And I finally understand “purple mountain majesties,”
as I sit here on my perch.

And behind me: that woman with the white hair,
like sails of the boats in the bay, or wings of the swans in my mind,
red pocketbook;
red lips dripping with hope.

I think someone forgot her.

Or maybe she is content.
Maybe she sees the world’s majesties, too….

But her swiveling head tells me otherwise.

I ask if she has a pen to lend me.
Her eyes become glass
as her third eye scrunches into an asterisk:

“No, dear, I’m so sorry. I don’t….”

My teeth and tongue lick the air with sympathy:
“No worries, ma’am. Thank you.”

I slide back to my rock and ask the slivered moon for her company.
I feel regret that everybody leaves with the sun,
as if the show is over.
But with skies still blue,
and moon always dancing,
it has only just begun.

I sniff the cold in.
Vicinity barren;
If I were to fall, nobody would know.
I would slip beyond this world
and find an orchestra of
silence in the sea.

I sit here wondering where the birds go.

Turning my head right
vertigo lops me upside the head.
The waves have rocked my mind to the point where I feel
I might
actually
fall.

Somehow,
that would be alright.
Somehow,
I would be okay.

Because maybe then
I won’t have to see
the vivid pained look in people’s eyes.
Like that beautiful abandoned woman
with the wing-white hair
and her hopeful red pocketbook.

type of boy: tastes lightly of wintre and cigarette smoke, but mostly of a deep-seated passion that is littered with things he rarely shares.

the lesions have eliminated the ability of my hands and knees to feel the difference between broken bottles, shattered hearts, pieces of bathroom tile. but was there really anything to distinguish them in the first place and there are times when i would die just to be a lightbulb, to illuminate people's lives without having to speak or feel pain, except for the burn of giving your life for people to see each others lips to kiss and to read what is going on in the world.


every evening you torture yourself spewing and spitting your pain into a bottle, because you refuse to allow the words of your excruciation to enter the world. darling, you cannot keep them bottled up forever. i dont think you understand that your pain has been here already, and it will continue to be so until the end of time. it was born when Eve sank her teeth into the Forbidden Fruit and opened the gates of Limbo where Disease and Death reigned supreme. their children escaped and ran into the world to ravage it and they live off of our refusal for comfort, our prideful need to "be strong" when truthfully you will find your release in humility and openness. your throat may fill with a conglomeration of everything that needs to spill but if you just release a drop at a time you will be only watering flowers that were so desperate to live. let the flowers grow inside you and root themselves in your soul. keep watering them. do not waste the water and leave it in the bottle. allow the waterfall to nourish the life within you and become better and stronger. do not keep caged a beast that will only ravage you, not build you up.

It's on them nights I drink alone. Find myself thinking of home. These beers bottle bones empty and shatter. Liquor lung sigh. Chest heavy like a white trash wind chime. Like a six pack of bud ice hanging from some fishing line. Hear them low notes bouncing of the lips in the wind. And maybe you worry, but ****, I'm fine to drive. And on those days when my gut isn't a gas tank for beer refilling at a pity party pit stop, I drive on love. Write love poems on phones before the ***** knocks me out. And sure, maybe my love makes as much sense as the words I slurr. And maybe my love is as unique as the crackheads needle in the haystack, but I'll still love you serious as a heart attack. Like a stroke... of genius... an epiphany about the realness of God. That maybe the story is flawed, but you're welcome to believe. And maybe I'm drunk right now, but I never meant to deceive. So kiss me with your break lights, while a pray to the slow light that I can live life like an old man feeding birds on a bench in the park. Got nothing else on his mind... just love... you maybe. And whatever you might think. I promise. I'm fine to drive

teeth are clenched together
caffeinated intoxicated little words
brought as one
into one minuscule prose.
the boy who shines bright as the sun
in your eyes;
i destroyed it, i suppose
lost into one broken "never mind"

your tongue lapses into
minute broken shapes
along the jaw that gapes
for all the love you've sought to lose

i wish that i had known in that first minute we met
the unpayable debt
that i'd owe you
and those words were taken
from a pretty song
that no one really knew

i long for the i.v. drip
to keep me barely alive
and i am so jealous, mother
that death took you

it starts as an innocent sip
grows to an open dive
to have for you another
one drink became a few
and you've wound up like your mother

repeating yourself,
losing yourself
to a substance abuse
and the words, they melt
together, you lit the broken fuse
that sent us all to hell

so pray your worst
and break for the best
we will all meet our funeral hearse
our minds will count for less.

my darling
my angel
my devil
who taught me everything
I'm so sorry I left you
I left you all alone
I'm so sorry
don't hurt yourself
my darling

scientists have said
humans are the only
organisms able to
express their thoughts,
but i often find that
to be untrue.

if people could
directly communicate
their emotions and feelings
i would know what is
happening
between me
and you.

I took a break from trying, because all of the words sounded the same and nothing new came out. It was all the old feelings I've already felt and old tears I've already wept. I was tired of beating the horse, it was already pulp beneath my feet.
So I let it go and I dropped the pen. I settled angst and let the winds run wild through the valleys of my mind. Tornadoes formed and storms brewed. I felt the cold grip of a 45 in my hand the other night held tight against my temple. I couldn't pull the trigger.
I'm glad I didn't, because that burning cold against my clammy skin awoke something deep inside. Feeling.
So I'm taking a break from taking a break because finally there's something to write about that isn't that **** pulpy horse beneath me. It's a new beast of fear and irrationality, but it's something. I've been so tired and scared that I haven't known what to do with myself.
Let go.
We thought I had ten little fingers and toes inside me. We thought that my stomach had a heart beat. I'm not sure why I felt so disappointed when that stick said no. We aren't ready for a kid, let's be honest.... are we?
Love is something we bathe ourselves in, what flows through our veins and stirs the dust within us. But I'm not so sure about a little us roaming around on ten little toes.... am I?

The storm has settle and these keys feel comfortable beneath my fingers. I just wish I didn't need to feel the burn on a 45 to know what comfort is.

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.