There's something about stars
Have you ever gone out to a field, laid down a blanket, and just stare at them?
They're just beautiful to look at
They're simply beautiful because they're being themselves, shining at night

I know paradise
has never been lost
and so it can never be regained
like the moon, a one-eyed girl
in sandles running from the Marines
and the stars are her sisters
hiding in the dark bamboo,
only sixteen dressed in black
falling out of a tree at midnight
a rifle in her hands, a bullet in her heart.

The work I do is not easy,
but it's not bad.
I'm glad to have it,
when it's all I've ever had.

I am a student of the night.
I wear a black patch
on my sleeve.

My teacher's name is Sleep,
and she goes by Dreams, too.

She moonlights by the creek
that flows like a gust of wind
through leaves I never knew,
places I've never been.

We sing songs about you, love.
This song's about you.

Journal Entry No. 43

We lived in a house made of sand and glass, far away from the mainland, across from a vast ocean covered in snow. I exposed your eyes to the television that was full of light and promise, and then I took it away in the middle of the night and dug a hole in the muddy ground and filled it with your extinguished passion and slices of your cadaver. From Chattanooga to Washington D.C., we traveled in a rowboat across treacherous waters, waves the size of skyscrapers, coasting through narrow passages packed with sheet metal and raw ice.


For hours I laid on my blue sofa and read multiple pages of The Windup Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood, hoping the characters would resolve the inner conflict that I harbored deep inside of my pit.


Cecilia never wanted to plunge her body into the swamp, while the alligators chewed on the bones of caribous, it reeked of misplaced pleasure and broken promises. I promised you I would build a white cathedral, but the smooth stones sat in the gazebo, waiting to be cut and shaped, the red brick stayed untouched, like the small of your back. Crazy women have entered my dreams and have died in my nightmares.

Cecilia gave me a rusted anchor and tied it around my neck, loosening it only to plant a wet kiss on my adam’s apple, as she leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “A universe exploded in the bottom of a wine bottle.” I followed her into the depths of the lush green forest, carrying a dagger and a flashlight. I shined the light on the brown bear that was eating honey from a collapsed hive. The dagger felt heavy in my hand, but I didn’t budge, and for minutes I stood there observing the eating habits of the brown bear, sweat dampening below my wrists.

Years went by, Cecilia growing bitter and resentful, having to mop off the marble floors with a wet rag, and wipe down the counters with a paper towel. Chore after chore, all this weight and animosity created something fierce and unsavory in her. I climbed a Mountain in California, wearing nothing but black sunglasses and a long white tunic. Pebbles became lodged in the back of my hiking boots, pressing into my skin, reminding me that some things would always remain tangible and difficult.

Warm and sticky, the rock candy lit up into a bluish flame, the pipe glazing up, the smoke percolating out and life being simple and free, dissolved into endless hopelessness. We were young and we were hungry; fighting off wolves and tigers that were starving like us. The smell of fresh meat bloomed through the air like oxygen breaking up into atoms.


Sadness permeated through the picturesque land, a storybook ending and a cinematic conclusion. She held the shotgun, pointed it at my chest, and pulled the trigger right as a deafening applause broke out from the grass tennis courts behind the open plain. This horrible and massive pain shot through my heart, causing me to fall back and hit the ground, hard, a lump in my arm emerging, my stomach turning in knots, as I felt my thundercloud softening into willow spring and silkworms. She moaned and screamed; I unable to grasp the intention in her words. Not like it was on purpose, but you get the gist of it.

I have never been sophisticated
sophistication just never related
relative to everything i hated
hatred of the over-stated

i have never been materialistic
materialism isnt a characteristic
characterized by a mind that's realistic
realize i am not hedonistic

i never gave a **** about tradition
traditional is subject to my definition
defined by my own composition
composed of passion and ambition

You walk across the room
in your black *******,
a cigarette in your hand
and turn off the fan
in the open window,
like an undertaker waiting
by the door for the headlights
in the driveway debating
another swig from his flask,
like a ***** blowing smoke
in the dark flicking ash.

Befuddled
      (as if)
I was walking on the rain

The rain
     (so cold)
Was it fog or the
     (formation)
of another
     (lost)
and listless soul

Even snow
     (falling)
would be warmer than this

I speak of the
     (blackness)
far beyond the absence
of the light

Truly staggering the
    (immensity)
of the nothingness
that swallows whole
everything in sight

Jesus walk upon the water
I just walked upon the rain

Yet he stood upon the
    (firmament)
I just stood upon it's
     (soaking)
pain