I found a hand written letter
From the devil, left under my
Crushed feather filled pillowcase
The morning after I sacrificed
My silhouette to sleep
Underneath those
Discarded angel wings.
It read:
            The gates of Hell have finally frozen over,
             So don’t sweat it so much up there.
             You’re making me anxious.
And that got me thinking
Maybe I do take this game
Way too seriously,
Because, just like me,
The devil doesn’t write in cursive.

Your sheep skin drapes
Far too loosely, boy.
You're much too starved
to be taken seriously.

You've spent too much time
Grinding your teeth against the wind,
And too little whittling
Courtship with your claws.

They're all going to laugh at you, boy.
Your wool-woven fool's crown
Tells you it's true.
They're all going to laugh at you.

Last night,
Just after the horizon snuffed out the sun,
I raised a fort in my room
With sheets stripped from the bed,
Strewn across standing lamps
And tucked behind an old armoire;
One that’s been rubbed raw
By more hands than a rosary
And could tell you any kind of story
If you just listen closely.
And it’s within this Stronghold,
Guarded by Phalanx of G.I. Joes and
Little, plastic, green army men,
Past the “No Girls Allowed Sign”,
That I worked away on my own personal
Manhattan Project.

I Built a Box
With windows, sealed,
A pad-lock on an old worn door
And nothing more than a hole in the floor.
Then I hung it with decrepit strings and lucid wings
Thrown together using what
little shards of innocence I could find
Sporadically strewn around the room.
I climbed to hang my box from heaven,
Perhaps, perch it on a silver cloud,
The ones you hear so much about,
And use the gold that laced the place to build a gate,
A gilded gate to block out all hate from my estate.

But Heaven seemed to be afraid and must have fled
Because all I found were stars…
Stars that, disappointingly, didn't seem to shine as bright as they did when I was a kid…
Stars with rotted holes.
"Stars, shouldn't have rotted holes" I was told long ago
By a man who molded my thoughts back when colors still seemed vivid.
But ironically, I used them to hang what remains of my childhood in a juvenile fashion,
Glancing back and forth searching for a set suspicious eyes
And developing pre-conceived alibis just in case to my surprise someone
Happened to catch me in my moment of immaturity.

I waited in my Box, my serenity in the sky,
My shelter from the outside lies that can hypnotize
Until a mind's wiped blank, a "clean slate"
In which they carve their "rights",
And their "rules",
And their "Laws" using tools constructed by Machines

That know nothing more than edacity and greed,
That know nothing more than the taste of oil,
And exactly how cold steel can feel when
Grid-locked between two gears and a wheel.
So we kneel to this submissive hold
Of chain-linked fingers
That keep us encased when
We're told that Logic and Probability is all we need to know
To make decisions and grow
Now we can grow in any direction
That our branches are clipped,
Like a bonsai tree.
So believe me, I can grow
but grow to what exactly,
A mechanical humanity?
Now see, that just wont work for me
Because, sometimes, I like to dream
That I’m superman.

So I turned an x-ray eye to a box the sky
My star-riding, gravity defying
Fortress of Solitude,
And it’s here that I'm safe,
Because the only hole to a corrupt world is the one I drilled right through the floor.
The one I peer through at the placid crescent right below me,
In hopes to find a feline running hand-in-hand with a spoon
Or to catch the cow that leaps over the moon,
Or maybe even see the Lunar Man, himself, crack a smile
Anything to dismiss my denial of Fairy Tales
And fling me back to that youthful state of mind
In which my mind would state that anything is possible.
Because the world we live in now tells us that Chapter Book Heroes are Obsolete,
That we should just yield to defeat
And that it takes a hell of a lot less than Kryptonite to meet our demise.
We just know that Nine-to-Five is the time it takes a glaze fade over the passion that lies within our eyes.

If I could just find anything to justify that true love isn't merely a cliché,
That innocence and limitless capabilities of the mind
Doesn't whither away with age,
And that "Happily Ever After"
Is so much more than fading ink on a worn out, final page.

This is not a love poem.
Because
I know nothing about the entrancement of Romance
It’s like watching a mime mimic antics
It makes me panic.
No, I write epics and tragedies.
About political catastrophes.
About the rhythmic anatomy of poetry.
Not about “How do I love thee…”
But let me count the ways that these days
Have grown strange;
The passage of time has seemed to stop.
This black clock’s bold Tock and
Tick have been erased and
I’m still sick with the aftertaste
From the venom of your kiss
Your toxic lips made me itch that
Poisoned twitch One-thousand times
Before my bloodshot eyes
Went blind to your beauty.
“A most unfortunate disability”
Professionals told me
But I just sighed and smiled insignificantly
“No, no, you see this,
Ironically, is immunity.”
Imperviousness to seduction

But this is not a love poem.
It’s a professional epiphany
An observation

All research and annotations state things like
Blind Fortunes and
Heart complications are just
Minor alterations that
Spark fascinations in
Lab coats and stethoscopes.
Isotopes of foreign hopes
Are my safety ropes to cope with my
Distance away from you another day
And there I go again.
Every ******* word I say will start out right
But then convey to betray me with the
Cliché decay
Of a fluttering heart.
And on this day when time has stopped
I’ll re-lock my jaw that dropped
And, with Blind Eyes, this mental case
Will try to trace the chalk outlines
Of  lucid days
With the white spine
Of the brain stem

But this
Is not
A love poem.
Because
I refuse to be Entranced by Romance.
I’m the kind of guy who would Panic in
That Frantic state of mind
And draw away from Sunlight
To find warmth Moonshine
To bite the bullet and lace up these shoes
Because eleven shots and twelve steps
Is the closest I get to refuge.
See, I dream in the Black and White
Of a first version television box set
About Bloodied tragedies
And political catastrophes
Set to a beat based on
The rhythmic anatomy of poetry
Rarely about “How do I love thee…”
Or the bedpost marks of
Fading, Chalk-Laced Memories.

Let the Moon spotlight
On this masquerade,
Some psalm they say
I think I’ll pray.
As my toes weave beneath
Crushed leaves and starlight imagery,
I think I’ll pray.

We hummed along to every song
We ever knew.
Licking the lyrics out on
Scattered starlit scratchpads
With the tips of our tongues.
Ink-dipped ego trips about love
Etched out top-chart carbon copies.
Our cursive grew sloppy,
But that hardly seemed to matter.
From tattered verses about fictional characters
To Hymns about God
To an aucapella exploring the difference.
Every song seemed to be sung specifically for us
And, Oh, how we both knew it
As our eyes jumped the stars and
Traced the constellations
Searching for inspiration in
The echoes of deteriorated light
From thousands of years before.

You spoke in absolutes.
To which I’d reply vaguely
And we dug up the roots of a tree
That we never let bloom;
Clawing hard and deep at the
Untasted foundation below our feet,
Despite the build-up of dirt
Under our fingernails.
But between the grass-stained knees and
The hail of stars that poured on our backs
We couldn’t find time to breathe,
So accordingly we ****** the sky
And lit up another last kiss
Which we’d miss again in
A matter of minutes
And make a habit of the instance
Exploring a distance supported by
Limp wrists that gave way to
Two-ton daydreams, which always seemed
Just out of reach
But that doesn’t mean I didn’t try like Hell,
With locked-joint elbows and fingers widespread.

And while I read the symphony that the
Wind silently recorded on the back of my hand
I remembered how,
Once,
I whispered a song in your ear
And my breath gave you chills
When I got to your favorite part.

Will the Sun ignite
On this matinee?
It’s safe, they say,
Don’t be afraid.
But their water’s gray,
And it tastes like silent yesterdays.
‘Don’t be afraid.’*

You closed those eyes and smiled that smile
That I write poems about.
But I shouldn’t be allowed to draw out such
Brilliant arched lips
So I ****** it back in mid sentence
Before it could drip
Through the cracks in my teeth.
I’ve chipped so much away beneath this surface
Which our toes cling so tightly to
That my bones have grown black and blue
But I’ll continue
Because this tune makes it worth it
Each time my pick-axe sparks stars when it
Collides with stone.

And amidst the skin and bone framework
Of a canopy sky, it seems to me that
You spoke about the history;
About the end of things, so many times that
For a point,
All you’d breathe is eulogies.
So momentarily
All our songs forgot
That the finest things in life
Truly are free.
That the buzzing of bees
Can be music too.
A tune so true
That even trees will dance,
Their leaves will cast sunrays
In rhythmic waves
Putting ripples in timelines
And making tomorrow’s yesterday
Something worth remembering.

My brother,
unravel your fist.
Part your lips and taste
bittersweet oxygen;
Breathe in sin
and lust and sore eyes
and Lover’s skin
and the crushed aspirin on
Her bedside
one-night
stand.
Taste the sharp-edged thrill of
Medicine,
let it make your head spin
like when children wove
Wind and Sky with cobalt
threads of moonlight
and hummingbird hands.
I can see it in your eyes,
they pray like the curling fingertips
of tidal waves, and I am
here to tell you,
You
are not alone.

I’ve seen men with canyons
cut across their face;
deep and sad and dirtied
with their grandfather’s gunpowder.

I’ve seen men who’ve blacked-out
their irises with full-feathered crows
whose toes curl from the corners
to catch drops of their
Oceans
and hide them where ‘real men’
stow theirs:
In the bottom of a bottle,
“Boy” they say,
“drink every **** drop
‘till that pain goes away.”
These are the same men who
read ghost hieroglyphics
and practice bed-sheet rhetoric
that lingers longer than
certain cases of Cancer.

My brother,
you’ve lived too many starless nights
in this era of broken jaws
and bitten lips.
I am a twenty-year-old,
sleep-deprived daylight dreamer,
naïve enough to still
believe in true love, but
even I’ve really lived life
at least once,
or twice.
I’ve learned that the purest gold,
pink and orange burn
in Mountain West sunsets.
I’ve learned that it takes a long time
to find your way home
when all you keep
wrapped beneath this skin is bone.
So turn to the sky.
Constellations pedal everything from
Prophesies to pipedreams
and the only thing that’s constant
is the direction
North.

Today, I plan on catching hummingbirds.
I kissed open the face
of a dusty, old pocket watch
which I adopted from
a bent-spined,
curbside Saint
on the corner of First and Main
in exchange of the cure
for cracked vertebrae
and an honest conversation.
I clogged its clicking gears
with precious stones
to induce a temporary comatose,
so we’ve got until the
backwards time it takes
to grind diamonds into coal dust
to string those beating wings,
feathers and fluttering heartbeats
to the weathered backside
of our palms.
Brother, I want you to come with me.
Bring your chipped,
white porcelain bathtub
We’ll drag it to the coast.
Forget about that diamond powder,
there’s plenty laced in the sea.
We’ll spell out our goodbyes
in the lines our feet leave in the sand;
messages that will only be
read by free hands,
who find the courage to cross them.
By the tail-end of dusk,
We’ll tear clouds from this overhead
Mosaic,
and moonbeam-stitch them
to head winds and comet tails.
Together
we’ll sail this makeshift porcelain vessel
to the Eighth Sea.

I’ve heard,
from folklore and
childhood bedtime stories,
that long ago
Wise men with bare toes,
grass-stained knees
and arthritic elbows
mapped out the sky
on the ocean floor there.
It’s said,
they whispered the secret
to the man in the moon
before he was silenced
by mathematics and meteorites.
a secret that
only the guy with a
three-point belt overheard,
so scour the sharp bedrock with me
because I can see the need
to feel the crunch of autumn
alpine leaves
beneath your feet.
Read the contour lines of the sky
magnified by ripples and
a pulsing tide that sings hymns
about desert winds and cactus thorns.
take a deep breath
once more
before we begin;
fill your lungs with all the beauties
of Human Pollution.
Let your dizzy vision
spin with the pale-blue winds,
which will blow us to
a decrepit island,
that once was a burning star.

Because I need you to navigate.

I’ve been there once before,
but I can’t remember the way.
All I recall was
hitch-hiking with the ghost greens
of Aurora’s borealis,
and an ancient Man
with marked knees,
calloused toes
and cracking elbows
who, with frail voice, told me:
“From the curve of the moon
sewn to the tune of hummingbird wings,
you’ll find what you’re looking for.
But when you’ve discovered it, come back to this
canyoned skin and brittle bone.
Because Orion and I are trying to find
a reason to follow the North Star back
Home."