There is a screaming silence on the
privatized public transportation of
Cleveland. A scream in the hearts and minds
of a people who live with less than zero.
Car fires in the streets.
Syringes next to the suburbs.
Nowhere is holy in this great city,
a veritable Gomorrah.
It's not a jungle,
it's a prison and a **** shame.
Ohio is for abandonment;
musicians, writers, astronauts,
pilots.
All desperate to leave a crater
where they used to stand,
to blast
a hole in the heart of this state.
A hole it already has.
They make it less than zero.
Plastering Chief Wahoo against
their foreheads, houses, cars,
lawns, chests, arms, bars, streets.
Saying it's not racism,
it's tradition.
Meanwhile, everyone else is
trying to explain that just because
it's old doesn't mean it isn't racist
to the idiots of Cleveland.
Cleveland is a city made of
stains, tarnish, rust and apathy.
Erecting a chandelier
instead of a dream,
a monument to desperation.
There is a scream in the back of the throat.

Hearing someone you thought was a friend of yours say,
"Women can totally look to get *****".
Then you scratch one friend off the list.

Hate me for something I did.
Hate me for something I said.
Hate me because I wished something
ill upon you or your loved ones.
Hate me because I'm a vile man,
with a toxic personality.
Hate me for the hell of it.
Hate me because it's the weekend.
Hate me for trying to tear down
your religion or ideology.
Hate me for wearing pajamas to the beach.
Hate me for trying to wear jeans to a funeral.
Hate me for speaking ill of your favorite writer.
Hate because you spent seven dollars for a digital
copy of one of my **** CD's.
Hate me because I think your children are *******,
and I want to feed your pets to larger animals.
Hate me because I curse like a sailor.
Hate me because I don't cuss as much as I used to.
Hate me for being naive.
Hate me for being unsuccessful.
Hate me for breaking something important.
Hate me because I went limp during a ****,
and laughed in your face.
Hate me because I have no ambition.
Hate me because all I do is think all day.
Hate me because I'm a hypocrite.
Hate me because I half *** everything.
Hate me because I wander around town
wearing all black at midnight.
Hate me because I made you a promise
I had zero intention of keeping.
Hate me because I'm not giving you a choice.
It's either
hate me,
or

Lukewarm coffee and the cat,
[not my cat, the cat, a cat]
is making the bathroom floor
look cozy.
I haven't had a terrible nightmare or a beautiful dream
in what feels like months, not years, but close.
I have an odd fascination with light bulbs,
sources of light, man-made fountains of brightness.
Not the sun. Rarely the moon.
I don't sleep well.
My father learned about my suicide attempt and thoughts,
because my sister told my mother, and she waved that banner
like a parade float far above my head for everyone to see.
Above his head as a symbol of his failure.
I couldn't pull it down.
Like Snoopy between two large buildings,
it was just inevitable. A matter of time, really.
My past curls up into a ball and waits,
like a cat on vacation from eyes being open.
The eyes open.
We're standing at the kitchen table.
You tell me that it wasn't your fault.
Not directly, of course.
You tell me about my bass teacher,
my ex-girlfriend.
Insinuate I was depressed about these things.
These are the materials to make the cocktail I drank,
full of not bittersweet poisons, but neurotoxins.
You tell me it's not your fault.
Now you don't have to apologize.
You were wrong.
I didn't "discover" these venoms in some fresh cabinet
waiting to be torn down, you, you [expletive],
I grew up next to them,
an IV drip in my jugular,
direct feed to my brain.
[expletive].
[expletive].
I learned how to sincerely love cursing because you wanted
to censor my emotions. I learned to hate myself from you.
I learned how to look at myself as
not enough
because of you. Surely, daddy the great doesn't owe me
an apology, the selfless man who tore us across the country
broke all the way. Surely, if his intentions were noble,
his actions were pure.
Just like Elvis Costello,
your aim was true.
Depression is like trying to find a light in a room
that is full of dark corners.
For a long time, I had no light.
Eyes closed.
I bomb the parades and smile in a hotel window at the chaos
in my mind-world. My other home away from home.
I ask my girlfriend how often someone should think about suicide.
The floats lift higher than the eye should see.
They become a string of dots in an otherwise empty sky.
Amorphous shapes in clear blue water.
Splotches of paint on a manilla canvas.
Something geometric with the fingers,
turned into a sound, then a sample,
then a symphony.
There is no remedy, no cure,
just placebos and snake oils.
Birds chirping.
Silence.

-Light up a cliche under a streetlight
while singing "the Star Spangled Banner"
and receiving oral from a trans-woman.
-**** in the drive-thru of an Arby's.
-Fist fight a bear that people
find much uglier than myself.
Made a bucket list of ****
I think might be legitimately worth doing;
haven't run it by my girlfriend yet.
Speaking of which,
she deserves a round of applause
for dealing with my melodramatic *******.
-Strike a police officer,
after robbing a bank with a water pistol.
I wanted to call her to let her know
I'd chased a bird till it crossed the street
and tweeted at me in anger or excitement.
Flipping the bird "the bird", I shouted,
"******* BIRD!"
and continued home.
-Throw a rock at a train.
-Toss a Molotov Cocktail at a moving car,
and cook a hot dog in the flames.
She deserves a million dollars
and a god-**** Nobel peace prize.
-Call one of those panhandling
money worshiping televangelists
a **** bird, and offer them to ****
themselves [the ugliest people I can think of].
-Wear a habit over a burka.
I don't believe in souls, soul mates,
anything supernatural or special,
but I love that woman,
and that's why I believe in love.
-Not die alone.

I want to get hit by a BMW.
I want to get hit by a Mercedes.
I want to get run over by a Porsche.
Something big.
I want to get smeared against the pavement
by a Cadillac Escalade.
I want to get hit by one of those big *******
who drag gasoline across the continent,
but I want the driver to be a manic psychopath.
I want him to stalk me on the sidewalk
and then run me over slowly.
He's not any coward, not like those bald patriarchal
Corvette drivers in polo shirts tucked into khakis.
No, he's a great fat man, a hairy beast with
a crooked stare that slows the pulse on impact.
I want the police to cringe or get scared interrogating him,
and haul his truck somewhere to be inspected.
I want the price of gas in nearby areas to go up
by at least fifteen cents for two weeks.
I want to get hit by a BMW.
I want to roll over the windshield,
and drag under the bottom for about ten yards.
I want to separate at the middle and leave organs on his
left side view mirror and hanging on his hood ornament.
I want to seep blood deep into his car,
and when he turns on his heat,
he'll smell my blood full blast in his face
burning.
I want to wreck the car inside and out.
I want to get hit by a car with a McCain sticker on the bumper.
I don't want to get hit by some middle class Ford or Honda,
or someone's ****-level Chevy or beat up jalopy.
I want to get hit by a BMW.
I want the driver to make his tires scream like banshees,
and leave four long streaks of rotten burned rubber on the asphalt.
I want him to step out in business attire, and gasp, inwardly.
I want to flip off the sky, because my aim is bad,
and call him a coward for hitting the brakes.
I want him to think,
"What did I do?
Is he Okay?
What am I going to do?
What if I lose my license?
How will I get to work?
How will I pay for this.
Does my insurance cover
vehicular manslaughter?
I'm not alone right?
I'll get through this.
I'll survive.
I'll just be another statistic.
That's all."

I'm standing in the jaws of this monster.
It may seem like fiction to most people,
but I've spent some twenty odd years
in the belly of a goliath.
It came and ate the planet,
but did it slowly, over centuries and centuries,
so as no one would panic.
No, instead
they killed each other, and
lost money on the stock exchange,
and went gambling on thursday nights.
All the while, we were slowly being eaten,
and not even one person wanted to admit
that everyone was a ******* lunatic
for not screaming till their heads popped.
I guess secretly we understood.
We don't even matter;
we're just bacteria down here.
It digested our **** planet,
but we lived, yeah,
we survived down here.
Amongst it's **** and it's
appetite and it's stomach acids
and it's growls. Deafening.
A few of us decided to try to escape,
and we were considered insane.
Collectively hysteric.
We found the jaws of this leviathan,
I can see the outside but
I can't tell which way is home.

You know, I never met a Frank I really hated too much,
except for when I was little and I despised
my ******* grandfather for threatening to
nail my ears to a door every forty minutes.
Having said that, there's a hole somewhere where
people vacation from life and I haven't found it,
but the closest I can get is bed.
I woke up with half my *** still asleep.
I hurt somewhere new every day.
But hey, it can't all be **** coffee and half wilted daisies, eh?
I got my copy of "Eaten by Machines; Collected Poems of Austin Heath."
Look at that.
My word in print.
I'm not making a **** cent off of it,
but there it is. I'll call myself a writer now.
At least out in the open.
Among people.
Sigh.
What if further on down the century,
people decide these years were the first
seeds pushed into the dirt that would
start the apocalypse?
Or, what if we are already the post-apocalypse?
This place smells funny.
What if the past heard about the future,
learned about all the wealth and resources we had
at our disposal, and instead built fancier weapons
for the war machine?
Would they even hesitate to call us monsters,
and declare the future the end?
What the **** do you think we're looking down?
We're all going to go insane,
and **** each other in our sleep,
and we'll sleep rarely because we
realize that it is one big
unprofitable blind spot.
We'll die half-narcoleptic, insomniac, lucid dreaming lunatics,
with manic paranoia and no conscience for violence.
In our sleep.
Sleep.
I can't quite remember why I left bed,
I guess I needed more sunshine in my diet.
My phone is off, it's past noon, and I haven't eaten.
Frank is disappointed.

Also, I ******* hate rhyming poems.

It's an unspoken rule that somewhere out there
there's a sea of ill tempered, cantankerous,
curmudgeonly men. These men are writers.
It would be both a lie,
and not even half the truth.
Today I tried to sell my dream,
and found it's worth roughly $14.50.
I wish about ninety percent of the world would
die in some type of plague or world war,
and just leave me in peace.
I could spare too many people I know.
My phone shut off abruptly.
The internet is out.
I'm roughly forty dollars in debt now,
and I couldn't pawn my life's work out of it.
Handed a gun I would promptly
shoot myself, because if I wanted to ****
everyone I don't care for, I'd run out of bullets.
My narrative isn't even especially unique.
It's summer and I'm trying to pawn an instrument,
and now ebay has killed the value of everything.
Harlan Ellison is complaining that writers
work for free, but he never had to pawn
a supposedly $700 bass to get told
it's worth $70 on ebay.
I want to fight most people I pass on the street, physically.
I want to choke them and try crushing in their faces.
Hypocritically, I'm a pacifist.
I live in a world where children starve to death,
and have been for centuries,
but you can pass an animal hospital and overhear
people saying they "care about animals more than people."
WW3 looks like an honestly
enjoyable prospect from here.
I want to collect my fifteen dollars and get very drunk.
Hypocritically, I don't drink.
It's summer and I want to wreck a stranger's car,
and flip off a police officer. Spit in someone's face.
Anyone's.
I want all those animal lovers to die of pancreatic cancer
while their lovers get shot in the throat in a ditch somewhere,
******* themselves and crying for their perspective gods,
or parents, or homes, or saints, or whatever.
I just want them to be crying.
I'll be rotting in a cell somewhere or dead too.
Hey, love, it gets darker from here too,
but at least I'm still alive, right?
Hey, sister, the will to live is a fire
that now engulfs me as I try
to ignite the atmosphere.
Hey, father, go **** yourself.
Hi mom!
No meter. Still no morals to these stories.
I'm alive in a generation that doesn't
even like talking about itself sincerely.
I'm writing to you via the public library,
a love letter to anybody who feels ashamed
for feeling desperate. Just remember, most
great writers didn't have the internet and
the ones who don't use it,
are just dinosaurs now.
Burn their bones for fuel.
Solidarity,
Austin Heath

Born of a binary,
black/white,
white/ black.
Cultured by silence,
a blank slate,
but no more tears.
Time isn't real.
They speak, they say,
tell me there's nothing wrong with me;
standing in the kitchen with my
grandmother telling me there is
nothing DIFFERENT about you.
Strive to conform.
Sameness is a casualty.
I DON'T GIVE A ****
about conservatives
.
"Humanists" avoiding their toxic
misogynistic tendencies,
old friends enlisted
voluntarily perpetuating a
system of violence and suffering,
others are bluffing, don't say ****,
walk eggshells,
I must be a tiger loose from the cage,
and they're waiting to see who becomes the
canary in my coal mine.
Rhyming by incident,
but I hate this **** & I'm not all right.
Women can participate in their own oppression,
minorities can be racist,
we're all raised in a ditch;
Patriarchy, capitalism, class values,
botched messages, "color blindness",
etc. etc. etc.
**** everyone, and don't treat me like I'm better
or I should know better, or I have to be "perfect"
if I want to be "different". Raised in a ditch.
Cultured by racism and depression.
I think of suicide like a novelty
until I don't
.
.
.
Everything turns grey and reads like sloganeering.
Waiting for the past to manifest as a trauma.
Waiting for the past to make sense.
Waiting.

I feel a kick in my chest,
but it's just my heart.
I'm choking to death
in slow motion.
The important questions
leave you in tears.
The important message.
Rifling through my mind,
but I never think of guns;
rifling for the feeling.
A ******* touch of it.
Gasping for air with arms
outstretched far above my head.
Reaching.
Reaching!
It's intanginble, and
moving so slowly backwards
I think I've gone ahead.

Ever get the feeling that,
this. Things? We?
aren't even... I don't know the word.
They're not real? Valid?
These things are eventual.
Since no one cares;
I was stuck in a mirror,
or I was dragged into the real,
for just ******* ages.
This house breathes,
but it creaks like a ribcage
without the flesh attached.
Cobwebs in the corners.
Fresh.
I thought of setting myself on fire.
No, that's selfish. I have dreams.
I had dreams.
I don't know everything I guess,
but don't you feel it too?

A friend of mine was attacked by
her homicidal cat.
Apparently,
cats are quite toxic.
They are also really evil,
in a naturally stupid way.
Maybe it's about time we
seriously considered them
parasites.
Practically venomous.
This I guess is half poem,
and half cautionary tale.
Your furry friend is an *******.

This story is headed downwards.
Down a spiral, down a staircase.
Backwards.
Trying to walk while hammering
your own toes, aren't you?
Slowly strangling the narrative?
We can see your fingers in the picture.
So you're convinced it was supposed
to be this way? You're ******* it up kid.
Just be honest for a second or lie, lie, lie.
Lie about where you are.
Lie about what you're doing.
Lie about how you feel.
You wish you could just **** it yourself,
but instead you lie and it lives another day.
Where are your new tricks kid?
Where are you taking us next?
Where is the end?

Deifying the cops for saving people
is a lot like
worshiping a retail worker for checking you out.

Take the fight out of a big cat,
proves nothing.
Yeah, there's something they'll
want to laugh about in circles.
There's something you can't
struggle to see the sunny side of,
because someone licked their
fingertips and
put it out.
Don't let them get you down.
Don't let them take the fight
out of you.
This is the second round, *******,
are you going to be
Mike Tyson or Glass Joe?

Flies in Cleveland bulk up in windows
just like flies in Buffalo. Like flies anywhere
I imagine, except maybe Kansas.
It's been a long time, hasn't it?
Are any of us sorry?
I wouldn't say it first.
That's why this isn't an open letter.
****, listen;
There's a lot of things in this book
that aren't going to make a whole
lot of sense to any of you, but
they're still here and I mean them.
Every single ******* word.
It's not that I hate everyone,
it's just, well... ****.
You bulk up in my windows.
It'll be a longer time till
the next moment we don't speak.

"Sorry, Austin...not for us...Best with it."**

"Four Verses of Inexpressive Groaning,
and 15 Ughs to be Sung in Beethoven's 9th. "

Ughghghgh.
Ughyughghg.
Eighghghgugh.
Myeeeghghg?

Eeehghghg...­
Myegghghugh.
Ghghghghg.
Huhhghghg?

Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.
Shrug- eh?
Uhhhmmm...
Eghghghghg....

Myughghghg...
grughghghg.
Gaaah...­?
Blughghg.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

He had a confident anxiety,
and a stage name.
Who the hell has a stage name anymore?
He ****** down cigarettes like he was
trying to eat their insides. Violently.
Swore he was a fighter.
Feint at the sight of blood.
I knew the last king of jazz, yeah,
he drank whiskey and sang out of key.
Stole his act from Tom Waits,
like any respectable artist does,
you'll come to find.
He was a big man, literally, intimidating in size
if he wasn't so **** funny. Not goofy, just funny.
Southern man, migrated north.
The south of the north; Buffalo.
Most depressing city in the world,
but you learn something from a guy like that
in a city by Buffalo.
How to survive, maybe,
or how to keep it together long enough.
Long enough for what?

Trying to get published is a ******* joke.
My hands are tired of holding my face together,
eyes open at the bottom.
Hydrated by tiny sighs of disappointment
passing through my fingers.
I'm tired.
They seek the ******* about flowers
and the quietness of a lake,
and all I have to offer is
the hopelessness that ensues
most of these messes,
and the reality that this **** exists.
They want the "solitude of a haiku" in every piece.
Well, I have some groundbreaking news *******,
if humans were so content with everything
we wouldn't have or need any **** writers.
This is poetry too,
and if you think otherwise
your definition must be
shallow, jaded, and/or
[most importantly]
incredibly boring.

*******, and it's definitely past afternoon.
I need a better motivation than coffee
and people possibly leaving me alone.
I slept in my clothes
and smell like fire.
Ignition- I need to
ignite something.
I'm scared
of drugs though. Talk about
drugs; even a prescription.
We were making sense once.
My face has melted like butter
into the flannel sheets
and pillow
cases. Be awake for what?
Dreaming lucidly but
unaware- just like real life?
I don't think I've woken up.
I just have coffee in me now.
I've been on both feet.

Dear Mr.Heath,
      Your latest poem, titled after a single profanity five times, has come under review for being trite garbage. We would ask that if you pawn anything, it be your left and right hands, to set up an obstacle which we are hoping will ensure no one else becomes subjected to your painfully transparent cries for help and attention.

      Sincerely,
      The Editor

Got money, but I spent too much.
I have to pawn something,
something worth pawning.
Can't sell a guitar,
they gotta be firewood.
Sell what? Blood?
Maybe a ******* kidney?
Have to stay calm,
can't pressure cook it.
Have to form a plan,
stretch it out over a few weeks.
Can't breathe too fast.
Been calm. Head on.
Better make it last.

Their wars are small, petty, and grey.
I was subjected to a dialogue;
a war story.
Side A walked to Side B's kingdom
to fight them. Side B formed a plan.
Side B sent one person to confront Side A.
She maced them.
In their faces. In. Their. Faces.
Her offense was successful.
I heard this story from Side A.
All I wanted to ask was,
"Why fight them in the first place?".
Why should I feel empathy; that they wanted to
initiate violence instead of dialogue,
and ended up getting outsmarted.
What was the alternative?
A fistfight, and now injuries that can't be fixed?
Who ever learns from the mistakes of violence?
Someone calls my love,
"A stupid white ***** who
needs to learn to keep her mouth shut",
and I can't tell her not to carry a knife.
In all my need for logic, even as a pacifist...
Now, I take what little money I have
and I buy her a canister of
mace.
Men are afraid women will undercut their power
or make a fool of them.
Women are afraid men will ****** them.

I'm not a genius, I swear.
In fact, I used to have money.
I've seen a bit of America,
and I've seen a few
too many people.
It's all the same after a while.
Acres and faces,
you get the sinking feeling
that no one controls anything.
You get the idea.

Because it's really ******* degrading to put your
work everywhere, often times for free,
and to not even get **** back.
I'm also really ******* sick of teenagers.
Yeah, that means you too.
Here's a poem called,
"**** the Patriarchy!";
"Someone told me it's just as
reasonable for men to fear ****
on the streets, as women. I've
been dropped into place and now
I realize I'm a radical feminist.
The kind of feminist people
check for under their beds at night.
The unapologetic type of feminist
who doesn't believe
in a "loud minority" of men haters,
but an eager audience listening for them.
The kind who doesn't play for your
culturally and historically  inept *******.
The uncompromising feminist.
Patriarchy is a cage,
feminism is my hammer;
I'm not trying to get out,
I'm going to **** this place up".

I'm panhandling my music because,
who even gives a **** about anything else?
I certainly don't.
"I'm gonna quit" I tell them,
and start recording new material.
I should burn them; burn every *******
instrument in this room and get poisoned
on the fumes and die in my sleep. In pain.
Haha. Laugh, it's just a dark comedy.
I'm going to quit, ******* sell out,
and sell cigarettes or invent an engine
that makes rich people money and runs
on labor, sweat, tears, and blood.
I'll... ******... haha... wait, I'm really laughing
because if I made it they'd find a way.
Tell me you don't get it-
those ******* rat *******
would make my engine
RUN.

Today I saw a larger bird eat a smaller one.
It's screaming sang through the air like
someone tearing the strings off a harp
with a table saw.
The taller darker bird stabbing away
at the torso with it's dagger-mouth,
I recalled an old gospel song my ex-girlfriend
used to sing; "His Eye is On the Sparrow".
Gospel, meaning "good news".
I could laugh till I'm blue in the face.

Alone.
Someone could stab me with their fingertips
and they wouldn't touch me.
I don't think I can get much colder,
but I'm certain I'll find out.
I'm tired but I can't sleep.
My stomach is empty but I can't eat.
I'm incidental.
My existence is hinged off of mistakes-
it's a web that hangs on a string.
I don't belong anywhere,
and it's heavy and sticks to my skin
and I can't wash it off.
I don't know how much longer anyone expects me to take this.
I don't know if I can take anything much longer.
I'm scared. I don't want to smile anymore.
I wish I could remember how to cry.
I'm alone now.
I'm alone.

I asked if there was anyone there remotely my age,
and she said yes. I had just dumped all the money in my
wallet into trying to make my savings not negative.
It didn't work.
I walked over, stepped inside,
and saw teenagers. She told me,
there's a guy outside and he's twenty.
I got ******* duped by a kid.
Her parent's left, unwisely.
I met another half-black person,
a 15 year old girl who had dark skin
and hated everything that resembled
"blackness" or "black culture".
She even called herself white.
Here I was, outside drinking grape soda
out of a hello kitty mug,
discussing radical feminism
to teenage girls-
and ******* five shots were fired.
Not even 15 feet away, behind the garage.
[A fake 100 was exchanged, to which distaste was shown,
also this sentence is in parentheses,
and technically doesn't even exist].
So now there are teenage girls crying over gunfire,
hyperventilating, the high school boys jogging-
people in a swarm heading indoors,
and me.
The stupid-*******-tragic-yet-benal artist,
running in his stupid ******* circle,
trying to decide if he should go inside
with the crazy juvenile people, or see if he can get shot,
because he already lives life awaiting some
stupid ******* narcissistic tragedy
to wipe him off the map.
My opportunities had rushed away already however.
I walked inside and sat on the couch hugging
one of those puffy round pillows and laughing
maniacally. It was intense after all.
Kid Duper tried to relate to me.
I know she didn't get it.
No one ever really ******* gets it.
Understood, maybe? No one understands.
I left shortly after with a copy of Fahrenheit 451.
I was told I could borrow it.

I'm not a lucrative billionaire,
I have no dreams or aspirations.
I'm terrified of dying.
I'm not much in any sense of the words.
Why do I look at myself like this?
What do I hope to accomplish?
I'm not meant for a million dollars,
and I never bit down
on a silver spoon.
I'm a god ****** loser.
What am I waiting for?

She's not a shy bird,
builds an army of the disillusioned.
Fleshy sacrifices. Don't hold back,
pull every trigger,
pull every pin,
drop every bomb,
swing every blunt object
in the house if you have to.
I'll be right here waiting.
This isn't new to me;
after you lose your name,
after you lose your pride,
and after you lose your purpose,
losing your body seems to be
in line on a continuity.
Seems trivial.
Easy.

Renewed faith in an empty system,
echoes on echoes.
There is nothing here.
The canvas itself has become
the most meaningful of arts.
Eaten by machines and purged
into a series of cross stitches,
screaming, "neon saints are real
and Jesus Christ is in the numbers".
God is in the question,
and both are a feature
of mankind's imagination.
We are alone here.
Information is nothing-
we have not created, no,
we have fathered a fiction.
We will abandon it shortly.

Some win,
they'll declare a celebration in vocabulary.
Pat yourself on the god-**** back kid.
You went there and committed those
worst of evils.
I was alive in a time of great confusion
and mass hysteria, post WW2
for 60 years, and they still
haven't put out those fires.
Yeah, some success you have here,
that machine burns just to burn.
Perpetuates for perpetuation.
The purpose has become
redundant, in and of itself.

No one even asks what I'm doing these days,
and it's obvious they don't care.
I want to wash my hands of these people;
I come from a family of fist fighters,
and forgiveness is like a cardinal sin.
****, even I'm still bitter about the ****.
Even I still get upset at the thoughts.
My lover wraps her arms around me
and I radiate this ******* into her.
Every time.
Sleeping next to me
is dirtier than sleeping
in any grave.
This dirt farmer can't wash his hands or his mind,
he isn't a fist fighter or a loud talker,
he won't let the easy things slide,
and even six feet into this hole,
this dirt farmer is still digging.

They expected some thousand people,
and about thirty showed up.
They put my grandmother's poetry
on tables for people to read.
They didn't.
It rhymed.
She wanted people to dance,
and instead they wept.
Complained about the food.
Some ******* made a pompous, "When I die..."
statement and I was left thinking [and half hoping],
"That can't come soon enough".
People talked about my grandfather more
than they even mentioned her.
Death is pretty ******* mediocre.

Stress on their brows and iron in their gait.
They exhale smoke like factories.
Extra arms, and packed in like ants.
Soldiers **** innocent people.
They call themselves "warriors",
and here they've become talked up
to the positions of saints and angles.
Deified.
Soldiers **** children.
With lightning at their fingertips
and thunder on their breath.
Our unfettered support into
death and those who would
perpetuate it.
In the name of God and Country.
******* idiots. We're all ******* idiots,
and we can't tell our ***** from our elbows,
but you know what makes sense?

Boiling.
I had a fever dream of being
meat in a self perpetuating
grinder. For a second
I could be
tender,
but I am made of bone,
and skin and little blood.
Brick by brick,
you've built me into
something less.
Crafted me into weightlessness,
so when I say death is my front door
and I sleep on the welcome mat,
sleep is like the police and you
are a parent strung out on smack.
I stomped on you in the clouds
where you broke three ribs.
I kicked your teeth in; heaven
came from your guts up to
the bottom of your tongue.
However, you have flesh, and fat,
and cartilage, and nail, and hair,
and willed me to sleep with less than
a flick of your porcelain wrists.
I am made of bone.
Eventual and useless.
Boiling.

This tattoo is slowly becoming
an ironic advertisement.
I'm just here.
Writing.
For Christ's sake, if this is how
we make our art, we're all ******, huh?

We're all hacks,
but you especially.

Last night I tried getting arrested,
and tried wrestling a plastic bag
out of a tree. The cops are
too forgiving. I lobbed rocks over
grocery stores and down the
empty streets of 4am.
I am relentless only
in my want of death.
I am lonely.
I am lonely right now.
I don't want to be lonely but I have no choice.
So here I am being ******* lonely,
and I won't say **** because I want you
to come to me first, to reach out first,
and secretly I want to be dead
before you make it here.
I want to cry but the tears just fall into that void.
I wish I could just feel empty or numb.
I had so many dreams once...

My reflection can't bear to look me in the eye.
Dirt bag.
They called me **** bag because they
couldn't see a sack of ****.
Thoughtlessly counter-intuitive.
Rhyming is worse than mediocre,
and beyond being forced into the sublime.
Blind folded and arms tied,
with salvation on it's lips;
Maniacally insane.
A campaign for liars, killers,
and something divine.
I never had a beautiful dream, or
a nightmare that wasn't in color.
I'm unprepared for everything,
especially whatever comes next.

He had a twilight in his eyes
that made that smile seem sincere.
Sincere in a way that some people
can say, "Go **** yourself"
and sound legitimately concerned
for your well being at the same time.
No, no, no, he was a beggar's child,
and grew up in a broken home
where pride spat in the face of
a legitimate source of income.
Couldn't lose a purpose if one was
never attained, but, you know,
still purposeless. Some people though,
they can be *******, ******,
they can be a lot of things,
but you'll still love them for being
honest. You see, when people see
brilliance in someone, it can just
******* ruin the whole ***.
It's better this way.
Just being honest. Just yourself.
I want that dream again;
the one where I feel like I'm breathing
instead of learning how.

I wear my violet like royalty,
like a badge,
like I have so much "honor"
[-is a concept I don't believe in].
I've shot every enemy I've had
in the back, or stabbed them
with this sharp, silver tongue.
Oh, the humanity;
we're all pacifists till
we're in vehicles,
swimming in caffeine and
road rage, threatening to run
over pregnant women, slowly,
for jaywalking. Smiling and driveling
over empty plates or china full of ****,
Smiling over garbage sniveling,
"I'm so weird, I'm so crazy,
Oh, I'm insane".
I'm insane.
I'm insane.

It wasn't a guitar solo.
It was a guitar and me going
******* on each other;
if it seemed cacophonous
that's because it was
supposed to be.
One of us is going to destroy
the other eventually.
Am I supposed to love a guitar?
See, I wake up next to her,
and look into her eyes,
and it's only love I see.
Warm skin in sunshine beats
factory made in China.
The curves of her shoulders,
or the lines that form her smile,
versus the curves of it's body,
the blades that vibrate at every end.
I painted it yellow, but when I see her
I feel it. Warm.
Me and that instrument are enemies
till either of us dies.
No, I do not love an instrument.

Ever wonder how that guy in the papers wound up that way?
Do you think about why you may believe it's bad to **** people?
Ever fall down and lose the desire to get up?
Ever stare at a door because you don't want to be on the other side?
Have you stared into mirrors for far too long
in public bathrooms because you realized your mind
is somewhere in that carcass?
Did you say something you didn't mean to
absolute strangers just to get them to say
something interesting? Did it work?
Did it surprise you when it failed?
Do you feel emotions or just wear them?
Is your natural state humanism or sociopathy?
Do you think about suicide at least twice,
even on a good day?
Does your head scream at night so loud that
you can't believe others aren't deafened by the noise?
Do see others as putting toothpicks in the sand,
and failing to measure things that are ephemeral?
Are you alone?

I think most people are two dimensional,
and for the most part, exhausting.
There's a hole somewhere;
in my head? in my chest?
I can't, no matter how hard I try, fill it.
I can't stuff it full of god, or **** it away,
no accomplishment or achievement,
impulse purchase, fashionable consumption...
It's a void that not even light can escape.
It only ever goes away because you
might stop thinking about it sometimes,
but you'd feel it deeper than your bones,
on a cellular level. Boiling on the inside.
Everything is overshadowed by death
or futility. Everything is defeatable.
Easily defeatable.
I asked you if you feel it too.
You said nothing.

I got hummus and pretzels,
but I wanted a bag of chips.
I got creamer and cheesecake,
but ate corned beef hash with a pepsi.
I don't quite think I'm lying about
who I am to myself, but
on the other hand I'm feeling
like there's something behind
those curtains. Friends I don't
give a **** about, and an increasing
incentive to just start walking
and never turn around.  There's
a diner somewhere out there
with a meat and potatoes dish
just as good as mom's, I bet.
I'd sincerely like to give a ****.
Sometimes I wonder if life seems
easier for people who feel gung-**
about dying in military slavery
and ******* to FOX news.
If you're reading this,
hey, maybe we're not so different;
You play a zealot's game of
love and peace, but pull the trigger
right in their children's faces,
and I tip-toe around people
I couldn't care less about.
We nourish each other in the way
that chairs aid discussion
in an episode of Jerry Springer.
Doesn't have to be comedy,
but I wasn't going to cry about it.
I'd probably just fib and say
everything's aces.

My Mom took me to the casino to gamble with her money.
Played video poker and roulette, and very well could have
just lit $80 on fire.
The casino was my Vietnam.
We sit down and order sodas from a machine
called "Fairies of the Forest".
No intention or idea how to play it.
Put in $20.
Press a couple buttons.
Won $140.
I think the laws of physics break down
under that ceiling.
Like Alice in Wonderland on acid...
or would it be more acid?