Dangerous times nearing midnight. Every day opens with fresh blood or ink drying down our throats, "...and I Must Scream.", Harlan Ellison [1967]

Honeycombs of humanity sink into themselves and form a thick syrup they claim will cure our ailments, but still tastes like Third *****™ nationalism.  They burn our shelters and chant, "Home."

Resistance looks strange. People aren't choking on gag orders, they're going around the wall, but hundreds are behind bars for protest, or still getting killed on the streets, or getting hosed down in the cold for advocating clean water. They're putting bounties on antifascists.

We beat that ***** Richard Spencer, but we're yet to strike the one in the White House.

Rattlesnakes under our heels, we've grown into something fiercer.
Something deadlier.

Built a cage in a cage
as an olive branch for
those who wouldn't call her an animal,
but won't call her a person.
Built a metaphor to slay her sister,
like trying to walk while hammering
your own toes;
hobbled herself to the master's home,
and played with the master's playthings,
and ate the master's food,
and received the hard end
of the master's humor
with a smile.

We are misinformed creatures-
A bird with wings to fly, but no destination.
A wildcat that hunts only to ****.
A serpent poisoned by it's own venom.

She traded hands to beat herself to death;
died with wrists broken,
lacy finger bones strewn across her throat.
No melody on her tongue.
Nobody dying to meet her.
Nobody is dying to meet us.

This is why the teacher punishes you
for reading too far ahead.
I've worked hard to swim out here
and I just feel hurt and alone;
drifting out at sea.
Being a radical means always
having to be the hysteric or the sensitive.
Apologizing even when
you know you're right.
Being irrational,
when rationalization means
accepting the dominant ideology.
Always having to be wrong,
because of some "crack in your armor"
or some blemish on your record.
Being the biggest ******* in the room,
not even because you want to,
but because you have to.
Alienating everyone.
Capitalize on who you are,
and you can smother everyone eventually!
Your profit is such that you
can push everything away!
Sleep easy knowing you were right.
Sleep easy.

Satanists are lobbying harder for women's rights
than christians, catholics, *******... everyone else.
Satanists.
Jesus H tap-dancing Christ...
might be a beautiful day after all.

4am and my eyes are killing me,
and I'm dull and sore and ****.
****. ****. ****. ****.

Leaning against an arcade booth
of Street Fighter 2 watching them
dance in green lazer lights.
We decided to go back to her friend's place.

Her friend got wine,
he got beer.
He ****** in the bushes.
Admitted he was drunk.

On the roof of her friend's apartment,
I ****** down a cold coffee,
and we played acoustic music.
We climbed higher on the roof.
They smoked and drank,
and just generally shot the ****.

Something bad happened between him and her;
she ran off crying, he's calling her a child, a baby.
He's pretending he's not mad,
pretending he's in control of his emotions
while lashing out.
Throws a beer bottle,
decides to leave. She
practically begs him for a ride home.
Me and her friend want so badly for her
to stay. Stay.
She leaves with him.
Drunk and ******, to drive her home.
I start walking home soon after.

I get lost on a street.
It's 2am and I'm jumping up and down
waving my hands, trying to get someone
to just tell me where I am.
A man across the street must be taking out garbage,
I walk across the street and say, "Excuse me sir?"
He shouts, "No! Go back across the street! NO!"
like I'm a ******* wild animal.
I ask him, "Can you just tell me where Bluestone is?"
He tells me to go north.
His input is useless.
I hope he dies of pancreatic cancer.

I kick a can and yell, "**** all of you, collectively!"
to the suburban nightmare I'm trapped in.
"I hope they nuke this ******* **** stain neighborhood!"
Kick an empty Arizona can in contempt and disgust.

I have a small monologue with myself
and almost break down on the sidewalk.

Walk back to practically where I came from,
and take the long way home.
On my way I pass a stranger who asks, "Dig?"
No ******* idea what they meant.
I dodge the skunks and grab a hubcap.
Wanted a trinket.
I think I'm gonna have a ******* aneurism.

If it gets you through the night,

you could sit there on the couch and pretend that I’m not listening.

We’ve been over this time and again, yet here you are flipped

from side B to side A. I hope your tape breaks and this message

is flipping in the wind on a tab with a marker

marked red. I hope you understand.

My life feels like vacation but my… well everybody

will promise you violence over practically nothing

and I think I deserve a better planet. Instead I’m here.

It’s marginally all my ego, but mostly I just want to disappear.

I swear; If I break a heart I’ll fix it, but I’m a disease and a symptom,

and I stick like bad religion. Worshipers take shelter from this cult.

I’d even stab you if I had proper motivation,

and I didn’t treat myself like my own martyr for nothing.

The “real” me may only be what you make of me anyways.

My image of myself only exists within my head,

and in that image I am rotten with perfection.

My only corduroy is torn and smells of bleach,

but I’m too sleepy to change into my skin.

I swear I’m more than just an ordinary sin,

just because I’m also my own martyr.

If the world keeps screaming I’ll break the night,

I’ll turn it around, I’ll bend the notion.

If the height gets steeper, don’t make a sound.

"Sacrifice yourself" is the name of religion.

Spinning the gears and faking frustration,

while the system fakes a male ******.

Here is your chance to go sour and

I hope you have the guts to walk into this trap;

If nothing is real, or we’re made out of sin,

what is the image of God?

I am not willing to be forgiven,

I am not the victim of your forgiveness,

I am not forgiven, I am not a sinner,

and I’m not a martyr for your God.

I’m just Austin Heath,

dying, and leaving nothing behind,

in the name of no one or no idea,

and not even poignantly.

Just mediocre.

Mistaken for nobody.
Everybody's no one.
Fractured yet generically.
They think I am a
Thoughtful
&
Slow talker.

I was born in the furnace,
and grew up halfway homeless.
Tough doesn't mean strong.
Thick skinned, maybe.

Lets make a theory;
If we're made of the same matter from
the beginning of time, we have to find out
where that matter has been. Like a recipe;

Coffin Nails.
Bullets.
Salt Water.
Broken Umbrellas.
Cherry Blossoms.
Burnt Plastics.
Lipstick.
Mountains.
Etc. Etc.

Ashes pushed in tight
against the pressure of us;
Our loose breath and words.

We are purveyors,
headcutters, jazzists, brawlers,
writers and killers.

We meet here to live.
We scream and bang instruments.
We come here to die.

Cutting our hair and
writing on the walls, dressing
immaculately.

Trying to keep our
chins above our sweat, rising
an inch a minute.

We come here to be
baptized in this river of
sin, made unholy

before the weekday
pulls us out of tantrum, to
mediocrity.

Silver-tongued soothsayer
with a voice of gold but
breath like mercury,
sing me a future full of
blue nights
&
days that seem to always
sit at the horizon.

Feed me opiates through dreams,
through tubes
down the back of my throat,
where I turn them into
poisons for my body to feast on.

Force them into my genetic make-up;
let me replicate a beautiful nightmare
out of my marrow and exhale
careless sociopathic lies
to ******* strangers and
******* with first names
I don't need to remember.

Let me be Ohio's last astronaut;
my head is past clouds,
my body, beyond earth.
Sympathy will be reserved
for those who have lost
their hearts, their hope,
their homes, their minds,
their control,
their bodies,
their functions,
their...

Yes.
Their dreams.

Daylight fades too quickly
and leaves you struggling like a dead fish
against a time limit you have no intention
of keeping or realizing, in even a small fashion.
The money runs out.
The money always runs out and
everyone is looking for a handout
no one wants to give.
Especially those who can afford it-
it's like a void;
a golden density not even light can escape.
Makes me wonder; "Is the money really power,
or is power just power,
and the hierarchy and patriarchy and system
just keep whatever stains in place, despite their incompetence?"
History seems to provide ample answers to the right questions;
Why does the day feel so short?
Why does retail labor feel like a pyramid scheme?
Why does work feel like prison?
Why are employers so scared of unions?
Whatever, right? Those ******* would give you an answer
after three separate commercial breaks and a survey.

Everyone views the person under their foot as less than human.
It's how we're able to procreate and sleep at night
[a night that comes quicker every day now].
A curtain over a birdcage; we're all just dozing off.
******* around.
Studying everyone else's face,
looking for a nervous twitch to decipher
whose bluffing,
believing we're doing swimmingly in our own *******.
The next generation built on our corpses, secrets and lies.
Corpses, secrets, and lies.
Let the world burn if we can make it past daylight.

They say there’s a kingdom in the sky,
where people never grow old,
and they never die, and
that’s why I don’t believe in heaven.
I hope there’s a hell for everyone who
accepts this system. I don’t believe in Jesus,
but if Jesus wept, it was for
Kelly Thomas, or
Leonard Peltier.
I don’t see a good outcome for mankind.
I think we all deserve exactly whats coming for us,
and some people would say that makes me a cynic.
I’d disagree with those people.
Well I don’t believe in these concepts of
"pessimist" and "optimist" either.
I don’t think karma is real either, but
it’s a hell of an idea.

"Dear Austin Heath:

Thank you for sending “Poems by Austin Heath.” Your work received careful consideration here.

We’ve decided this manuscript isn’t right for us, but we wish you luck placing it elsewhere.

Kind regards,

The Editors”


Dear editors;

I’ve carefully considered your disposal of my material

and found it troubles me not. Whether you accept these

confessions or not, they’re still hand written on the liver

of every drinker from Cleveland to Ithaca and back.

Thanks for nothing,

Austin Heath.

You wear your black tie
like a felony.
You wear your dark sunglasses
like a criminal.
I'm your little wallflower;
hiding in your hideouts,
riding down your highways,
looking for escape and I
don't know where I'm going.
Don't mind where I am.
I suppose I don't know.
Grim Reaper! These pills make life seem sweeter!
Sin eater... could you make me clean again?
Am I still "pertinent" to your heart?
[Am I your little wallflower?]
Am I the one you love?
I don't know where I'm going,
but I don't mind where I am.
I suppose I don't know,
and these dark sunglasses
so I never have to look away;
today is such a perfect day.
Twenty one years and
it's always been the same.

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.

They broke his bones in a bathroom stall
with pipes and left cigarette burns
on his eyelids and I
washed my hands, cleaned the blood
off of my shoes and shrugged.

Some days is all you can do to throw
your body on a cursing poor *******,
but most days you seem like you know
humanity is going to eat itself alive
so you just close the door and stay
in bed for a few more hours.

They say his lies have gone too far
and they know they don't know
whether he's gunning to give up
or run away and try again somewhere
where freaks on the inside stick
out like circus sideshows.
Home is not where we belong.

Christ got nailed to a cross
and I stared and said, "So what?"
that day and every day since
I've been cursed to give zero *****.
I tried and it almost killed me too,
if you know whats good for you
keep to your own.

This world isn't made of flesh,
it's made of dirt and fire,
you'd do good
to keep that in mind.

I didn't know you could read lips,
so I laughed unreasonably hard when
people were telling you their *******
excuses for not being able to
donate money to you
and your family for Christmas.
The irony being I gave a stranger a
roll of quarters the other day
because they asked,
and I'm eager to lose all riches and go insane.

Yelled at my girlfriend for the first time yesterday;
she was frustrated that I wasn't frustrated that
she was upset, so
I banged my head against the wall and screamed
"What am I supposed to do?"
Still have the mark somewhere under this free haircut.
I don't get how we all push people away
and beg for them to chase us.
Never give me a word, but always
want me yearning. Not old yet,
but not from lack of trying.
Not wise, but it's not desired.
Fools make kinder people anyways.

Amen to "I'd rather get ****** and keep giving."
Guess you could say I make it rain on those in need,
but please don't. Don't ever say that to anyone.
Write it down somewhere unspecified and
lock it in a drawer, or light it on fire.
Put it through a shredder,
I'll tell you a little secret,
I'll try to tell you a secret;
Most of us are more selfless than Christ.

Merry Christmas in August.

They say there's no cause for these,
yet dream like, "yeah it's plausible".
We don't make laws for people,
which is why they don't make sense to you.
Another high percentage stacked
against you.

You don't wish people good luck,
and I want everyone to crash and burn
and be worse than me by comparison.
I lie when I talk about you.
I lie about a lot of people.

I dreamt we drove a car backwards
down a highway and they threw
every cop car in the state after us
and gave us a $5,000 dollar ticket
and even though we were on the
wrong side of the road
/wrong side of the law

I said, "**** no, officer and *******."

I've never seen miracles,
and I never hope to.
I just want to wear my black tie
and dark sunglasses
and make them think,
"he knows where God hides,
because he puts it there."

Common folk in a state of fear always,
and everyone has a revolution theory
or an apocalypse set-up,
and there's more than one way to skin a cat,
and no reason to keep to one method.

We all think so hard and none of us really ******* get anywhere.

I spend so much time not saying
"I don't care" & "I don't give a ****"
and people stay around but
my life feels shorter for small talk.
Like how I could've left this
idea written in 13 words
but decided to keep going
till I got here.

Was touched by a witch.
Clawed at me while in her mouth,
but didn't draw blood.

Music in my head
too loud for a simple pain,
I'm begging for more.

Grabbing her wrists and
placing them where It's painful,
and nodding gently.

"More. Please, more.", I sigh.
She laughs, or giggles, I think.
Pleasure spiked with pain.

Yeah... she enjoys this.
Pure energy on her tongue.
Electricity.

Of course it makes sense, now,
but it disappears; passes between your fingers
like sand, like water, like salt, like blood.
Stains and makes religious connotations,
although I'm a non-believer
and so are you
and so are they;
The ephemeral heroes.
Absent or cloudy minded?

The impossible riddle.
We went searching for gods, devils, angels,etc.,
and instead found an embarrassing truth;
the blunder in centuries of slaughter.

Q: "When is a door not a door?"
A: "Usually you'll hear sirens.
An unusual amount of broken glass,
or a crater, or a statue of a maniac,
or a portal to someplace in time, space,
maybe it was late November,
when you took cash from a woman coughing blood,
12 hours ago the man walking down the street,
screaming, "**** MY MIND. I'M SO ******* STUPID.",
ghosts aren't real, but people are, and we treat them
like they are invisible don't we?
Treat them like windows."

Fireworks that spray paint
brain matter and bits of tongue
like obscenities in a bathroom stall.
Spray paint everything yellow.
Own everything. Burn everything.
**** everything. Invade it;
infect it, vivisect your name
as an iron-on patch into it's guts.
Stitch it in close to something necessary.
A little bit of everything dies.
Anything that can be possessed,
umbrella of oppressions.
Prancing.
You'd make me cry just to see if it's possible.
You'd push me off the edge to see how close I am.
You'd push me off the edge to see how fast I fall.
You'd step on my fingers to see if they bleed.
You'd stomp in my teeth to see if they crack.
You'd spit on the corpse to see if it hydrates.
Cartwheeling.
Anything abrasive, anything slightly toxic,
something disgusting to indulge in.
**** the gardens, **** the rivers and lakes;
Died in a boar's den,
died in the stomach of a volcano,
gave it three days and decided
death suits one just fine.
Pieces
of
dishes
stuck between your toes.
A rainbow in violent undertones,
the ROYGBIV of slashing motions.
Tax exempt.
Cartwheeling.
A little bit of everything dies.

If you have enemies.

If you live in a constant state of fear,

or you live in fear of state.

One day you wake up and realize

nothing you were promised was delivered

and resent the wealth of the few.

Sleep with the lights on.

If you live in fear of guns because

you don’t fit the status quo.

Sometimes you have fits of anxiety,

and other times you have sudden

jumps in identity and everything

makes sense because you’ve

stopped trying to analyze the chaos.

Start searching again.

Sleep with the lights on.

If you can’t breathe and can’t accept

that this is happening, although ****,

it’s so real, and all the pain feels real,

and the hunger feels real,

and the sickness feels real,

and you may sleep many days at a time to forget.

Sleep with the lights on.

Sitting in a Starbucks sipping a needlessly costly dark roast,
wondering if I've solved life, or if I'll break apart soon enough.
A tightening sensation.
I could get a ****** cup of coffee at both ends
of this ****** workday, and it'd be lovely.
Just having a sense of time,
even if it's just to **** time away.
**** everything away.

Saw the apathy that hurt her, the want of nothing;
a lust for sudden death, but staring it in the face
I saw the pain of death.
I was too caught up in dying.
It usually takes years to just ******* see.

I woke up to the sound of my name as a vulgarity.
I left abruptly, defeated, disjointed,
"If I stay here I will die."
I walked thirty minutes with no destination,
until I decided I would go to the beach.
Did not prepare for the beach.
Walked from downtown Cleveland, CSU,
to Edgewater park. Burned.
Gave a man my last couple dollars.
Had no idea how to get where I was going,
crossed a bridge, walked on the highway.
I got there, took off my socks and shoes,
my yellow and black plaid shirt,
and walked backwards into the water in my jeans.
Burned some more on the sand.
Got sand in my pockets still.
Decided I want to live.

I could see the city in it's entirety from the pier,
behind me; somehow conquered by distance.
Visually smaller. Tamed?
I walked some more until I hobbled and came to her.
Held her. Kissed her shoulders. Just melted.
I just melted.

No love.
You didn't believe in expressing your feelings plainly,
till you were crying vulgarities into someone's chest.
A strange cliche became something to accept, ordinarily.

"How the trip never stops", MC Ride is screaming,
"On and on, it's beyond insane."
Drowning out your thoughts was something
you only heard in music, or something your ex said
back in high school,
until you fell asleep with headphones and sunglasses on
blaring Death Grips.
"Choose this life, you're on your own."

"I never asked to be a hero"
Hanging your Moon Knight collection on your walls;
Cried to words written on a page for the first time.
You need to be loved by everyone,
and want to be loved by no one.
Understood the pressure and wrote every day,
wrote to be not the best, but just to return from your
fall from grace, to former glory.
"I never asked to be a hero, but I beg you;
Make me a hero again."

"Sono Teido?" = "Is that all you got?"
Studying frame data, unable to sleep.
Thought you had a calling, but you gave up.
Realized a hobby is only as good as it keeps you
busy from all the ******* you could be thinking of.
Good ******* to keep out the bad.
Chun-Li leaves her opponent with wise advice;
"Tameraibe Make yo" = "Hesitate and you will lose."

All you have to do is shine and be bright,
you'll be the type they want to take home.
However, angels didn't want me when I was young,
and they still observe for seconds at a time.
You press your palms into your eyes;
They pick you up for only a moment.
Didn't believe you could be heart broken.
Then they dropped you.

Came back from the dead without prayers.
Found your armor didn't make you a knight,
it made you a villain of the highest order.
Spoke in curses and sang a hex,
to banish your love to hell forever.
"I was a God, Valera", Doctor Doom spoke,
"I found it beneath me."

Found it after the fact. Three too many voices in your head;
Prodigal Son, Nihilist Prophet, Feminist Instigator.
Few believe so hard in something they've tried to erase.
Tried to ****, to smother, to maim, and finally, to nurture.
To give up, to recover, to come back, and decide you still believe.

You couldn't make anything happen with no love.

I awoke to the absence of life I'm fond of;
Whose conditions merit my apathy towards suicide.
Found a cup of coffee in the ***
waiting, begging, to get poured out.
The feeling of a railroad spike driven into my skull
has worked it's way from the
back right section of the dome
to my left eyeball.
Lovely.
I am at one with all the bullets,
the dead hamsters, bent silverware,
tacky ties, and broken fingers,
the world over.
Floating between the gravitational pull
of two great monuments.
A mutilated Zen.
My personal handiwork.
I want to stand in the ruins of one success.
Instead I'm vacantly taking aspirin,
finally okay with giving up.
Quitting.
I don't want to be an artist anymore.
That spirit stapled to the spine,
entwined to the softer parts of the brain,
pretending to be a dream.
Give up.
Giving up is the scalpel for
Quitting; self lobotomy.
I don't have a surgeon's hands,
but I'll settle for a surgeon's success.
In dark sunglasses. The distance.
A nameless faceless paycheck.
Sipping on a bottle of ghosts
to maintain a mere apathy.
I don't sleep well.

I dropped a bag of free muffins
on your shins and the cat
freaked out on top of you
ran off, and knocked over your water.

You're such a ******* stiff
you might as well have
rigor mortis.

Gorgeous though.

So I tried to be nice,
but I laughed too ******* the inside,
and I'm probably
never apologizing.

If you're looking for one,
*******, buttercup.
I got fuel to burn
and I'm saving my remorse
for the people I've ****** over
worse
and you ain't topping that
totem pole.

You were throwing up uncontrollably into the toilet,
and I cleaned up all the chunks of *****,
although it was mostly water, but bile now.
I've seen more sickness in the past week than I'd care for.
I panicked at the pharmacy while the pharmacist
shadily spoke over various aisles to me.
I sat on the tub while you threw up the medicine he recommended.
I sat there while you laid still at my feet.
I sat by your bed when you could make it back there.
I'm slowly going broke. I'm slowly going insane.
My head is in too many places to sleep next to
you tonight. So I'm here while you sleep.
You keep apologizing, and
I just don't know what to do
to make my head want to go to sleep too.
No rush of words.
No pearls of wisdom.
No moral to these stories.

Princess sleepyhead;
secretly death, from below.
His hand is fast like

how planets may spin.
You sit on a projectile,
unable to see

anger and fury.
A tiger yawning before
it may **** it's prey.

Unpredictable
/impossible to predict.
Quicker than a thought.

Weary and maybe dusty,
maybe a million years old.
Disappearing.
Shouting hatespeech
and trying to make others
as bitter as myself.
Toxic and made of stone.

Crafted of some **** harder than diamond,
but cheaper than ****. Also, I'm so *******
sick of hearing about hope in the human soul.
I'm sick of souls.
Cynicism isn't right,
but being ****** isn't lying,
and maybe we all have a little bit
of love and something else.
Exploit whatever feels better.

Maybe I said that wrong,
but if you can exploit yourself
you're the only one who deserves
to ******* do it already.

Trading in our hearts,
unemotionally here.
Turning to the sun;

We don’t find answers,
we don’t even find solace.
We dance like they do,

like impressionists.
Our art still has clear borders/
Performances end.

We take our masks off.
Pointing out our own flaws, yet…
hmm… Something like this.

Talking at myself
again and learning nothing
new of importance.

So, dance flower dance,
tear your roots and die trying
to amaze us all.

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?

...and haunted by
undead royalty.

We sink to extremes
and discover solace in finality,
because we yearn to be
morally black and white.

Engineers of blood-driven machines,
garnered in fleets, unsinkable,
parasites, unkillable.

Your wights and revenant
wander around you like
brain-dead dogs caged in
useless human flesh.

Finding ease in ownership.
Bliss in the wavering ignorance
of taking orders without question.

We are gods or insects.

Woke up at 4pm today
and remembered I have no dreams
that have flown beyond the cage,
and past the cage there's still
a burning coal mine.
Ten foot sunflower standing out back
trying to be a beacon in the night,
like a blind leader for the dead;
sending them down that river,
paper boats across a sea of lies,
and there is no right direction.
Once you set foot here you are
lost permanently.
No one knows if it even
had a beginning,
or if it'll ever have an end.
Woke up late with  a ten-foot sunflower
at the foot of my bed, harvesting canaries.

Sometimes I go in
too deep just to see if you
still feel any pain.

The wince on your face,
the sudden drawing of breathe.
Timeless everything.

Sometimes lovely and
maybe just another kink
to get through a night.

You thought you knew anger,
but it was spite in a thin foil wrapper,
poised like candy,
poisoned with tiger's whiskers.

Harbored depression since elementary,
but didn't know the weight till it was
in your stomach and your fists
and you cringe with pain
every time you talk.

Relieved to hear somebody say they can't
give a **** about what you feel like.
Medicine; snake oils,
cured to hear that you can't
give a **** about what I feel
like anyways.

God graced us with it's absence.

Thought you knew absence
middle school crying
in bed over how insignificant you are,
but bitter nihilism
dropping out of college twice
taught you emptiness.

Keep thinking that thought uncovers
more direction and technique,
beauty through function,
but
John Cage is meaningless as a system
and chaos as a instrument of
wonder and progress.

The amateurs think
about what the legends do.

BANG CRASH BANG CRASH
HuuuuBANGmmmmm. WhCRASHir.
I hold my fist in the air against
a specimen that would commit genocide against me,
a semi-sapien in that humanity is devoid.
CRASH* the people we call monsters.
BANG the sound of nuclear omnicide.
whiirrrr.* If we all die, it'll be a great
CRASH to ignore. ****'em;
I'll toss my plastic in the heap
if it means we melt off the planet
or drown in our own eventuality.
If it BANGs it's head voluntarily
why's it white like a straight jacket [?],
why's isn't it a criminal like Nixon,
like no bird and two Bushes. CRASH
CRASH
BANG CRASH BANG CRASH
Hum. Whir.

Truthfully,
you remind of someone I'd know
in my dreams;
a strangers face made recognizable
by lack of initiative, or curiosity.
Impervious to actualization.

Confidence in nightmares;
reflective of shock-waves of Nagasaki,
mutants in our collective DNA,
monsters wading in the gene pool.

Atheists with superstitions.
A viral nihilism befuddled by
religious idioms and anecdotes,
held together loosely by
scientific mysticism
&
hypocritical moral
superiority.

She reminds me that humanity is just,
"everything that mankind is capable of."
Builds complex doomsday devices in his head,
and plots to rule the world.
Meanwhile Manhattan project seeks
to either rule the world
or open it's
throat.

It pains me to write a puff piece
on hometown, love-life, hope/etc.,
yet I can wax lyric lusting for the apocalypse.
In this fashion, I can look into crowds
[sadistically romantic]
and tell them, aspiring to the Manhattan
in our everyday savage grey matter,
"We all have dreams in our hearts."

A sad confession, but I still think of suicides,
which is a pointless task for even a nihilist.
A chore, really.
Yet here I am awake, without purpose,
like limp lettuce in a banquet; useless.
No career, few desires. Old /young.
Whose to say? I worry. I wish I
was immune to the trepidations of
a life without merit to society,
yet I worry. Don't even know who
I'm disappointing even any more.
Louis Keys said pondering suicide was like
a strip joint; ideas, theories,
actions you want to go through,
but ultimately you get to enjoy
nothing.
Just the idea.
If it's the thought that counts,
I couldn't live with the *******
who'd exploit my death like my life,
or the people who actually cared
having to go through the pain of
wondering why. So this is a
sorry *** confession, and a plea.
Please, ****** me.
For everything I'll never be.
****** me.
For all the **** I've done to others.
****** me.
For my penchant for spreading misery.
****** me.
For my bad skin on my nose, under my eyes.
****** me.
For the **** I'll never get sick of repeating.
****** me.
For the sake letting some people die with dignity,
or in the self interest of respect for the dead
as long as the information is present for
a ******* second in this vacuum.
****** me.
Don't the words just rush out of you too?

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.

Came out of the heat and into a strange simmering ***;
my mother accepted the responsibility of a baby
for about half an hour or so.
It cried.
It cried so **** much.
She tried to hand it off to me, and I
dodged that mother-sucker like the plague.
Of the top three things I "don't",
babies are two.
******* it cried so much.
That's all I have to say.

You're a botfly in the snot of something
way bigger than you. A nuisance.
If it had hands it'd **** you.
You're hopeless.
You little **** stain,
you driveling dolt,
less than pathetic;
You're gorgeous
and I love you.

Prince of stolen goods come to take over
the nation that spat in his face.
We are losing all our ground an marbles;
we are not going to be okay,
things will not be fine.

Mother is in a women's shelter,
losing weight and begging for money
weekly
from her deadbeat son
who is now broke.

King of hearts take away the sleeping sensation
oozing up from my toes to the center
of epicenter of thoughts that shake my body
like earthquakes of palsy or a stroke
made up of
every pond or puddle you pass up
couldn't hold all the tears I haven't cried.

Sister can you hear me now,
I'm not exactly trying anymore
I'm silent with syllables and
loud with my pauses.
I'm not going to make it,
and I can't turn around.
I'm fragile and delicate and
some would say I'm flat-out weak.

I want you to put flowers on my grave
instead of sleeping somewhere next
to me, six feet under, or sleeping in
wondering what went wrong.
This **** isn't your fault.

Put a sword or some sharp object
to **** away the idea that
I'm going to use to destroy whatever
is left of myself.
**** me, to **** me before I **** me.
Steal everything.
**** anything.

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.

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.

I took too much aspirin
and when I finally got in place
next to her, comfortably,
my ******* ears were screaming
like they'd just seen a constellation
of invading 8-bit aliens
and I was a blind leader.
The **** part is that the pain
didn't even go away;
was not "relieved".
Well, you driveling dolts, as is;
I see no danger yet, so
I'll take another aspirin.

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.

There was a river
sixteen miles north the highway
where we lost our sins

and sent them downstream,
where they wash their hoods with them.
White like oppression.

When we hang our heads,
they're behind us with the rope.
The same as ever.

Dry your eyes children,
the fight for bread has ended.
We fight to survive.

*******, 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.

With no money in your pockets,
and a desire for a smooth ride.
Yeah, **** it... something simple.
Lust for something easy.
You speak like
anything matters;
I complain in
the opposing
direction.
Bleeding, and everyone would care
if you'd just ******* show them.
Overdriven in lifestyle,
by design without purpose.
Wearing black, but not poignantly.
Cursing because ****,
it feels so good.
Smashing whatever since
you don't own anything.
Dissenting because you can.
Maybe you'll steal **** tomorrow,
maybe you'll tell a lie.
Breathe in.
Cough, choke, turn indigo.
You're gonna do just fine.