If I could stand on a metaphor
trust me, I surely would
I would forage in the sand
if I could weather the ****** rain

I should've become a man in two tenfold breaths
and learned the only reciprocal is pain
and only certainty is death
or so it would seem


if we could stand on this metaphor
it'd collapse. we'd watch it
shatter in time-lapse

and we found;
every ocean had dried
in every insect's dream
as light flickered outside

there was never enough of it to go around
as we set foot on rough, shaky ground

Jailed with all the other squawking birds
confined, it never flew and barely grew
& never knew the mimicry of words

sanguine, foul molting cockatoo in the corner
lowered, bloodied, the lowliest in a pecking order
his owner's a loner, a collector of tinged newsprint
entombed in brick & mortar - nomad minus footprint

and his birds, perched across wooden dowels
proceeded to empty their millet'd bowels
onto sheets of unfinished poetry
correctivewhiteoutmisery

so, he, being miserly, wouldn't shell out the reader's fee
to the greedy posthumous publishing company, yet
another relic in a mortuary of literacy

he was just another faceless, bearded bard
and with the old coffee grounds
he would discard
piling mounds of compost, broken bound
his compositions decomposing in the attic
warbling hiss, winding tape spool. ghosts
searching for signals amongst the static

he awaited revision of his works
ill, amidst the scattered ruins
red ink, gold leaf & carets^


he, impetuous, slumped further into his doldrums
though, all public grievances were withdrawn
crass, he prattled on to his dolorous birds
still oblivious to his defunct words

He lied dormant, comatose
in the 3rd degree infirmary

there was once a pretty lass
who could exhume the pristine
glass contents of his tinsel'd tomb
His malady, he once named Gamine
lived in a stretched-white canvas room
she eyed his burnt pile of vile-dirge verse
as mayflys & junebugs, & smoggy dirigibles
fluttered gently out of her empty purse

she grew on him like a cancer
for she was God's embellishment
pallid and perfect, and he cursed
her love as it ebbed and flowed
her aureole glowed, safely stowed
in an airship's overhead compartment

she was flying home for
there was no other answer

plot out distances between freckles
and count the amount of hairs;
in a beauteous analysis
a cold witnessing
of)a featured lifeless gaze
projected onto windows
refracted in time with the pounding
from lost soulless ghouls
in a dank puddled basement
as we stare through keyholes

the length of life waits to rescind
to wash up on the shoreline
anew, once refreshed
with Angina on

wading in cyclic waves
in deposits of reveries
stale orangeade sonatas
and dull area tirades


the purpose
economized

every axiom
americanized

and as your atoms become depersonalized
tension is materialized, in ornate ivory
shattered brass instruments rusted by
novels written to god
in a
fractured light
and range

cramped in a curtailed distance
a brickwall deadend universe
gnashing with frustration
****** yawns of futility

closed viaducts
and vacant lots
deafened eyes, grey
glimmering in retort
to their own expression


blind sight was squandered by the snapback, of all the
strings of the orchestra as they were simultaneously snipped
by sharp prying eyes, listening to the mixing of paint
to smell the music, its arms limp, vivid
wishing to pull you back (in hindsight)
with dreaded, deadened incantations
a dithyrambic liturgy to the drunken thoughtless night
of slurred litanies and unappeasable, irascible deities
lonely and immaculate, all-powerless and deft
in irksome quarrels and arguments
glossed over by the fine print of another
exalting the vainglorious self-inscribed paragons
and revelling every inadmissible mistake

gazing past to a solo star
dumbstruck and dead
from an evaluation
and dehydration

dying to know
forget it.

you sing on and on (and on) in the foreground as
the meter aches and constricts; with its power, beauty, antipathy
searing distances between us, hearing the becomings of null somethings

we reunite with the blankness
of pristine white passages
to break free from inertia


I cannot describe my infatuation with a split second
the embrace, the longing of wordless writers
and their unacknowledged cruelties

grieving over all this birthing
objecting to their own last words
the fresh blood of teething &
the prodding of our sores

the writers block entrances to stone vestibules
life congeals and appeals to those despicable few
creaky mattress, true, but we flew by burnt capitals

the grass's dew dried up at four o'clock in the morning
we learnt the vastness of our own chaotic complexities
it's impractical, doling out the pasts to our moping guests
insight into their creature comforting me, smiling languidly

he saw those hooligans dance above his crumbling tombstone
impregnated by the rain, headlight shone into impending gloom
waiting, moaning, mourning in a deadlocked, deadweighted room
we're inclined to drown in our own questions, in irreconcilable fate
and a hateful frown, the tasteful waste adorning those latest to bloom

its voice was muffled, though we understood from its tone
a blood red color in the horizon, a droning hue of white noise
a perpetual blackout, comforting us with the uninterrupted feed
of the newswire, its meaningless events, dull opaque eyes, fasting
for the prize, a striptease of the mind, peel back another sheer layer
(and cry)
pretty girl's smiles are currency. a word is worth a diagram
for the color's lost its vibrancy
this world is old, it's
finally lost its will to be

o' comforting electricity
the warm glow of the television
stuttering voices, hawking, chanting
o' static lover, worship me, your pagan god
I would forever write you letters
I would listen to your breath
on the receiver, panicked
I would hold my own, to hear the sigh
of the universe, collapsing

And while the whole world is sleeping
I will hear you creeping
through the hall, looking for another fix
to finally break you
to take you where you need to be
to refuse what you've been lacking