Who minds getting
Choked?
Slap me,
Kick me
Leave your marks on my neck and hands
(I wiped out on my bike
It was only gravel
Honest).
Skin me alive
Glue me back together
White-out and saline solution.
White
Out
And Sailing solution.

My heel
Is so
Ripe.
Grind it
Boil some stock
(Vegetable, please)
Season it with teeth
Discard the rest.

Dispose
Compost
Get it in the ground
Let the rain take care of the rest.

[Yields 4 servings]

My hands are not my hands
My voice is not my own
My lip never was my lip
But this blood is all mine.
The spoon sedated my fears and insecurities
It's tender metallic surface gleaning
And involuntarily shaking
As I lapped up alllll the yogurt.
I could use a cartwheel.
I don't want to sleep
I'm afraid of dying
as my back and forehead sweat in agony
My eyes don't open anymore
A steady beeping
A flickering fills the air around me
I told my brother I'll be back soon
If I stop
I'm writing with my eyes closed now.
My heart rumbles like a cannon shot
My only regret is how I never knew you better
Mr. Cobain.
We had such fun nights with Mr. Yorke
and Mr. Coyne
Just laughing
And taking turns rolling Thom's glass eye across the floor.
Spring training.
I'm laughing on my bed outside
Catching glances of the summer
Coiled and contemptuous
They go on their lives not caring
Who lives.
Who dies.
Three girls climbed into my window
They smelled of grass and
polyurethane
The children died 6 years ago
The Johnny Carsons of this life
And
GET OFF MY HAND *******
PASS ME THE FOOTBALL
Percodin.
Codin.
Coding.
I just turned the page
And I'll be ****** if I do it again

“oh ****!”


If Dan went white-face ghetto
And wore beatnick clothes
It'd be
AMAZING
The incisor broke my fall
Sorry.
No pork and beans today.
Ericccccc
Help my head
Chalk these mint leaves up to fate.
Because ******* are they good.
I'm reading your expression
On an empty pizza box.
You don't seem too pleased.
I fear
This ice in my tray made me soak my bed
Honest!
Flounder had a mohawk
I don't give a **** what you say.
His **** mohawk was badass.
His stubble made Sebastian jealous
A bed of ice is better than a bed of coals
Or a bed of cars
Or a bed of rice
But that would feel really, really good.
Take a guitar solo
Now a bass solo
Now a keyboard solo
Now a harmonica solo
Now beatbox, no go?
Maybe the former
The TRANSFORMER of course. I hope I live to see that one day.
Yes.

Catharsis is finally putting that ******* in the past.
Is changing rather than conforming
is finishing last in a one person race and not caring.

Catharsis is waking up 8 hours later
Next to someone you love
On a Saturday morning.

Catharsis is staying there all night
Unaware and oblivious to the paper you had to write.

is ignorance
is bliss

is waking up together
even if you live alone.

Catharsis is taking the past
From around your ankle
To the past
And leaving it there to die.
Even if it's the only past you know.

My college instituted a new policy today.
In an effort to promote solidarity,
All students, professors, service workers,
Janitors, coaches, board members,
Dining hall workers, librarians, baristas,
Gardeners and printers
Are required to mark their foreheads,
A sort of branding if you will,
With permanent marker.
This is retroactive immediately.
I had thought I had seen it all within week one:
Lions, GPAs, phone numbers concealed by long
bangs
Personality traits, four letter words, names of
significant others
The very same that were crossed out as the bottom
fell out,
Rocket ships,
Or what I'm assuming were rocket ships,
Advertisements, slogans, “taken”.
I also saw bar codes
And statistics
And long, non-terminating sequences.
I looked at myself in the mirror
And saw that I had not yet marked my forehead.
I pulled out a sharpie
And upon my face
Highlighted my wrinkles.
Because, who isn't tired of being a cog in the machine?
And who doesn't worry about life otherwise?

Spare a job, spare a penny, and spare me the chorus line.
It’s tough finding work in 2009
But if you’re alive when you get this,
Let me know so I can sleep.
I was never good with assertiveness.
It makes things very hard when everyone has their own bias.
Are you sad that I hurt you?
Or did it turn you on?
Tragedy excites you, I know this.
Mental lacerations, mental diversion
Feel my skin, pull my strings
Oh! Look what they’ve done to you!
Let’s both agree that we hate each other,
That sounds like the best.
Yeah, the best.
For you.
Maybe.

It smells of soco in the air.
She gave up her body to preserve her dignity
But in the end, she lost that too.
There is nothing dominant in dominance.
Only preservation
And perpetuation of a dying era.
Unless dominance is dominance.
In which case, bring your pipes.
Pipes, pipes, pipes, pipes, pipes,
A thousand and three pipes
And not a single one of them on key.
You say it doesn't make much sense,
But frankly “*******.”
No one's got a gun to your temple
Praising the ivory role of the natural order.
That theory died out with hanging paper clips
Clinching yellowed notepads in their skinny fists
Shouting praises to Everclear to the heavens.
Just ask Salinger what it means to be expected
And I'll tell you my opinion on life.

What would you say if  you knew
                          your life raft
Is the only thing enabling you to sink?
Struggle as you try to tread the water
When you could just lay on your back and float?
No, there's a better way
No, don't let it end this way.
Just move your arms,
Fight the current.

Stretch out your hand.
Smooth the cracks on your fingers.

they say doing this enough can cause
Your fingerprints to wear out
Ultimately causing you to lose your identity.

Get yourself a glass eye
Shoot some marbles.
(Clean break!)

Just keep it in the shadows,
Wear it like a sock
Or a new pair of sunglasses
If you're into that sort.

Just do us all a favor.
Keep it off your sleeve
Please.

"Neither him nor I could decide for ourselves if we wanted to outlive the night.”

- Tomas Kalnoky of Streetlight Manifesto, The Big Sleep

It wasn't necessarily bad,
It was just different.
It was slower,
It was bend, bend, tremolo,
It was high, low, high, low, high
It was nowhere and
It was everywhere.
It was soft, but
It was growing harder.
It was but
It wasn't.
It was never a dull moment.
It wasn't up nor was it down
It was hidden
It was you, you, you, you, you
It was nigh and
It was sudden but
It was bound for the floor.
It was 80 proof
It was strong enough to knock out a lightweight, but
It was medicine to the depressed
It was a drug you **** for hours and
It was a fake ******. Above all
It was a blue eye,
It was a stapler
I was in your head and
It was in my hand.
It was straight and narrow
It was at least 50 miles per hour against traffic.
It was a grape
It was peeled and
It was a strange set of values.
It was live in 1970, but
It was rerecorded
It was redistributed to the public in 1991.
It was 1992,
It was cloudy and
It was red.
It was an open sore
It was lingering for sun.
It wasn't like this hadn't happened before.
It was run of the mill
It was a pop fly, 80 ft high.
It was a million other people
It was true but
It was true to a fault.
It was one lie after another after another.
It was a chance for redemption but
It was a Christmas on Easter.
It was thick and
It was slushy and
It was nothing out of the ordinary.
It was a mistaken interest
It was a mistaken identity... above all
It was a mistake.
It was the best mistake, but
It was a mistake.
It was dry then
It was wet then
It was yellow then
It was wet.
It was rise, fall, lift, rise, fall, fall
It was a bag full of nothing.
It was a wall of notes
It was a wall of sound
It was low-end techno mixed with high quality
FLACK.
It was it was it was it
It was, was it?
It was it.
It was braille.
It was written and
It was the start of the end.
It was just junk, and
It was a shame.
It was potential, sheer potential.
Now,
It is just ***** in a sink.

Write me a melody.
Nothing too simple, though that’s what you lead on
Building a bridge over a lake of fire
Ah!
If only fire could swim
Grilled fire on a side of living gargoyles.
Forked tongues shoveling rice,
And chicken,
Into a newly refurbished brain.
Does it burn?
All the seaweed and hackneyed
Washed up krill,
Burnt up, skewered, and caught in the nets.
New mesh scales
Mashing mesh sha shooting into the skin
While the sun circles
And the animals follow and dance
Preying themselves into everything you’ve done
As though you’ve done anything new.
Like addition multiplication,
Surely you’ve done all of that.
A tear in the paper
And you’ve spilled the white out.
What a mess.
A great tear in the universe
Arranged.
Separate colors of
Grass and sky,
The trees and sidewalks form into one.
Everyone adjoined and nothings lost
Because even this idea has a partner.
What a lovely
(shattered)
Dream.

I'm on the curb
Face to the sky, *** to the world
The rain never felt better.
All the sores on my face are cooled.
I can feel a steady tempo rising in my chest,
I can feel the beat pulsing in my lips.
Slow and steady never won the race
Never won the race.
It was a draw
I saw the portrait.
A man hugged his tie, loosening it up.
Tightening it?
Who's to say? He knows.
All the rain in the world
And all the rain in his world
Couldn't drown his calls
His constant elevation of his voice
As his pet canary threw up.
You toss your cookies?
I toss my frisbee.
Oddjob tosses his hat.
It doesn't make him any less of a ******.
Any less of a ******* ******.
MI6, 007,
**** it all, let's call on Kevin
Smith, Kevin Smith, Kevin Smith.
...it worked for the bogeyman.
The man hiding in your closet
wasting away, counting the chips
peeling off the walls of your liner.
They say none of us are connected in this world.
They say 6 degrees connect everyone.
Social theory.
Redemption for the bogeyman,
His claws scratching as he kneels
to pick up your screwdriver
And uses it to pick his teeth.
Nuts and bolts, nuts and bolts
He's got nuts coming out of his teeth.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Tunnel approaching.
Playing the keyboard is said to set off
Feelings of arousal in the hearts,
Hearts of those with special tattoos.
Really? Because I don't believe that for a second.
To believe you need to trust
And judging by that squirm, you don't trust me.
I'll believe in you if you believe in me,
Don't you believe that?
A car splashed a tidal wave
It felt cool against my scratches.

There is a wall and this wall is drawn to scale.
A bug saw the floor.
This is my new perspective.
Gravity isn't always as it appears
Your right and my down are one and of the same.
Nothing's falling,
But still sends shivers down my spine.
The glue holding everything together
Is yellow at the tips.
A couple on an altar
The domain never-ending
Eyes on a jellyfish: New Orleans.
Run for the peaks
Drooling out of both sides of the mouth.
A loss of a leg, means a loss of a wing.
Sonnet rhymes are child's play.
Blocks as bricks with the support slipping out.
Six feet and falling.
Nine stories,
Why must 5 parallels intersect?

Rolled and tossed
A couple of lost socks
Found each other in the wash,
A bed of warm sheets
Without any soothing pillows
Fire
Without sugar.
Their bodies slept
Connected just like numbers
Surpassing lust.
The music kept us busy
Wandering nowhere.
The twang of guitars,
The soft percussive sounds,
The echo through the air.
Just as the buzz was wearing off
Ringing came from overhead.
Selfish voices, questioning choices
The rumors that we'd spread.
Logic all but ignored.
Didn't see that she was so serious.
Never saw her act so serious.
Could be she'd be so serious.
My jaw hit the floor.
The painter took some brushes
On a canvas made of clay
He chipped out intertwining bodies
As the black and the grey flew about
And the dust was settling
We'd arrived far too late
But the beauty is in the peace.
I just pray I look as good
In the morning's clean light
As I do the night before
Though I know that's strange
A little pathetic
And a bore.
I could capture the sighs
The taste and hurt in your eyes.
You've got the biggest heart I've ever known
Though you're only half my size.