I have discovered the sober sunrise.
No longer the bringer of pill-drawn sleep
or the sick brightness of morning
as I walk home via cigarette butts
and misleading signs.

Who am I, to walk amongst the living,
after all the times I have died?

I saw myself at the end of the world;
strategic scar on my upper left wrist,
the extension cord and the lower branch
of the Tree of Life.

The taste of cheap red has become a phantasm;
salted mirage of clean streams and reservoirs
in the backdrop of dry land.

Now only cigarettes or accidental love can **** me.
I have discovered the sober sunrise
but have no idea what to do with it.

Let's feel alive after the first cut;
the bloom on your wrist,
the white line on the mirror
separating where you have been,
and where you want to go.

You laid down in a blanket of snow
and rocked yourself like a river boat,
turning sleep in fits and waves,
to wake as a fraction of yourself.

Let's feel alive at the steep passing;
the sheer drop below,
the winter that thawed in your mind,
that first hit of love-
first taste of smoke and sugared ***.

I became vacant at the shop-fronts
and pinned myself to sleep
with **** and binaural beats;
the sea-wall to my mental health.

Let's feel alive in our life's passing;
the intersecting plot-lines,
the echoes of old suffering
that will dissipate as we make our way
to where we want to go.

We still call the homeplace mom's
Calendar in the kitchen unchanged

Two years past
The old clock ticking

Branches tapping against a window
Iron Mountain through frozen rain

Like a silverback
White along the spine
Cold and silent

Strong against another winter.

r ~ 2/2/15

she carries
her stark
naked
beautiful
truth
folded
in finely
spun verse;
but sharp
are the
scars that
push their
way through
her fragile
layers
of words.

I don't believe in God,
I believe in me.

Because
the only thing
that scares me
more than a God
is myself.

I am
so many people
that I can't even
keep track of
myself.

I am
group-******
ideas, personas,
smiles, images;
fractions of a being.

Phantom in plain sight.

I am a joke.
I am *******.
I make you laugh,
so you can't hear me.
I sell you someone else
so you don't see me
as I stand before you.

I am the ghost.

So, so many
voices
but none of them
are mine.

**** me
to pieces,
then gather
what fits.

It never does.
It never does.

truck-bedded teens smoke leaves above the tree branch cathedral;
treefort,
& fumes from her lips. her lips/
crush me oh my.
climb down to the street.
snap into a slim jim.
smash into a television.

            skateboard kids:
blackboy bent into dust and old motel.
whiteboy with fireworks spitting modern mallrat jazz.
girls of stuffed tiger and bottles shattered,
by blood
by beer
by now. she dreams
of the coast henceforth
& grips glass to imagine it like good futures.
    /****-hit.
    /swallow the pizza.

into the arcade ******,
like denim jackets and the mohawked-heads of foul foolish boys.
like little sister vanished into the music.
she presents her flesh before needled ink in the neon-rung afterlife.
she tongues flame.
she thumbs for fame and a highway to california.
she speaks in tongues to win enough tickets for the big panda bear.
her boyfriends punch faces in parking lots.

their generations gather at the apricot tree.
they pull at the seams of eachother’s tricky slips,
& watch hyenas tear through the trash
in the lawn across the street.

old factory:
old shrine of sky & night & bottles & bottlerockets
& her hair & us.
take the bus, or
walk the paths of backyards, home.
sneak thru the window,
cracked lip and shower.
to appear,
in a sunday dress.

home in the mirror
appearing nearer

but i'm not driving
or even trying
to turn around

i'm burning down

bridges behind me
all I can see

over my shoulder
looking for closure

the colder and closer
i get to the sea.