she didn’t know the rules to
After all it’s not like I was going to explain to her
What logic and reason were
Sometimes I would say things
They would snake out of my mouth like rancid smoke
And I didn’t even mean them I just knew they would sound satisfying
Like cutting all the way through a carrot
Hearing the knife hit the cutting board in a comfortable thump!
My words evaded me
When I’m afraid I lose my mind
It’s fine it happens all the time
One day I won’t have a mother to not say things to
Maybe I’ll learn
One day

garden hose apartment duplex
garden hose apartment duple
garden hose apartment dupl
garden hose apartment dup
garden hose apartment du
garden hose apartment d
garden hose apartment
garden hose apartmen
garden hose apartme
garden hose apartm
garden hose apart
garden hose apar
garden hose apa
garden hose ap
I messed it up
garden hose a
garden hose
garden hos
garden **
garden h
garden
garde
gard
gar
ga
g
ga
gay
***
freaky
freak
frea
fre
Free
Free c
Free co
Free col
Free Coll
Free colle
Free colleg
Free college

when did my life go from
simple pleasures with uncalled for meanings
angst and dread simmering
like a rhubarb reduction
suffocated by the plastic euphemisms
the children of a flat white perception
beautiful girls and beautiful moments
words spilling like coffee stains on pages
secrets not really meant to be uncovered yet they just ebb from a throbbing conscience
when did my life go from this
to a vulture’s disdainful touch
my own aura emulating blankness
no thought and no asphyxiating emotions
eyes vacant of animation but dilated pupils of magnificence
cardiac arrest fueled by the most ragged and raw and remorseless of experiences
whistling wind and tangled hair and looking up into the sky and seeing absolutely no stars, just light pollution, but ******* light pollution is beautiful the city is beautiful
I feel no need anymore to tear my own conscience apart
to make up for the pathetic excuse of an experience that we fabricated for our amateur selves
now I have my experiences. and I experience them
void of guilt and regret and self deprecation
self pity is the most attractive thing I’ve ever experienced
but no longer can I stand
waltzing like the court jester
instead I chose to wander like a lost prince
to each their own.

The only way you knew how to dance
Was to sway your hips haphazardly
Off beat Back and forth Side to side
to hazy savage glaringly ***** music
I would sit in the passenger seat and watch
With the car door ajar and the
Seatbelt light blinking
The only way I knew how to dance was to close my eyes and visualize the
Gospel of the orange and pink and cloud paint splatters
And so we were in perfect synchronization
Like symphonic harmony
My eyes closed but yours wide wide open
Not a moment of hesitation between one second of action to the next
Except when it came to opening my eyes
I would watch you succumb to your assimilated actions
And we would welcome
The droplets of a newborn rain storm attaching to our clothed backs and bare shoulders
Laden across a field
We were not allowed to be on this field they had football practice
but we were anyways
The air was of a room temperature and caressed our fingertips
How did we manage to articulate to each other
What it feels like to be enveloped
in reality’s arms
Your hair was almost the
Color of mine but your skin was usually a lot
Paler
But in the summer it would turn bronze
When you held up your hand and against
The cotton candy sky you looked like
A shiny brass statue of a Greek god
We thought we were Zeus and Hera but
Were Sisyphus and Merope
Bare legs meant mosquito bites but
They drew satirical constellations across our calves
Like a sadist reminder of irony
We existed in perfect destruction because
The birds had left but
The moon had stayed
I felt my ragged fingernails frighteningly grasping at
The remnants of a pathetic twilight
I don’t think I can ever look you in the eye again
And then I blinked just once and
The sky had turned indigo and the chill of cicadas and summer night set in
And I was intrinsically alone with no ***** music and swaying hips and summertime lies
Deceit had evaded me but it surrendered to you
And with your presence left my respect
This celestial ship will carry our mundane bodies back to shore
But I tangoed for one
And put on my seatbelt and closed the car door

My dad let me drive his expensive German car
Except by myself even though I wasn’t old enough
i came to a complete stop at every stop sign
And checked my mirrors and my blind spots
And at every spot light
I made sure my foot was on the brake
In case
my mind decided to change my mind

the ravens picked up on my intrusive thoughts
Stepped on the brake for me
Turned on my indicator
Moved the windshield wipers so the breadcrumbs would fall to the side
And then they would eat them up
And the car wheels would smash their bodies into smithereens

What if I swerved right instead of left
The windows were cracked so that
The pressure wouldn’t trap me as the car sunk into the abyss
That was the pool of lethe
Maybe I would forget the route
And take another one home
Park in the garage
And then hand my dad the keys
Until the next time, he said

Considerate movement of systematic gray
The holy trinity consists of me and you and us
Or maybe me myself and I
On this platform it melts together
I see in two dimensions but with you I see in one
The impossible intricacies of the worn tracks both exemplified and diluted
Or dilated
I would not know
Tattoos of crows mid flight on my chest
One for each mistake and a star for each regret
Let us just say
A blanket of migration under a dark dull and void of light night
Just take the **** train
And leave it behind

what could have been
a glance of longing
Is now
A gaze deep into glazed
Passive eyes
With
Impossibly long eyelashes

I looked up and I couldn’t see the end of it but I knew it was there
Sunshine glimmered against the surface like
Cling wrap
Infinite horizons meant intrusive thoughts
If only I could bring myself to jump
Small children giggled in a row
Stumbling over each other’s oblivious actions on the dirt-caked path
Brought a smile to my face because they couldn’t help it
Panting puppy dogs sent a haze of debris into the air
Enticed the girls, sitting on a blanket
Who didn’t care to understand the appeal of fishing
Families of several walked by substance abuse and crude jokes
Disapproving looks but no one really cared
The sky was cloudless but the air was smoke ridden
We took a short nap
The sun set over the train tracks so the sky never turned pretty
But the melted blue meant we were to go now
So we walked past gurgling babies and smiling mommies on the dingy trail
And drove home with the windows down and it was an icy wind that bit our earlobes
The speaker screamed hey good lookin and we sang as we became enveloped in the
Blanket of wilderness