Lately when it rains-
Your articles on the floor.
The whining pacing dog,
relieves himself, what can't be stomached.
No, I don't think he likes your work.

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

i would like
to treat you sweetly
but you pull away your cup
almost on cue
your tongue extends
its protests
to sugar
mixed with the caffeine
morning aches
of days to-day.

the world spins
like **** in your coffee
poured deeply in
like rain redirected
by the water drain
and still, daily, you wonder
from whence all this drunken bitterness
came.

It occurs to me now,
set before a table of endless feasts,
that i have always been hungry,
and even as i eat
i cannot be sated.

The restlessness cannot be laid down
on any torn spring mattress;
it cannot be deep fried,
or burnt, in the stomach of a gas oven,
but rather, plucked from the tree,
or gleaned from the wheat:
you, spinning so gracefully, sow
and so lovingly, let fall
to a dog like me.

Finding strength stitched in the hem of your robes;
you, my procession, celebrated:
on a sunday, through the narrow alleys,
you slowly strolled,

tying opposite ends
of a wick, lighting the street lamps, so they too may live,
sweetly humming my beginning,
that i somehow forgot,

as i scurried along,
you, waited
for me to catch up.

Abbye says i am a finch
because i can swallow thistles
and other things most birds can't.

me and my steel esophagus.

So am i the finch?
or the cat that digests it?
or the dog who eats others excrement?

even if this poem is neither deep, nor strong enough
to answer that
at least my stomach is...

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 father says
you spread me thin
he doesn't want to see me
dying over you

but my throat swells
with your name
and my heart throbs
with your beat

you only say
you miss me
the ground you stand on
is not a necessity

the liqueur
is your blood
for now the absence
is your love

i built you
eternity
but if that is not enough
please, feel free

to tell me
anytime
now.

i want to stand like a tree
and reach my limbs out in every direction
i will let any breeze brave enough
shake these branches and flap these leaves
i will let every last drop of precipitation in
because whether you believe it or not i am thirsty
and whether you believe it or not i am searching
every root and every seed is probing
looking for heaven somewhere in this earth
because i know it cant be made of clouds
No, no, its more likely made of dirt
and I will stand still for the lovers cut
as they carve hearts and letters into my bark
because it is through the pain that i find love
indeed its beneath the cuts and under the bruises
where butterflies slowly devour me, inside
oh how i dream of pinning their wings, to a slide
and through careful meticulous interrogation
i will find the reason they fly, flutter, and burn up before
they migrate
to the poplar, to the maple
anywhere far from me
to any other home, any other tree
i suppose they too are searching
circling the globe
these hitchhiker bugs
creep into the skin, hearts, and stomachs
of many
but oh, how i wish
oh, how i dream
that they would
stay
stationary...

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.

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.

you were always there
sitting in the study
rainy window pane eye sockets
persistently looking past me

like i was just someone who died
a year ago and came back to visit you
from the grave
a spirit you could save

or shove in the right direction

you were always there
presenting the necklace
like it were strung with pearls of air

like someone didnt pay
6 weeks of pay checks on it
just so some men half a world away could
walk on ocean beds
and crack the skulls
of those chattering heads
of the sea.

for each and
every bead

wrapped around your neck
ms. fleming,
you'd do well
to-

...forget that
and all other things
if i could just
have an inch of your time and gaze
i may not be this wicked
astral projection
your aversions
have yielded to my name

no i might be something else

like a guardian angel
who picks up rusty tacks
and puts out your cigarettes
who pulls up your covers
and presses lips to your cheeks
oh i could be this all
if you would for once look when i called

'susan fleming
if you can be a
pleasant host
i can be
a friendly ghost.'

Come now:
as the night inhales,
and while the guards rest.

Wearing shadows
like loosely fitting robes.
May each footfall press
lightly, like a thousand soft kisses
across a long sleeping body.

Come now,
hold my hand
when the world, for once, is silent:
Al-Khafid, take this city.

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?

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”

i would like to stand beside kathryn burke.
well
only if You
can promise
it wouldn't hurt.

a promise: is a
promise: and You
promised: You would.

i would just be happy
if she would sit beside me
on a park bench
under a sky
as absent, as dark
as the black lace that chased
her skin

and even if You were
really dead and gone,
(or so says Nietzsche,
a fact i still find hard to believe)
even then,
i wouldn't mind.
as long as that rib
was returned to my side.

then i wouldnt be so half-
empty.
so inside:
out.

then maybe the mirror
would bare an image to me.

boy, i'd finally be living!

who would of thought
a sorry lot
like me
would be
a **** worth giving?

surely
none of the Lords
that are still
living?

but a promise: is a
promise:
and she always

promises.

like those pretty eyes of hers
i couldn't keep

in pockets full of posies

kathryn burke?

does it hurt?

to stand, to sit, to lay
beside me?

i think i
would like
to fall

into love again,
like a deep dark well

i
could
descend
in.

the days light slipped out--
gravity calls
it in other directions.

i do not miss it,
but sometimes i do
get reminiscent.

passing stones, gray--
far past illumination.
and for moments, forever:
i feel such
a heavy weightlessness.

my mouth agape,
but fear isn't a voice here.
i yearn for impact;
i howl for it.

when i am aging
at this velocity,
every futures growing
more and more
present.

and so
i break fingers
on every lonely stone,

and i bruise, like sunlight
thrown on
smashed human bones.

i drip,
like rain that longs
to be a lake again.

but for now,
i'm reflecting on
stars
burning holes
in the reservoirs,

because
i think i
would like
to land
into a heart again,

splashing,
like a rock dropped
to see where
a deep dark well ends.

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.

Eternal wheels spin-
connected by wooden spokes.
The center remains still.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Insects mimic man,
swarming the street lamps warm glow.
Only G-d knows why.

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.

We found our way in-
to gutters, in search of food.
Their scraps are our meals.

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."

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.'