When the tears won’t come
At the greatest depth of our sadness
When we feel so hopeless
We couldn’t fathom any space below
And yet a great pulling in our chests
Haunts us with the knowing that still
There are fathoms to be pulled

Within these sensations the dry eyes of
Sorrowed desperate beings hold
A wealth of insight regarding the
Machinations of an essential process
Hidden beyond the reaches of
Empathetic yet requited hearts
Lost to the imaginations of those
Embedded in the arms of belonging

When the tears won’t come
It’s because the bottom of a deep well
Has been pulled away impossibly
And where there was no space to give
A great void is rendered into being
Within fragile beings made desperate
In the wake of an impossible suction
Pulling into existence a hollow space
That we birth and give the name of Loneliness

Loneliness does not cry but asks to be filled
And the fragile beings now made
Sorrowed desperate parents give
Their unconditional love to the child
We fill Loneliness with belonging
With love no matter the source
And the bottom to a well is rebuilt
Of brittle sinews and hollow bones

The pressure rebalanced one might cry
For tears need a harrowing and
Strange balance to gift us relief
Or the tears may still withhold their gifts
Haunted by reminders of desperation

Awoke to a sad same day
And before I went back to bed
I crumpled every ******* dream
And threw them all away

Fools are those who imagine
It’s somehow righteous to be different
And amid the masses they’ll be seen
But no one knows you, little man
The news is not covering your dreams

I think someone really wants me
To be the same as all the rest
Behind their smiles I see a lie
And though I’ve scoured the bay for truth
Cities make, of my reflection, jest

Dreams are this illusion of vastness
Like matter, what seems dense is hollow
What I want, to you, is small
Every selfish field must grow fallow
What’s fateful matters not at all

So it turns out I was right
And happiness must be
An empty bottle
A towel to throw in every fight

The dream is one of life’s great ironies
A word overfilled with the vaguest hopes
A word impalpable, of fantasies
And yet, the tangible within its scope
When nightmares leave us restless and afraid
Mother soothes her child with “it’s just a dream”
But when bold men dreamt of what they then made
Matrons held those thoughts with profound esteem
Each is urged to trace whimsy’s beaconed path
For boys and girls can be all they desire
Heed not reality, nor aftermath
Set reverie, each night, newly afire

I found this same paradox to apply
When I dreamt of you, my deluging love
Saw heaven in the depths of your brown eyes
But sleep’s hellish guile pained my heart thereof
You smiled at me and walked amid soft light
Under a glowing willow tree, we met
For hours, as friends who were once lovers might
We merged with warm embrace our silhouettes
I cried for joy to hold what seemed so real
Lost in you, I forgot of earthly time
And to have foregone breath might bear appeal
For, in that false world, you were truly mine

This sweet conceit is such a cruel scheme
For, when I wake, it’s always just a dream

Sometimes, the sad stuff nestles
And offers a familiar strangle hold
But you offer me a stranger’s hold
And like a snow globe unsettled
The sad stuff scatters
Blood vessels open wide and wild and bold
And we go deeply upside down

All the particulates of our particulars
Dance around in carnal discussions
Of morality and philosophy and borders
Spoken in petite four letter words

I held my head today
With compassionate hands that pulled forth tears
I held my aching head
Filled with thoughts and images I’ve kept
In distant recesses
Breaking free, boiling up to forefronts
With rage and sorrow
Like bodies long forgotten out to sea
Washing ashore to shock new eyes
With bloated horror

Thank you, distant ****** ancestors
For compassionate hands

Your stare is a diamond-cutter
Your hair smells better than
Hair that smells good.
Namely, I like you better than
People with hair that smells good.

And I wonder at your personhood
For you are made of *** and *****
Your mouth is filled with gold and snakes
And trickles rapturous winding rivers
of *** and venom.

Your sharp teeth have purpose
And your softness only seems
To heighten their resolve.
When you open up to me
I better than dissolve.
I become aware for the first time
in a week.

Take me everywhere, beautiful
There's too much
I have not been

Be wild
Be free
So to leave the hollowed masses blushing
With reminders of forgotten roots

Tear clothing from imprisoned flesh
And let light nestle back
Into ruins abandoned not through time
But for ugly Godful shame

Savagely unhinge choking steel doors
And let loose a fiery green
Send forth flames of growth
And sparking soul
Leaping high into the night
Taunting the darkness
Beyond the reach of Jove

Light pagan candles
And chant ritualistic
Prayers of Yes

When we die
We sink back
Into that from which
We came

We reconnoiter
Our stuff
With that from which
We were delivered

And it takes
A bit of time
No one
Can be sure
How long

Because
Well
The process
Of reconnoitering

Starts with our rotting away from what we are now  
Involves some process
Or another
Of our being reabsorbed into the Earth and her elements  
Being redistributed  
Here and there  
And everywhere

Over that period of time
I am fairly certain
We cannot know
Ourselves as we are now

That is to say
There will certainly
Shortly after we die
Be an ending of neural pathways firing
And a stillness of thoughts
Even those that let us therefore be

And given enough time
Some of those elements
That were
Within us
Will certainly
Be without
What we now
Call us

And all of the elements
That we now
Call
us

Will
have
to
deal
W
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h

t
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e

p
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o
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s
s
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B
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s
A
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W
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W
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And given
Even more
Time
As much as
random
Dissociated time
Needs
Elements
Of what we now
Call Us
Will be within
What we would now
Call other
Living things

Or, one living thing, viewed not through the lens of time.

As a poem
On an
Infinitely long
And strange
page

Sometimes, as I lie in bed
I awake to the screaming
Of some tortured soul
Lamenting his current existence
In the ruin of hopes
In the ruined city of man

Sometimes I even awake
From the seductive dream
That this misanthropic howl
Is not my own heart
Yearning to sing its sorrow
In the way given to man

Oh, mockingbird
That you could sing your own song

Repeating nightmares
Just to be sure—
Certain I’m this insecure
Depleting patience
Of conscious dead
From whom nature’s love has bled

The leaders of men
Have come to pray
But no gift can greed allay
Yes, no gift at all
From iron gods
Can assuage a soulless fraud

I call thee, War Horse
The time is nigh
Mars is mirrored in our eyes
And our empty hearts
Will beat anew
With blood vengeance shall accrue

Our humanity—
All our prowess
I bend unto your malice

Ego, madness, hubris, anger
Darkness, violence, loathing, doom
Fury, abhorrence, wrath, danger
Desire, frenzy, hatred, black bloom

Constantly tripping, stumbling
The circus search for imperfect heels
I’ve offered so little effort to protect
My love for the empirically ideal
Concerted my focus on what never to expect

I’ve been wearing a chip upon my shoulder
With an Achillean charm
Been chopping at my shin to guard my pride
When I should have thought myself an Oddarm
And thereby learned to fly

And of all the endless grained aspects
Strewn on the gray beaches of time
I could not have wasted my ignorance
On one more voraciously sublime
To squander the virtues of such chance

And the glancing blows of life
Shape in me such strange affect.

Our scene began one softly chilling day
There were lies in your head, but that’s ok
‘Cause girl, we’re all actors of comedy
Played the understudy a time or two
But real-life heroes are too far and few
Honest men only lead in tragedies
We can smile and dance and play games all night
We’d lose our parts if we saw wrong from right
We’d all lose our minds to reality

I’ll always be the beat you should have skipped
But, dear, you’ll never stray far from the script
And so my ****** caring eyes betray me
Just too in love with truth to learn the role
And too in love with you to claim control
I’m living between fraud and honesty
And no, you never asked my forgiveness
But hey, we’re all young and we’ll outlive this
Time ever frees you of morality

Yes, time will free us all of ev’rything
The stage will fade beyond all reckoning
Neither applause nor encore will there be

In speech it seems forever right is wrong
The grammar love must use enumerates
What sadly grows but smaller while so strong
And failure reigns that none articulate

For words that do oft fuel hot debate
Are ever left from matters of the heart
And if the heart does mirror soul and fate
No passion has the lexicon of art

But look on past the void and back to start
To endless want for passion to express
And find my sullen weary face apart
For I instead the earnest do impress

If there are countless words but in my mind
Would long, for you, that speech romance refines

Little boy Cain finds daddy’s old straightedge
Cracked leather band, wipes the blade on his thigh
Little boy stalks ‘round, slingshot in the sedge
Soft stinging cheeks, striped where bloodlines dry

Little boy breaks ice, cold winter this year
Big brother chops ash with numb hands out back
Little cat hunts mice while the dogs chase deer
One last hammer lash, then leave duties slack

Little boys grow up too soon, mother knows
Brother lain face down by the cutting wedge
Little white-furred pup, matted crimson nose
On the icy ground left in need of sledge

Little too late now for the morning chores
Cries upon his knee, curled by reddened bed
Little boy, head bowed, listens from the floor
Brother, bury me where the raven treads

Brother, forgive me, curse the wanton gods
Now, I walk alone through this land of Nod

Every time I’m lost, I will come back to you
I will sit here with a pen and we will meet
And I will cry to you, beyond the words
I will ask you questions without answers

You will never know it,
But you will lead me back

Because sometimes, when I drive down any highway
I yearn to stop at any small town
And believe that I could live a life of wandering
Every small town has a story
But the words will bring me home to you

And sometimes, when I find any lovely shaded garden
I’m enticed into hidden corners
And believe that I could live a life of wondering
Every corner has its secrets
But to learn them is to be with you

I have spent a thousand sleepless nights
Dreaming of you

I am a writer, and as I toss and roll
I dream of your smile, your tears
Your beating heart

Just maybe as you read
You dream of my sleepless mind
On a highway winding
In a hidden corner
You’ll find me

there is nothing left to say
everyone is speaking
gets louder everyday
a din of cell phones blaring
ads harassing to the soul
where went our truthful daring
all is stripped to twice produce
what’s then ten times over-tolled
clichés were born of meaning
but, oh, what great vigilance
note how keen the public eye
one thought of valor seeming
and the marrow is ****** dry

the straw children run and play
their ring around the rosies
but burn the field of posies
for television tells us
today, roses are more chic
and love has lost its justice
romance is just hide and seek
affairs come in litany
for want holds no salience
in lands of great industry
good girls know no prominence
past the throned celebrity

and god is a silent place
where everything is said
like symphonies of poets
softly writing in their heads

Love, tell me where the old souls find their rest
Or, better still, that you and I are young
Just scream to me and tell me where you are
Tell me someone out there cares for me, else
Tell me no one will and dispatch the lies

And please, show me how to be whom I want
My thoughts are like those papers in the trash
Nowadays, I discard more than I keep
Should have learned to edit before to think
Editor, come save good thoughts from the waste

Love, tell me in a whisper of the world
Editor, come save my life from the waste

I have not been well lately
But I have a secret to tell you
It’s a success story: my most secret success
You see, I’m very skilled in crafting holes
And I’ve punched a massive hole
Right through the middle of my life

Please, don’t mistake this accomplishment for the result of talent
This is a skill and it takes practice to master
I went to college and learned to turn theories and ideals from basin to sieve
I learned to critique everything hopeful
And punched a hole right through the heart of hope
I honed my ability to close out creativity
I built a track down which to guide concrete linear thoughts
And I learned to use said thoughts as a battering ram with which to
Knock a hole in the barricaded door to dissatisfaction

And, though this skill is often practical
As you know, one cannot walk around wearing an open hole
So, a corresponding skill has successfully emerged
In parallel with nurturing voids
I have learned to conceal each and every hole
Sometimes with a thick canvass and
Sometimes with a paper-thin veneer
I may have learned to wrap a package
And to tie a bow
With the express purpose of packaging
The broken gift of life
Full of ugly holes

And, now, all that is left to complete the perfect ending to this success story
Is to grow old in a neatly kept apartment
Filled with the unseen haunts of relationships neatly hole-punched and
Filed in a hidden mental cabinet
Next to a night stand where I keep my phone and glasses
And across from the bed
There will be a glass trophy case
Full of trophies denoting various acceptable successes
But, just between you and I
The largest trophy denoting the largest success
Will be a lifetime achievement award
Bestowed for hollowing out what could have been
A beautiful life.

Though my soft, floured heart were of beating bread
For each raven to peck crumbs in morning
Bleeding from wheaten wounds, I do, instead
Loose each door, pull back curtain adorning

First light, through open window, in you fly
A yellow songbird with speckled, pale breast
Though sweet your voice and innocent your eye
An empty plate now lies within my chest

For you thieve bread from hunger, like the rest

Search out no lie in words that follow
Though, lie and liar have come before
A child’s dose is smooth to swallow
Packaged, pretty endings from the store
Even homes lined with white picket fence
Are filled with macabre, bright-eyed babes
Soon, they’re taken without recompense
None forbearing of life’s costly wage

Don’t you see?
There is no happiness in ending
The promises of life that cheer me
Keep facades of continuity
That’s why the message that I’m sending
Is of pleasure that an old soul takes
Always looking into the same face
And of the heartfelt pain that severs
Spring lovers lost to winter’s weather
So, when seasons turn, shall we follow

The courtiers guide this frenzied waltz
Through strange and tightly spun ellipses
And, knowing this dance and all its faults
My account has strained into thesis

It seems some, stoic toward our fate
And fixated always on an end
Come to ever practice means of pain
To remind them that indeed they live
As the coupled who attack their mates
As a child draws blows he cannot fend
As a young girl pulls steel cross her veins
Sin against self, hardest to forgive
Yes, so they won’t have to look inward
So he won’t have to fight what’s inside
So her pain is seen, but never heard
Thus, old wounds live without parting wide

So, you see?
There is beauty in our suffering
It is filled with tales of honesty
And, though it’s a morbid offering
I hope some smile at its honesty
With each little piece of me that dies
Drowned inside this bottle that I hold
I try to douse the flames of old lies
‘Cause there’s still some story to be told
And where we go, no words can follow

Often, we masquerade behind words without weight
Words that coldly costume our minds, but rob our warmth
I know you’ve euphemized, for me, speech forged in hate
Just as my mouth belies each loving thought I form

When burdened, your mask slips to lay bare hidden eyes
Eyes flatly calm, though agleam with muted malice
While I’m a hypocrite to disclose webs and lies
Still, our beloved ones should not act at loving us

My rarest friend, please, know that to my heart you’re near
And the sword you have carried is a pointless one
For I fall on my own, year after wounded year
I chastise on behalf of all when day is done

So, if the veil grows too heavy, then let it fall
Your shrewdly made disguise does not relieve my pain
The truth can never cut like secrets, after all
There are furtive daggers in the smiles you have feigned

We are all alone, and I, in suit, am alone
And I’m still not sure where life’s path will lead, my friend
Maybe to a lover or child with to atone
Someone real whose hand I’ll hold in my story’s end

Spryly aim your pointed arrow
Draw forth vaulted courage
Call to the depths of your medal
Bend intent at its course and surge

And fire the truest
Most molten affect.

Promptly shape the tensing sinews
Of your malcontent
Harness your tirades
Beckon they be throat-stead rent

And spit a righteous
Incendiary word.

Nimbly wear the Fool’s hat
With a brackish pride
Wag a wanton finger
At the reign of compromise

And singe the cowards
For their hesitance.

Quickly give your last
Before the thought of lapse
Push the outer limits
Of every giving synapse

And save nothing
For the faintest spark of excess.

And if these processes
Seem weirdly foreign
Or misfit within
The best of commonplace

There is a name
For this noble haste

Good Speed.

what ghastly filters we carry
behind our eyes
and under our skin
how powerful the voices in our heads
to assign order and category

our world is spectacular
the spectacle of nature
tireless, overwhelming
glorious
and then I arrived
so important
as to shut out the glory

I works not
to see things as they are
I wants to analyze
to convince, dissuade
and deconstruct
I is busy
after all
there is so much happening now
not pertaining to I
needing to be filtered out
I needs room
to ruminate

I would surely be unemployed
unneeded, forgotten
if we get distracted
powerless stow-aways of life’s theater
and it must be
the old man inside my head
is afraid of the dark

I found my thoughts too linear so
I drew a dark and scarring line within my mind
I yearned to see the rising sun and
My gaze shifted toward the west
I longed to hear the nightingale’s song and
A flock of carrion crows flew in from the north

I grew weary from travel so
I pressed on over many cruel miles
My stomach ached with hunger and
I began a long and patient fast
I wanted to hold the world in my arms and
I pushed the ground and sky aside

When I needed so deeply a companion
I shunned all and withdrew to a hollow
I worked toward a more righteous life by
Embracing the role of hypocrite
I desired to cleanse my body so
I drank poison amid cretins and dinge

And when I reposed in my loneliness
I saw you holding a scarlet shawl
I knelt at your feet and
There I found peace

In misplaced demographics, an underlying figure
Gets lost in the middle of double-helixed bound’ry lines
Dissolving past parameters, confounding to the mind,
A deadlocked debate decides if pain or love is bigger
It’s like the world’s hardest riddle, answers buried deftly
That no savant or prodigy is able to surmise
And the truth does differ from what words can now describe.

I’ve learned that one can tread life’s forest with a steady course
And with the best of intentions and stark, concerted path
Turn winding bends ambiguous: mistake a birch for ash
So to end the tiring journey in tangent to its source
The nature of the Earth is neither white nor black
It’s more like the palate used when blue becomes grayish sky
But, then again, it’s not this easy to describe

Inside my head there lies a circuit, closed unto itself
So, through this loop I’ve learned to see the difference between
Progress and regression, what has been and has never been,
Is like finding from a deck why each hand differs that is dealt
But the answer matters not, for the circle spins again
It’s kind of like the ocean where the calm and break collides
But, then again, it’s not this easy to describe.

I’ve watched a daunting fog descend upon my clouded eyes
It curbs the hue of ev’rything to darker spectrum shades
So this shroud submerges light until definition fades,
Frustrates the sense of passion; luster steadily subsides
When the mind’s only window is comprised of rippled glass,
It’s like a drunkard’s double vision having not imbibed
But, then again, it’s not this easy to describe.

Each step I take grows even more uncertain than the last
If I could convey to you the shape of this confusion
If I could draw a diagram or picture of delusion
Then you and I might, together, construct and raise a mast
So with to steer life’s wayward ship back toward a purpose
At times, I’m unsure if living’s just learning to survive
So, in this pall, I reach you now, and in you I confide.

Now and then, I feel the clock stop ticking
I feel the parallels, keeping us on track
Let loose beneath an even greater force
And the world becomes honest

If this force were to submit and be humbled
Enough to take a name
I might be tempted then to call it love
But it is more than love
So, I might call it safety or warmth, too
But, so special seldom does it strike me
That I have yet to dare name it

All I can properly give to make clear
A better sense of why this force
Does shake my mind
Does shake my heart
Does stir in me meaning otherwise uncompelled
Does the clock stop
Does leave the world honest, de-comprised, unparalleled
Is to tell you

It holds like unconditional arms of a mother
It smells like just the right cooking from
Just the right turn of dusk in grandma’s old kitchen
It feels like a spot where the trees’ shadows
Leave dancing strands of filtered light
To brush a shoulder on a breezy summer
It sounds like a silence to the clashing sounds
Of all life’s petty games, forfeited
The players unshackled from hollowing rules
It looks like your first celebration
Where your mind did not know to wander out
Beyond the confines of the joy engulfing that moment
It bends time
So that each instance of its presence
Melds into what it was then
And its next visit will bring me to now

When I feel the warmth in how
I love you so
I can see my child smiling back
From long ago

I am angry today
Angry because all the core is hollowed
Angry because content became arbitrary
Angry because lies can so easily be packaged, sold and consumed
As honesty
And in consuming, leverage is given to the machinations of the lie
The machine is now whirring
Can you feel it?
Can you feel the happy monster, hollowing out the core
Processing all the content
And spitting it back indistinguishable, shiny and price-tagged?
Can you feel the great shudder of humanity
Yearning for its heart
Searching for its passion
Longing for its character?

I am angry with the greedy for their philosophy
I am angry with the weak of character for perpetuating
And building from the blueprints of greed
I am angry with the politicians who broadened the roads
Guiding emptiness to our doors
I am angry at the vast apathy, seeping from out doors
Flowing over each road and filling the cracks in the system
I am angry with each individual I have met
Who had a chance to let go of an empty façade
And choose to do something human
But who chose, instead, to look down
And push forward in the lie
I am angry that what is good is lost
To what is practical

I am angry because healthcare is not about the health of people
I am angry because education is not about learning
I am angry because news is not about being informed
I am angry because food is not about nutrition
I am angry because work is not about contribution
I am angry because music is not about sound
And art is not about beauty
I am angry because being a person is not about relating
To other persons as they are
But about relating to their function in the lie
Their function in the aforementioned and hollow
Shells of what once served as our pillars

Yesterday I was sad
I felt saddened by loss
Loss of people and meaning
Loss of a future that now seems impossible
Loss of purpose and agency
But then I realized something important
I realized why my heart still pounds when I see children
Beaten by police for speaking out against the lie
Still pounds when I learn of rebels
Still pounds when I see the truth growing up through
A crack in the road
Still pounds when I hear the slam poets
Yelling at my generation
I realized that sadness is what one feels
In the process of giving up
And anger is the forerunner to action
To life and to love

In sadness we absorb all the pain of the lie
In anger, we pull tight the raw sinews of our sadness
And shape stones of the pain we’ve absorbed
And though we are all mortal
At least, when we die in action
We send a message that reverberates
Through all the machinations of the hollowing lie
Through all the squandered hearts of society
Through all the ages and spaces of consciousness
We will be human
No matter the cost
We will be full
No matter the loss
We will relate to each other as we are
And we will not believe the lie

When you strike out in just anger
You feel all the camaraderie of history
Of those who shared in the common understanding
Of justice and of fighting for its attainment
And in that moment of action
You are not alone
A thousand immortal fists bolster you
Each one shouting “truth!” loudly and in a straight line
An unwavering line that does not bend
To time or place
To odds or probability
To fear or hesitation
To hatred or malice
To resources or means
Nor to any limitation

The only one true sin that man can enact
Is to forget love
And in forgetting love, grow detached
Fall into sadness and despair
Fall into apathy and neglect
Fall into the void of their core
Fall such as to forget what they deserve
And the punishment for true sin is to be alone
I, for one, would rather embrace the vast love of truth
And companionship of anger
Than wither into sin
Cold and lonely

The flesh of which the body holds its form
Objective mass, so grateful, held in debt
And I the glutton, swelled from thinner norm
Destroying each whose faith was lain unkept

‘Tis known to me that life a body met
But I do hold the life therein with scorn
Although the marriage seemed adroitly set
My mind from home is rent, forever torn

Would I could once remove the skin of thorn
Betrayed and jailed, as I indeed deserve
As flesh enfeebled me to acts forlorn
For my misdeeds no tears should lie reserved

That hide were forged of thought would be my will
Within the vaulted mind is beauty still

A secret stage to live out dreams
Water rolls down the pane in streams
Filtered blue ray on blouse undone
Bedroom eyes in the midday sun

Gone like a passing summer rain
Dried and forgotten yet again
Warm light shines through the last droplet
Crumpled clothes in a back pocket

Look of June and the smell of spring
Young hearted steps a sidewalk king
Evening paints horizon line
A smiling boy with girl in mind

Sometimes heaven taps your shoulder
Some times wait though we grow older

One hundred fervent handshakes
With the bearer of neglect
The pall of days has fallen
Where our lives did intersect
And I grow melancholic
Wading through the disconnect

Oh, I stand, I sit, I lie
In this tower where I’ve kept
And my legs have lost their strength
Else I would surely have leapt
Now, I sadly tread circles
Wading through the disconnect

What was pure evaporates
Like the fleeting white of snow
So pool the melted hopes I’ve failed to protect
Dreams, used to fill the voids, now shape disconnect

Sometimes I feel like those who
Aren’t overwhelmed
Aren’t tired and broken down
Aren’t hunched and encumbered
Those who can breathe without
Feeling a tightness that strangles
An immensity that fills the heart
With shadowy, sorrowful tangles

They must not be listening
Must have sheathed their eyes
Within the blackest, sight-denying blinders
Or else resigned to a myopic gaze
Yes, they must have made
Some unconscious decision to don
The enduring armor of ignorance
Deftly designed to repel the obvious
Forged in the fires of whimsied romance
Of furtive fairy tales in which
The protagonist, hero, heroine, the revered
The beautiful, the admired,
And all their supporting characters
Are agents of nothing

Sometimes I feel that in the stories of the free
In the mythology of respiting privilege
There is only one antagonist
Against which said armor does protect
He is truth
He is compassion
She is courage and love
She is feeling and thought
He is meaning and substance and matter itself

So, take heart, my armored many
For, it seems to me, your villain
Is nearly dead

I have the utmost faith
That each of you will do your parts
Will walk with your heads down
To your dramatic destinations
Will ignore the journey, the repercussions,
And every longing bystander
Yes, you will merrily spend, and sell,
And buy, and sell and sell
You will straightforwardly tread
Over the downtrodden with your feeling-less feet
Your blind eyes will roll about
Inside their numbing sockets
Your deafened ears will placidly bypass
The rhythms of opportunity and intuition
Your made-up mouths and raised noses
Will vivaciously avoid
The fruits of feeling, the pains of principle,
And the arduous trials of belief
In one’s fellow man

Upon the hour of final victory
I will write of epitaph and eulogy.

If life could be so unfair
As to bestow upon one man
A heart that begs love enough to swell
To fill each beating basin over-welled
Love enough to breach a boundless sea
That man is me.

And, if having felt such love
A man could grow to then forget
If fate could shape such a callous fool
Toward the self uncommon-cruel
Could the right hand to the left belie
That pain is mine.

No pride can go long sustained
To stand is but halfway to kneel
To the cosmos, rigid wills we bring
What with Saturn deems to bend a ring
Wise to curve and carve our humbling scars
So sit the stars.

The night and moon live in peace
In same, life is a neutral friend
Only a home where the mind is kept
No rug under which our dreams are swept
Nor grand antagonist to evade
So hope is made.

If you let the magic flow
And loose the clutches of control
You will come to learn the sun is wise
On his stoic clock, he yearns to rise
And when it’s too hard to be alone
Then we walk home.

If ever there were a man
So stubborn as to forge shackles
Made heavy laden with his own hand
And break, in time, these same burden-bands
So to know the debt of being freed
Then this is he.

If I could but learn to discard a wounded piece of self
If I could part with the beautiful symmetry
Of the cogs, driving forth the machinations,
Churning with their white noise, that
Turn to shape maiming thoughts
Then I might one night close my eyes,
Not to images of words bound by self-deriding connotation,
Comprised of typos and back-strokes
But to a peaceful blackness

Yes, I might lie down, close my eyes
Out of a will for rest, not contrived
But organic and my own
And so I know this as my waking dream
Relegated to wake for the night has been
Deemed the world of painful perfection
A place where protection is offered
With a backward hand, carefully made
Patron to the lovely polished mental instruments
Used to bludgeon simplicity and idiosyncrasy
Used to leverage pressure on the scales of the heart
So to tip downward the side of known cyclic indifference
And lift upward toward heightened neglect
The side of pleasure, the side of silenced retrospect

I grow, each sleepless evening, more fearful
That the ugly, backward hand might never forgo its leverage
And, if life is a wellspring of knowledge
Feeding into a stream of lessons
Then my strife stems from reading of the
Same page in the same chapter of the same textbook
A book filled with words bound by self-deriding connotation,
Comprised of typos and back-strokes

On this page, one learns a fundamental formula
It derives the relative weights of who we are
And the happiness we might find
Through some convoluted tale of misfortune
My page was written by an ugly, backward man
So, through unsagely studies, I’ve concluded
That the art of well defined reprimanding thought
Does outweigh in its beauty, the unseen hope
Of a future left to whim and bliss, or perhaps
The simple elegance of chance, goodness unsought

So, for the first time in my life, I seek to unlearn
I seek to roll back the defining lines that once flowed
From the pen in a backward hand that yearned to sow structure
But the vaulted walls that hold the scales of one’s will
Are so dauntingly difficult to unbuild or puncture

This, truly, is the weight that each sleepless night
Bares down upon my sleepless heart, so heavy
If I cannot pull exacting, formulaic pages from my sight
I fear the only peaceful blackness I will find
Is one against no patron hand can levy.

Juxt

Easy bucks
Market flux
The democratic peace
Imperial caprice
Praise be to lord and Savior
Sacrament, scandal-flavored
Legion of dissenting voice
Treason in the use of choice
Give me your teeming tired, your huddled poor
Bones with to festoon the corporate door

And if you could turn to me, adoring
I’ll check my busted magic billiard ball
All signs point toward what I’m ignoring
Burnt the bridge to your heart, land, deed and all

When time is right, we secretly confide
What should have lain bare in our first report
Our ideal homes of mental cards collide
Seems, in comparison, we all fall short

Glory in history contiguous
Gory details, a bit ambiguous
The equality of man
Neo-****, Ku Klux ****
Only with the best intent
Rubber bullet malcontents
Perpetual motion
Toward backward notions
Money flows
Deathly throes

Oppose

Life knew it would be hard
So it hard-wired its many children
With a self-serving fondness
Life was well aware of the darkness
And for fear of objectivity
Man was subjected to instinct

Life knew of loneliness
So it made us laugh down
Through our bellies and slap our knees
Life was well aware of heartache
So it drove us toward pleasure
And made us forgetful

Life made us forgiving
Resilient, blissful
Life, the narcissist
Knew of limits
And made us to imagine

Life watched me balk its efforts
And gave me to you

I’m in too deep
To pretend that I can survive
When the walls start falling
There is no more room
The smallest shift
Will tear me in two
And a greater shift
Will leave nothing of me

If you say it
I will open my ribs
So that you might learn
Of my heart more perfectly
It was always yours to know

If you want it
I will spill out my head
So that you might inspect
Each thread of my intent
Rummage through each loving thought
They were always meant for you

If you need it
I will cease to be as I am now
I will discard and scorn my flesh
So that you might see
Past the dilettante efforts of the body
And into me
I was always waiting for you

We look past meaning, still blinded and dreaming of riches,
Which leads us toward track homes and condos, cruel chapels
While the hapless live in the world’s mansion: the most open convent
And what we don’t see is sometimes the crux of our content

The streets offer a morose array of the discarded
They, the wise and most wretched, who humbly suffer
Are perhaps the truest, comely Christian-hearted men and women

They bless the day as they pray to the ground
Where cracks become twisted crucifixes upon which
The most selfless are displayed for public derision.

Ironic is the formula written with precision on the tome of our existence
Iconic moments of pain bloom into the banks that loan out inspiration

Each electron is one thousand eight hundred thirty-sixth of its proton
And this proportion, though grandly and numbingly unimpressive
Is the basis upon which we live and whir and spin as matter does
Coincidence is a lie in the face of the certainties within what we cannot see

For, though one decade separated the births of Crockett and Bowie
And, though their names might conjure knives larger than pockets
And hats, stolen from conquered bandit-faced creatures’ tail ends
It was on the same 1836 day that they evolved from flesh into legend.

Joy is a strange element that seems to come and go without a plot
Yet some know how to wield their emotions with little thought
As if joy and love were as a hammer worn neatly at the belt

So, I yearn for one day to grasp a handle in a hand that has never felt
The shape of certainties, once discerned as chance and circumstance
And when the hammer falls, I hope it breaks a twisted crack into my heart

I hope to, from my reflections, thus bereft,
Find some perfection hidden deep in death
As one might decipher, through foreign language,
A light that warms within a sonnet

In a way, I think my life depends upon it.

I would that I could clasp hands, at once, with every diasporic man
And our hands could merge and rise up as a single fist
And all the subjective shades of our own colors and the
Daze of our own druthers would be shed in the process
Yes, I find that I absorb the pain around me like a fine osmosis
That unifies the minds forged in our generation’s social suffering
And I wish my skin would grow akin and reflect a synthesis
Because there is no bliss when men bisect people into “us” and “them”

I would that I could turn my insides out and transform my ***
Organs, as a moth does surge inside a closeted cocoon
Only to emerge with wings and the power of new found flight
And I wonder if I too could sing the perspective of new heights
Because there is only ******* in a world where those who
Share the same ****** shape cannot share the same heart
Are condemned to be kept apart by taboos viewed through institution
Started by confused men, afraid to admit that making love is a free art

I would that I could push my hand into the ground and grow
Roots that drive deep, past the sand, beyond the rending flesh
Of our loved ones’ bodies and mesh with the immortal earth
As if I could bolster, with my chemical composite, the site of true birth
Because when the mightiest of the world’s glories can be
Bought and sold for the price of arbitrary ******* figures
Written in the blood of forests, in the torn face of mountains
Then we can stop ignoring the forlorn thought of dark days before us

I would that I could bring back all those lost before their time
That a rhyme could sting the cold cheeks of slaves who never
Saw a western sunrise comprised of multicolor, of many brothers
That I could brush softly the minds of couples buried not together
And scream to them that time left some bereft of victories
Yet to shape their scene, yet to substantiate their dreams

Then I would quickly reseal the doors of slumber that guard
The restless dreamers of the past before revealing the
Horrors of societies stepping once forward, then twice back
Yes, before the haunting words of hateful choruses should
Ever shape their reposeful, moral-less, and peaceful sleep
For the hopeful eyes of soulful passing activists should never weep.

The following statements of truth were brought to you
Not through, but circumnavigating fated parameters
Of insane, yet normative, largely uninformative
Mechanisms that formally give birth to *******;
And instead, strategically splicing said bounds with
Ideal variables derived from the courageously quixotic,
Unrobotic, and outraged agents of, and for, capital Real:

The train of corporate reasoning derails so fast
To follow is to snap the head backward,
Far past angles within measures of pleasurable fit
And open gates to deluging tangled circular
Failures of logic that trick and co-opt the proletariat.

We are Present-Ambassadors with broken flux-capacitors
Demonstrating a consistent tendency toward error
In efforts to obtain diplomatic access to a future where
The same reemerging deficits do not manifest unfixed.
One of said deficits may include all positive freedoms.

For the record, it shall be noted that civil society
Currently arrives implicitly to find it compliantly fine
To promote systems of labor designed to illicit behaviors
That will eventually undermine the actors of exhaustive work
And make benefactors of those complicit in crime.

As case studies of this paradoxical paradigm, we observe
Nations signing trade agreements aligned with
Selling more of the goods whose extractions have
Cataclysmic exactions upon locals contracted not to resist.
Those who take issue with this are directed to appellate institutions.
The projected scarcity of over-consumed poisons causes fear
Which leads to faster hoarding and more ex(t/p)ensive death.

Thus, most human behaviors presently inflate pricing, popularity,
And rapidity associated with committing system-wide suicide.
As shackle-some power consolidation bends toward a transnational peak
I hereby slide-tackle these forwarded trends, seeking goals of the rational.

All the feelings I could now deny were
Real as so many cherried cigarettes
And the smoke from both cases filled my head
Just before the air shifted in regret
Spring winds bring in new feelings of regret

All those late-nights I smiled to myself for
Just a little bit less than I was hoping
What I ask is too much for anyone
Winter rain and working in the open
Curls and curses working my heart open

All our bold movements and your will for more
Stronger than my will to sit awhile here
Despite strong words, where did your courage go
Was leaving again what led you to fear
Or, thoughts of joy, the roots of all our fear

All I can do now is leave assurance
Not I, and none, need know you cared for me
And thus I’ll keep your anonymity

Just one source of warmth and light
Just one star away from oblivion
As a child holds its mother tight
So forged in need, some love the sun
But needing, still, is not to know
Toward you I gaze without letting go
So to study and to learn
What beauty, from the sun
No pupil can discern

I am drawn to you, whose careful eyes have held off far enough
Deep in my bones, I am writing tales of bold and ancient lunar stones
Your roots and mine are intertwined beyond the reach of star stuff

And if the day did cease to burn
My death it would be swift as light
But if to you I could not turn
I would linger in the pall of night
So I would rather die a solar death
With mercurial mercy, thus bereft
Yes, better snuffed in starry fire
Than to slowly fade within desire

And fear not, love, to need me too
Though not by force, most assuredly
I am drawn to you
I am drawn to you, whose careful eyes have held off far enough
Deep in my bones, I am writing tales of bold and ancient lunar stones
Your roots and mine are intertwined beyond the reach of star stuff