11 feb, 16:03

It has just happened.
There was a lot I said
    and a lot I didn't --
                    couldn't.
What was I supposed to say?
Your feet were always shuffling
     like you wanted to leave right away,
       your fingers ruffling your hair incessantly.
It was as if you were never content with
the way things were at that exact moment,
                    and you did what you could
                              to change them.

My favorite record
                  is broken.
This particular one is my voice
   saying "I'm sorry,"
and then yours -- "You shouldn't be apologizing."
It's just that,
    over and over,
        it won't stop and I'm not going to stop it,
                    that's for sure.

Disillusionment is a virtue for some.
For me, it was every minute I spent with you.
     I'm not sure why, but I think it's time
  I started paying attention.
We are always walking, walking,
     strutting around in circles to avoid talking,
        and getting lost, always getting lost.
Another virtue: honesty.
        What is lying by omission anyway?
           How much should one reveal?
And what is forbearance?
It has just happened. It has
                               just happened
       and I am still lost.

dear friend,
I can hear you
listening.
through the static
your voice carries
to the other side.

and you're falling apart,
one Saturday at a time
I can feel it
your heart in my hands
so ******, so frightened.
it's beating hysterically.
thump.
thump.

knowing you is
all that I can ask.
contentment arises
from your company
as I tell myself
what to think.

we're happy here.
no identification,
no forest fires,
just snaking vines
and sun-streaked regret.
it's quiet.

I only wanted to know you
as I had within a dream,
I woke up with wet eyes.
I woke up terrified,
I awoke in grief.
you will never die
in the places you hide.

living in the gold sunlight.
living in darkness.
living in the belly of the beast.
I know you.
I need you.

friend,
take care.
you say you need me
on your journey,
across the water
across the sand,
and I'll go with you.
it's better that way.

some strange dark corner of the earth
where the chemicals run high
and everyone hangs low
from the gallows,
their feet touching the ground.
all these people around me
their whispers and muffled coughs
the rich music resounding
through this fluorescent cave.
I am alone.
I don't want to be here,
It'd be better to be everywhere;
you could slice me up and scatter me
wherever you walk.
I want to stay
and fight, and see stars
but I'd much rather be
dust in the wind.

I love the way he types and the way he uses punctuation in a form that makes it so I can read everything in his voice.
and when we talk he leaves his walking stick at home, he keeps his coat off. the last one had his hood up before i even opened my mouth.
he is superior, he is mature in the childlike sense; he wants to be so. I want to believe that he is.
a long time has passed since I've written a poem about anyone else but that last one. you can't really call this a poem, though. it's more of a disorganized string of thoughts. it is a compilation of my strong but contradicting feelings for a person who I was warned would want to be more than an stranger, more than an acquaintance, more than a friend. but I don't like warnings, I never have. I decided to make my own decisions and in doing so created my own problems.
He runs to help me in shoes that are too big, probably his father's. I have no expectations and no inhibitions; he brings me a band-aid and I love him back, until the last wave of jovial companionship passes.

the ocean is unforgiving.
it ebbs and flows and drowns.
you are perched there on your sailboat;
you have thought this out.
at your feet is my body, alive but immobile, bound by ropes you twisted yourself using my vocal cords and your shoelaces.
the makeshift ropes secure the rocks you've tied to me,
made of quartz and the unchanging fact that I always come back.
it's almost time.
I look at you with fear and desperation, and you look back for just a moment.
your face is a board hammered down to your skull. you feel nothing.
you pick me up, not looking at me.
steadying yourself near the edge of the sailboat,
leaning your shin against the wall of the sailboat,
you throw me
in.
the water hits me in stages, the cold slicing my shoulder.
the last breath is a hardship,
but a necessity.
bubbles spore from my nose in the water, ascending in schools
but I am only a dropout.
I plunge downward.
the light is running away from me
I would catch up, but i'm not in shape.
this was your plan.
you sail back to shore;
a storm is starting to brew upstairs.
you will not give it a second thought --
I have enough second thoughts to supply an army that you command.
can you use second thoughts as gunpowder?
as a mask?
as an escape?
I will never find out.

I. Knowing you,
it's like a dream.
I'm not referring to perfection or
personal desire,
because both are insufficient excuses
for lack of motivation, lack of action.
No, I'm talking about the way in which you remind me of the dreams I scramble to write down when I wake up from them.
The ones I'm able to put into complete sentences,
not that they'd make any sense.
Usually it's just words and images separated by hyphens, commas, space--
                             but not this time.
  It still doesn't make sense.
This whole story, it's incomprehensible, it's between a nightmare and a daydream. The fuzzy edges, the tilt-shift,
        the vibrant colors that I can't remember, the way in which we never touch each other.
Can you recall ever running your fingers over,
embracing,
biting, scratching,
feeling a tangible object within a dream?
Maybe it's a personal experience.
But this disconnection, this feeling like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, it's too outlandish, too surreal.
There's too much periphrasis.
I'm not an interface.

II. There's a windowpane, freshly scrubbed--
Through it I can see everything, comprehend
everything. the smallest details proffered in high contrast and high saturation.
But I reach out and my fingers bump and bend awkwardly as they come into contact with it, minimally smudging it.
Sorry about that.
When I walk into the room you look at me with such bewilderment,
as if I've come back from the dead,
but you're too scared to touch me--
               I'm a ghost, I'm a mirage, a phantasm,
I'm a stone sculpture erected in memory
   of who I used to be.
Who did I used to be?
I've been resurrected,
but do you want me revitalized?
It concerns me that I need verification,
but even more that I'm concerned
with the fact that I can't get it, it's too hard to read, it's in another language, or it's too blurry.
I told you this doesn't make any sense.
"You think about death a lot"--
I'm sorry about that too.
I've been trying to be more unapologetic.
I don't quite think it's working.

III. So, about this:
I'm not quite sure of the direction
it needs to go in;
it would benefit from a clean dissection--
we should talk about this.
And we have.
But nothing seems to work;
I don't know how to get through to you,
I don't know how to break the glass.
          What would I tell you? I don't know.
  I've already told you so much,
and you me.
Why did you tell me all of that?
These ulterior motives in an ulterior dimension, they differ so profusely from the world where I write dreams down; the real one.
You inquired once about the differences between who I was in voice and in action.
I didn't have a good answer,
but I wanted to ask the same of you.
Stop looking at me like that,
         you know what I'm talking about.
Say something. Please.
It doesn't have to be like this,
I could wake up from this dream and everything could be almost the same,
if you'd agree to it.

we climb to the summit
just as the sky bursts,
a midday coronation
and we begin orbit.
no one can touch us here
clouds spinning above our heads
like a mobile hanging over a crib;

these children are so soft
these children are so scared.

miles away from war and pain
yet a soldier returns home today.
a soldier rests.
and the lazy spark
like a film I've never seen
mistakes in turning towards,
turning away.
creases in the folds.

kneading your thoughts
shoving them into desk drawers
frantically, so you can find them
later.
this moment, you save for the sky.

do not fall asleep.

fall asleep.
the wind runs its cool palms
over me, gently, gently
and I'm shivering.
then, everything in reverse.

(you are small,
you are gigantic,
you are not the universe
like they tell you, but a particle,
less than a particle,
important only to minuscule bodies
on a tiny, faithless planet.)

there's going to be time.
every minute is ours to blow to pieces
every moving landscape
leaves us with another place
to call home,
maybe.
another place to point to on a map
and say "we've been there"
another place to fall asleep
on your shoulder,
another place to leave behind.

the ways in which things happen
are like guerrilla warfare.
the future would not be
itself, that title would not be not born
if we could predict its nature.

this is not going nowhere.
I have a reason for everything I'm saying,
I swear.
you were never patient
and I still cannot spend a second
without having second thoughts.

we are always in the wrong.
it's the wrong place,
the wrong time,
the wrong person--
the wrong person you're kissing
in the wrong bathroom stall,
the wrong way in which
they're touching your hair.

then again, the word "wrong"
is subjective.
if you were at all suspicious
you would be writing poems as conspicuous
as mine.
but you don't write at all.
you were all edges, no art;
nothing tore you apart.

I always thought the timing was wrong,
but now I think it irrelevant.
I still hope that you knew what I meant
when I said "please don't."
and I have a clock whose hands stopped moving
around the time that yours did.
the second hand still quivers
it makes a ticking sound
through every night.
if this was the wrong time,
I could not tell it from the right.

Despite the ebb and flow
Of people as they come and go,
Voices rising and digressing
Eventually altogether lessening
And turning to silence
Only to return with vehemence--
I remain still
And still remain.
They are mobile in their clumps,
Always crying out, always counting
The ways in which they are the worst.
Inside they feel not remorse,
But that is not the intention.
Yet the inglorious ascension
Of their voices to the vaulted ceiling
Has such an effect on their audibility.
I hear every word.
I drink it in
Like a poison,
It's addictive; it's ******.
I cannot focus nor be steadfast
As long as this prattle is to last.
Their words are never directed toward me
But they never push me away--
It is my unspoken job to meet them halfway.
I am not a link
But a hammer, disguised as a bolt
Or should it be the other way around?
The incessant ingemination of sounds
Is too heavy a burden for ears such as mine.
I could not keep a level stance
And so I fell into a state of haphazard dissonance.

It was not the trunk
But the stretching roots.

All right, it was partially the trunk.

He still hasn't figured it out.
He thinks that he has.

He was aching
and I was leading him astray.

There's a cemetery down the street
from my house, I used to walk there
It felt like a breath of fresh air.
                             Is that morbid?

"Here is where our bodies will come.
Here is where our bodies will go.
It's just a matter of time."

The clouds have been branching out.
They now cover such a vast belt
of the sky, so there are always shadows.

Here is ours. Here is our shadow--

He was impossibly great,
And I just hated myself.

That was the beginning
And it'll probably be the end, too.
Such waves of danger do we swim through.

Any attempt at predicting the weather
Becomes instead an excuse
to keep ourselves, clouds at dusk,
from birthing a downpour.

The sun will continue to tell people
How they should feel.
And my mother still yields to conflict,
but everyone seems to do that here.

How is there not a larger collective fear
of lying beside someone for eternity?
Headstones almost identical
Decaying bodies almost gone.

But I suppose it's natural.

there are bystanders
and there are activists,
the ones who care enough
to attempt some futile rebellion
by taking a seat on the wrong side
of the couch.
it doesn't sound like much,
but it is.

lately,
your hands are always
on that bottle of glue.
I guess it's better
than a bottle
of something else.

look at me,
the famished beggar
quenched and grateful
and silent
in consumption.

I do take hold of it
and clutch it in my palm
even if you can't see it.

and then, the impact.
it comes quickly
in lambent fractals
an unsettling, gleaming mess
of lightheadedness
and holds me in paralysis.

It doesn't belong to me.
it never did.
and there is still that guilt
buried deep within;
it howls in the night
and whispers incessantly
in the afternoons.

it is dry gluttony
incarnate in the hardest
of gazes, of nights in indigo
and in the softest
of ratted fabrics.

look, I remembered for once.
that's a step
in the right direction
but I've still got so far to go.

don't you know
you have so little time,
in the blink of an eye,
the flutter of a lash
you'll be insipid ash.

you've got to go
it's better you're blinded
by crimson sand and salt
than you stay and wait
for a hurricane.

the torrents, these downpours
but we all stay the same --
we refuse to move away
from the shore.

the door swivels
and you hobble in.

what's the matter?
you're fro-zen.
come in and sit by the fire.

oh no --
your fingers are white
like the lace on your waistband.

who did this to you?
tell me as I make you some coffee
no sugar, no cream.

your voice is scared
and I try not to turn red, turn over in my skin.
I tried to slow my heartbeat for you.

I am not the dominant figure here.
I am the helper, the healer, the envelope
sealer, the stone.

you are the flame
and I am the wood.
you are always welcome to burn me up.

We sat alone in that cottage by the sea --
you crying through your bony shoulders,
me quietly comforting you,
a long way from home.
allaying your headache
with small doses of *****.
i'm trying to fix you, I am,
but the teapot broke last night,
and there's grass growing up
through the cracks in the floor.
you were in the rocking chair when you said
"I've forgotten what your voice sounds like"
and I broke down.
it's so loud, the ocean as it ebbs and flows
I pushed just one wave back
and expected the whole of the seas to
bow down to me.
I'm sorry that we didn't have more time.
I'm sorry that I was too late.
But I'm mostly sorry that I dug myself up
when you needed the roots firmly in place.
the selfishness that I keep close
has too small a space
to sustain life.
I enshrouded you with a heavy blanket,
draped it across those bony shoulders,
but you maintained your gaze
into the distance.
across the water,
into another continent.
I'm sorry this wasn't enough,
but i'll leave the door unlocked.

it was coming,
arriving on a train --
some silent, mouthed anticipation
recalled to life,
finally.
soon the house had no walls;
we were living in huts made of twigs,
trying to kindle a small fire
in the snow.
surrounded by darkness
and the occasional passing car,
we leapt from star to star
in the cobalt haze of the night.
there,
a bright spot,
a sort of celestial fortuity.
all of the sudden I was not so alone.
I walked in your footsteps
on the path to your house.
knee deep in snow,
being careful not to stop moving,
but still wary to move at all.
I remember we were falling,
falling, falling down
(well, I was falling,
you were helping me up)
then running, running,
racing through the streets
to ensure our return
before anyone knew where we were,
or who we were.
I remember you taking my hand
which was wet with a layer of snow
and numb to the bone.
I couldn't feel yours at all.
maybe that was the idea.
there is always a guilt,
but it was mitigated here;
for one night
that terrible swelling in my throat
did not swallow me whole.
but you cannot open the floodgates
and expect to stay dry.
I am slowly learning why this is true.
I only hope that I will live to tell about it.

everyone speaks in tongues
leaving traces of their sickness
in others' lungs.

and we're waking up
with bad dreams in our mouths.
tell me more about the monster
that hides inside your head.

don't you want to be alone again?
that night, the snow
when no one could name us;
sovereignty in its purest form.

now it's just glances, banter
across the water
a blur of other faces.

because everyone here is against us,
or for us, or whatever.
don't bring humanity into this.

(you are hand-made
derived from symphony halls,
guilt-wrung hands,
hard feelings, the light reflected
caught on the metal.

jesus, you're going to blind me.)

see that I was looking.
see that I'm still the same.

recognize that I'm getting worse every day.

the smell of burning tires
smoke ascending from the streets
someone call for help --
everyone's coughing.

they will forget soon enough.
what did they know to begin with?

look, I heard things too.
you don't have to smash your padlocks
we all have our secrets.

19 jan

He is the opening cords of every song.
He is the sound "sh."
He is the tree held up by stakes,
  He is the stakes being whittled down to size.
He is inside the rough, back-and-forth motions of the pocketknife as it scratches off the bark.
He is the red, callous hands of the blade-wielding woodsman.
He is the brown,
     the deer,
          the drowning,
                the dirt.
He never leaves footprints,
but he always leaves early--
He is the soft light of dawn,
                              never here for very long.
We remember him but we do not
  yearn for him, we do not live for him.

He is the dead, brown shrubbery pushing through the melting snow,
                         all bent, no direction,
                                  no preconceived intent.
Oh, but he's reawakening, it's almost spring,
                   he's growing above everything.
We take out the stakes and he does just fine.

10/27/14
say it once more, out loud, or as many times as you want:
"I did not think it would happen like this."
there are seven billion people on the earth right now, and that means about seven billion god complexes, each above my own.
there are things that aren't supposed to be said, and things that are crafted to be left behind. I always compared myself to one of the latter, but now I realize I am the suitcase. I am the hotel shampoo that you leave in your bag only to carry it to the next hotel.
those little bottles have seen a lot.
so have I -- well, enough to know that when people say "don't look down," they mean it. I compiled a list of the ways that I could have said goodbye, and then tore it up, letting the little pieces go one by one from my hand out your car window as it speeded down the thruway.
there are good lights and bad lights and lights in between -- warning lights. if there are no sirens, how can you tell the difference? red is not a color to mess around with. and please, whatever you do, please don't get it on the walls. people will get the wrong idea.

when shuttle feeds show the earth on fire
and unprovened ashes stray from the pyre
  ammonium nitrate will still be there
   to keep us unvitiated, cold, and bare.
    not that we'll need it, the sun can warm
     with its dying light it is no longer "aurum"
      but "ater."
     lying next to me, a body in destitution
    rags and bones and circumlocution
   no medicine can fix you, no analeptic drug
  only the attraction of the gravitational tug
for when we are done with cosmic consorts,
we will be only sedimentary quartz.

1:44
I feel empty.
there was a sinking feeling from my throat to my stomach when the ball dropped.
nothing has changed at all, really.
it's 15 minutes from here to anywhere you would need to go. things were supposed to happen and not supposed to happen and still happened.
I didn't expect this at all, any of it.
but here it is.

time does not exist in the parameters in which humans set for it. there are no days or nights, they are man-made, like factory goods.
who decided where one orbit ended and the other began? who decided that we all make resolutions that last as long as a scrape on the knee?

i'm alone in the dark again as a new year begins. again. a well-kept secret is screamed in a foreign language, and I've taken a few years of it, but I don't remember enough to fully comprehend the message.
too bad.
I didn't say anything as the ball dropped. nothing seemed right for the situation. the new year began silently.

This is the first and last time
that the moon and the planets will align
in such a shape.
At least, the last instance until the sun burns up.
You said "Look out your window."
I did. I looked out;
I blamed the window when I couldn't see it.
then I went outside
it was negative nine degrees
and my face was set to freeze
yet the moon remained hidden.
I drove to the end of the winding road
in the orange darkness
Even in the opening of the trees
there was no lunar disclosure,
no planetary apparitions
to soothe the frostbite I inflicted
when I stuck my head out of the sunroof window.
I never found what I sought
I feel robbed, violated
a sense of entitlement
(wrongly felt, I suppose).
Then again there is a guilt
when something is so beautiful
that there is an obligation to share it
but it was then refuted by the premature death
of this moon,
and by an acute tardiness
held tightly in a clenched fist.
Next time I promise not to miss something
so revolutionary
and sensitive to time.
It was fleeting,
we tried to catch and match it
like lining up squares of cloth to cut
"Isn't it funny how everyone is seeing
the same moon?"
Look out your window before it's too late,
drive until you can't feel your hands
or your face or really anything at all
and come back full of life.

fear is useless.
or at least, it should be.
it isn't.
fear stands on the edge of hope and teeters
until it falls, it tumbles, it drops to its death
and your stomach goes with it.
fear leaves your mouth dry
and your lips chapped
and a vile taste on your tongue,
but maybe those are just excuses.
there's a possibility
that all your deliberate shortcomings
and bewildered apprehensions
are just rocks in the landslide,
simply supports for the growing fortification
that is your inescapable fear.
maybe it all adds up.
maybe fear is what keeps us safe.
can you tell I've begun to make friends with her?
I'm finally letting her in.
she tells me things,
she whispers in my ear:
"you are correct, your misgivings are confirmed."
she's like a fortune teller that way;
she reads my shaking palms
and listens for the wind, my psalms
sung softly in the darkness.
she knows she can convince me
that I'm right.
I'm tired of waiting for the fear to break.
spiraling downwards through the void
somewhere between dread
and senseless anxiety;
I've been here before.
there's still a hole in the floor.
I'm keeping myself awake.
I'm crashing to the ground and resurrecting
with a cold sweat and broken arms.
tell me it's not going to be all right.
I only want the satisfaction of knowing,
finally, that my fear is rational.
I'm terrified.
so let me know.

somebody is watching me
they peep through tiny holes
veiled by secrecy,
they want to see our souls.

I looked back at them
and they were quite frightening
their yellow eyes a requiem
as the sky was lightening.

they told me to tell you
that they saw your lungs' shutters
they heard your wooden songs
and they felt your heart flutters.

they wanted to help
and I said you didn't need any.

Although I never looked closely, there's something in the Bible about cutting off the hand that causes you to sin; tearing out the eye of the same nature and casting it off.
Have you heard of it, dear? Last I checked you were a non-denominational Christian.
So maybe you have, but you're too pretentious to say so. It was always like that with you: you left things out.
It's quite interesting. I stopped believing in God around the time that I met you.
Do you remember? Two years ago, the walk home, too many dandelions. They crawled up through cracks in the newly antiquated sidewalk. I couldn't focus and you were too focused--an antithetic situation.
You were my savior for a lot longer than you should have been.
There was a shrine to you inside of my mind, with 300 steps and stone pillars time hadn't been kind to. It was like an image from a textbook, but a little more fuzzy around the edges.
Hell, I think I prayed to you; you were just as absent as the God you believed in, so it was easy.
But you're just an man.
Maybe that's too strong, maybe
child would be more suitable.
And if you're human I am almost certain that I was at the other end of this spectrum of religious allusions; one of your demons, or maybe even all of them. I represented everything you couldn't control. I ate away at you; I was the devil on your back and under your eyelids.
I can't go away. You painted me as this sort of ugly creature and put it in plain sight, and though you never looked at that cursed painting, you cursed at it a lot.
I'll be ******.
But unlike you, I can always convert. You could disappear completely from me, washed away,
If I wanted you to.
And I did. I cut off the hand that caused me to sin,
I tore out the eye of mine that remembered
The veins in your hands, your bony hips
the curvature of your face, your lips
And I never saw them again.

10/3/14

I had a dream that you led me out of the fire. you were there to save me, it was nothing new.
but how do I measure the distance between my head resting on the pillow and the words that came from your mouth? they were: "come on, it's not safe here."

you don't like that you can't control the way people feel about you.
but she and I both are clinging to your belt loops, and you're trying to cut off your pants to get rid of us, like those helping a car crash victim with a fatal wound.
we are a million miles away from the ocean and the desert. in paradise, there are fields of wheat, but here, there are only
parking lots. grass grows through the cracks,
no one's stopped here in a long time.

I will not forget
how you made me feel.
I will not remember the times that you screamed in my face, you said "there's no hope for someone with weak self-esteem and a strong sense of perception."
I am not afraid of heights, but you were afraid of me. or maybe you aren't anymore.

see yourself
looking down on them
through the upstairs window
once again.

see the shimmering fish
below, the fountain full of papers;
some wishes do not sink
but instead float on the surface.

then see how
you still are the same.
the walls move around you
in a microcosmic orbit.

look, look
you're never first.
they've locked you out of their heads.
you are the papers in the fountain.

all that remains, for you,
is a story you can tell yourself
when the murmurs get too low,
your very own wolf on the wall.

everyone has a name here.
but you must now forget that title;
leave yourself and lead yourself
into the darkness in the corner.

17 feb: offbeat

I couldn't stop thinking about
grey tartan and gin
and soft pink skin.
Cigarettes and typewriters,
drops of ink on the paper
leading away from the word
"desperation."

But there it was.
"I'm leaving for the afternoon.
Your choice is to prune
the bushes or to water them."
What was I to do?
I liked them full and so did you.

You were frantic.
As though you'd misplaced something
when really you were just searching
for a fishing net.
"Look at the sunset."
Oh but it's gone, it's over, I'm sorry.

[Friend, friend
do not cower or back down
from this but know
that I am listening for you,
to you, always.]

Left to rot,
built to spill,
one of us was always ill.
I was waiting for you to come home--
I have not touched the bushes yet.

the squinting of the wind
as it whips me about
pulling and driving,
throwing me into the street,
leaving me gasping for air.

then the lights from above.
orange and violet and flecked
like your cheeks, like your ring.
you're looking into my eyes,
something is reminding you of me.

the low hum from the backseat
we don't know all the words
but we know most of them.
somehow, you don't look over at me.

the lethargy and strange pellucidity of dusk
in the corner of the city where light hangs
like satin off the curves of a goddess
getting ready for bed.

then, one thousand cups of black tea.
hands on the table, the glass door
calendars all falling off the walls
as the room shakes, days drifting to the floor.

everything spins in orbit
and it doesn't seem to matter
that nothing makes sense,
that the liberty of delineation
is intentionally stripped.

an effulgent twilight may be soaking
through your raw and simmering skin,
but my only fear in this moment
is that I'm still holding back.

You left yourself there.
I guess I was so used to seeing you
against those walls
and never pinning you to them
that I began to wonder
if you ever left that room.
It was never warm where we were
but we wore coats.
We listened for the howling wind
and turned our backs against it.
Your cheeks were flushed
and I could not help but rush
to look away.
You had this way of making people feel
like they were seeing something they shouldn't.
I am not very clever
but I know this:
you were happy and hopeless
and I tore that down.
You were a lark building his nest,
so timeless, so graceful, and I can attest
to the fact that you were content
exactly where you were.
There it is--
there is the difference between us.
I was a different sort of tired than you were;
mine was perpetual boredom with the world
while yours was a pleasant aching
deriving from a day of labor.
As I said,
you were the type to build a nest.
I was the sort that aspired to fly to heaven,
and hit a windowpane instead.
Call me Icarus,
and I will call you magpie.
I have never been one for terms of endearment,
but these seem to fit,
don't you think?
In a dream you met me for the second time. In the same dream you left the city, something you swore you'd never do.
In a dream you shone out
like everything I had ever been told
about the end, the eschaton.
Maybe you were meant to crush the serpent.
Maybe I was meant to write the book of Revelation.
We are not alive to exist in captivity but to consider how we might one day escape.

Oh God, oh God,
Oh Jesus Christ,
God ******* ******.

The child lifts his head and weeps.
He has just awoken
and his skin burns, burns
Holy hell, he's stretching out
Let's get a blanket, let's get a hammer
He won't stay still.

God, what a mess
Jesus in heaven, **** me
**** the inflammation and the scratching,
The fruit that is ripe
And that which is rotten
down to the pit.
**** it all.

Are you there, God?
It's me, the unbeliever.
I may have been a bit impertinent,
But Jesus ******* Christ,
if you could have seen him
You would forgive me in an instant.

But he stays under the stars.
He appears only to me
Like some kind of theophany, a dream;
You have not seen him,
And so I remain
in your divine eyes, a sinner
with the hands of a saint.

Strike me down.

welcome to the city.
time moves differently here,
you can feel your bones shifting.
that Harmony is elusive
and gone in a flash
but Tedium overstays his welcome,
bringing with him
the lovely child, Ennui.
a plain face,
a plain heart too,
the same as the rest of us.

I want to die.
not really, maybe,
it's more of an occurrence,
a spark in the mind of a lonely wedge
of sour flesh.
please don't worry about me.
nothing is wrong
or right, I suppose,
it's just the consciousness
that comes from being with
my friend Monotony.

I know what's out there.
I know that there are things
worth living for, wonderful things
but they aren't happening to me, are they?
I have to keep my feet planted
as the planet turns.
this dead city,
I've seen it all before.
it's nothing new,
it's nothing new,
I spend every day
in a dirt-filled hole
while they shovel more
onto me.

welcome to the city.
everyone leaves here
eventually.
I don't want to die,
or at least, I don't think.
but when bones crack like sticks
in a muddy pool of blood below
and we're all scratching at the door,
(or maybe it's just me),
it's hard to think
that it's worth it.
I don't want to die,
but occasionally
it seems
like the best option.

there's a drought, maybe
and it finally rains.

we were thirsty and thick-headed
and relishing in dry fields of wheat
running through the weeds
and burning our skin
on the rough edges.

all the rough edges.

dear stranger,
I knew you in the trees,
in dissonance,
in the lights in the dark street
as you view them
through a rain-streaked bus window.

it's rained here before.
we have turned out all right.

a long time ago,
I wrote something under my skin.
beneath the layer you've touched,
beneath the parts that burned.

I wrote:
"you are to be art for people to look at,
the kind that people admire quietly,
not the sad kind,
not the kind that makes people think."
and I haven't forgotten it.

I fail to remember
that you're real sometimes,
that anything is real.
pull me back into the circle.

every light is the sun.
every sun is another lamppost.
you are the light.

the city burns at night.
I see the glare of the flames on your face
and the world is still.
the rain is nothing to worry about.

there you go,
sweeping over the unknown
and envisioning yourself
in the promised land.

you have not chosen this,
you did not build these walls,
or maybe you did.

as the lead spirals
you count your blessings
you pray it's over soon
and you don't even believe in God.

maybe your journey
doesn't end at the pier.
they found a boy dead off the coast,
so close,
right off that pier.
his family stopped looking.

but you have something,
a delusion and a lengthy curse,
a vision you should not possess
and it's dying with your growing rationality.

don't you wish you were like
everybody else?

you don't hear the waves anymore.
you're a mile from the shore
but it's too loud now.
it feels like a desert,
and you're dying of thirst.

a sliver of light
fractured and feeble
gleaming like a beacon
between the door and its frame.

the only truth was a name
without a face, but with a death toll;
she walked in shadows and
was reigning queen of no-man's-land.

tapestries on the wall
the gold and scarlet sacraments
a vicar and a witch charged with sacrilege
and yet never greeting penitence.

in light and with light
the dowager queen stands upright;
the barley fields whisper her name.
the truth is a facade.

I tend to sit awake
and dream
of what could be.
could have been.

I can't stay still
around him,
but he lets me choose.

"don't make me choose."

I need him
on grey, dewy mornings
on humid nights crouched in the back
of my scope of reason.

he tells me everything.
he never shrouds himself
but he isn't proud of his pain.

the nettles sticking to the pelt,
two bodies melt
as they meet
in the middle.

what a lovely cup
of lemonade.
I wish it was mine.

I wish the boy with the argyle socks
had the sense in him
not to follow me.

I wish I had the courage
to be the compass.

I had a dream last night that you read my poetry out loud to me,
and at the word "mask" you used a low,
                                   definitive tone.
                              It was your voice.
It resonated within me as I realized that
I knew you well enough to construct
        the exact frequencies of your vocal range
while I was asleep.
It was your face, too.
                        Grinning, but holding back,
                             half afraid,
                                   half elated.
That's all I remember from that dream.
When I woke up I remembered the basic framework
but not the voice, or the face,
                           just the words.

There have been tears and laughter and
                                       screams and chatter,
     but nothing is going to be worse
                                      than the inevitable silence.

I remember him.
I still dream about him sometimes,
except there he is softer
and he speaks to me.

I remember him;
things he used to do,
the way the world used to be.
he was the sun
and he looked the part.
he hurt to look at,
the curve of his lips
stained the insides of my eyelids
and left me blind.

"I broke you," he once said.
he meant it, he sounded proud.
how excruciatingly distressing it is
to want to teach someone
whom you are afraid of.

I remember him.
he would play with the curls
that fell out when my hair was *******,
the ones on the back of my neck.
he twirled them around his fingers
and crept into the nothingness
like some spreading web.

oh, but then there's the cruelty
without shadow of blossoming.
he was fond of slamming doors,
simply because he could.
everyone saw stars in his tired eyes
and in turn began to feel them in their own.
leaving was always a question
of whether he would say goodbye.
he seldom did so.

I remember the colors in his face
brushed on by his father the sun,
as he showed me how to use his gun.
I wish I had it back.
not him, the gun.
I don't know.

I was pretending to look away.
he was balling up paper plates
and throwing them in the trash.
we were riding in the backseat of the car,
we were up in the balcony, crying
we were rarely out in the sun.

it all started with him not knowing my name.
I think it ended that way, too.

south of *****
lies the winding river
where you baptized me.
or at least that's what
it felt like
when we waded naked
in the murky green water;
a sign of heaven
that required veneration
of corporeal sin.

everyone knows something
that you have never heard of.
and there is one thing that you know
which no one else does.

don't you feel special?

one list, two hands
cut off at the wrists,
three and a half bags of sand.

for centuries I was in constant dread
of this night:
the culmination of something
that was only pure
and strangely clean,
yet it still made us tremble.

all these people
progressing like a restless sea
shifting plates under my feet
everyone is here.

no one is here.

emerging from the cave
and quivering even so.
hundreds of faces,
those colors blended together
an onslaught of trepidation.

[just like raw skin,
I feel it more than a muscle does.
I'm the untreated wound;
I am shuddering at the touch.]

don't shoot --

you'll scare the animal away.

oh, but it's too late.

these days,
it's a gradual, shaky descent;
I'm waning, deteriorating,
I can feel myself getting worse.

I am not a rock
nor do I fall through fingers
like water,
and I can tell that you're parched.
I can feel you trying
to melt me.

you can't hide in the bushes
or pull the floorboards up over your head
anymore.
it's gone too far.

where's the fun
in someone
you can't drag around?

see how the animals
scatter immediately
from the empty field
as the rifle is fired.

look at how inconvenient that is.
it isn't worth it.
and now it isn't a secret.

no one knows
until they know.

and now they know.

19 october 2014, 22:31

I didn't mean for any of this to happen. in fact, everything was supposed to be different. show up for one night, plan it all out in your head, a preconceived novel. but we tore out the pages long ago, by our own choice. we agreed that we didn't want this to happen. but now i'm having second thoughts -- it is a blessing to have a map and a curse to have it lead somewhere. he was an atlas and you were a tiny triangle drawn to represent a mountain. the men around the table all have shoes i could fill, they talk about the box that came in the mail. but i'm getting ahead of myself with this surrealism; you didn't ask for it, in fact, you hated it. you wanted the poetry out of your head but it was
stuck
there. I wrote it on the inside of your skull and now it plays every day: as you're on your way to school, as you're sleeping, as you're playing with her hair. it's faded to a gentle hum but it still drives you insane.
the cracks have been sealed, the mirror replaced. this is not somewhere you want to stay.

4 apr, 00:47

isn't it alarming
to have such faith
in an oncoming train?
maybe I need a rest.

we could all use more of that.
lately you've been throwing yourself
into fits of fury and static waves.

you can't be shaky,
I'm shaky,
that's me.

please don't hide in the brush again.
the creeping tendrils of hanging plants
draped over your shoulders,
a cloak of twisting emerald fingers.

and you're scared,
and you're breathing;
you swell up and become the fog.

suddenly everything stops
and I am aware of where I stand.
I am here.

every inch of the skin
of succulents and small children
turns crimson,
all at once.

I had these maps in my hands
and I traced the paths to their ends
only to find that the mountains there
are, in reality, only clumps of soil.

it isn't what you thought.
these maps are all wrong.

but,
fear is not the edge of the forest.
fear is the darkest thicket, the heart.
be careful in those woods.

Six feet apart, feet wide apart
relentlessly checking the doorways.
I wished I was six feet under,
wished some seismic sea wave would arrive
and pull me asunder.
I locked myself in the third-floor bathroom
because I didn't want to wander the halls.
There are people stuck in these walls
and I hear them, I hear them, I hear them
       I hear them when I walk alone
  and they're all screaming
         for me to leave this place.
There are people stuck in my head
and I keep them there until I'm ready
to think about them,
       ready to write them down.
This is a warning.
    Do you see the red flashing lights?
      Are you looking at the black and gold stripes?
I was warned in a different way
and now I'm warning you not to stay
    here.
Some people are so naturally ordinary,
and others don't quite fit in place.
Parts of them do not align, so to speak,
They are never looking directly into your eyes
and you only smile a half-smile,
                       because you feel bad,
                          but not that bad.
Why are you still here?
Don't you have somewhere to be?
It's not worth it to meet
  just to see me curl myself in a ball again,
    make a home for myself inside my head
   putting up a picket fence there
          so the dogs don't come for me.
I admit that it's a juvenile fear.
But I promised myself I'd run away
when my fingernails started to rattle,
and I've kept my word.

12 dec: yesterday,
he sat behind me, crying. his eyes and were puffy and red and I asked him if he was all right but he said
nothing. it's predictable, it's overlookable.
I thought God, God, god,
but he's non, non,
non-denominational.
how pretentious.
i "use the lord's name in vain" because i've accepted my vanity, learned to cope by belittling myself in the dark.

there was a certain serenity in his chaotic demeanor, if that's possible.
he wrote with such affinity, such pressure. abundant was the adrenaline and passion which coursed through the veins in his forearms as he scribbled.
something's...different.
he's wearing glasses. are they his father's? I considered the prospect because I thought he might have asked to borrow them to hide his tears.
"I didn't know you wore glasses,"
(never in three years).
"I got them yesterday."

is it a demographic feeling,
is it worldwide?
am I alone?

and my nightly delusions are all going to waste,
they're rusting and greying
with the realization
that I'm out of time.

the things I thought
lines from songs and little papers
crumpled up in your fist.
gone.

the yellow of an old day,
a new day,
one without anticipation.

you are going to die alone.
take your advice from a poem
and set it out like you're
dressing the table for dinner.

chains are made to be broken.
lives are made to be changed.
it doesn't matter what you think,
these things are false.

nothing is made to be anything.

hope is false as well
and we borrow mountains
to hide ourselves behind.

living in the shadow
of a decision you can't make.
there,
that's your problem.

winter is over.

Where are you?
Could you name this place?
The escalator breaks and everyone complains that they have to walk.
Your feet don't hurt yet.
You see your reflection in the glass window overlooking the city
And you don't recognize yourself.
You're just another faded face in the dark.

These little ants
In their yellowing house,
Speaking of revolutions
Talking about ideas far too big for their tiny heads.
They stutter and almost implode from the pressure
Of these unfathomable thoughts.

There are too many paintings on the walls.
Getting old puts a damper on things, doesn't it?
Some of us have bigger forces behind them,
Against them,
For them.
You're beginning to understand why some people don't get better.

If things were different,
If things were different,
If things were different --
Over and over, you tell yourself this.
You write it all over your skin.
You scream it, but no one even hears you.
You are starting to lose your voice.