Today must have been

a field day for the Gods

Up there in the heavens

Staring down at this walking travesty

I stretched out my hand

To get hold of a dream

Only for them to chop my hands off.

They ceaselessly blathered about society
How it should burn
For all it’s wrongs, decay
And unjust judgmental hypocrisy
With such conviction
It was as though
This “Supreme” species
Had forgotten that they too
Are this society they loathe.

"how strange it is to be anything
at all"

sometimes i look
at my skin
and wonder why we have
branches growing out of lined palms,
and wonder why
our eyeballs look like galaxies
compacted

and i realize that there is no answer
but to stop thinking about it
and just
live
for ***** sake.

please take me into the
forest, deep
with tall redwoods and let me feel the rocks like
swords under my callous feet.
where we can watch the sunset from
up above the tilting world, sitting on our thrones
made of Marlboro filters and sticks
on a mountain cliff.
we'd be cliffhangers
and thieves and vagabonds, painting ourselves
with the blue tinted night
like the deepest parts of
the
sea
far from the wandering grasp of
reality.
watch the stars with eyes like
flickering lightbulbs,
shining yellow in empty, echoing rooms.
bring along four bottles
of wine,
one for each of us.

we'll drink until theres wine slipping past our cheeks
like some kind of blood-orange sob,
leaking out our hollowed belly-buttons
rivers running swift through the lines of our
palms.
wounded from every pore with the blood of
our intoxication;
magenta tongue stained skin.

would you let me take your hand and lead you
through the empty, knocking dark
and sing to you in the soft moments of
before morning?
would you trust me enough to
close your eyes
and let me lead you in a bruised,
tumbling
drunken journey to the top of the
highest mountain?
we could lay in the summer blanketed wind
made of dancing sky and
burning earth.
close our eyes and stop the earthquake in
our minds,
wake up with the sunshine seeping through
every corner of our aching
bodies,
roses growing out of our jigsaw jaws and puzzle piece
crumbling ribs and lungs;
see through our sober fingers and
wandering eyes
a different world than it was at
midnight.

I want to sing you to sleep
Underneath this dark sky that cradles us
Let these drifting notes lull you
And allow yourself to descend into the comforting embrace of the constellations
Let them dance across your eyes
And put on grand plays to enthrall your mind
Sink slowly as one falls in love
And lay lightly on the bed of light
Prepared for you on that etherial plane
Drift away to the words of this lullaby

In your eyes I find the echoes of my dreams
My hopes being amplified back at me
I find those unspoken wishes
Sent away with the smoke of a birthday candle
Those desperate whispers I pinned on the tails of shooting stars
The hopeful notions I tossed with the coin into the well
You are the personification of every wishful adjective I tucked away for a rainy day
I am losing my mind
Yet I somehow know that you hold it
In those searching eyes
That hold me so dearly
Let the years pass
For I know that, while we may break,
The hours will only magnify my love

I have faith in the ground under my feet
To remain unyielding
To the eroding
Of the trees.
Who's roots weave
A web of earth
Under me.
But through the decomposing
I have found myself falling
Through the land
That hides under me
Unseen by these eyes
That desperately cling
To the ideas that are structures in my belief
They are being attacked
They are under siege
From the same ground that once supported me
They are crumbling
They are fading
Under the light that has set me free
From these ashes
Arise a hope reborn
In the land of my fathers
My newfound home

He had no name to call his own
no true home either
he had been following his footsteps into unknown
for an unknown amount of time
days, weeks, months, years?
the convalescent bond he shares with his heart and his gut and his spine
meander around and through his humanity
tributaries of some God sized river
when the night comes around
he hunkers down in a suitable place
and drifts off to restless sleep
his legs twitching with excitement like an old dog’s dreams
he is a biblical figure in a non-biblical world
he drinks too much and vomits up cringe inducing truths
let’s things slip
but all in the name of honesty
all in the name of passion
all in the name of the nameless father who cast him out from Eden
he roams with the cold, the hungry, the tired, the poor
he roams through crack deals on Y street
and date rapes on Laurel
he roams and roams and roams until sneakers become slippers become bare feet
riddled with blisters turned callous
he roams with the forever sleepy drunks who murmur nothings at nobody
he has a harmonica and he plays a song called love
sleeping under the divine sanctity of cathedral steps
smelling like the James River
Norfolk salt in his hair
and a tan that only comes with those who have a pinch of Southern Soil in their blood
he roams seeking out the answers that we didn’t have the time or courage
to pursue

I had always been
the one pushing everyone away.
I had always been too scared
of my own feelings to ever truly
give into them.
I had always been the coward
but somehow with him,
I was the brave one.
I was willing to put
my fears aside for him
and I managed to ignore
all the loud voices in my head
until eventually they became quiet enough
to go unnoticed.
He was always picking his cigarettes
over me and I often wondered how
he could choose letting his lungs deteriorate
over someone who loved him
as much as I did.
He would yell at me when I asked him to quit
and when I got upset,
he'd hold me in his arms
and say that I would leave him eventually
but they never would.
He never truly saw just how much
I loved him.
He was so convinced
that I was too good for him,
that he was the darkness and I was the light.
"Baby," I'd tell him,
"I know that you believe your heart
is made of coal
but I have seen the truest parts of you
and I need you to know that there are
constellations hidden inside of you,
you've just gotta let those stars shine."
Some nights, he'd kiss my neck
and hold my hips so tightly
he'd leave bruises
but he always stopped himself mid-kiss
to tell me we could never work.
He said this so often
I eventually started to believe him.