When it all got to be a bit too much
I reasoned my way into a corner
Sat there silent
Stapled my bottom lip to my convictions
And called it poetry

We all pretend to have ways to cope
Write a poem
Pretense and prophetic anthems
Some say it better than this
It’s harder with through staples
I didn’t know how to pull them out

So I learned to drive
Pressed mute minutes into the pavement
Pulled prayers from the asphalt
It’s all I was good at
Taking long steps

On the last night I lived there,
I stood on my mother’s front porch
Holding everything I was in one hand
Everything I could have been in the other
And clenched my fists like a fighter
Denied the daylight
Spit in the face of the night
Drowned expectations in the dawn

Counted 148 bricks between the front step and the streetlight
Illuminating 4 wheels and one way out
Kissed each brick with my boot heel
Packed my belongings in the backseat
And my longings in the bags beneath my eyes
Put pedal to promise
Peeled out and pretended
That we all run away

When it all got to be too much
I bit rubber into ground
And wrote myself a letter saying:

“Someday, kid,
Someday you’ll be found.”

Stained glass coffins
Crystalline mosquitoes
Death that masquerades
In silken flags and floras
Languorous beauties
Graffiti of red and violet light
Sirens kiss the bullets
As they scatter them
To burn holes in sepia dreams
Watercolor ghosts
Casting out wildflower candy
Attics that hide under
Strawberry dust and lemons
That melts into mildew
As they pass down the gullet
Layers of ashes in the belly
“But you told us to swallow!”
Masses of children howl
The pretty ghouls hiss back
“Cannot you tell a lie by now,
By the sweetness of its taste?”

I remember a time when time was just a number,
where the only times where school and dinner.
When I didn't have to grow up to be what I want,
but I could act it out in a secret lair or a parking lot.
As you become old, they try to rid you of you imagination,
well I say nay as I fly my submarine in a train station.
You know what take my wallet, live my life,
because I am a ninja hiding in the night.
Go ahead, try and catch me if you can,
Big old stupid corporate man.
You might be sophisticated and civilized,
so what, I am a 50 foot spider that can freakin' fly!

I thought I heard you laughing,
I thought I heard you scream.
I thought I heard you say my name
But it was all a dream.
I thought I saw the morning break,
I thought I saw a bird in flight.
I thought I saw the sun wake up,
But I was being taunted by the night.
I thought I felt your skin on mine,
I thought I felt you sighing.
I thought I felt your breath on me,
But it was just my desperation crying.
And through the snow I saw a light,
Burning slow yet burning bright.
And in that moment I then knew,
That I was now entrapped in you.

This is a true story of ******’s ally

The old man carried a cello and a stool
Bullets divided wind
So many straight lines he could see them like sheet music

He sat the stool down in the middle of the street
Held his cello
And played under the gunshots
Until everything was quiet

And in the outdoor acoustics
Made by apartment buildings and the morning cold
He played a fifteen minute rendition of heartache
On a cello tuned to the key of thunder

His high notes were so much screaming
And the deep low notes bellowed his hunger
It was the simple sound of savagery
When people needed another way to know what pain sounds like

They could hear it in the way that the strings
Absorbed the rust from his arthritic fingertips
Scraping the sound of struggle

It was the most painfully beautiful music
He played to the soft continuous metronome click of reloading
Beauty like a rose that dies in the hair of a girl
Whose own rose is a blooming ****** chest wound

Thought maybe he could replant her
Like the earth might give her back

Anything plucked from the root dies shortly after
He played for her
He played for courage
He played like a prayer to be shot doing what he loved

We all wanna die doing what we love

She was shot picking roses

He played cello
On a playground of bullets
A song that begged
**** me

Where is your god now?
When all you wanted was to be a casualty of love and music

He finished
Beads of sweat like ***** diamonds
As the morning sun mocked him for living another day

Some of us get to walk away from this
Without a single scar
Even if we wanted one

He walked away

And shortly after

The bullets began to do what bullets do
When they pierce flesh

I live a shallow life.
No one is willing to submerge too deep.
I see them all around me…
Dancing on the sand,
Their skin hot from the sun,
& burning with romance.
I let them come and go as they please,
Stepping in my puddle by the sea,
Taking away a little at a time,
Leaving me alone…yet free.
I hear the others coming,
Rolling in so gently,
Each just a passerby
Speaking to me eloquently.
I see in the distance the whole that I should be,
But here I wait, unattached…
Just like a puddle by the sea.