The horoscope instructs you when to try,
Sportscenter shames
Time poorly spent,
And a commercial on the tv tells you why
You tried to earn more
Than covered rent.
In fact, you’ve learned that you can sigh
From the same logo that aims to prevent
A tree growing straight,
Still wondering why
The kid from Into the Wild preferred a tent.

The weatherman told you when to go but
Those hills have eyes that
Tickle your spine;
You can convince your arteries’ juice to flow
But some streams run deep,
Deeper than a drill could unwind.

The schoolboard cannot be stopped
In rain. In snow,
Knowledge breaks the naked man’s vision.
The hardwood floors in an old house
Grow, and when those panels crack
I hear they glisten.

I remember the morning Tuesday was invented—
how gleeful we sang across the streets—
forgetting that the day after tomorrow would be Thor’s day
and that one we didn’t own, too.

I remember the bathroom stalls, the sins of Leviticus
we survived
comforting our confusion with the indulgence that God too
love man, kind.

Let the purgatory full of half good men sing about their sins
with pride and laugh at the moons and stars for being without limbs
and tongues to protest their innocence and Idontgiveadamnisms;

For I remember being fed the tenets of heterosexual history in elementary school
yet wondering why queer gods are the ones named after the planets.

The thought of you makes me want to refashion old Bible verses,
“Consider it a pure joy to be a part of this trial,” I whisper,
“And you know that the testing of faith becomes perseverance.”

The sound of your voice carries more overlapping melodies than
Hard brass mallets hammering at the tips of my fingers,
More depth than does escape the open casing of my grand piano.

The warmth that flows from your heart is a testament to my lack
Of circulation, despite my ability to swim through the ocean naked,
Far passed the pier and into the horizon, every ceaseless morning.

The sight of you tears me open, tears me open, until I am all
But unable to put my nerve endings back in order, despite the fact
That they are reinforced every minute of my solitary waking hours.

We sipped boulder rock from refrigerators doors
and watched the heavens hand out food stamps with IBM logos.
“ode to Mehmet” we sang, and licked the Mossberg—
fixating on the blue collar philosophy that lived in our empty wallets.

Trash cans filled with water bottles stared at us to find our essence—
the one we had lost while being fed quintessential American idioms
in state-of-the-art classrooms sponsored by slaves and Popol Vuh blood.

Six million years of human existence trivialized down to a single sentence—
* Man loved God, man wrote, man conquered God, and now man loves science* —
scribbled on SmartBoards afforded by fire burning from Prometheus’ female liver.

Trees sing with oxygen no more for the sake of making paper,
and eyes soak in the words on paper for the sake of making paper.
Trees make the avenue but the future holds an Avenue of no trees—
… for in the land of the free, anything but freedom ain’t free.

.                                      

                        ­                 How is it that                            when you need
                                   something - anything -           from me, I run franticly
                              to your side to aid your desires...But when I just ask for a
                               little compassion, a little distraction, a little satisfaction.
                                You look right through my pleading eyes to the person
                                    behind me and seductively say, "Hey, could you do
                                        me a favor?" And that's when I melt inside. I feel
                                          misused, abused and yet I can't wait until I'm
                                               reused. Because I believe that next time,
                                                    will be the last time, the final time
                                                          when you realize that I might
                                                           ­  not come running. Instead
                                                         ­        I'll be waiting for you
                                                             ­       to miss me by your
                                                            ­           side - like I miss
                                                            ­               being there.
                                                          ­                   *Someday

The Moon is cratered, crying desperation,
the marks on her skin stretch far beyond all impacts--
Her orbiting celestial guidance a withering pawn,
moving ostentatiously across the fields of our minds
and motivating sorrowful inspiration into all those
who wish to share her connection with the heavens.
The Moon is grey and deficient of life,
coated only with mounds of crumbled featureless dust
and razorous peaked mountains which shelter none.
Her craters are of magnitude unmatched, and
carrying the memories of eventless imprints,
affecting sentient beings null and watched by the same.
And the space rocks may crash into the Moon indefinitely,
and the only while we will stop in our engagements
is when she has finally been obliterated and the
tides of the oceans gone mad, and the spin of our earth
drastically distorted;
and the calamity will be unparalleled where finally
we may feel the bleak and distressed nature of this rock,
and we may watch gallantly as everything we ever knew
is destroyed completely, along with our legacy and our
self-important views.
The moon she will fade away into oblivion, and we will
travel with her into the dark of the infinite sky.

The only thing I want for Christmas this year
Is an idea, one that doesn’t crack under pressure
Or insist on its originality, like 50 Shades to an era
Raised on bootlegged copies of the Old Testament.

Holidays are overrated but just this once, Santa,
Bring me a body more intangible than yourself
That can stir up the kind of emotion that adults
Would lie to their children for. It’s torture, the way
Few words sound before they join the tongue,

The way some names should never be spoken.
You can wrap a gift in a hundred different skins but
If it’s still fragile enough to swallow, snort or smoke,
Then Santa, I insist you hold onto it this year.