Complex or not
I always come out on top.

The love you hold in
So moldy from years of sitting
Unattended
Stuck in a cabinet of
Miscellaneous memories
Has been dug out by me.

Now kindergarten has regurgitated
Feelings of jealousy you grip
Tightly
In secrecy.

What is the game
In befriending me?

It's not going to be
The way you dream it to be.

Because now?
He sleeps with me.

You're a good distraction-
like the channel without infomercials
at 2am.

During the day
you haven't time for me
and I'll waste away

and no one will ask about us.

I don't care for the way
My words come tumbling out of my mouth
Before I can even sort them
Into socially acceptable anecdotes.

Misinterpret my intonation-
Come morning you'll taste
The disgrace of sober, sloppy lips
On a tired face
In a place you never liked

Besides when you got high.

Hiding from yourself in your own home
I left before you put pants on-
See I have a job
And you're alone,
wondering obliviously how
You became so.

I keep thinking
                                 I'm hungry
                                 I'm closer to the curb
                                                      I'm late.

I keep thinking
                                 It should've cost less
                                 This was a waste of gas
                                         I'm gonna head out.

I keep hearing
                          my alarm;
                          Your early morning voice
                        The frosted wind quake above.

I keep thinking
                          I'd have more to say
                          I'd have more change
                        The meters were off by now.

I keep dreaming
                            I'm wandering
                            You appear occasionally
                           I have the antidote to misery.

I keep trying
                      To be
                             poetic
                                Enthusiastic
             ­                             Inspired.

Vonnegut has cursed me
I'm caught in a Timequake
Repeating continuously
My last worst mistake.
This is a tendency
I can't seem to shake and
My dependency
Comes and goes in waves
But for now I'd say

I don't need you.

I keep trying
                 to be logical.
I keep thinking
                 I'm doing alright.
I keep dreaming
                It's true
But I keep hearing
                The opposite from you.



C.e.M. April 24, 2014 first draft

Caught between the couch cushions
of earth and the abyss
what a sick twisted tryst.

whens the last time you really kissed
you know, pressed lips with a mister or a miss

Caught  in situations that have
persuaded a pulsating
aggravation

caught between the oppressive and the suggestive
childhood fades out in succession
because you are still hooked on
your old house

you are the deja vu
of what I
already do.

Excuse me to say that I am already done
I don't like to run
my knees sting from the pressure
but a lecture  
of run on sentences is longer than
a list on
some prison percentages

Caught between deranged and wanting to change
sputtering out the plague

my eyes are on fire
If I close them nothing will transpire
is that required?


Caught.
On an idea of something you are not
and I forgot.

C.e.M. 11.26.2014

Bodies replicating displacement,
twisted growths
Streaming up walls
that separate and segregate
The once spacious and spontaneous.

Brimming past allotted space,
Gridlocked in a postmodern wasteland
Deprived of wonder,
no ability to wander.

Stretching,
aching to escape the odds,
The masses stacked against each other,
wrapped in suffocating saran.

Plastic and detached
We clamor for peace
As they bury the hatchet
Separating bone and flesh
De-spining our fragile backs
In an effort to preserve class.

They tie us up on strings
For an elaborate show,
Distractions make us feel we’re in control.
Puppets and human beings
Become indistinguishable.

A pre-allocated placement
only masked by possession.
This land of the free is weighted
towards the monetary security
of them,
Never us.

So will we,
modern day slaves
of the service industry
placidly toil to please their every need?

No, indeed
The chosen few will turn back,
Ready to be trampled
by the stampede of society.

Itching within,
beneath skin and muscles
through blood vessels and malleable marrow,
All vibrating in frustration
and we will exclaim
with little more owned than our given names,

We are no longer
willing to play survivor,
fighting against our neighbor
To climb this invisible ladder.

We’re digging through the *******,
elbow deep
and dredging up with two clenched fists
The forgotten sediment of rebellion.

Error:404

I was once convinced
Everything would
work itself out.

Every problem had a solution
Every fixation, an axis
Every point? purposeful.

Certainly time was an equation.
Solving the question of final age
was merely the addition of years
and the subtraction of moments
our vices swallowed.

Everything was orderly.
Numbers in a row.
Empty boxes, waiting to be checked.

DNA strands coiled ceremoniously
into my exact composure
worried about me so I wouldn't have to.

Days flaking off like dandruff,
unsightly flecks of fragility,
floating toward irreversible fate.


I would live until I wouldn’t.

I would teeter
        ...skid
                   ....careen
through hours, anxiously awaiting
never taking a breath to rest and reflect.


Death was algebra.
I was subtracted from morality,
added it back as fatality.

Evening out- solving for X,
My many quaking days
having lost their grip.
            ~
Life is not math.
Life is trash recycled into sporadic moments that won't last.

Simplicity was never synonymous
To consciousness.
Sentient beings will always suffer.

Words will never suffice
When the feelings are out of place.
Attempts at descriptive narrative
only feel like a forced hand,
a poor play.

My slippery fingers are arthritic,
clutching at the vapors
of moments before mistakes.

I've never kept anything I loved.
I have ****** out of hate
more than I have out of lust.

I was always what I wanted to be
never was what I needed to be
And when desire ran dry
I always settled in the dust of desolate decisions.

The bell curve never helped with my grades
And this learning curve can’t help me find my place.


C.e.M. Aug. 11, 2016

Let the wind take me like smoke
And every other over used metaphor
You’re a bore
No I am
I don’t know where I stand
Where we stand
We used to hold hands
Not anymore.
I’m in the bathroom hiding
Biding our time
Lets rewind
You’re always on my mind
Its inevitable that I’ll fall into my old ways
I’ll start littering again
And slithering around with suburban ****.
I haven’t become anything.
I’m just coming undone.
C.m.

8.3.14

...
                                                             ­          I search for reasons not to trust
like the maniac, the ******
picking at his skin,
convinced there is something living inside of him
crawling from vessel to vessel,
shattering synapses,
reforming patterns.

                                                      ­      All my personal relationships have failed
they say I expect too much
or I don't stay in touch.
.. . whatever it is,
I'm too much. and not enough.

9.13.2016

I hear my last words
lose themselves
hanging from the precipice
of a precise demise.

Looking for nectar,
I pick at thorns and scabs
you name your regrettable yesterdays
though I won’t find any syrup
In your horseradish skull.

Tuesday’s malaise will spread
across the week turning sour and heavy.
Summer to fall I thought I had it solved.
Fall to winter,
I know nothing at all.



12.13.14. Cem copyrighted
edited 6.15.16

Strawberry sun
hot on swaying hips

a shimmer of skin,
sultry beacon of temptation.

Days smear in sweat
and grass stains.

Twilight carries dusty toes
a few steps further.

Legs dangling, lonely
top of rusted tower,

Moon whispering
“come and kiss me”.

Languid laughter lilts
lining ancient constellations

Space(s) [is] filled
By our separation.

Cicadas croon,
Biding elusive slumber,

dawn’s yellow tendrils grasp eyelashes,
rays morph into rivers of light.

Time, the illusion of a tether;
A notion of perpetual motion

Adrift an absent-minded sea,
Hazy, evasive sleep

Our ropes will fray
in wisps and waves of heat.

C.e.M.
31082016

his voice is like poetry
while I’m sleeping-

I cant make sense
of the information I’m
gleaning
in tidal waves
spawned by
the moon that is his mind.

the space is stuffy
and I’m
sweating,
tears for the idea
of a young man who never existed.

every new face is a pawn
in the facade
of a game I’ve spun together
over years of misfortune
and emotional torture.

I’m enraptured
by the subtleties of self
you capture in such
spirited convalescence.

In an effort of defense
I will plead the ignorance
of a meager age
and a shifty stage in life.

i am prone to strife
that entices me
late at night when
the dishes are piling and
ash is frosting my kitchen floor.

I’ll make it back to bed
when the sneaking wisps of daylight
come slithering
across
your uninhibited sprawl.

I really
should
stop
playing God.  
c.m.
8-19-14

You're not hiding anything tangible
Just secrets, building,
Mortar for this wall behind your mandible.
You view your vocal chords
As a noose
Stretched too loose,
And you swing free
At the base of minor key
Haunting melody that repeats
While jarring words behind your jaw
You will never speak
Pile higher
Higher higher
Until we drift asleep.
Cem dec.18,2015

detached. seeing, not feeling
the chair the ceiling, the floor
spinning and who am I kidding-
it's long past when I should've
had my last laugh, when I
passed midnight and the
highlight of the day was
the meager wage of pity
I accrued from a
generation subdued by a
preposterous possibility over-
exaggerated in expectation and
reaching for the highest
creatable version of elation
without laying the proper
foundation built by
layers of training and daily
straining that compound
into callouses and graying roots
until we are austere
and astute or at least
that's the excuse we will use
for the continual quietness we
exhibit, inhibiting
relationships to flourish
discouraging speech
self medicating with synthetics
that inhibit hunger
fidgety and without epiphany-
cemented to the same place
later than you should have stayed.

We want what we want,
never mean to misbehave.

September 11, 2015 C.e.M

Street lights shift in tandem,
Flickering rhythmically
Sputtering small halos of safety

Bleached, cracking pavement
devoid of fellow travelers,
and subsequent passengers

I devour dotted lines,
The speed of light
no longer constant.

I allow heavy lids to fall
without much hesitation.
Feel the road sway beneath

I above, disconnected,
yet grounded still. Oil atop water;
Disharmonious cohabitants

Consistency is lost. I pretend
time moves as I please
With or without me

I begin to count


One
Testing preservation,
Instinctual construction of survival.

Two
How long can I trust
touch to keep the course

Three
Can distance be anticipated
without visual stimuli?

Four
I feel the whir of the engine,
obediently churning

Five
hear the wind whipping
defying my wish for silence
slipping through the back window

Six
This is bliss.
I swim envisioned oblivion

Seven
I should open my eyes

Eight
Reality in motion -
time makes me queasy.

Nine
Sight returns.

I stop counting.
Safe, trundling on
I slide silently down 48.

December 12, 2016

sometimes
I just feel stuck.
I couldn't tell you how,
or by what.
There is simply this
perplexing mass of
displacement
weighing on my mind
in aggravation.

It feels eerily like stagnation
and impatience
but I have no current task
I am evading.

I am just....
waiting.

it is excruciating.

C.e.M. September 12, 2015

The residue of indecision
Rumbles by in
Stomach pains
And the repetitively lame
Excuse
As to why
You didn't get
Out of bed today.

What a shame.
What a waste.

C.e.M

so strange
it should seem
how vividly those lost moments
reappear to me.

they seep into my conscious stream
like the steam
beneath a ***
simmering on the
low heat of three.

I’ve never been much for
the romanticism of lost time
regardless of the frequency
at which it
captures my complacent mind,

but the silent movies
that wind
and unwind
behind closed eyes
are redefining
the circular lies
you seem to find comfort
in hiding behind
in order to maintain sanity
in the circling calamity
of present circumstance
and reoccurring coincidences.

I am victim
to the incident
that serves as
a lingering question mark
of the intent
behind the recently
protruding insolence that has been
festering since I
refused penance
on the slight chance

I’d find a savior in myself.

C.e.M. 8.19.14

I am spreading myself out across the splintering voids of the crackling civilization
One borrowed hair tie,
T shirt
Bobby pin
At a time.
I am the little presents and treasures
You keep for no reason
And you are my mix CDs.
You are the summer when i
Was most like the trees- swaying and bending in the vaporizing heat
Of an august afternoon.
I am ashes scattered to the wind
Begging to begin again
With an old friend.

Cem 427a 11015

dozing or writing poetry
always seems so much better than
the alternative
going out-
stale *******
package left open world
spoiled.
Don't cry over spilt milk
don't cry over the bed you made
or this tower you built.
you were in on it.
every over bred chicken
ground and breaded
we rename our stupidity all cutesy.
So if that's the only way I can appeal
to you
the only way you can hear
so you might heal,
then take a chicken nugget of wisdom
and go check out the kitchen.
What are they cooking up?
the putrid toxins of dissention
racism named "culture"
police brutality spelled "justice"
hidden
organized
normalized.
News sources with the
long-standing trust
of the public
but they're slowly becoming
a part of the budget.

Cheap food and the six o'clock news
commercial break for cigarettes and *****
we're spoon fed
and we choose it.
Plastic bred
poison fed
under the guise of choice
and an easier life.
Hard nights
bar fights
at least the taco bell
is open past midnight.

While your brain is soup
eat a little more sludge
and when you're uncomfortable and confused
well,..
I told you to run.

C.e.M. 8.14.15

intrepid tingling rapture

The metallic shine
Of the chopping waves reflected in my looking glass eyes
That had lost their shine
With the explosion of the sun
Many moons ago
Now I seek the woman the old crow has visited in  the corners
Of her smile and she gazes off for quite a long while, returning with some unseen bizarre entity of a thought you sensed she had forgotten or perhaps hidden from herself.
Now the rhythmic pedaling meant nothing just churning slowly churning
Briney water of the moment still left
untold water
rushes by in folds of fools gold as the elephant mountain geishas marched by in wind blow whispers of their former selves and both compell me to give them my undivided attention
but I'm still trying to
find my direction here
on land.

"Would you like your groceries
bagged in paper or plastic?
will you be paying with paper,
Or plastic?"

Rock paper scissors
has been replaced
With something
more rudimentary
But essentially,
Neither have intentionality.

No matter how far you try to move
away from synthetic
you're still drinking out of plastic
eating out of plastic
driving, walking, buying, *******
out mounds of it.
You put your plastic in plastic,
leave it outside
until a man swings by
throws it into a pit
with all the other wasted ****
to exist
for all eternity.

Would you rather melt or burn?
Bankruptcy is a hard lesson to learn
But the ashes of this economy have been
Touted as prosperity
Instead of resigned to an urn
To relearn the transparency
of democracy
As it should be.

I'll trade my plastic smile
For a fistful of paper
I'll exchange it for something physical,
Something bigger
Something somehow better,
Sans the improvement.
The reanimation of the market
Capitalism! Ah,
The dream land.
“Build your monopoly
Crush your enemy”

Oops I mean your neighbor
They're all the same
in this day and age.
Community has been sold
for pennies on the dollar.
Now we’re fighting tooth and nail
To be the one
wearing the shock collar

Bzzzt!
I have the most likes on my photo
Bzzzzt
This minor annoyance
has become my addiction.
I’m shopping and sharing
And living within this tiny television.

This is post apocalyptic
You just can't see it
Because you're living in it.
Things are better, yes
But 6.7% of Americans are diagnosably,
incurably depressed.
37% are oppressed
44%  are over stressed and
81% are in debt.

Let me just say this now
From my white-privilege-podium
That keeps all adverse effects
Of free speech
From touching me

****
YOUR
AMERICA.

**** this corporate greed
that grinds itself down
and repackages itself into
“The American Dream”.

and **** us, right?
For thinking anything here was free.

Oil in the ocean
she is the insinuation
of a poison
both intoxicating
and breath taking
though, without mistake
she is devilishly volatile.
speech becomes slurred and spaced
and her intentions become displaced
as she falls from grace
night after night
this is her fight-
she never stops to question
she might be on the wrong side.

C.e.M. June 14

...and at the end
I'm scrambling for just a little more
**** and for words
and your redundant rambling
is broken English
trying to communicate things
I'll never understand.
When I remember my last wish
I check the kief catch
the last shot 'till I'm dry
and with an empty barrel
and hollow sloshing guts,
my porous bones will snap
under the weight
of morality's fate
and my wayward ways.
I'll crash into a parade
of memories
that will spiral around me
as I plummet into the geyser
that last dopamine rush
that will ****** me into
the fifth dimension
the crystalline eclipse
of what is yet unknown
and forever undiscovered.

c.e.m. 4.28

Carried home from a family occasion
and placed in the icebox,
slowly slid to the back of the fridge
as leftover moments fight for space
near the front.

Styrofoam predictions
of life after  childish ambitions
are accidentally neglected
and left to spoil,
unattended and tempted
with wayward growth.

You may find them again,
rummaging through,
making space,
or maybe just looking for something
you thought you lost.

Long since forgotten,
 the ideas molded
over the ages of a chilly
adolescence,
and what might have been promising
is now indistinguishable and unusable.

A small, unaffected edge may remind you
Of its purpose in a past life
and you’ll sigh
as you change the trash liner
to accommodate another failure.

You sometimes wonder
What you may have missed
piling so many options
only to be forgotten until they’re rotten.

It doesn’t help any
to be the one who has to retrieve it.
see what it is,
know what it was...
a subtle, sneaking certainty
of what it could’ve become.

more and more often, it’s too early
to stomach the sun
and you find the day
has begun without you,
as if it doubts your commitment
to present tense.

Still, you continue along hanging
from a precarious
cable car of ambivalence,
waving at each opportunity missed
as it passes you by,

your eyes
idly on the sky.

"Next time, next time"
You mutter

"Next time I'll give it a try."

C.e.M.
2.17.15
Edited 4.18.17

You're picking at me
like scabs of my mistakes

Disappointing you
is easy;
and admittedly-
pleasing.

We're careening down the mountain
and you've cut the brakes.

Your medication give you the shakes
and I twitch in my sleep

Your love is cheap
and the wine is sweet
and I awake the next morning
with a migraine from both.

What a gracious host.


I'll try to make ends meet and
you'll half-heartedly sing me to sleep.

We'll do the whole **** thing
again on repeat
week after week.

Do you think that you'd need
some sort of apology
When you come to me
While I'm still dreaming?
Do you think this could make
an awkward autopsy
Because I'm too dizzy to be
Agreeing?

Caught on the hook
You played it
right by the book.  
You took your time
And little of mine
and now I'm the one
Left leaving.

And screaming
And trying,
But not really believing
In anything
but a bereaved blessing,
All forgotten and festering
Though unnoticed,
Still attesting
To it's wasteland existence.

Porous, dry and without pigment
Like the skin of an overgrown pigglet

Time for slaughter,
Courtesy of the indignant.
In death too *****
To be a meat worth eating,
Your glory days
Of **** wallowing wonder
were fleeting,

And you knew it from day one
But it wasn't till near seventeen
You began to come undone,
Got a little high strung
And grew a knife for a tongue
Plunged straight into the heart
With snide remarks and whispers
Of text messages
Left off the charts
And I'm left in the dark

To inside jokes
Of feigned friendship
I suppose I'm waiting
For what you forgot to mention.

Yes,
You've always had
good intentions
Just
... no direction
And little discretion
I'm sorry,
I'm sorry...
But I must change direction.

Cem 5.4.15

We're lying back to back.
Faces in our screens.
We are together...
whatever that means

C.e.M.

To the crushing of bones
when you implode;
my stubborn skull
was no match for the concrete.

I flew face first-
now I am ground into dirt,
or the dirt is ground into me
wherever I’m bleeding.


I can’t clean these wounds sober.
this girl?
you won't know her.

my jaw is popping-
is there any chance of that stopping soon?
The moon is closing in on the sun,
threatening to collide
and I've grown wearing of hiding in the night.
I'd just like some
medical attention.

My knees,
my knees...
I forgot to mention they're all ******;
I don't have the money to call off
for a few days.

can I sleep on my face?
my pain is evidence of my shame-
these wounds just my physical disgrace.

I'll regain coherency
at a quarter till three
with a swollen, puffy face
and vinegar in my veins.

just add it to the list
of blundering strains
maybe some time in the future
I’ll be able to worry about it again.

it never ends.

my new lamp, shattered
my clean sheets
dirtied and tattered.

my left ear is buzzing-
everything has gone fuzzy
and my head is numb and
throbbing.

maybe I’ll sleep well tonight,
and my nightmares will find me
without any fight left
in my dried out bones
and pseudo studio home.

c.m.
draft/original: 8.5.14
posted: 1.7.15
revision/edit: 1.8.15

It’s not true; not all the way, but they say “it’s all about your choices.”
It makes no sense to me. I’ve never been much for inexplicable and
       inexhaustible benevolence.
I find I spend copious time figuring my meaning, in situations I over
       analyze into mathematical equations...am I conscious,
                or just a calculator?
Or...have I been (and hopefully still am) living, breathing, feeling…?
      flesh.
I question...is this stealing life?
This is evading death.

Arguably, our beginning is our end, no? Upon inception of life, have
      we not inherited death?
Yet again ponder...is there fate? Do they matter? (that is, my choices.)
I was once told, “if you can dream it, you can do it”. Shall I still build
      the perfect life?
I’m beginning to be overtaken with impatience that surpasses my
      innate benevolence.
I cannot say which is weaker, my spirit, or my flesh.
Once I’ve punched in my last numerical decision, how long will my
     finger hover above ‘enter’-
how long until the outcome appears on my mortality calculator?

I often lose myself in the turmoil of emotion. Not cool and collected
        like the others. It’s been decided, no I’m no calculator.
She seems to always descend at an uncanny time. An uncouth cold-
          caller, that Mistress Death.
“I feel young”, I croon. Unanswered by my withering flesh.
I consider my carelessness, wishing I had been the master of more of
     my choices.
Sometimes, it’s one-in-the-same, self-defense and benevolence.
I’m just trying to find some connection, but still I question, “is that all
        that makes this life?”

Will I ever find definition and solid intention strong enough to be
     named the same as all the other countless, hazy perceptions we
                call life?
I find myself to be robotic in response and anxious in nature. Perhaps I
      AM an inhumane Calculator.
I consider myself a fine hostess, even admittedly, to thoughts that strip
        down my benevolence.
“Death to those demons!” is my rising cry, “death!”
Death to unfavorable and unforgivable decisions, may they be buried  
        in my future choices.
May I think logically, and not be seduced into lethargy by the sinister
        siren calls of mortal flesh.
I cannot quench my questions, they crawl in droves beneath my flesh.
What am I do to? What shall I make of my life?
How little do I truly control with personal decisions, how much will I
        suffer from others choices?
Is it more dangerous to be over zealous or indeed catastrophic to
      function merely as a calculator?
How does one prepare for the permanence of death?
Have we soured into surface common courtesy in the guise of true
      benevolence?

I contemplate this often. What it would take to retain a group consciousness in distress…
     true benevolence.
Perhaps if we did not so often succumb to the momentary gratification  
        of pleasing our flesh
we would feel more peaceful, knowing we gave our best, to enter the
      vault of death
grateful and complete, finishing the entirety of our life
with no devious schemes for feigned success or entitlement; no
       manipulated calculations.
we’ve all heard it before, “It’s all about your choices”

But the choices of the best differ from the choices of the rest and
        it all depends on who’s willing to fight
their own flesh for a chance at life before imminent death.
       There’s no calculation for conglomerate benevolence.
Human flaw will always persist.

C.e.M. Written 0ct.5 Edited Oct 6

I am beginning to wonder
how many more times
I will awake
to another sunrise
to find
that I never quite shut my eyes
yet again-
I was just spinning or
maybe swimming
in these visions of sins
and grins met upon
the second guess that
set in after that double take.
Is this
something we can make
or will it just
make everything
more tedious-
what we are is fleeting
and I’m lost on a bus
and the schedules swing
in pendulums-
when they hit the bottom
they strike as weapon
of wasted time
and I need a ride.
  I might get off track
but at least
I can keep you laughing
with the things I say
behind a timed rhyme style-
I’m done with denial
of my actions of a child.
Excuse me
I just went a little wild
trying to beat the feeling
that I was mild,
just mediocre.
Compensation
for a consolation prize
I’ll play the joker.
I don’t have a spine
but I’m paying for things
that aren't mine
Don’t worry
I’ve just lost my mind
in the shrinking times
that grow more rapidly
with their progression.
The earth stands still
while heads
are standing upside down
in the sands of their dreams
and perspective realities
I’m up in the trees
or maybe
I’m just trying to get closer
to the sky
so I can feel free.
There’s where I need to be-
those dying stars aren’t fleeting.
Not immortal,
no maybe not;
but so ever radiant
in a cataclysmic death.
Finding my way
through broken phrases
and run-ons
I’m tripping towards
my glory days
wondering
if I can actually make it
or if I will be forced
into the illustrations
of exaggerated narrations
of a day last week
or last month,
does it matter if it’s gone?
I’m just like you,
trying to hold on.

picking at the skin
left to wither around a
somewhat fresh
wound,
avoiding eye contact
and your next move.

you don't have the energy
to choose
when moving forward
means you lose.

stay in place
stay obtuse
shell out another
over used excuse.
dropping clues
to your old ruse
for a new muse.

C.e.M. April 25, 2015

How many more beers until the moon looks full again
How many before I've made some friends
Combined, is it enough to make me whole, then?
I’ll keep drinking until I reach a dead end.

How many sips does to take to reach the truth
How many to bridge the distance between me and you.
If I sip long and hard, will it be easier to let loose?
I’ll keep sipping til it’s warm and I'm old news.

How many steps before I find the path I should be on?
How many before I know it’s the right one?
If I keep on stepping, will I find myself on the proper side of the sun?
I suppose I’ll keep stepping along.

How many sleepless hours until I've cracked the code?
How many split the difference between insane, and genius mode.
If I fake it til I make it,  when I've made it, how will I know?
I’ll only be up a few more minutes or so.




C.e.M.

I suppose
This is what ****** addicts
And psychotics feel like.
White walls
And overflowing ash trays, long
Drags and sloppy kisses
Open shirts and
Undone belts;
Their eighteenth year spinning
Records of commentary
Nostalgia before you got sick from
The speed
Uninteresting to everyone else
Inescapable to you.
Slaughtered morals
***** socks on the sidewalk
If something honest
Inside me could talk I'd say
I never want to feel another questioning palm again against my prickled skin.
Ten days until escape?
Or is it back to the cage?
Who's to say.

C.e.M. 6. 9. 15

It's either too slippery
or too slurred
vision always obscured
when speech can't reach
the right intonation.

It's a gradual gravitation
away from the status quo
that turns stale again
the further you go.
I've never been one to take things slow

no,
never been patient
just defending against
the negativity and
a bitter sensation of defeat.
ah, just a statistic
for my generation.

what a marvelous time to be alive
and wasting away while
you crave something more
than the plague
of lazy days
that keep you flat on your back
in malaise
and die at fourty-five
from being fat
and smoking one pack-a-day
too many.

The truth is heavy
and I guarantee
once we look back on sedintary lives
we'll realize
it is our own
lackluster shells
we despise.

C.e.M. July 15, 2015

The rain beat down like a ferocious lover
On cracked windows
And creased curtains.
Barren and dry outside
This tumultuous storm
Lay inside my eyes and kept
The raging wildfire abreast
If only momentarily.
Sorrow as my only defense mechanism
Pleading innocence and defeat
I may be laying low
For a week or more
But I will not be beat.
Go ahead
And bring the heat that swells
In the late august
Of good intentions turned sour.
Age out all the promises
That have rot in the back room
Before ever reaching their destination.
We have reached the boiling point,
Now slipping into disintegration.
You were a caricature of yourself
And I, the animator.
Maybe I’ll see you later
When you’ve rearranged your display.
I think we’ve had enough
For today.
c.e.m. 2.9.14

I hereby resign myself
To lie in a bed,
Overheated and always tired,
Next to a body that I never touch
And never
Touches me.

I will drive the miles
And spend the money
On a friendship I can't afford
And be ignored
When it's convenient
Like the all the rest
of casual acquaintances.

I will pick up every odd shift
For a few more dollars
That surely
won't be in my pocket
For very long.

I will sing the same sad songs
On the occasion
I might at last
Have made it to the shower
Because although I still have water
I might've lost power
And still done nothing
To fix it.

I'll be the texts
At 5am
When the rest of the world
Is sleeping in bed
Likely dreaming and spooning
With breaths regulated
By their cyclical,
routine naïveté.

I'll be the cold body next to
No one
When the morning comes
In the next state over
In the back seat of my car
Wishing I had enough gas
To take me further.

I resign myself
To second place,
The hell for the always over looked.
I'll read another book
And wonder how easy
Fictitious lives must be
Only spanning two hundred pages
Of tastefully flawed existence
With a diligent persistence
To come out better in the end.

I'll stand lonesome as a highway ****
Blown in on the back
Of some filthy bird
Who dropped me off
And never noticed my missing,
Never knew I was with him.
I will never flower.
I only wither.

Cem

She’s discretely picking herself up
yet again.
her toothbrush is in the front pocket
of her ripping knapsack
her necklace
refastened around her neck.

he’s still holding on to
her vintage
beach rock CD.

someone will always walk away
with something that wasn’t theirs.

the look in her eyes
when she was trying to drive,
was exhausted by the streetlights
and repressed remnants of
secretly sought after destruction.

she and her passenger
were separated
though verbalized indignation
seeped into
timid toleration.

he’s god knows where
touching who know who
it took three whole days
to move on.

She’s not strong
she just knew he was wrong
and lost in a throng
of undesirables

left overs in Styrofoam cases
with their names carved out
are shoved to the back of the fridge
silent and molding
like unspoken words
hanging their mouths.

it’s the mid-afternoon
and he couldn’t be bothered to wake up
before two.

she slipped out of his grasp
and dangled off the porch
in an overcast lavender blue.

back inside
the wood floor gives way
to her moon beam knees
and she loses perception
in the imperfections
of her dreams
and realities.


c.m.
7.15.14

My tongue flicks
Absent mindedly
Discovering and rediscovering
The new sensation
Of a missing tooth
Or a kernel of food
wedged in my gums
Or a ****** cheek
Bit ferociously while chewing.

In my same manor
My thoughts stroke
the idea of you,
Feeling for any new details
i may have missed
My first time
across your surface.

a mark, wrinkling
beneath your eye
a small  tattoo
above your elbow
a delicate crease
where your head
meets your neck.

Subtleties of self
are everything to me.
you hold your cigarette
between hits,
bent backwards between
thumb and *******
as if subconsciously,
you know
you’re damning yourself.

You hold your elbows
When you cross your arms
As though you are afraid,
Should you relax your grip
The contents of your chest
Will spill out before you
Like a toppled canister
Of produce remnants,
Juicy, sloppy, and sopping

But you speak quietly,
like a discarded bag
of shredded documents.
Rustling with partial importance
I try to piece together
your comments
almost as though your words
hang beneath the weight
of your breath
as an afterthought
of your exhalation.

I watch you
watch me,
calmly calculating
baiting conversations
with tactful insinuation
and later,

in deep rumination
they replay.
I select the moments
That fit the narrative
I've created,
rummaging through
until what I want
you to mean
is all I hear you say.

secondary vices
were always compromises
to the original morality
you sought.

somewhere in the pages
and peer pressure
and stage pressure
and slave wages
you forgot

you wanted memories
to mean something
and dreams to be
achieved.
But now life long
is long gone
and you lose your steam.

though I can no longer
imagine it
the way I fathom
insatiable hunger
will linger
a little longer.

perhaps someday
I'll be stronger
and I'll be able sonder
more than pessimistic ponderings.

Today I'll go under
and asunder my imagination
from fruitless creation that leaves
me listless and disagreeable.

If the future was foreseeable
perhaps I might be more careful
however knowing the complete anthology
of my defeat would never push me forward.
Is it fortunate I'm blind?
either way I'm falling behind.

C.e.M. September 13. 2015

Today is the day
I buy that bus ticket
for somewhere
on the other side
of the methodical mundanity
I've dubbed "daily routine".

I become
the salvation army
second-hand sweater
to the space in between me,
and wherever I end up.
Worn,
warm
and welcoming
to anyone who hungers
for comfort.

You smell like the second night
In a fresh bed of sheets
Soon to be soaked
In a morning sun
That has slipped it's way
In through the window to
Drench you in daylight and responsibility.
You worry what the others will think
But they're downstairs
And a ghost like wind
Will shut your door to hide you from them,
It will caress you and suggest you
Dive back into sleep again
But morning must end  
And you're drawn back
Into the pretend game
That awaits you
On the other side
Of your second day sheets.

C.e.M. 3.21.15

There was a time my words
were poison and sap
all in the same breath.
I was vile
but I was gorgeous,
The only vice I had left
was to claw out the insides
Of lesser men
With a rapturous tongue
And a sharp steel pen.

I'm still trying
to kiss girls
In the doorways
                              Of the bathrooms
                                                        Of these same few bars
While their boyfriends
Wait intrepidly outside

Since wanting something
I know I can’t have
Has always been a source
Of undeniable temptation.

I’m still binge eating
                                           and chain smoking
                                                         ­                 and getting ******
Since gaining weight
And the mounting pressure,
  Of the thickening
soot in my lungs


Seem to be the only things
that feel similar
To the stagnation
that accompanies
                                Filler friends
                                                  and dead end outings
That leave me pouting
Not in the corner
But just off center


C.e.M. 4.10.15
edit 4.18.17

I will touch your hair,
matted and wet after a shower,
and tell you sweetly I like it better
when you forget the conditioner.

I will count each drop that falls
from tangled strands
that are strewn across
your pink *******,
and slides down under my fingers
until there are no more,
and I will be forced to speak.

you smile,
and its so much sweeter
without that awful shade of red
I used to fancy you in.

You offer me breakfast in bed
but I want you instead.
we lie face to face,
nothing but sheets in the way
begging the day not to begin
and this dream not to end.

you are sweet as sin
and I'm ready to dig in.

the lights hung,
suspended in the fog
of the incoming storm
like lanterns from across the barriers of hades.
your faces hid in the shadows
drawn on like your thick eyeliner
and smudged, ****** lip stain
worn from too many cheap beers.

the methodical flashing of streetlights
played a song as monotonous
as a morse code metronome
spitting out meaningless phrases
and chords
that lead to no resolution nor reprieve.
with the flick of your lighter,
you ignited your somber visage momentarily
as we sped down winding hills to the highway.

the times were changing;
they were tearing down buildings
we had always taken for granted
and the friends we made
in our childhood
now lingered as undisclosed phantoms.

would you really go back?
if you could?
to the room in the morning
to the knife tucked in your boot
to the side of the road
to the carcass of your
festering
forgotten
fallacies.

or will you get in the passenger seat

and move forward with me.

C.e.M. 1.6.15

Blitzed and blinded
by barely escaping lies
that make you feel apart
of things
but have left
you behind.

Why have you shied away
once again?
you've lost any
real intent.

Bottom of the pit
with blood crusted lips
and a head
full of ****.

You're still a kid.
you're still a kid.

C.e.M. April 25, 2015

Your sleeplessness will follow you into your next failure,
cuddled and coddled in cotton carelessness.
And I will love you like you will love that quilt, for years to come.

and I will leave you
like the last patched fabric
that found another to cuddle under the warmth of her love
but I will love you enough
to pull away from strain of coming undone.


C.e.M.
April