Tomorrow is a shattered mirror,
blinking at me, showing the sun's teeth,
as though fending off starving stray cats.
There was no sun today,
I worked while it slept below
its sheets made of the empty fields
that lie east of my home.
Dereliction, undiluted, joins ranks with the
birds who have forgotten winter is coming.
Blotches of paint on stormcloud canvas,
like Jackson ******* began painting the October sky
and gave up after three or four flails of his
glorified, dripping brush.
Although there is a reflection here,
it is a dream now. The details have been
misplaced, and we can only recall major
landmarks and plot twists.
The surface, however, looks the same
as it always has,
and will go on doing so,
through the death of tomorrow, and her child.

Find yourself a cliff to swan-dive off of. Somewhere picturesque like the coast of Maine or Ireland. Look down at the water, so much like terrified horses, one hundred feet below where you stand. Feel the wind as it pulls your hair, throws it into your soft, blue eyes. Stormy. Night time. On the edge of this cliff you've made for yourself, with a Surgeon General's warning printed in ten-foot tall letters, black like death, and thus, ignored. Isn't erosion a beautiful thing? The waves eat at the letters of the government-mandated label, warning against use by pregnant women or while driving. The wind blows over the limit of 0.08. Find your cliff and jump, arms outstretched, reaching for the sky that is the sea because you are upside down, with perfect posture. Find your cliff and hurl yourself from it like a rag doll. You never have been able to dive well. Pell mell, racing for the knife's edge where the open-space free-fall consumes everything, each memory and prized, forgotten possessions, and photographs of cats that you chereished, then lost. Yes, find your cliff and jump if you want.
My tongue can only say so much, and my teeth are utterly useless. My fingers can not hold this hand any longer, and it is time for you to jump or not. Wait, what am I saying? You have jumped, and I am just now catching up to the reality, looking over the edge of your cliff, the taste of last night's beer festering in my mouth like the corpse of the awful evening. I am speaking to a dead woman, as she lives those last sceonds before the frightened horses devour her. White stallions, angry and scared. Angry and scared, just like you. Or me for that matter. I am yelling to deaf ears. Over the roar of the ocean, you would not hear me anyway.
My only hope lies within iron skin and bitter determination that I drink like raspberry *****, in the bathroom, taking shots like it's the only thing that can save me. Determination that singes the tongue and releases flames in the stomach. Pure resiliance and dumb luck, for I have seen the depths of that ocean, and know just what monsters dwell there. They have heads like vultures and the teeth of hyenas. They are called monkeys, because they cling to your back as you sink down into the black, where the floor of the ocean is not a floor at all, but a giant mouth full of razors, fire, and sweet oblivion. I felt the fire once, and fought these "monkeys" all the way to the surface, being birthed out of the water with my hair knotted and my eyes filled with horror, stubble on my chin. I have seen the waters you are heading for, but you can still grow wings. There's always that. The "monkeys" are leaping from the water like great whales of despair, or the flying fish in that old Mario game. Biting at the open air only feet below you now, but you can not see them, becuase even though you are falling, you still believe that you are running, and you can't stop looking over your shoulder to try and see the thing that chases you. Your eyes see nothing though. I stand atop the cliff, watching you fall through the rain, writing this poem in blood over the ******* warning label, and you can not see me. You imagined your persuer and now see him everywhere except the only place he really lives, inside your mirror.
It is with a tear and a final drop of blood that I turn from the cliff, and arrest your motion in my mind, taking a photograph just before you passed out of sight, so I can remember what you looked like before breaking the water's already unstable surface. I hear the jaws of "monkeys" snap, but I saw nothing, so nothing happened. Denial. I walk away as the tear falls from my chin where it has rolled down to, mixing with the blood of the poem, which has extended beyond the warning label all the way to where I stand now. I close my eyes for one, long moment, remembering what I knew and what I thought I knew, and what I now know that I did not know.I take one step. Another. Another. I am running from the scene of this death like it was my fault. But really I am simply scared.
If you can swim, swim for your life, friend. I can do nothing more, only be here when and if you make it out from under the surface alive.
I'll be sitting on this rock, under the lightning struck tree trunk that is split open in the middle, branching out in the most unnatural fashion. It looks like electricity itself. I will be sitting on this rock, chain-smoking, lighting the tip of one with the **** of the last, watching the edge of your personal cliff, waiting.
All I can say now is, "Good luck."

Last night I got lost
in the vast expanses of myself.
Who knew there was so much of me?
While the shifting realities
churned before my black eyes,
changing just after I named them,
I drifted, eyes closed, on an unrestful sea
made of the most chilling noises.
Thrilling voices
soaring from the television,
as I light another cigarette.
My friend, Nicotine, seems colder
tonight.
Unreasonably less vital,
woefully less communicative.
The couch refuses to speak with me as well,
and the only voices are those of the television,
masked and muffled by the dense,
strangely spinning, parallel homes
of the dead, of the living,
of everything but me,
for I am become POET
the describer of worlds!
Laugh now, kid. It's okay.
Blame it on the television, or the acid, or a joke you could swear someone made.
But laugh, because I never knew there was this much of you,
and the things coming out of the deeper waters
are beginning to make me uncomfortable.

Aimless, in a desert of
strange colors I have never seen before.
Lost and wandering, wondering.
I find the sunburns oddly charming.
Dry skin, splitting lips,
and the constant crawl of sweat
on my baking, burning skin.
I know only the sky,
as empty as my jaded, coffin of a mind,
buried in Egyptian sands,
long forgotten by even the most dedicated archaeologists.
The sky is laughing at me,
my plight.
Contrary to popular belief,
it does rain here. But only for a moment,
the most brief whisper of hope that falls,
unobstructed, through my grasping, thirsty hands.
Or maybe that is my imagination.
Or, better yet, simple determination.
It's probably better not to ask questions.
The phantom rain is my only sustenance,
after all.

This evening I can feel the fingers of Migraine - black to the bones and crawling with snakes - as they push my eyes forward.
This is pure seduction, the pressure. I can see it - my frail, jagged optic nerve resting between the first and second finger like a cigarette. With each drag Migraine takes, a flash of brilliant pain (high-beam, spotlight, strobe, flashbulb) skitters across my field of vision. I mistake them for rabbits.
And the chase is on. Mechanical dog, mechanical bull, mechanical rabbit of pain like firecrackers, in slow motion. Half-time signatures flutter again as the thing made of snakes inhales my eyes. I guess I am making love to it.
The rain is coming in waves, marked by drops you can count on your hands, in intervals of five minutes. It comes and it fades, mimicking the snake-monster-thing living in my skull, huffing everything I see, getting high on the fumes of the images I feed to it: this paper, these words, blue pen and black sky.
There is a similar sensation in my stomach. I tried to drown butterflies in decaffeinated coffee, and they are fighting back, with constant pressure on the flexible walls of my insides.
They are hungry but know that they must wait three-and-a-half days to eat. They are taunted by words - short responses. They are teased by intense surges of memory, and by smiles that stalk the underside of my brain (have they seen the snake-monster?), waiting to submerge themselves in the calm, reflective water of my face. **** those ripples. They fall down my spine, from the base of my neck where Migraine has made his nest. I shiver.
I am made of ink, rabbits, rain, and butterflies tonight. These shapes I force my pen to draw are serendipitous, falling randomly (rain drops that have collected on the leaves of a tall tree but remain long after the sky has finished sobbing) atop the heads of unsuspecting strangers and one beautiful girl. Why does she always carry that **** blue umbrella?
The answer, of course, is gray matter and black memory, more harsh than my last cigarette will be, four days from now. The answer is experience, drought and flood. The answer is in Migraine, who makes up one third of my soul, and the soul of every human - although he may pick up a different face and hobby.
The answer is that I don't know the answer. I will not until she sets aside that artificially colored canvas reality-shield she carries, and talks with me. With the rain falling on our heads - hers filled with memory and brains, mine with whimsy and Migraine - the mechanical rabbit will come down from his track to dance at our feet, to kiss our rain-soaked shoes. He will lead us to puddles we can jump into.
Splash. Glorious Splash. Migraine is receding to his nest and the butterflies have taken one step closer to contentment. The rain falls, the ink falls with it, and sanity once again speaks to me.
I've missed you, old friend.

I tried to quit smoking last week. And my best friend died for eighteen hours. Such a deep loss has only been felt by rose hips, in the early winter, after the petals have fallen to the ground, like snow, like jumpers from high-rise buildings, like a maiden, after that last, fatal step off the plank, with swords at her back, and the horizon calling to her, the song of the Sirens drifting up from the ocean floor. Dropping, like petals, caught in a harsh winter breeze. The left-overs, the carcases of the flowers that were and are no more, watch with eyes of sorrow and hearts of lead, as each friend, companion, lover, even casual aquaintance plummets, to land on the already frozen soil of a dead, snowless, Colorado winter.
I died with my friend. My roots were tangled, and with each second that passed, a million axes took bites out of them, feasting on my identity. The axes were only gold-plated, it would seem, and not pure, unadulterated precious metal. Engraved in the paper-thin facade was a name, a face, and a hope, all of which were merely a poor excuse for an excersise in willpower. The cold, iron blade shone through the thin, gently curved lines of lip and ear and eye made of nebula. With each breath that passed between loosely parted lips, I felt myself fade, giving my everthing to the world (hope, name, face) that had, only moments before, murdered my closest companion.
My eyes grew steadily hard, increased stone-content. By 6:30, I had been staring into the eyes of my mistress, Medusa, for at least two hours, my head filled with love songs and daydreams, clutching straws and holding out for the one perfect moment that would shed a brief light on my life, which is, in all reality, the afformentioned pirate ship, but void of lamps, candles, or any other means of illumination.
Questions flowed to the surface of my disjointed mind in a stream, a river, an oceanic current of molten rock and sloppy second guesses.
(Will one hurt? Half? Just one puff? Why? Why? Why?)
And as I turned to stone, I finally found the courage to answer one of the questions that my brain shot itself with, injected into its own blood stream. The question was the sole bullet in a revolving, high-stakes betting game, the answer, the fourth trigger pull, with only two chances left anyway.
(Because... I don't know why...)
So stand up, go to the place you have thought about two-million times, and, yes, smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette.
As my friend rose from the dead, pushing aside the boulder blocking the entrance to its tomb, which everyone knew was just a temporary tenement, and we were reunited, we spoke of fascists. Well, I spoke of fascists, it listened. I spoke of the kind of fascists that exist in grayscale television commercials, spewing ingnorant words about the untimely deaths of beloved family members, who give me ***** looks in public, and have forced me into alleyways, across streets, out of sight, out of mind, to the back of the bus, as if non-smokers live forever, as if everyone can accomplish said impossible feat, if not for the evil plant, the evil spiritual plant that poses a threat to the well-ordered religious structures, pyres built for martyrs and long-dead saviors.
I have only begged for eternity once, and I was very young, with years of rocks and hard places ahead, only pink clouds behind, and eyes incapable of foresight. This boy ate apples, and drew on his arms with black pen every Sunday. Go into the church clean, bathed, come out with temorary full-sleeve tattoos. This boy was made of wonder, myth, and blind acceptance. No longer.
I have now gazed into an eternity made of open graves, lost loves, and harsh, barbed-wire truths, punctuated with sharp, jabbing exclamation points of brief pleasure that only seem to make the reality of eternity worse. I am a *******, and even I don't want that. A body can only function for so long without sleep before the motor wears out, the radiator breaks, the gasket leaks, and the marbles flee from the growing insanity of their owner. We all need to rest eventually, and in my secret mind - the one that grimaces with sick pleasure and only shows its teeth in the lines of a poem, slightly blurred by metaphor - I long for that sleep. I am tired, but the day is only half done. But each sun sets, and we can not deny it that truth, that sensation of finality that settles upon senile eyes like a cataract, that snuggles against warm, pink lungs in all its black, tar-like splendor.
Truth, like so many other things in this solar system, only takes shape when under the eye of a microscope, with a passive viewer sewn to the end of it, with the sole intention of passing judgement before shouting "NEXT," and repeating the process untill they either run out of things to judge (blame, think, guilt-trip) or die.
So, smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette. Puff, puff, puff it and let us hope they never get to either of us, old friend.

Even I, with scales on my eyes and large, heavy headphones pressed tightly against my ears, can see that this three week conversation has died out, although I have made every attempt to keep it burning.
Even I, with my nose bleeding, and my heart bleeding, and my soul dripping some strange, red liquid, know that this has run its course, which, coincidentally, was directly into an iceberg which I never saw. An iceburg that only exists in your eyes, yet this ship sailed, serene, into it, with no word of warning from your lips.
Even I, with guts spilled out, in the street, in front of your house, spelling your name, must aknowledge the fleeting nature of the situation. I guess.
Even I, with next to no knowledge of myself, know that I am lying.
But they are lies that I must eat with the eagerness of starving foxes - for that is what I am now. I am made of lies and paw-prints in the vacant lot, near the abandoned sugar factory, that place I still believe is haunted, to this day. Maybe it houses my ghosts.
But after my dinner of hollow lies, I am left famished still, even though I choked down one too many, coughing, and gasping for air, as if I were drowning in my own falsities. After my unsatisfying meal, I only want one dessert: A cigarette and an answer. But only one is possible, and I have already made my choice. The pull of Nicotine is much stronger than that of closure. So I don't really need it.
I am a blind man, who has wandered onto the train tracks, far outside of town, where the iron horses can really run. In the city (or something that may only resembe a city,) they prance. On display. "Look at my tall, graffitti-stained walls. See my beautiful face of cow-catcher grin and headlamp, cyclops eye."
I made my picnic on the tracks, thinking they were a bench. I guess that was a bad idea. And my reanimated corpse agrees, as it trusts that another train is still far away and stumbles about, picking up lost pieces.
I should build a house here. I really don't mind rebuilding, and the trainwrecks ain't so bad...
All in retrospect, friend.

My hooded head casts a shadow
across the overflowing ashtray.
My exhaled smoke is silhouetted on the
handcrafted clay.
In the shape of an oyster,
painted with the colors of
rebellious 21st century youth:
Red. Gold. Green.
With a flare of "originality."
Breeze, light, cold
escorts winter across my
aged face and I see all that my life is:
Tar. Work. Tar. Tar. Sleep.
Work. Tar. Eat. Work. Tar.
Tar. Work. Eat. Work.
Drink coffee.
Tar.
Sleep.
Die.
Is this equation what I am
reduced to?
Simple formula, obsessive compulsive
DREAM.
The exponents of my life,
variables and names:
Tar. to the power of X.
Tar. to the power of M.
But exponents and powers
mean little to drowning men.
Can a man suffocate on
his own routine?
Can a man fashion a noose
from the fibers of his
"adult life?"
Look, Ma!
I'm all growed-up.
I have murdered adventure
and the youth that lives
inside it.
I snapped one too many thin branches,
fell through the thin ice,
and now I am addicted to solid ground.
I will stand on the banks,
watching the children
ice-skate around my ashtray
that overflows with
every "yesterday" and
half-smoked "this one time"
that comprise my
former life.
I am a grown-up now.

Generally, only more specific than that?
Please, if that is not too vague.
Whispering assumptions touch my face, and
cold fingers, like winter wind solidified into
ghosts and a smell that lingers in
innocent nostrils.
Enchanted by cancerous eyes that are
too much tombstone.
To fresh, the memory of decaying
melodies played by heartstrings in my innermost
love song,
I can not bare another death, another season laid to waste under
indifference, feigned or otherwise.
I could not handle another moment banished
into forgot exiles and requested reprieves from "reality."
But I grit my teeth to this
fabricated adversity,
this hypochondriac's molehill.
I will tell the devils to be silent,
to watch me grow wings,
not wings of angels or bats,
but wings of a lonely songbird who
relentlessly searches for harmony
in this dissonant world.

Slipping out of focus now,
this slow fall into a shallow pit
has countless audiences on
seat's edges.
This is the kind of thing they make movies about.
Convoluted past exhaustion,
cliche spirals sell their earthly trinkets
and head for Hades.
Destination: Ninth Circle.
How is it possible? This
alienated deprivation of reality
is not all my own, never will be.
I have become everything one-dimensional,
a decaying heap of facades. Leftovers from
more photogenic weekdays remind me
of duality, of a set of gaudy earrings
I have apparently not yet forgotten.
But I find it better to let the corpses sleep.
Rest assured, they will wake eventually.