"Because you have done this,
cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel."* Genesis 3:14-15

oh my dear eve
to be young and stupid with you
to be stillborn naked into a cold world
mouth full of rotten fruit
the taste of broken promises and half-truths
what I wouldn’t give to sleep naive
next to you and under a tree
to see God and myself hidden shyly behind fig leafs
to name animals and constellations
to experience lust and love
all at once
and without a whimper, concede to those foolish temptations
but you speak softly to brother snake
and every morning before I wake up
you slither away
it must be that fiend, that belly-down devil
who took you from me
oh, if only i or God were so convincing
but politely wincing,
a gentleman retreating
i press knowledge to my lips
and follow you, head down
out of heaven
And into a neverending
eternal
Hell.

previously
i would of said
love was the purpose
there was a heart to this universe
and it circulated
meaning
to every extremity

but now i wake
to toil
silver and gold pockets
finally a son to profit

my father was right
we're all just a number
and we cant add up to
lofty goals
or life plans
you're not a doctor.
i'm not a police man.

dream
no more my sweet
those are shores
we'll never meet

ithaca
is no more
and never was
and i'm not the kind of king to be waiting on
a prince, a pauper, a peon
i'm only a man in an argument with God
but its a problem
that is often
never solved

life is getting
what you dont want
and making the best of disappointment

oh penelope
it may be 10 years
or twenty
but i'll make it back!
i swear i'm coming back!

with money in bags
and cloudy eyes

'how're you?'

'oh, you know me
i'm making
it by
and by'

'but you're not you
you're not you anymore'

and we'll both get by
not really happy
but, hey, thats life

maybe one day
i'll wreck upon your shore
and your suitors will meet me
and my sword

i can string a bow
and keep my word

all at once

oh penelope
wont you wait for me?

wont you unweave
this burial shroud?

because
i am not
no no no
i am not
dead
yet.

I think you revel in my fear
I think you bathe in it
Like you were Elizabeth
And it was blood
And by some ******* of logic
It kept you young

I think you want me
Like a fish in a bowl
Swimming circles
In the space you rent to me
I am the tenant of your uncertainty
Forever taxed, and begging for the scraps
You’d leave

I think you smile
When I fall for your snares
With lustful eyes that raises both suspicion
And hairs
As I gnaw my leg, through bone and vanity
To run away, to be free

As you yell from behind,
“you’ll be mine for eternity
I am the entrance and the exit
You will see, oh, you will see”

I think every word you’d speak
Was just to show the point
of your teeth
and tongue
still sharp enough
to puncture my bagpipe lungs

mournfully humming along
“let me be, oh, let me be”

my body
was buried beneath sand
grain by grain
i carried the weight of the earth

i heard the ocean
sigh,
my tongue became the desert
too dry to call out to you

i was
claustrophobic and hesitant
unruly in my sediments,
stubborn, like the rooted ****

i was
quite the public nuisance
but still you loved me
pulled me up,
and dressed me in a kings garb

now i make the
roses weep
and all the lilies lament
their endless jealousies

just as you promised.

you do not know art, like i know Art.
though you paraded your passings in public
it was i who, Art, trusted with his secrets
it was my window, that Art, tapped when the arguing began
yes, you may have enjoyed a dinner or engaged in conversation with him
but he never trusted you with paintings of the english language
or pictures worth a thousand songs
you didnt get 6 stitches, with Art, when you tried to climb the tallest tree
to reach out and touch heaven but still fear the fall
you didnt find Art trembling in a bathroom from what he saw
that day. You didnt find Art in broad daylight dancing
to some invisible meter, some transparent beat
you didnt see the patterns left in the steps of his feet
and while you may have gone to the cinema with Art
it was i he forwarded the scripts
to reenact a lifetime of moments
because we, Art and i, wanted a silver lining
something vague, something inspiring
to keep this momentum going
and while you claim to know this being, Art
you have not participated in a drunken brawl
with Art, involving a few rotten Connecticut men
and things not in our control
you haven't discussed eternity and death
with Art, or any of his close friends
and though, i'm sure you may have wish you did
you do not know art, like i do.

i would like to play the trumpet for you
i feel i could breathe
the wailing of my soul into it.

i could play myself through this instrument
into consciousness
from this sleeping dream
into smoke from this flame

i could wisp and dissipate
like clouds in your eyes
can you see the clouds in mine?
or the dew, in the morning left?
i cant remember the rain
though i am drenched, i am dripping
every bit falling, drop by drop,
into a lake never quenched

before words, before television
you have always preceded
the breath standing at the crest of my lips
but turned, scared, naked
retreating, from the beach
back to the sea

where you close curtains
to my whale song
pounding at the door
unintelligible frequencies
on top of waves and across the sandy floor

i sink so low, shaking
chains shackled to the earth
i'd barter for the key
but the guards
they ask the trumpet from me
summoning vultures to my stomach
my burning coal punishment

for swimming so reckless
for weeping on the shoreline
because you and the rainwater receded
back into the depth of chambered winds
slipping like the valves from my fingertips
before the hushed tones of my non harmonics
my soul blossoming out of it
my song on every radio, every wax and needle
in the air wisping out

when you are not the sun
and not listening.

clouds in the back of eyes,
and sleepless nights.

Freedom is
a fly caught by the fish
that sits
on the tongue,
to ponder thoughts
to dark for digestion.

Repulsed,
as the silvery mouth opens up
and in that single moment
i think
the fly is
lost.

A hundred eyes
unveil the cloudy parched sky
that reflects off the surface

and reveals only the illusion of space
trapped in a ripple
like the image of a face
looking down upon the wavering nights
thinking about the freedom
found in the mouth
of a fish.

Upon the dry afternoons,
the heavens tremble violently,
thick with a fathers fear,
that condenses into anger.
The sky must some day fall,
and i think it knows that.
The sun blisters its back,
and the mountains splinter its side,
but still it lurches forth,
the chained gardner to earth,
content to look down and see,
his lover still shares his suffering.

Among the muddied morn'
Gaia quivers indefinitely,
full with a mothers worry,
that solidifies into pain.
The ground must someday slip,
and i think it knows that.
Time has curved her posture,
and weather shows her age,
but still creaking forth,
the spinning ballerina's curse,
and the infidelity of the truth.

a dupe wasp
settles on an orchid,
singing sweet somethings,
melodies that shiver the stem--
tremor, knees.

i'm sure she feels the samethings.
curling toes, and antennae
afterwards, the plumes of her pollen smoke
and a giggle,
beat faster wings!

it is good to find pleasure in the little things.

Beware concrete deers
for they are not as fearful
as their wild cousins,
unmoving to your high beams,
unforgiving to dads new car.

Christine says she's proud
eyes wet like clouded burnt suns
she says i'm a man
now, who can love all freely--
i hope i dont let her down.

In monasteries,
clay men seek the potters hands,
slight imperfections,
were their claim to injustice--
the worst kind of puzzle players.

She sifts through
my words
like a miner
panning for gold,
only finding dirt.

is it really necessary? to come and go as you please? to share the fickleness of these autumn leaves? to bat your eyes and drain the blood from me? to wrap that filthy crook around my neck? are you prepared for that? to walk in front of me out of reach like every october breath? wont you reconsider? for all the possibilities and peril? for fear of what could quite possibly, probably, and preferably be the end?

yet you continue? and interrupt this perfect re-clusion? and break apart every sentence like a rotten soaked november twig? is this all truly necessary? to please yourself and go and come into days like a drunk naked december wind? to howl down my street like some great holy christmas beast come to correct me? to show me all the preferable, probable, possible, and parallel worlds? to burn all the red where the Tennessee hills once slept under blankets of green? to hold a conversation with this snow as you please to come and go like the first tiny snowflake that will begin to bury me? as you insist? as you pay me no rent, tax, or mind? dont you know? that you should take apart those frigid winter layers? that you should disregard that preoccupied, parallel, preferable, possible, and most probable gaze? why, oh my god, why must you play shy? myrma darby, wont you look here? wont you look me in the eye?

why must i constantly be humbled?
need i press my forehead to the floor, my lord?
any pride or confidence has been slain before the altar
my lord, what else could i offer?

i have not much, and i am not much more
than a rag doll stuffed with a cotton soul
casually i will be sat at the table and forced
to watch you take your tea with six spoons of sugar

what a tremendous joke, what a divine comedy
to think the gods favor civility and peace
carried like a twig in a doves beak
angels singing through the dissonance of a deaf mans symphony

a dot within a dot within a dot
if there is much more to it, i've already forgot
i am a carbon copy, with atoms bonded sloppily
and i am not worth much, i am but a penny.

why must i constantly be humbled?
do i not already speak softly? every longing had only been whispered
(till now) i have never dared, nor intended, to disturb
a laughing remark for the placidity of my universe

kept hungry and at the door
a beaten pup and i am not much more
i am brushed off of every skirt
and still when every letters been returned

i still place the vowels with the consonants
into these cheap shoddy words
like rusty flowers in a transparent vase
trying to capture beauty in one place

so many lights chased
on the way home from the store
i am constantly humbled
and i am not much more

My skull cracks open at the eye lids,
as the light pools across the morning.

And Heaven is not peaceful, but spiraled, turbalent:
as ivory continents drift, aimlessly, about the hollow firmament.

They foam and twist, and I ask again,
for uneven patience.

My shoulder blades bend, I cannot pray, so I ask again:
for seven severed seraphs wings,

each outstretched against the dawns edges folding in.
My cracked hands hold equal parts water and oxygen,

though I'm still unsure which is the more transparent,
each is fleeting, and will not be cupped,

and will not be pressed, drawn into, dry desert lips.
I shall not pray, so I ask again:

for pale landscapes to be first outlined, then colored in.
The light and the distance,

the unaswered question,
the curious reply of morning,

as all the world bleeds out from my eye lids.

sheep do not exit gracefully
no, the shepard
no, the dogs
must bring them in
yes, the crook
yes, the growl
must turn their necks
toward pastures
toward homes
much greener than
the barren deserts
they have wandered in.

Where the soul stirs,
   in a maelstrom of fear:
       Spinning me down into
             a mote of dust.

‘Oh why am I

             here?’

Where the sky sinks
   and the sun drips, crystalline
      finally exposed

                  for what it really is

The great golden insignificance,
Cold,
         calculated, and still

                                       disconnected,

Is lost on
me.


         over the edge of a thousand cliffs
consumed
         just for the sake of consuming
the summer is frozen
         and even more brittle.

‘oh where are we going?’

under such tremendous weight
              the chest still rises
      but falls further


the distance, my only recollection
      of hugging the coast
                   in desperation

     the sea, turns and flees
ignoring
     my burning witch inquisition

looking up,
        chasing pinpricks.

the Night's veil, glittered with dead light

*'and there is no

                        direction.'

i wanted to show you the
swamp lights

because i am not quite sure
but i think they came here for you

like me
every speck of moss, every scale, every
quivered breath in this bog
has been impatient

and finally
you are here
with peace like snow
and hardly weighing a thing

you
were like a feather over the shore
carried like a torch
hands reaching out
to pull down the shades of night

you
who i've been waiting for
for who the swamp lights sway

you
who turn men into monsters
and monsters into men
solutions rest on your lips
and i am waiting
for your
exalting press
again

making me
no longer a beast
but something civilized, something renowned
not quite a prince, not quite the lead
but your giving me shivers, these sensations
of flights and crowns, these fevered dreams
of stepping onto dry land
and not looking down.

you always come home with this armor
like your hiding this great big jug of happiness in there.
is this image of her a one sided mirror?
or her bed time clothings reflection?
cutting out the curves, leaving only the armor

and these shaking words
'explain yourself! your eyes
are dull they must
glimmer for someone else!'

you are a shell within a shell
a self-sufficient snail
judging by the oxygen packs
strapped on your back
you're too good for this pollution
turning her lungs a midnight black

and you wear it well
a chest with no heartbeats
only clicks and beeps
absent minded
messages home
to the mothership

but she can see through you,
'just be gone like a demon
back to Nibiru.
circle the sun. your path
now altered in degrees.
but from your caustic debris,
your persisting memory,
still orbits me as a moon,
making me drunk and dizzy.
so still i must insist you leave me.'

and so you do
with your jug of happiness
successfully guarded
still intact
you are a fortress
a dam holding back
the ravenous waters
you cant share
with the indigenous people
here
your head floating
up in the
atmosphere
an unfamilar creature
safe inside the walls
of your space suit armor.

there was the three of us
me, pauley, and pete

you
could always see us
smoking cigs
down the street

we were
the baker street boys
we had hearts
of engines, and smelled of factories

i didnt eat
much that winter

and neither did my boys

every breath we breathed
was a cloudy gray
even in the summers
haze, we were mean
cause we had to be,
never knew
better days

still lighting up
mama's face

so if
you
have a question
if you have a point, i suggest you get to it.

because life is short like
me and my boys

and i
aint got time
to be
wasting it
on this
colour
learning about
the classics,
past, and poetry

it's 4:30 am,
time to deliver.

I wanted to write you a poem,
but there were no words for: "You."

And even if i could pen a thousand down,
it still be inaccurate,

Like studying the beauty of the butterflies in my stomach
after they’ve been pinned to slides.

You are something Mystical, something Fluttering,
something Alive.

Perpetual Explosions:
more golden than the sunlight,


and there are no words for: "You."

we are ascending,
like birds who pray.

losing cabin
pressure,

when pressed,
against the floor.

dropping oxygen masks,
from the ceiling.

ripping off buttons
from the doors.

regulated
breathing.

my stomach,
turbulent.

from either
gravity or grace,

clouds of blue,
and skies of grey.

falling, falling,
always ******* falling:

though i’m still not sure
what this means to me.

the maryland girls
sit with half eaten smiles
speak sideways
half truths
casting lines out into the Chesapeake
where men jump
at shiny elusive things
hook in lip
blood in mouth
worms writhing on their tongues
pulled to shore
uncomfortable
choking on oxygen
pretty eyes eclipsing sun
measuring by skeptical scales
a good heart for loving
strong lungs for screaming her name
soft hands to chase her hair from her face
hook from mouth
worm swimming down throat
pulled to feet
she kissed me
[swallowed it]
pressed for just a few seconds
[but shes still kissing me to this very day]
she whispers to go
but i so desperately want to stay
fish out of sea
she'll agree that i taste nice
but through seemingly faked sorrow
she'll admit she has lost her appetite
knife in chest
gutted head to toe
tossed back into
the frozen mouth of the Chesepeake
and i will be swallowed
we'll all be
and when i come floating down to Baltimore
They wont find much of me
like the Tomb i will be found empty
but since there are no places in heaven for fish
i simply will cease to exist

maryland girls
sit with half eaten smiles
waiting to devour
dreaming to digest
stupid
floundering
gullible
fish.

somewhere, in the gold echoing fields
the wind turns through wheat, removes its hat and bows
the barking, howling speech
dares the moon to lower its neck
'hum a tune, then lose your head'
oh the peaceful inches of the evening
where the sun and moon meet
like gentlemen dueling on Swiss Street
who will not return, cracked like autumn leafs
and twigs you walked over
in the middle, where its still
your eyes open while mine spill
you gulp, choke, but swallow
this is my sadness
brushed on me, i am bruised like a canvas
a child in a suit posing as Miklós
but not as handsome, and still not as verbose
and when my vessel shipwrecks on the shallows of the eastern coast
will you pick me out like a chrysanthemum among the dead?
will your lungs burst in silence when you check my pulse,
then my pocket?

and how fares
myself? in between
the ticking tocks?

the clinking,
inched signs of riots
numbered on clocks?

well,

i thought
You

would
never ask

i spend most of my moments
building shacks

peeling boards out from trees

same parts,
for a different body

animals and i, all crawling
inside, on all fours

the foxes pace, while i wait
out the storm

from my window frame
a west wind whispered warm

the clouds,
admitted the forms change
but that the vaporous nature of it, stays

between my fingers
combing the tangled apparitions free

begging ghosts and gods
for this hollow solitude

in the distance the cities
dismal lights brood

the night is overlooked
and still refused

the stars left holes in their place
that fill in blue when i wake

a dreaming question,
in sunlight, evaporates,

suffused:

is this house a home
or simply
an altered state

reused?

Goodbye, Earth:

I have felt every grain of soil
That was meant for Me,

My feet are coarse
From persisting friction.

I love you,
But I need Space

I need to cling to other Sovereign Suns,
To slip into dark pits of singularity,

Where I am one again
with You who are Many.

And every ring
orbits in place,

and every circle
will be retraced,

to where Lagrangian Points,
suspended and sustained,

watching a year spin down the toilet
of our shallow galaxy.

Oh yes, my friend,
We are the Stain.

And the Universe
is flushing us out.

For some time now,
these winter months

have been stuck on repeat:
like warped records, skipping and slurring beats.

Icy needles across my skin:
making me hum, making me sing.

I'm tired of seeing them,
in coffeee shops, and on adjacent streets.

These apparitions, these ghosts, and these souls
behaving like chimneys, billowing out of exhausted throats.

I need these stems, I need these seeds
to awaken, to grow, with purpose through the concrete

reclaiming the land back from Neitsche,
his cruel men, and his frigid industry.

Because for some time now, for far too long,
i have missed the birds and their living song

calling their silence an intermission
tho not visible, not entirely gone.

i will meet them on branches
high up, if and when they return.

Because almost all the time now
i have missed them like angels waiting for G-d.

Burning like leaves, candles in the Sun
pressing pen to paper, and naming each one:

some Bold, some Free,
some Golden, some Harmony.

Because for far too long now
i've interpreted, i've examined the question.

Asking myself, 'why play only one? why play just one?'
stringing notes together in one crisp strum.

And now, this morning, not playing for money,
but playing for warmth.

I am rekindled,
I am up at dawn,

and I am calling out for the Sun.

There is dusk
twisted

and circling
through the air,

as western mountains
devoured a Sol,

boiling blood:
impure, but thick with hopes.

Singing dog songs upwards:
the unrequited lunatic.

Pulled to you
like a current,

coming close
but never touching;

(i ache like the sea.)
or heavy stones sinking-

Find me, i'm Septentrio
and you're Eurynome:

and what was waiting to hatch,
has already been born.

Carving up Chaos,
to make my home.