His father was a drinker,
                                                        ­       his father was a drinker.
And for him,
                                                               love was a folding chair.
Life was difficult.
                                                      ­         and time was purchased in packages.
Bruises would wax and wane,
                                                               though his skin stayed clear,
His wrists were like orchids,
                                                               you could peer through it,
thin, fragile, and resilient,
                                                               but see the carbon, not the blood.
His father worked at Lobel’s;
                                                               his father worked at East National.
In those days, gin was cheap,
                                                               but tonic was steep.
(Circa 1894)
                                                               (Circa 1918)

Plato believed that the future could be told
by listening to the lingering whispers of the wind.
between its howls and sighs and
its knuckles cracking on the branches
it mentions something,
the something to come
the something that envelopes us
like an iron blanket.

or so Plato says.
but every time i've opened my ear
it just grew cold and slightly stung
so i stopped trying to hear the something
that wouldn’t voice itself loudly enough.

yet, along came an orange-haired girl who claims she can hear the wind
and i watch her and she sings along with it
in words that sound like cello strings.
her arms sway leaflike in a breathing ballet
a combination of her and the something
and all i hear is its hushness.
but it lures my legs to sit
and it tempts my mouth to shut
and listen.

i don’t know if this girl actually understands Plato’s sacred windsong
i don’t know if it’s something that her mind composed
but i do know that her lungs seem fuller than mine ever have
because she breathes belief, something i’ve always exhaled
in my sarcastic search for Science’s future.

after enough charred inhaling and stuttered swallowing
and after the invincibility of the act evaporates
your biceps begins to sag and your mind stops moving
it’s you suddenly find yourself hovering through the days
and time is subjective and all things are subjective
and so what if you don’t do that because everything’s just particles in your brain
slapping against one another to make the flickering pictures of this world

and then once every few days you shake your head and stand up
and say I’m gonna do something! but keep the same diet
and revert to the same state of synthetic zen-like denial.

you sit on a silent conveyer belt as hours pass
and things happen around you but you see them through a lens
a film onscreen, pleasurably cathartic, but your soul’s still in the theater
watching from a stained, sticky seat some dimensions away
and the heckler’s behind you won’t shut up
and they keep you from focusing on the movie itself
and your peripheral vision becomes distinct
and you find yourself aware of the speakers and exit signs
and the slight dust and film grains splashing in front of your view
and you think of this as an ephiphany
instead of Brechtian distanciation at its most curdling.

then your brain starts feeling like a frisbee
and your body is the monkey in the middle
trying to grab at it but it tires out
and the bullies run away with it
and your left with a black hole in the head
laying in complacency in front of a shimmering cube
sounds and images with no correlation or relevance
pondering your higher knowledge of all things around it, around you
and giggling to the echoing cobwebbed corners of the room
about the ignorance of those not privileged to the same diet.

the moment when you met was rather insignificant
but then someone told you that she liked you
and you realized that – hey – you suddenly liked her too.
and so you expectedly courted her
kissing her at moments that you did with previous girls
telling her old sentences
recycling plainly hidden stories from your childhood:
one showing your good heartedness
one about your embarrassing marching band days (without forgetting to mention your pop-punk band now)
and, of course, the first girlfriend tale that makes you seem vulnerable.
and through these, you reveal things to her that other girls, now decaying in your mind, have known for many many months.

yes you hook up
and the *** is up to par
and there’s some appeal to the overall lack of trying involved.
you date as obligation
and you somehow convince yourself that you love her
because feeling wanted feels so **** pleasant
and her lack of intrusion on the rest of your life is pretty convenient overall.

and out of complacency this love takes hold
or at least solidifies like an algae bloom
and you grow tired for settling
and she gets exhausted from caring
and everything stagnates to a perfect balance.
your blood hardens to plastic
so the your muscles can no longer fight
against the unsettling comfort of the life
you said you’d never lead.

living can be tiring and decisions regretful, so often we find ourselves
marching to the beat of obligations’ drummer – unnecessary paths are safely untreaded
doing only because the doing is necessary – to keep life at its homeostasis
fixing but not tinkering – the return to normality is the goal
just accepting these ******* days for their lukewarm livability

yass yass
you his over my shoulder
******* through Foucalt
agreeing to whatever I said in a way
that doesn’t show commitment or care
to my whichever whyever opinions
cause I’m here to drive you to Vegas
so we can drink and you can leave our trip
for a guy who tames white tigers and will buy you

white wine from California from a vineyard that his friend owns
and he will have to take you there sometime

you sure are fun
and we have fun but I don’t like being
a vessel for your fun
so you can take your ambiguous agreements
and your artificial american adventures
and shove them up your
recently waxed showered this morning but look ***** on purpose
middle class daddy issues band-groupie neo-intellectual
early twenty’s ***.

and your sigh and smirk
and say *yass yass
and push a bang out of your eye and look ravishing.

boo croon the sunflowers
and **** squeaks the jay
this garden was not tended to
and when it was, it was done with bitter blisterless hands
the weeds are creeping out now and thickening stalks
and they move out
out out
goes any sense trust we grew in this garden.
and out
out out
goes my frothy yellow blood into the humid grounds of the garden
and you mop it up and glaze over my barkless parts

boo croon the sunflowers
and **** squeaks the jay
the hose to feed me
was bent at angled corners
and the water shrieked its way through
to come out a subtle flaccid
drop by
drop by
drop
on my parched cracked tan sun slapped skins
and i was angry
that you never felt the need to untangle the hose
because you turned the faucet to full volume
so you assumed that was all the water you could give
and i needed

boo croons the sunflowers
and **** squeaks the jay
the garden is all sand colored and tired
and you don’t feel guilty
you looked at it every day
and squirted what you could on it
and picked whatever weeds you saw
but you never went beyond what looked pretty to visitors
and you let the roots rot across the summer
and now that the winter’s fallen in
there’s not enough water to keep the garden beating
and all the melted snow in the world won’t make up for it

you know how when you are reintroduced to a thing
a thing from your child-days, a grand something, a monolith of that tiny time
and you know how when you see it, it is suddenly
average-sized and painfully plain.
well, this wretched phenomena,
this inevitable happening of that comes with the aching curse of age,
was given a name by the scientific community:

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (or AiWS for short)

i swear to god that’s the name,
and when i learned that some psychologist chose to identify this as a real something
(and give it a title so playfully curious, at that)
i couldn’t help but giggle at how man’s heart can be so unnecessarily sub lime.

Hiro was such a clever guy.
he always said the funniest little jokes, even when he was Hiro-chan, to me.
he used to act like a cat when he was frustrated and, and-
remember what he said to the mailman that day, in like june?
about how he looked like an angry Hotei-osho?
we all laughed and that mailman, that man’s face went radish red.

he was such a good lawyer, Hiro.
i mean, he wasn’t rich and powerful, no
but he did good things, though.
like Sayotoma’s lease –
without Hiro, he would’ve lost the store!
and then where would we get our tempura? huh?


oh, Hiro, you are so much fun to talk about.
and i hate that all i have of you now is smoldering incense and an expired passport.
i poured a cup of water on your grave today, you know.
it was a hurting kind of hot under summer’s sun – it’s august, after all.
some steam came off, and it sounded like you sighing
and i said more loudly than i cared no problem, Hiro
and my wife looked at me, with a misting eye,
while my son kept flicking matches
from that cheap matchbook we got at Sayotama’s place.

all the failed matches collected between his sneakers
and i thought that i wish Sayotama didn’t make all his matches
so **** fragile.
they burst and blacken in a second,
and you don’t have the chance to really light something,
and they just end up falling between the sneakers
of some kid who can’t even remember you, Hiro.

Father, Son, Mechanic…
Man, I’ve wanted to talk to you – really talk to you – for some time now.
to see your face in front of me, instead of dangling from necklaces,
or hanging, melancholy, over sexless couples’ beds.

I’ve spent a lot of time reading all that stuff you wrote (supposedly),
and I’ve enjoyed it, Man, I have.
but I keep wanting it to be a letter, when in the end it’s just
a bipartisan explanation – an engineer’s guide to
building a pretty vehicle around a faulty engine.

I always see you, arms spread,
sprawled across the older bitter-america’s steering wheel.
my mama would tease me, saying you’d want me to help some day.
but you and your cronies drove me like a beat-down El Camino,
joyfully taking me through wrong turns and bumpy streets
waiting for my chassis to split.
and once I ran out of gas to offer, you refused to touch me at all,
letting me rot in your cobweb garage.

and all those ******* in turtlenecks and polos popped,
they’ve gleefully branded your logo on their chemical biceps
and gaily explain how close you were.
how they knew you like no one else did,
how you guys didn’t have a connection, but a relationship.
people should only let their mechanics touch their cars, though,
and keep their innards free of oily fingers.

to be honest, I don’t think I’ll be coming back to this establishment again.
it’s a little too clean for my taste, and your prices are way to high
especially when all you get is a little peace of mind and a sense of humbled grandeur.
don’t worry about the car, though – you can keep it.
you’ve sort of spoiled all its good intentions,
so I’ll be buying a new one sometime soon.
I guess I’ll be taking a taxi.
No, actually.
I’ll hitchhike home.

men would always tell me about the
arcs of screaming air splitting through gaia’s hair,
the heads of wheat falling, light shredding, and the sun bowing before
Leah and her scythe

this woman spent all her twenty one years in the fires of idaho
working for her father
preparing food for her brothers before their schooling.
she was made to stay at home,
and there she worked and washed and read and cut and crystallized

business men in windup cars would see her off the highway
her muscles swaying with the wind, treetop hair flogging the setting sun
singing folk songs to herself in a falsetto that sounded like a rocking chair.

these men would stop to chat, but soon realize that this
Leah was burning too much for them.
her heart was different from city folk
and most country folk for that matter.
her ventricles were connected through a series of
crimson twigs and gnarled vines.
it pumped like any other heart,
but it would crack and wheeze anytime she left that farm.

those businessmen expected that she would be enthralledby anything out of town.
but it was the opposite; fancy gadgets bore her and
snazzy suits and autos seemed like pointless little ornaments.
she’d be more impressed by a man who could cut wheat like she could
a man who could shoot life out of the iron earth
and feed his kin with the pickings of his heart.

but she never quite found a man like that.
she stayed there, and let herself bleed into those idaho hills.
the roots of the grain wrapped around her veins
and her lungs breathed for the farm
just as its rainfall pumped her brown blood.

she never grew old that Leah, because she kept her crop so fresh.
every morning she watered and plowed and every while,
with scorching eyes and whipping locks
she’d swing her scythe, and smell the breaking spines of wheat,
and would quietly sing,
like a rocking chair.
Posted by David Clifford Turner at

I spent two years calmly collecting the pieces of you,
the boy I love like the music.
I remember the way your auburn eyes stared at me when your body turned to glass,
and you were split and scattered across the horizon.
I walked through forests, under redwood gods, looking for the subtle gleaming of your shards in the soil.
It went on like this; I’d find another piece, smile at its lovely shine, and place it in my basket, continuing.

I wasn’t alone, though.
Sometimes I’d see a piece sitting on a leaf miles up
and The Wind would be watching.
It would gently blow you off, floating you to my breast, my hands grasping tightly.

I lifted a stone to find a piece in the arms of a Spider.
A single tear fell from one of its eyes as it handed you to me, understanding.
As I walked off, it slowly waved as it wept.

When I went north to find you, and saw a piece locked under the frozen lake,
the Sun outstretched a warming ray to melt a hole,
one just big enough for my hand to lift you out of the arctic.

For months I searched, but it was not a sad hunt.
Because every piece I found brought a memory of your laugh,
your long fingers,
or the coolness of your neck.
And every time I was scared at the impossibility of it all,
the melancholy kindness of the hearts surrounding me would remind me that
all I had to do was keep looking, and eventually I’d find all of you.

My basket was almost filled, and with every piece I found,
my face would glow in your bliss.
I sprinted across the gray desert, kicking your shards out of the sand.
And in the exhilaration, I barely noticed the great ocean I had come to.
I had reached the end of it all, found every piece of you I could,
but you were still just fragments in a basket.

I collapsed in front of the Sea, shrieking your name until
the screams scratched my throat.
The Sun and the Wind and the Spider and every wonderful Thing that helped me
crowded around, mourning.

Our tears flooded the shore, raising the tide.
The Sea filled up, and lifted the basket, carrying it out to the end of things.
It drifted out further,
until the sum of all your pieces and those two years seemed like a little gleaming speck itself.

And then, at the defining line of the world, the Moon shot up.
Slowly at first, but gaining momentum, it exploded into the indigo sky,
becoming larger and larger until tenderly taking its place in front of me.
It placed your basket in my hands, and laid your final golden piece on its top.
Light enveloped its wicker frame, and it burst in an eruption of sunset sparks
and everyone stood with shining eyes as the colors took shape:
two arms, two legs, shaggy hair, auburn eyes, long fingers.
And then you stood, collapsing into my arms.
We silently held one another for some time,
and in unison everyone sighed with a quiver in their voice
at the aching beauty of all things.

I remember when I found her in porcelain
cracked. she shivered the shell until she pierced
out a tiny foot – a baby’s foot.
five fingers and toes were revealed at a time,
but then came bursting out her head: all-black
eyes, large and quaking. skin as pale as the
egg she split from. but instead of wafty locks,
she had soft brown feathers, flowing from her
widow’s peak to the small of her back.
besides that she was a perfectly normal
child.

i grew her up in town, with the other kids.
i fed her what i knew: seeds and corn and the
occasional peanut butter pinecone.
I made her a nest of blankets every night,
and she sang me songs goodnight and
we always slept soundly and unthinkingly.

she grew up quick though, and soon came the days
when you send your daughter off alone
to school. she was five and I was thirty eight,
and I was the one terrified. most other girls
don’t have feathers, especially this young.
I offered to shave her spine, but she refused.
she crooned that she was born in an egg,
and she didn’t care who knew it.
I was frightened for my beautiful bird-child.

schoolday came, and off she went, dancing her way
to the moaning old bus. it puttered off
in a smoggy wheeze. the sun sulked some miles
before she slowly staggered home, without a
backpack, shirt torn, blood rubbed on her knees.
I asked her what happened, and she never told,
saying it would only make me dark and bitter.
but every morning she still hopped her way
onto that bus, with her bright smile and ******* eyes.

I couldn’t take it. one day I followed
the bus on my bicycle, and visited
her school for the first time. it was large and grey,
like a cynical stone with bunch of windows.
I roared in, asking where she was, attendants
voicelessly pointing in any direction
but the right one. I saw her on the playground,
lanky kids pushing her, bony fingers grabbing,
trying to rip off her telling birthmarks.
she screamed, shouting that she was a child, too.
they asked if children came from eggs, if children
ate only seeds, if children had those things down their back.
she said that this one did. they all laughed.

an angry boy pinched a long chestnut feather
and pulled; she wailed a song of aching.
I jumped in to rip him off but he wouldn’t let go.
the feather stretched longer and longer,
four feet, five! her body bucked and we fell over.
her feathers spread from her spine, wingspan huge
and she glowed a stunning yellow-pink.
her black eyes shimmered, looking at me, apologizing.
I ran to hold her, tears on my cheeks, and she
held out her hand, no. I asked why and she said
goodbyes are too hard this way.
before I could ask what she meant, she sang
I love you
and exploded upwards. her wings stroked lightrays as she
burst higher. she went straight to heavens, and just
when I thought she was out of sight, she spread her feathers
and her silhouette erupted on the sun.
I waved, and saw her white smile glow from her grand shadow.
and off she danced, feet playfully poking at clouds,
with regular birds gliding beside her
and regular children watching below,
her boundless black eyes unjudgingly
gazing at the world running beneath her.

she was my bird-child, and I was her father
for a brief period. I wonder where she is nowadays.
whether she found others like herself,
others who didn’t care. or whether she’s still in the skies,
dancing with the stars, her ten fingers and ten toes
wiggling in the blue, feathers proudly spread, singing.

cannonball bodies
in stagnant ponds
tossed-out towels
under browning legs
fluttered words
and humid spit-kisses
mean that for now
our stray-mutt mouths are fed

discarded burnt butts
and whisper-splash bottles
angry coffee caked on tires
from nights of broken speedometers
and a.m. dinners
frustrated waitresses
and chuckling short-order chefs
shadow the backs of polaroids

august breaks in,
with cars on lawns and
weeks with relatives.
the sun sets early
and the moon predictably dims.
our blood hardens,
and we all stop simply flowing.

june is born
and our arteries melt again
watch hands are ripped off
pagers recycled
clouds make critters
and our coughs make clouds

lazy insects and
sweat sit on eyebrows above wayfarers,
reflecting summer’s praying,
under black glass, youth decaying

he had folded photos of Anita Page above his cot,
and a melancholy little crucifix,
and, of course, a long-winded letter from his mum.
he dipped tobacco and always tried to spit it on the barrack’s ceiling.
he would squander half of his canteen on his hair, if it got too muddy in the trenches.
he whittled a bar of soap into a horse one time,
and then washed himself with it right afterwards.
he always put on his cap at this saucy sort of angle,
even though there never was a lady around to woo.
once i saw him read Jules Verne, and I asked him about it,
and he said “Who?  You know I can’t read for squat.”
he was a funny man, you know, a guy that makes life feel good.

two days ago i saw his lungs throb against the walls of his ribcage,
i saw his adam’s apple swell up rotten, and his neck grow thick and veiny.
his muscles spasmed and his orifices emptied and all i could think was
how worthless it is to carve a horse out of soap and then soak it to nothing right after?
it makes me wonder why someone would bother
whittling in the first place.

blues man, man of soul,
writhing in my forearms.
a heart too calloused to pump,
eyes too full, fading to chalk.
thin wooden fingers, whining joints,
sagging biceps splotched with bleach,
a broom mustache solid in sweat.
it hurts, blues man, to feel you fade.

your sax bleat against the sidewalk,
the dry reed snapping on impact.
your canned bank spilling nickels into the storm drain.
i felt your shattered muscles shiver against my chest,
your spine spasming back and forth, pounding against your lungs,
blocked by all the **** you’ve eaten in your seven or so decades.

your shoulders sagged and your chin wilted to your wheezing heart.
i laid you down against the wall of Mother’s and searched for a payphone.
looking back, you seemed like an old black Atlas,
i stuck a few quarters in and yelled at an answering machine for four infinite minutes.
looking back, i saw people looking anywhere but your face,
dropping change in your saxophone case.
your fingertips stopped shaking,
and with it, my old earth sank into space,
and you ****** me into a new one.
it hurts here, blues man, man of soul.
it hurts here, and everyone’s got a rasp in their voice.

In sophomore year, I was top in the county, one of the very best.
The school even made me a mug:
Johnny McCarthy: World’s Greatest Running Back.
There were so many times I saved our ***,
so many moments, four downs in, that I came through for them.
But then I my knee exploded in bone, and they all suddenly forgot.

I never really had to care before that; about anything, really.
Everything was given to me – friends and girlfriends and grades.
Especially grades; let me tell you, teachers are less sympathetic when you’re in a wheelchair.
And that’s what ****** me off most: when I felt most pathetic and most hurt, people cared the least.

My mom would kiss my forehead whenever she saw my eyes looking beyond the TV screen,
and she’d say something like “a leopard’s stuck with its stripes.”
Sometimes they wouldn’t make sense, but just hearing her sing proverbs with such confidence,
well, it was comforting have a self-proclaimed-sage living in the house.

As I rattled over the gravel walkways to the student parking lot, I would see the football fields,
see the guys practicing, laughing, and looking at everything but the sad *******.
It was then I learned that I hated football – well not football itself,
but what football meant in this west Pennsylvania town.
I hated how it was everything, and without it, I was nothing.
I was the overweight cheerleader to them, I was the equipment manager.
I was even worse than that to them, now.

I charged my wheelchair to our sixteen year old Dodge Caravan, and lifted myself in,
leaving the chair outside the driver’s side door.
I tore onto 270, and aimed myself north.
Driving on the stony stretch, between the strip-mined mountains and the blanket of pine,
I thought about what was left for me back in town.

I thought about my recently ex-girlfriend, who was like a butterfly,
in her ability to float from flower to flower, and **** as much life as she needed
before fluttering away to some other unlucky ****.

I thought of my high school English teacher,
the only one who pretended to care about me after I was drained of reputation.
He gave me a book, the Catcher of the Rye. I haven’t read it yet – it looks really long.
I want him to thing that I did, though, so I guess I’ll tell him what he wants to hear.

I thought about the half-black kid Christopher, who started up the anime club.
It was cosplay day, so we took his gym clothes and threw them in the toilet.
He had to run laps dressed like a samurai, and ended up ripping his kimono.
We all laughed, though I always wondered how hard he must’ve worked on it.

And I remembered my mother, with her free promotional shirts and forest green sweatpants.
I thought about her tiny piggy figurines in that case in the kitchen,
and how proud she is when the Hamburger Helper isn’t burned.
I imagined her kissing me on the forehead and saying:
“Home is a dangerous thing, and there is little knowledge where the heart is,”
or something like that.

I remembered every individual in that tiny high school, and how in my last week there,
I felt like I was choking on everyone’s endless spoken noise.
I pulled onto one of the camp sites at William’s Lake and collapsed out of the car.
I dragged my leg to the shivering shoal of the stagnant pool, and dipped my casted knee in the water.

I felt its bacteria swim in the wound, the exposed bone now pressed beneath my false flesh,
and infect me with a slow disease that felt like a long warming hug.
The water was shifting to a higher tide, and I lay there, feeling every knot of its slow ascent.
Its green-grey film floated at my chest, and I felt determined to let the algae find its way above my head.
As it creeped its oddly tepid sheet up and up my neck, I thought of telling off my ex-girlfriend,
and reading that book my teacher gave me,
and letting my mom know how much of an artist she is.
I twisted over, and pulled my extended leg back into my minivan.
The van smelled like the lakebed now,
like a great many microbes dying and re-birthing silently, in the cracks of the tan pleather carseat.

Remember Wyoming?
Those two days find their way to me, and it always seems so vibrant.
How it hurt to breathe with the constant cigarette smoke in our mouths,
and how hard it was to light one in the windy cough of the night.
I remember us and the others drinking some tea,
and seeing myself in its ingredients.
I remember looking in the splintered mirror for half an hour,
exploring the wonderful fluke of my face.
I remember feeling every ***** of you in the prickly light of night.
The desert howled at us and we howled back, not caring if our sounds would slap the others in the face.

When we stumbled back in afterwards, the space was silent.
Someone took something and they heard their own voice,
but they didn’t like that echoing clatter.
Their hands were over their ears; they writhed on the floor like their skin was a size too small.
It was then I realized that our cabin had no windows or doors, but just gaping indigo gashes,
and I felt so defenseless against the angry emptiness of those American wastes.

Eventually his body slacked, indicating that he was stuck in himself once again.
We stayed inside for the rest of the night, keeping our eyes away from the spaces in the walls.
We huddled together, me and you, on the concrete floor, and tried to keep the fire going.
I remember someone through in that Aldous Huxley novel, and I thought it was a waste.
I, for one, always liked the ending, with the feet rotating like Columbia Mall’s carousel.
But I’m sure you’d beg to differ. 

The next morning we and the others shook ourselves awake, and shambled our way into the Dodge.
I sat in the flatbed, and as we hollered down the highway,
I watched a single cloud slip across the sky at the same rate we were driving,
and lied on my side for those 8 hours; the cloud looked like a tired blur.
But when we arrived outside Omaha, and everyone and you jumped out to ****,
I realized that the cloud I thought was still must’ve flew about seven hundred miles.
It could’ve fooled me.
And then you kissed me on the cheek and took a Camel out of my pocket,
skipping into the soda shop like a child, two days younger.

We swam in wombs, with painted hands,
spreading the Red across throbbing walls.
the floor, Blue,
and the mess between, we made Orange.
Parents swam beside us, younger, dumber, but smiling.
In the vibrant sea, the some of us danced clumsily,
tripping the kaleidoscope fluid.
As the parents moved, though, their wrinkles returned, and they asked questions.
They swam southwards, the colors were too bright for their aging eyes.
They sunk like slugs into the blue, ‘till it rotted a stocky yellow-brown.
I tried to find them, and paint over their telling marks,
but in that putrid brine, I couldn’t find a single blonde hair.

Some amount of time passed, and the south returned to its older shade.
I felt the urge to explore the ordinary depths;
I shook as I stepped into the cobalt,
but soon became too busy to be scared.
I planted my feet on solid ground,
and in slow-motion, marched my way towards an elevator.

“Dig in the garden with the other omnivores,
and get me some lightening, not too ripe.”

i stumble out the door with my fingers and toes
arcing against the cold metal earth.
i wear rags with Armani scrawls;
barely enough to shield my skin from the chilling heavens.

we chew out the roots of nearby trees,
moist as ***** and tough as tendon.
we gnaw and gnaw but spit out only steel
and breathe in only soot.

shrapnel finds its way beneath my fingernails, and i wince.
it's not a new Pain, but a repeated one we’re told to relish.
“When splintered, push them in and
sing a song about It.” and we do.
though the melodies vary, the lyrics say the same thing:
it Hurts to Hurt ourselves, but not enough to stop.

i sigh and sit;
are we really expected to find this lightening,
or is this just unconscious hunt She wanted to put us on?
whichever way, whichever way,
you’ll be fed at the end of the day, i instinctively hum,
as i resume ripping through petroleum roots.

It’s easy to call yourself Ancient,
Painting wrinkles and molding moles,
But eventually your ugly Youth rears its head,
And you just won’t die.

The sun floats in,
******* the pillowcase
And flicking the brown blood on my lower lip.

You make my hormones rush, baby, and I can make you laugh with recycled clever-sounding comments while you uphold decent conversation on your end.
You dress in a way that makes me notice the curves of your upper thigh and angles of your wrists.  We have so many platonic(?) tickle wars and pillows fights.  My arm goes around your neck when watching a movie at a friend’s, but I let it hover over the cushion of the couch.  Let’s not be hasty here.
Come on, baby, let’s kiss during a casual conversation outside the high school one day, and from there feel obligated to date for a one-to-three month period.
I want to hold your hand in the hallway, but not in front of girls I find particularly attractive.
I want to publicly display our lust affection in moderately meaningful situations.  Like lunch.
I want to say “I love you,” because I feel like it’s the right thing to do.
Come on, baby, let’s go see three action movies and a romantic comedy in the span of our relationship.  Let’ s have a single dinner out to Olive Garden, and not get dessert.  Let’s bake cookies at your house afterwards, and have your mom and dad step in every few minutes to check on us.
I want your dad to make smalltalk with me, baby.  I want to give concise answers, and keep the conversation to a minimum.  I want to have a weird ****** tension with your mom, and act cooler than I am to your little brother.
Let’s just kiss for far longer than necessary, until our lips become chapped our cheeks sopping wet.  I want to undo your bra with both hands (and a little aid), and feel your snowy *******.  I want to **** on your ******* for the first time, and be inexplicably disappointed from the experience.
Baby, let me put my fingers in you and focus on the wrong places.  I want to use our mouths, and have you give up halfway through and make me finish on my belly.  Baby, let’s be make a mess due to our discomfort with our own ****** interaction.
Sleep with me, baby.  Let’s do it.  I want to give you the best six minutes of your life, finish early, and be apologetic, yet still confused over how good I was.  I want you to smile politely and kiss my cheek afterwards.
Let’s break up, baby.  This isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Let’s make a mess of our clique and make them pick sides.  Let us oversympathize with our standpoint, baby.  I want to hate you for no reason.  And I want to cry over what seems like everything.
Baby, I want to reconcile and have an uncomfortable friendship.  I want us to date other people, and feel weird about it.  I want one of us to be single down the line, and in the middle of a casual conversation, kiss you, and then I want to do it with you again.
I want to be somewhat improved from last time, but not great by any means.
I want to make our friendship more rocky than ever before, baby, and be far more interested in doing it again than you.
I want to make a friendship impossible.
Let’s do it, baby.
Hey, are you ticklish?

Music can express things so much more elegantly then words.
So much more purely.
So I’ve gotta clumsily try to explain this with these awkward sentences,
When it could’ve been stated so much more perfectly,
through Song.

Rotted wheat squats patchily on his farm.
Though harvest time calls, he lets it grow.
Without a customer to his crop,
He has little incentive to properly sow.

A crooked hill overlooks the creek,
A flaky, limestone waterbed,
The hill has bushes stretching from its base
And many cuts upon its head.

Once golden streams lay a stagnant grey,
Waterfalling over two lifeless caves.
I knew a woman that once explored those caverns,
But that was back when he used to shave.

The only sound heard on these hills is an angry wheezing.
There are no words here, only noises.
What use are words when there’s no one to speak them to?
With no one to share dinner with, why maintain poise?

Every day the land’s reminded that its caretaker is long gone.
Every day the man’s reminded that his lover is now a lawn.
Is he still truly a farmer,
If he no longer wakes at dawn?
Is he still a farmer if his tractor’s rusted and still?
Is he still a farmer if his crops are sick and withering?
He asked this question once, but cast it aside.
I’m a farmer, he nods, as his tired horse pulls at its tethering.

I’m squatting in a chairless bathysphere,
a rusted windowed pearl of a vessel,
leagues away from any honest light or life.
I’m locking my knees to pointed right angles,
trying to keep the tendons taut;
if they relax for a single moment,
the surrounding ocean will spill in.

It comes down to the reflective question:
Is it better live isolated and uncomfortably,
Or slowly die with your atmosphere stuffing your throat?

The answer should be obvious,
but when your thighs scream and your forehead melts,
it’s hard to put yourself on such a pedestal.

I sweat and focus on how satisfied I will be if I keep squatting;
How impressed others’ll be and the things they’ll say!

Against all odds and immeasurable pain, he tensioned his body for *** days.
Imagining such quotes warmed me, and filled me with a salted hope.

And as I obsessed over their admiration,
a sudden shock went through my body, following a swift splash of skin.
My *** hit the cast-iron floor.

My eyes capped white in panic and reprieve.
I gasped -

It all began as the shotglass took my hand,
Leading me into the ***** waltz that had become so necessary for me to survive the evening.
We bought ***** for each other, me and these people I end up drinking with.
There was that girl who told me she liked loneliness, but forgot those claims eight hours later.
And the guy in my apartment building who only comes over when he hears the word “she”.
But tonight I am happy with them, because tonight I am blind.

Me and these humans, we danced and we shrieked and we felt like gods,
And between drowning sessions, we found our tongues down strangers’ throats;
They explain that they were “so wasted” (and I wordlessly agree that yes, we certainly are.)
Laughter and a false forgiveness follow their excuse.

We catapulted ice cubes into Britney’s mouth, and I sat there, quietly watching them melt,
The cold water trickling past the white veneer of her teeth and kicking in the cavities.
Her strawberry-flavored lips quivered against both the liquid’s biting chill, and the iciness of my gaze.
Her giggles slowed to a silence as I stared at the skin beneath her nose, raw from constant waxing.
And as I pondered why I was sitting there, the group of uncertain eyes all looked at me, disappointed in my disconnection.
“Shots for Scott! Shots for Scott!” they chanted. I sighed, accepted, and stopped all that seeing once again.

Oh these people, I hate them but I love them because they are easy to use as friends,
And, like mannequins playing with dolls, we take each other out of the toy chest on the whim.

We flocked from our secondhand nest, and flew up the backroom stairs.
Exploding at the top of the discotheque in a fervor, we lied at the top of our lungs:
“This is the best night ever!”, “I don’t know where I am!”, “I am happy!”.
I vomited between the screaming and the listening.

After ten or so of these claims, they were just shrieking swears at passerbys.
There was too much bile and not enough bliss here,
So I stood up on the ledge, and started to tango by my lonesome.
They laughed at the insanity of it all, and called me “crazy” and “free-spirited”.
Dean tried to scramble up too, and make an equal spectacle, but I didn’t see his climb (I’m blind, remember?), and I slipped on his hand.

And as though my strings were cut, my appendages weakly fluttered as I fell.
I looked up to gaping faces, covered mouths, but no outstretched arms.

It was then that I wrote my philosophy of life, but before I could write it down proper, my vertebras folded back as my frame flattened against the pavement.
It’s a shame I couldn’t, because when I opened my mouth to exclaim it with the air left in my punctured lungs,
All that I could hear was the bass of the club’s dance music, and the sound of parking cars.

The firefighter explained to me
My brain was still aflame.
I have to water down my thoughts
If I am to be saved.

I focused hard and pondered on my
Faults and past regrets.
The firefighter’s eyebrows raised
And, in fear, began to sweat.

He said self-remorse would scorch my flesh,
And forgiveness is my water.
To stare beyond this choking smoke,
My vision must be broader.

And as I thought of all I’ve done,
And all I’ve yet to do,
I couldn’t help but sear a tear
For the scalds I’ve singed in you.

My head blew up, my heart explodes,
An inferno in my mind.
So he arced his axe behind his head,
And buried it in mine.

My father was a philosopher, or liked to pretend as much.
He couldn’t look at the world for what it was, but rather what it represented.
“This tree isn’t just a tree,” he’d say,
“It’s a symbol of the wisdom of man,
growing until it’s cut away, stripped, and used for God knows what purposes.”
To me, it was just a wooden friend made for climbing.

There was a frozen lake near us he often gazed over while driving to the 7-11 for cigs.
He said it was a perfect image of impermanence:
a beautiful crystal sea with solid skin, soon to melt, and become a bathtub to wash the local compost clean.

My brother and I go sledding on our snow days.
If you don’t, well, it might as well be a weekend,
or a grading day,
or Flag Day.

We’d slide across that glassy plain on our bellies,
our hearts beating through the ice;
music for the fishes below.
It was in those days that I thought of my life as perfect,
and I realized all the possibilities that the fire of my youth could fuel.
Well, one day our hearts beat too fast,
or too strong,
or the fish wished to meet the musicians, or something happened for reasons which I still can’t come to terms with.
The glass… it shattered.
And my brother fell through the other side,
to dance with the herrings and sturgeons till he was all out of breath.
And he tired quickly of the dance.
And I wasn’t a strong enough partner to lead him off the dancefloor.

My father, when he heard the news of his son’s new hobby,
it was as though every book he ever read,
and every four-syllable word he ever knew,
and every overdrawn metaphor he ever spoke were all just a weird series of lies.
He swam into his bedroom, and through a blizzard of thrown pictures, sobs, and “*****” he calmed himself to stupor.


He went in the room my father, the intellectual, and came out as Roy, the sorrow-drunken spatter of roadside slush.
Whenever we pass the lake, he no longer comments on what it represents, but rather what it is:
“a ******-up graveyard for innocent little angels.”  
The world is no longer a set of symbols, but a tangible environment,  
though one he looks at through a lens of tears and amber bloodshots.  
My father is no longer a philosopher, but a poet, spitting out sonnets of regret and rage.  

And as for me, I haven’t really much to talk about.
I guess I’m sitting stagnant, frozen.  
I don’t want to be like my father, but I’m realizing it’s inevitable.
I haven’t felt anything genuine since his heart beat its last song.
Hell, I don’t even sled on snow days anymore.  
They might as well be a weekend,
or a grading day,
or Flag Day.

And as smoke snaked from between your lips
Like the angry ash of inactive volcano,
You said “They’re all a bunch of crackers, no good, no fun, no nothing.”
I smirked as I tasted Parliament in your gums.
“That’s enough now, let’s party” and we certainly did. You (featuring
me) hit up every street and every open door; we heard
the Music bleeding in the road, shaking the feets of the young dead.
As their ears crinkled,
their mouths dried,
And their halos melted,
I thought I heard you humming Satie.
But you were only coughing up nicotine
In rhythm to the dying song of an overdosing art student.