just like old words left-
your eyes give you away
like dormant artifacts
that carry the weight of falsified prophecies.
in your letters you “spared me the details” of cities that swallowed you whole,
citing the monopoly of american ignorance that senselessly consumed my ideals
and
truths
and the cracks intertwined between
the honesty of the rain pattering on an old tin roof.
rapturously rambling on,
textbook Rome motions for inevitable patterns drawn up by hands with fingernails like knives
no longer dull and complacent.
an excavation of sorts:
a plagued year of understated notions
and transplanted promises.

scars are a blighted currency.
we speak in overstatements,
blood capsules and parlor tricks
translated villainy romanticizes eras of naturalism
our fate
in the balance of underwhelming prose
and i think i would know
cradled curses
baby i was born this way
you've got to catch up
puking emperors exemplify judgment lapses
and solidify an irreconcilable clash
the study of clinical lycanthropy
is just a step above and beyond the underwhelming

in this plastic dormancy i’ve happened to slip into deeply (yet subjectively), i feel i can finally acknowledge, conceptually, anyway, that your incessant rambling about wrong turns and orange juice with pulp actually raise a convincing argument. of course, i don’t think i would ever openly admit to this in any sense of vocal resonance, but if you could read the inside of my head, unfiltered, you may be pleasantly surprised by the vagabond mentality that makes me tick. i have fallen under the same catastrophic spell that has consumed your golden years with the attempted emulation of summer scents and sundress hearts filled out by tattooed wrists, and chests that beat in tune with the pulsing beams humming their way through the thickness of the east coast heat. i agonize over the fact every single person i know is sidestepping sunsets, cursing the ambiguity of their own beguiling history, as if their new found (last resort) sincerity could somehow still turn “this” all around. i’m still wondering what “this” even is. maybe we secretly covet the allure of being the monster rather than ending up grey and beautiful. maybe we aren’t wicks sparking and knees buckling. maybe this is it

you make me want to show up to the choir.
pixelated eyes get lost in the illumination.
a promise from a poor apothecary speaking feverishly in forgotten dialects
because cunning tongues are second to none.
your voice when you're telling me where you've been. what you've done.
promises made between a passed flask.
brief lessons on authenticity. population displacement theories.
living the American nightmare. but everything resets by the semester.
we are Rome just before the fall. cast worry aside for one more day.
a farewell to arms race.
you were ruined by your own standards.

squadrons deployed. everything permanent is still removable if you ignore it enough. revising your lackadaisical list of priorities. repeat play and an ashtray full of roaches. at this point even nostalgia feels classic. cross your t’s and then just x out everything. circle the names of your favorite cities. hands held, grudges kept. i swear somewhere i’ve got something left. in my head the rescuers are always gonna be the ones who go down (under) in history. everyone else is just running their mouth or grinding their teeth. there are some lies left over but who cares? this might be the worst ever. or the best yet. i guess we’ll know for sure soon enough. i right clicked through this like five times because of what i’ve got flowing through my veins. sidenote: i miss you.

carving names into the woodgrain in old El Salvador. set the scene in your head: open air cafe, smiles and bad checks, squandering morale. vagrancy helps us hold our grudges. we are the greatest of all time, only we missed our mark and trailed off somewhere into a whisper. they always said our eyes gave us away, but i never really got that until now. it's inevitable that our eyelids will drift back and forth between sleep hemispheres until we accept the dormant fate of three twenty four AM. "you could be the death of me," you said, eyes fixated on the door, burnt out cigarette hanging from your cracked bottom lip.

that tightness in your chest you could never explain.
what good are leftover words for anything other than a small semblance of hope hiding behind pleasant phonetics?
natural shades still stain the replacement pillow cases as you small-talk your way out the door in between every fleeted step.

skyward certified ledgers keep track of all the godly, gritty details we can’t bring ourselves to believe. just throw some words together and make it count. the dust between our fingernails flavors the few crumbs we have left with the taste of a world that turned it’s back on us. honestly, the real apocalypse is just simply going through the motions. only we’re not as important as i’m making us out to be. sometimes (mostly on nights where the cold infiltrates your bones like an incurable disease and the rain is hitting the roof so hard you think that maybe this time it all will just finally come crashing down) it feels like we were designed for eachother. excuse the sentiment, i know it’s not me. i still picture you in the under-renovation-library thumbing through indexes for facts or truths, or maybe even just a semblance of hope. but that’s just the kind of punch drunk love ******* that keeps me ticking. my smiles come and go with the knowledge that you collect expired medicine and listen to mp3s of seismic waves from beneath the earth’s surface. you’re that special kind of weird that only makes sense in the way you can’t even play a game of monopoly without falling apart. a true rivalry is the greatest form of love. i’m stuck somewhere in between holding on to a grudge. you’re at my throat, i’m in your head. i swear i’m trying to regulate my sleeping patterns again. but the autocorrect on tumblr tried to change “mp3s” to “mumps” so where does your allegiance really stand? melatonin nod. glasses smudged. overedited and overanalyzed. linking words is the slurred speech of typing. or something like that.

outer body
mind sick off radio silence
worry behind me
embers of apathy dissipate across pavement at high speeds
"the best of the plague years" drones on through headaches
and sometimes this all still feels real.
DIY the time of your life
i've already given up twice.
old anthems resonate between clenched teeth
i just want to know where i can rest my head
it's like i have to channel the old me just to get a wrong word in,
senselessly spinning fabrications.
blog-tag manifesto.
cicada summer redux.
we are the originators of resurgent treachery,
and it's all seeping through the cracks at once.
settling ourselves by circumventing sidestep hearts,
old prestige fades as the evidence rests engraved on golden placards.

set your love free in hopes to repair the livelihood of controversy. yesterday’s savages are tomorrow’s saviors. in confidence under dimly lit familiarity, you whisper “the dosage makes no difference” as you sink into me like poison-tipped daggers securing a sought-after throne. we ward ourselves off from rumors of western winters and confide in the solitude of reciting famous one-liners with the Oujia board. you always hated how i didn’t take your obsession with unhallowed legends and celestial bulwarks seriously. it’s still hard to believe that the eyes that safeguarded my miserable legacy are the same ones wandered at the first sight of trouble. arguing over conjured arguments. talking **** about the screen door at your friend’s apartment. you were quiet on the ride as i finally threw apathy out the window, red eyes in tow, pretending to sing along with “I left Tennessee very much alive” creeping through the static of the country radio.