When you're down and out
you can look up from that
gutter they threw you in
and I'll be standing there
with a smirk on my face
and a hand outstretched.

So, spit and my feet and
claim you don't need my
help, when we both know
you do. Scramble around
in the mud like swine,
because we both know
that's exactly what you are.
And my hand's still outstretched.

Your name never fails to appear.
On little LCD screens. On the back
of my eyelids where I trace the letters
as if they belonged to me.

My heart claws its way up my throat
like the way I claw at my scalp.
My face. My hair. Everytime
my phone lights up,
your name never fails to appear.

One doctor with a yellow number
Two pencil, writes notes on a paper clipped in a
Three-ring binder, scribble, scribble, scribble.
Four white walls suffocate me black.

Birds are chirping,
and the ground is wet
with rain and tears that
were not wept. The sky,
overcast with the fleeing
of the lightning storm
that passed through
like a warm knife through
butter. Carving a path
nothing it touched
remains the same.

I am the abyss.
That great gaping whole in the sky.
In the Earth. When you peer into me,
the dark threatens to swallow you whole.
A cold, calculating, Nietzschean monster.
I am the perfect predator, walking amongst you.
Aggressive mimicry, I dance, and I laugh, and I cry.
Counterfeiting emotions so well, that sometimes
I even convince myself I am but a sheep among the sheep.

Cracked walkways like smiles
cracked in a hallway
at the side of the house
lead the way to my crooked little
house. Where the lies
are dim and the air is cold.
We have special things to do
in my house
where the air is thick
and lies are old.
Snakes cling to the walls like
wet shirts in my house
where the foundation is sick
and the cries are mold.
Special things to do, I say
Special things, indeed.
Everything is special in my house
where the smiles are slick
and the eyes are cold.
There is a special hole
in the basement of my house.
Where the lights are shaded
and the nights long.

And the hole grows.

"Maybe if you're lucky"
she says like the dealer
at a blackjack table.
The representative of the House.
Of the Competition. She fingers
the deck of cards that hold my
fortune with whimsical interest.
Whereas I can't take my eyes
off the flop.

So, paint me on canvas
and I'll scribble you
in my little notebook
with references on your character
filling the margins like water
overflowing from a class, Incapable
of being constrained by
such a vessel.

Etch me with a pencil,
draw the side of me
that nobody can glimpse
but the artist.
Shade me intentionally
and pure because you
know just what to
do, turning a piece
of paper into life.

I'll make a crude
caricature of you
with lines drawn into
letters that can do
something so beautiful
no
justice
at
all.

I wanna breathe in smoke
and exhale brimstone.
I wanna rage against the
fallacies of the world and
chew on shattered glass.
I want to make life meanigful
and true, like so many novels
and short stories.
But it's like searching for
answers in something completely
mundane and pointless like
smiles in a grocery store.

Following the crooked pavement
that is set in the street
like a broken arm in
plaster of paris.
We steal the smiles from
the people plastered on
the sidewalks like thieves
in the night.

Stealing the hope from children.
Stealing music from the pages
like a third-rate pop artist.

Sneaking past sirens that
try to lull us from the
road less traveled.
Sirens that blare in the night
like ghosts in the hall.
Singing songs trying to serenade
the kleptomania from my
soul.

everybody is ******
in the head except for me.

Yeah, I'm fixed like a
pair of glasses haphazardly
stitched together with Scotch tape.

Fixed like a pothole
with a traffic cone placed
over-top, consistently treating the
symptoms and never treating
the cause.

And fixed like a hole
in the drywall
with a poster thumtacked
crookedly in place.

Fixed like your face
in front of a camera
and fixed like your face in
front of
me.

We beat the paths that
are laid before us with
machetes and gunfire
Loving violently, loving
violence like Roman citizens
at a colosseum.Cringing
heroically at dismemberment
and pain.
And we're all just the same.

She only tells the truth
in the mornings.
Sunlight cracking through
the windows across her
face just as sure as the grin
that I put across her face.
Whispered words that
make her grin echo across
my face.

She only tells the truth
in the mornings,
but I wouldn't trade the nights
for the world.

They say if you believe in something
enough, it'll happen.
I believe in nothing, and it happens
every single day.

1) The sky is the color of cracked television screens and in your sleep you're mouthing silent screams that sound like needles on vinyl.

2) I'm scared you've done lasting damage. I'm scared I was a monster before I even knew you.

3) The moon is just a paper plate and the stars are all LiteBrites.

4) Pictures of girls that are prettier than you, cigarette burned around the edges.

5) Betraying myself with every line I write. But my old heart beats like your knuckles on my ribs. Like your teeth on my lips.

6) Romeo and Juliet except the Capulets are pill heads and Romeo is an orphan.

7) I'm getting pretty good at not controlling my moods. It's the only thing that makes me feel like the passenger seat of your mustang did.

8) The alcohol burns but only half as bright as you do in my heart where you sculpt horrible ice sculptures with cigarette butts and bics.

9) So now smoke is all I breathe, gasping deeply at the chemicals that help me purge you from my system like a sickness.

1) Your heart is so entwined into mine that I'm not sure if it hurts you or me when I pry it out with a crowbar and leave it on your windshield.

2) You're letting boys ****** you sweaty in your backseat and I just want anyone to write about me the way all my blank pages scream about you.

3) I've always been one to root for the underdog and baby we're a million to one shot.

4) You're the Dragon and the Damsel and I'm not sure what to do.

5) You're the draft I've been writing on for months. Art is never finished.

6) I'm wicked and I'm proud, just like every fallen angel.

7) That's not a light at the end of the tunnel. It's your eyes and I think I always knew it was.

8) There is no salvation. There is no damnation. There's only you.

9) And I'm sitting outside the Pearly Gates, cigarette perched in my lips like a crow.

10) Or maybe I'm sitting on the bank of the river Styx, I'm not much of a cartographer and Dante doesn't have time for fools like me.

11) My poetry is a lip-synched prayer and my goddess has turned a deaf ear to them.

12) I was replaced by we and me by us and you wonder why I don't know who I am when you're gone.
12b) You wonder why we don't know who we are when you're gone.

1) 12 thousand tweets and none of them are substantial. They're becoming less and less about you though. Maybe that's what is substantial about them.

2) Something in the way you wrap sin in worship.

3) I'm an arson waiting to happen, is the funeral pyre really necessary?

4) Writing about you angrily isn't doing it anymore. I want to smash bricks through windshields that used to hold flowers I bought you.

5) Looks like you're not at the bottom of this one either. ****.

6) My love has always been leprosy.

7) You're the interlude, not the chorus. But, that's okay I'm a terrible vocalist anyway.

8) She wants to date boys that are self aware and boy did she hit the jackpot.

9) You smile with the grace of grandmothers and I'm a bad boy like your grandpa after the War.

10) Can I cut out your grin and put in on the wall next to my framed poster of Bob Dylan and Charles Bukowski?

11) Trace my outline in chalk when I finally drink myself to sleep. I'm euthanizing the pieces of me that belong to you.

12) If I find you in Heaven won't you be in his arms? If I find you in Hell won't you be my torment?

13) You make me feel as insignificant as God does and I think that says something about prayer.

14) I quit paying my phone bill so I'd quit dialing your number like a suicide hotline.

15) My teeth are rotten like the lies that spill out of my teeth. You find me beautiful and I've never been more self-conscious.

16) Your silence fills my abdomen like daggers and words clot where crimson should flow.

17) Loving you is *******.

18) My heart is at a crossroads and you're drowning in dust in the rearview mirror.

19) You prefer the subtle burns. The flames so hot they sever nerve endings when they lick your fingers the way I imagine I would.

20) She sings the body electric and I'm forced to worship her through computer screens and the scratch of needle on vinyl.

Yesterday you were swallowed by the sea.
Gasping and screaming air bubbles
and smoke.
Flailing and laughing your laugh
that made the room raise their
eyebrows in suspicion.

Yesterday the sky swallowed you.
Somewhere in the vicinity of
Howland Island.
Without a trace, without a sound
save for a single cry for help.

Yesterday the earth swallowed you
cracking and splitting like a
peanut out of its shell.
Suffocating and squeezing the
taste of soil and decay down
your throat and into your lungs.

She's moving to the big city.
Leaving this Podunk town
behind in a blaze of smoke,
sarcasm, short steps.
Accomplishments.

She's dancing away
from this town
with the grace of
grandmothers and women
long since past. Past
the cracked sidewalks
and brick streets, down
the highway. Out of here.
Out of here.

It's 4:17 A.M. and the
alcohol is wearing off.
I feel you creeping
back through my veins
like poison.
Bulging veins, busted
blood vessels. Eyes red
with guilt and hope
that they'll see that
******* car round the corner
and stop in front of my house
Blonde locks out of the driver's
seat like the prettiest little promise.
Prettiest. little. Promise.

The alcohol is burning
a fire through my veins
that makes every love
you ever showed me
microscopic in comparison.
Minuscule and disproportionate.

I'm tired of giving away
Pieces of myself like
Free samples.

Timing is everything
is what they say,
but they've never met us.
Passing each other
on the highways and interstates
that connect our hearts together
like tiny spiderwebs.
Like shackles.

My friend Murphy knows all kinds of things about everything.
Like the chemical composition of LSD and how to dance ballet.

He told me once that there are an infinite number of universes,
where each possible variation in life has happened and I think
it's kinda funny and I think it's kinda sad

that I'm stuck in this one

And all of my cigarettes taste
stale since you've become
concerned with my health.

Nothing I could
ever write would
capture the way
you make me feel
when you're not even trying.

I'm just an unlabeled mix CD.
Slightly scratched at the edges,
worn with the labors of love
and the empty rooms with the
twangs and bass of my soul
resonating off the wood panel walls
like they were midnight cathedral halls.

She's the kind of girl that laughs at her own jokes.
Not in the way where you are left thinking
she is the center of her own universe
but in a way that makes her the center of yours.

I made you something for Christmas.
Nothing that could ever satiate your
expensive taste. More brass than gold.
A little worn, a little old just
like my apologies and all of those
"I miss you"s.

She's all class
and manners.
The way you imagine
your grandmother was
when she was a twenty-something
Army wife while your grandfather
was eating mud for Christmas dinner
in a trench outside of Berlin.
All smiles and pearly white teeth
and slow dances for one.

All of time is happening at once.
I am forever sharing that awkward first car ride.
Knees bumping in the dark.

All of time is happening at once.
I am still sitting on that couch
stealing glances at tattooed covered arms
from across the room, wanting them wrapped
around the small of my back.

All of time is happening at once.
I am forever at the tip of your tongue
Syllables echoing like the Big Bang.

She doesn't read poetry.
Everything pretty I've ever
wrote for her has remained
unread like junk mail.

There was a story I read to you
from the internet about a man
who paid his dead girlfriend's phone bill
for months after her untimely demise
just to hear the sound of her voice.

You asked me if I'd do that if I were in his place and you were gone.

You're gone now.
And I'm still calling.

You are a dinner set for two
and I'm late like always.

The candles have melted into red and white puddles on the tablecloth
like wax seals on the unread love notes
I leave tucked under your windshield wipers.

I'm sorry if this seems long-winded but everything I write is short
because I'm not used to speaking without you cutting me off mid-sentence and I must get these weights off my chest before they crush my lungs
like the pressure that surrounds me as if I'm a deep sea diver
and you are the ocean. I used to liken you to things like that.
The ocean, the color blue, famous women that have courted my heart
from their places in the history books:
Jeanne d'Arc, Bonnie Parker, Amelia Earhart.
But the wars you wages in my name were lost and my name could never rally the troops like God's.
And the banks we robbed never satiated your expensive taste when everything I could offer you was more brass than gold
and for that I am sorry.
I never wanted you to get lost in the ocean. Your plane crashing somewhere in the vicinity of Howland Island where you sent out your last cry for help
and it choked for life in the static of my busted ******* stereo.
I know that this is coming out in pieces and my stream of consciousness
lacks the stillness that Nature tries to instill like a watchful mother
but I can't help the way all of these words and sentences keep bringing
you back to life and I know now that I will never stop
because what can Nature tell me about the way your lips moved
when you whispered my name.

String me up like a marionette.
Pull my strings, watch me dance.
Dance my way through relationships,
friendships, sinking ships.
Watch me give you an Oscar-gold
performance. You can't tell that
I'm as hollow as the o in love.
As hollow as your smile
to everyone but me.

You are a rummage sale
jigsaw puzzle. Pieces missing.
Colors faded and edges frayed
exactly like the edges of our smiles
as they crack through the masks
we wear. Faces half concealed
like the Halloween party
where Red seeped through
and made me feel again.

I am a warped vinyl left in the sun
by your careless hand.

My voice has become so warbled
it's no wonder you can't hear
all of the times I screamed "I miss you"
into that tin can microphone
so many songs ago.

The surface noise has grown louder
than the instruments
and now I know why
you never dust me off
the shelf and play me anymore.

I used to think your eyes
could save my life,
in the middle of Summer.
But the days are shortening
and growing colder like your
eyes and tone when you
talk about things about love
and current events.

The funny thing about memories
is that when you find an effective
tool to blot them out, say a bottle,
A bottle of whiskey, a bottle of Valiums
a bottle of white out, they adapt and
change like some Darwinian monster
come to fill your mind and heart
to the brim with ink like longing.

The English language falls
terribly short of giving me
the ability to describe how
I feel on a day to day basis.

So this is how it is.
What life has become,
a fleeting chase for
the next **** and
the next buzz.

What a long way
we've come from
our childhood dreams
of space voyages,
and gunfights.
Presidencies and
marriage.

and this drought has
lasted long enough
for the crops to wither
and my stomach to swell.

Don't you know that
I would have died for you
like a nameless martyr
on a cross, blood trickling
down my brow like the sweat
you used to induce.

Don't you know that
I would have lived my life
just for you, living on, just like
you told me to, never calling
your name, never bringing you
back.

Don't you know that
I would have killed for
you like so many starcross'd
lovers, needing only you
to survive. The antidote
to the poison beating
through my heart.

Your voice is electricity
that shoots through my ears
and down my veins like
Frankenstein's Monster.
Reanimating the dead
cells and tissue with
surgical precision.
Arcing across my back
and shoulders singeing
hair follicles and chattering
decrepit teeth in my mouth
like dice in a cup.

Your voice is electricity
and it's clinging to my chest
like a defibrillator, sending
shockwave after shockwave
through my heart and soul.

against my face and ears.
Forever pummeling the
inflections across my jaw
like a teacher who is overworked
and underloved.

You've conditioned yourself
not to care, but I'm still
standing on the corner
with rain pouring down my
back like the lies that pour
from your mouth, bitter
and so ******* obvious.

You've conditioned yourself
not to care, but I'm still
by your side, trying to hold
your hand, with a reassuring
smile and a promise that everything
will be just fine, as long as you take
the time and try.