I've lived in all times but these.
Going uncharted, through lands
i've only heard of in pubs

The crossing is a hop
over a low wall
and into brambles

Where I'm from,
the sea never allowed
for fruit and flowers

There was only
the blast, rolling
off the water

The air here
is patient. The people here
are patient

They've never been
on borrowed time.
Boredom belongs to them

And it's hard
to recognise
their joy

This, a balm,
to a girl who knows
happiness in others,

only as the white-eyed,
frothing panic
of consumption.

I am in a different land
They tell the time
much as we do,
But it counts for less

morphine. i found ashes in the pages of the photo albums under
my bed yesterday, leaves turned red pages to the colder chapters
and i thought you could still grow a rose this time of year but then i
remembered when we used to make flower crowns in sixth grade so
i took some morphine;
it helped with the pain

the night is younger than ourselves and we run through breakspears road shattering the lampposts with our bare hands, yes we are the new generation! everybody knows we aren’t scared of losing the pieces in our own, we just want to see the skin pulled off the tips of our fingers! (when you’ve been feeling the blunt edges of scalpels and needles all your life walking on glass starts to feel like heaven)

codeine— hell is getting hotter! she took to the clouds and the glass
shards wrote crimson sonnets on the bottoms of her feet, marietta i
trusted you i really did, i made you promise
that you’d stay; not with me, of course
(some things are more important in the end)
i wanted you to stay here.
but you wanted to see the stars so
i choke down the cough syrup;
one ache distracts me from the other

dear marietta,
the light distorts so strangely here in the water.
this is how i want to leave this place

small crevices filtering water from the rain,
all heedless, silence, when alleys utter shouts of pain,
all in motion, void devotion
hidden schemes, but caution
sleep,
even commercials, hide skill, despite it's toxin....

a vertical garden of concrete bliss,
lessons, points of times past, did we succeed or miss?
sleep well, each day another chance,
despite looks, money, truth appears, when self in stance

sleep, the city needs sleep,
not action, not movement, just self to keep,
sleep, sleep you'll have steps, leaps,
whether just or foul, an ad, or even truth in cowl,
sleep, city sleep, the city... the world, needs us
our minds are too busy, let the city, our minds sleep for once

Those who passed the gate,
                              don't ask the gate keeper
Those who ask the gate keeper,
                              haven't yet passed the gate.

It is easy to be indifferent,
                              and not take action,
Easy to fool one another,
                              and view morality as an abstraction,

What has long been neglected,
                              cannot be fixed right away,
Regretting past fault and folly,
                              Brings potential; Don't stray from The Way.

I
am
a creature
who
dwells
in
the
trench
Mariana
I
do
not
breathe
as
you
I
have
no
ears,
tears,
or
fears
I
do
not
love,
nor
hate
no serpent
tempted
my
kin  
I
came
before
sin
I
need
no
salvation

Techno-blurts bleed between neon corners.
And she walks among the flashing lights,
an illuminated epidemic.

His name is Arthur Brunswick,
or so the rumor goes and goes.
Art. Artie. God of Death.
With a hand on a gun,
the other on the pulse of America --
redundant --
his eyes slide up and down
her shimmers of symmetry.

If there's another place, somewhere,
he said bedding tobacco behind lip,
Let me know. Hell, let yourself know.
There would be no greater shame
than becoming a mystery,
even to yourself.

Whether or not she is nameless,
she strutted around body of the room,
untouched by the God of Death.
Stopping, her stare turned towards his,
Your name isn't Arthur Brunswick.
I know this, you know this.
Whether or not, you say my name,
you know who I am.
No matter who you say you are,
I have known what you are
since we were created
to be in this room.

They both turned their heads towards the ceiling,
waiting for the author to acknowledge them.
But he couldn't -- wouldn't -- for whatever reason
he told himself over and over and forever.

He grinned, Arthur of course, before saying,
This may not be entirely original, but you
cannot, will not be saved. Even by him.
There are a thousand girls like you,
nameless, an object of a wanna-be
pseudo-provocative, pretentious, poem --
Too many P's, big guy; let's tone it down.

Listen, this ******, he said as he pointed up,
wants to be David Foster Wallace;
all soft-spoken, trying too hard to be smart --
which came effortlessly to Wallace, not him --
but I can tell you what he doesn't want to be:
The person that saves you. Your messiah.
Are we using any words correctly, yeah?


Either way, he doesn't want to save you.
You are meant to die -- you're going to die --
know how I know that? Because. Because he...
He, Arthur pointed towards the ceiling,
He is telling me what to say, and these words
are leaving my mouth. You die, I die -- **** --
I die... I don't want to die, but we die.
Maybe you could have all of this dialogue,
but it's common for his males to, well,
you know, be interesting and somewhat developed.

Her body, pearl and on the verge of objectification,
had glimmers swim across her moon-crater-pores.
Looking up, as she had throughout her
line-by-line life, she asked the creator what next.
And, before she was given another breath,
the neon of the lights dissolved into her skin,
burning her alive, eating her alive;
her body falling apart, disintegrating.
Fatty rain drops of blood, bile, and memory,
gathered at the danced-upon tiles.

Arthur, frozen in the now disco heat,
swung his face towards the stripped away ceiling,
a lava sky staring back at him, waiting to choose.
He said *******, He said Just ******* do it,
and, at first, he was to live, out of spite,
but the temptation of choosing death over life
was too great for the author.

Arthur's skin flew across the room,
in differing shapes and sizes,
clinging onto the lights, revealing
the God of Death: the reader,
the absentee father, the scarred brother,
the crooked teeth heart-breaker,
the author, himself.

The pearl girl woke up, next to the author,
in a place in a space in his head,
telling him that she had the strangest dream.

I lied about so much and in such a shortspace of
time that I should probably begin

with the   circumstances of my birth.

There were three grainy    home movies in existence

that captured the

unbelievable    incident on camera.

A soft mewling sound was found to be issuing
from the manger
                                                              at the centre
                                                         of a school nativity play.

So that's me, then. The baby-saviour whose sudden

appearance was not recognised as a miracle by the State.

My origins are disputed and there are

some schools of thought       that consider me prop-made-flesh.

Others are rooted in more digestibly Anglican ways of thinking;

degenerates made me,                                    degenerates left me.

god he saved me how about that?

I remember my home phone number
                  from a house we left when I was 5 years old,

but there's sadly a decent chance I can't remember your name.

you finish your drink in a vicious way,
                                          as if you hate it.