Like cold coffee, the fun of the taste is gone.
too cold, just like my feelings
All Alone.
no one drink it, they refuse to add hot coffee on it and fix it
instead they throw it away and replace it
they did the same.
my heart felt like a cold coffee
but when I'm with you...
you made me feel better, you drink me even though I'm cold and you drink my sadness away

I-81 North towards Hazleton.
                   Exit to Hazleton.
Merge left away from Mahanoy
City exit.
           Luzerne County crossing.
                             I always thought the spheres on telephone wires were kids' basketballs that got stuck in the sky.
    Three New York plates in half a mile.
                              151 A or B?  
Kelly Clarkson tells me through static that I don't know a thing about her.
    Water beads on plastic cup lids by the "diet" indent, but never goes in.
          Americans are water.
                      Lemonade clots the cuts
                      on my lips.
The car's a few years old but still carries its dealership scent.
                   Adjacent drivers keep their
                   lazy eyes on their phones.
Prismatic flashes through tinted windows from a woman changing CDs.
           Oaks in the distance overtake
           stores and church steeples.
                *The earth is theirs.

I promised Nick I'd take him out
of Pennsylvania, away from evergreen
trees and our troubles. My car leaked carbon
monoxide, but never enough to ****
us. Where we lived, things never changed.
Two out of three stores open on Main Street,
two gas stations where people paid $3.64
a gallon just to leave, a grocery store
that never settled on a name, and a police
force with histories no cleaner
than their patrol cars. If you've taken Route 6
through, you've seen too much. We dreamt
of Lady Liberty raising her torch to the sunset
in defense of the Empire State, or simply to pluck
it like a musician playing for pennies
near Strawberry Fields from the sky.
The Big Apple, where people make art instead
of excuses and the brightest lights aren't fixed
atop police cars.

Years have passed since our dreams died in '13.
We're stationed at desks in different hemispheres
for different reasons. All he has left are his lonesome
thoughts and all I have are mine. It won't be long
before my pen becomes a serpent and strangles
me in my sleep or my butterscotch disks turn
to cyanide. I'll always hold steadfastly
to our dreams underground.

Nick, I promise you that one day, we'll make
it to New York.

I think I'm gonna hang,
down by the willow tree that stands,
so tall it touches the sky.
Think it'll keep me tied to this earth?
I don't think it will, it doesn't care.
Down by the willow tree I'm going to hang.

A traveler stops by,
asks me why,
tell him I'm hanging to forget
and to be forgiven.

They untie the knot,
pull me down and say,
life ain't fair and it's definitely not easy,
but it's not worth hanging' yourself for.

Bitten by a spider
at the oddest hour.

His whole body throbbing
with his own pulse.

All his insides are charred
but sleep is not a willing
companion.
The eternal coronation,
death as his champion.

Sweating through a thin veil
of details, begging the question,
begging for recognition,
even the most elegant logic is an ugly thing.

In delirium, he tears his journal apart-
that's how an artist starts.
He is ugly,
he is crude,
he drank some poison
down in Greenwood.

he becomes quite faint
when struck with the
quaint notion:

that even the heavy
handed blacksmith
has finesse, and feeling too.

The cedar chips were being spread
in Oregon City when you went to Grandpa’s.
The coffee shop is open, gravel on the drive,
sheets speckled with lobsters carry you
in sleeptime while in Boston mine is feverish
without your mouth, reaching out.
I dream of abortion at a waxing studio,
diving into bowls of cereal, checking
every room--
I look in closets.

You’re not one for dreams-- you salt notebooks
with navy marks, dripping pen onto pillows,
the world a sweet heuristic I cannot know.
You make me live quiet. I stop
screaming and pulling bird feathers. I gather
tea cups, pull chest hair, carve a warm nest
from soap suds and candy.

My poetry was drawn from angst,
from drunken dream light, eggs frying
on hot pavement, a galloping horse. Now,

I want  
a pen carving
patterns of earth into our skin.
I want kisses and puppies, shrimp cocktail,
birthdays and bathrobes, a walk
in the snow.

Hell doesn't show us all the answers about us
It brings to light only some
Just another incognito, today goin' no lower
So, good morning to the fields.

Actually, nobody's to blame
Ex-dome belts out and drones barge in, beasts!
Expect none less
Certain dishes spoil, once reheated..if left standing too long.

We sometimes drape objects about our person
To hide and to protect: get with the programme, they say!
Shy and gentle chapel, no idea: thus, feel like a crim
Only to check a pulse that isn't there!

Not going all the way, just to be cool, to have arrived
Is innocence lost when you do what they do? Never!
Perhaps best to chicken out, if too far gone
Southern rains won't be found.....in the nick of time.



S T, 26 April 2013

People ask if i am a ******
I say yes, i am waiting for marriage
I hear "good for you"
or "dude you gotta get laid"
still, a part of me doesn't believe what i say
Everyone has there Thorn?
i mean who hasn't looked at ****
but where does it stop
I have Never had ***
but i had a sick addiction
Filled by this simple prescription
Every night i ****** that ******* the little screen that taught me she was merely a possesion
I Just typed in those 3 letters
and it became an obsession
A black hole
Ripping apart time and space
Not even light would escape
And the only thing that mattered
Was me
Me, and that thing on the screen who nobody wanted to be
An object
Like a silly little toy
For those ****** up little boys
Who after batting you around
And shoving you in the ground
Just cram you back in that chest at the end of there bed
Like a ratty stuffed bear
No Love, No soft touch, no sweet embrace
I didn't even have to care
Why would I?
How could I?
You were just a wave of photons collapsing in my eye
to come and go as i pleased
projected from that ***** little screen
You were just a *****
to me
and not anything more.
In a place where i was supposed to have the deepest most intense connection
I would replicate with meaningless, emotionless self satisfaction
i would sow seeds of my own destruction every time i opened that link
where i was made to feel love and joy, i would only sink
becoming tangled in emptiness, i was lost, i was dying
like a bird drowning in a sea of stone
where no one would think to find me
No light would be shed on this pathetic part of my life
A life of darkness in that room where my face glows
and my pupils dilate
My fate slips from sight as i separate
Body from soul
I see myself Mindlessly staring at that dark light
It was a drug, My sick Addiction
I wasn't even trying to Fight
It consumed my Thoughts, took me from above
dissolving my capability to love
I tried to run
I didn't think
That without His hand
I will always sink
Back into that creaky chair
Where this beautiful creation of God, this person, this human being
Just becomes one of my daily rituals, self fulfilled
She becomes just a thing

In short, if i gave an honest answer, i am not a ******.

Day one,
Hour three
I don’t know you
You don’t know me
But I already have a question.

It went downhill from there
Questions coming as fast as the seconds passed leading up to my parents
Departure.
You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into when you said I could count on you
And then you let me follow you home
Like the lost puppy I was.
I didn’t know what I was getting myself into
When I said
Let’s be friends.
Because now all I want to do is trust you
When all my head says is keep it to myself,
Baby, I came here with more than just clothes in my baggage.
But I can’t keep myself from saying too much
And I can’t keep you from saying too little
And I can’t keep myself from wanting to save you.
When I need to save myself.
Because I can’t do this
Again.

I’m supposed to forget my past
But her words were dragons that continue to rear their heads
At inopportune moments.
For every question I ask you, I ask myself fifteen more
And the answers?
Well they’re with the slippers I forgot to pack.
I’m in love with a bunch of letters.
Little pieces of paper that make me nauseous just to look at.
Words that used to mean the world are now just contradictions.

So please don’t ever write me a letter
Because I’ll take that to mean you’re leaving me too.
I know her actions don’t have anything to do with you
But my past isn’t gone
It’s just been put on a shelf
Somewhere else.
And I’m trying so hard to forget where.

You deserve more than this.
You deserve more than the cheesy clichés and the useless words.
You deserve more than the part of my past I won’t tell you
And the rubble that I’m left with.
And for you I want to be more.

I’ve given you my heart on paper multiple times before
I want you to know
That for you, there is no door.
Forget my shoulder,
Let my lend you my spine.
And please if you ever need it,
Let our fingers intertwine.

Friend,
I want to be your windowsill.
I want you to know I’ll always be there,
For you to put your crap on.
I want you to know you can open up my head and look inside and rummage around for a while
If for some bizarre reason you would ever want to that.
I don’t know why you would ever want to do that…
But anyway.
I want to be the notebook that you can write your secrets in
And know no one will ever find them.
I want to be the magic eight ball that you turn to for help
And that has the courage to tell you what you don’t want to hear
Because I know you need to hear it.
I want to be that sticker you put on your wall.
You don’t always look at it,
But you know it’s always there.
Most importantly though,
I want you to think of me as a bottle of glue.
It doesn’t matter what you throw at me,
I’ll always stick with you.