Patience’ breath
in waves and rhythms
mists across the mirror,
blurs eyes returned,
lightest blue,
so cold, so still,
upon a boy who grew and grew,
into a wire frame, a cage,
it’s warmth like
almost loving you.

How it comes and goes
away again,
pillowing in tides across the glass.

Reflected
again,
a warmth like almost loving you.

And all things once loved lie
to me, drooling into drains,
along gutters,
pooling into streets
through cracks and creases of
vicious, indifferent roads.

And all things once loved smile
at me, from silver,
along aisles,
in between sheets,
blooming in early morning sun,
sinking with fireflies like shooting stars.

And my hands lie
at my side
much calmer than before.
Much looser, much more giving,
without ache nor itch,
they wait;
of course I maintain those well.
But when I left my feet by the fire,
I left my soul to burn.

You feel it ripple your bones,
in waves, in waves, in waves,
wavering across your spine,
in and out,
seething,
teething the bottom of your mind,
the part that connects jaw-line to skull,
the part you wish to pry your fingers into,
the part you wish to slam your knuckles through,
the part you wish to tear ligament from ligament from
the part you wish to ground into thick, black pulp and sod.

So you can mirror yourself
violated.
Painting self portraits, fists swinging
wildly,
narcissism sails eagerly from
cascades in skewered necks.

Could you finally, then,
give?
Could you finally, then,
give enough
to let loose hounds
thundering in your throat,
gullets run red, raw
from pulling chains
through bowels…
Could you finally, then,
let the outburst out and burst through those very bowels to spew fragmented thoughts onto the floor after you’ve berated the very walls that dealt with the pyres and the floods and the ice and the hell outside foaming at the mouth to be let inside to rip you apart in the very fashion that you ripped apart your own heart in an effort to live up to the family that sours in your veins?

And their mothers cry as they **** harder,
and their fathers cry as they swing harder,
and their sisters cry as they scream harder,
and their teachers cry as they blink harder,
and their preachers cry as they lie harder,
and their friends cry as they grow farther
apart.

Now we can see where they come from when they gag and heave into a night of small candy pills.
Now we can see where they come from when they’re found face down in the ditches and gutters.
Now we can see where they come from when they cry into the same phones that split their skulls
Now we can see where they come from when they stare, hopelessly waiting for the pawn shop nine to pull itself.
Now we can see where they come from when their ***** fills their lungs in cars and bathtubs painted red and brown.
Now we can see where they come from when their fathers drop them like wasted forties into the streets after ******* in the empty bottle.

In spring
the birds converged upon a tree,
filling, brimming, bustling,
with tiny jaunty jovial bodies, and
wings, legs, beaks, and eyes
all peered onto
the world from skies
so high, so high
the giant tree, that blocked the sun and
forged the wind and
forged the rain and
forged the clouds and
forged the shade and
forged the dirt and
forged the grass and
forged the snow and
they amassed,
branch by branch,
limb by limb,
stick by stick,
twig by twig.

Pygmy bantams
leapt, hopped, skipped, popped,
grew
in volume enormously
until the tree, being just a tree,
only a tree,
could only hold
so much and
when they amassed
branch by branch,
limb by limb,
stick by stick,
twig by twig,
it happened to crack
break, dissolve, fall, and die
into hard ground
under weight of flightless
little bodies.

Oh, go on,
and give it up,
you alone and something types.
Heaving thoughts
through throats slit
wide
eyed stare.
While you slept I was surely alive.

There are days when the sun
speaks through windows
speaks through anchors,
cast through windows,
of light. Soft, elegant,
swirling entities,
to claim your picture frames,
to claim your clothes,
to claim your keys,
your shoes, your change, your favorite chair, your favorite cup,
stagnant dregs of your spit
on the rim.

Yeah, there are some days when I wake up
and your smell on the sheets
burns my nose,
creeps into my eyes,
razor wire finger tips
split my pupils, wide.

There are some mornings when the hard
lasts longer than the time
I’ve got to give,
and there are others
when I’ve got the world to explode,
yet no one to show.

And there are nights when I dig
deep into those same sheets,
and I look,
for you, for me, for that smell, for us,
the smells of us,
those that set us free, and full,
from hunger, thirst, lust, death,
life.

There are nights when I stare outside,
the porch light brimming with beetles
and moths and gnats and flies and sometimes
the occasional *****.
Some days are just like that, I guess.
The T.V. hasn’t been turned on
since you left.
but a lot of other things have.

When Atlas cracked
under the weight of eternity,
did he think,
“I deserve this,” too?
Did his anger overtake his throat,
raging titan,
******* and sweating?
Did he tire of enduring roads for godly men,
not because of his failure to be strong,
courageous, powerful, mighty,
but for no reason that made reason.
Why should a god like himself
endure the weight of heaven?
Why should he carry paradise when it beats,
cracks, splinters
chews into fingertips,
rips at nails,
callused hands,
hopeless trembling arms burning,
sweating, fuming with fury and might
wasted potential,
mere volition.

Oh, the beasts you feed,
that laugh and **** and steal,
I’ve seen. You wonder why they grow
so tall, so furious, so strong,
so angry, so cut throat, they
that lurk among you,
baring fangs to bite
the hand that gives,
and strokes the necks of callous pigs.

Some men blink,
some men die,
some men lie
awake at night
and scream their heads off,
cry, “why? no! why?”
to echo silence.

But still they scream and scream and scream,
and then their throats turn to rage.
Screams begin to turn pages
read, passed down from father to son,
from father to son, from father to son,
farther from the sun
at last.

And every night grown hopeless men
read chapters in dim
light, bleeding out below full moon sky

Dead men sour the shores as waves
play at their feet. Bored, the water
will tug the stiffs into frothy sea,
spewing brine into foul air.
Ideas that once were
now lie at the mercy of burdening waves,
are carried down, deep into current,
to feed the mouths of bottom feeders
without pride nor dignity.

They will choke to death on crowns
of yesterday, rotten meat of men
still digging at the bottom of the sea.

It’s been almost twenty years,
not a single word. Thoughts?
I guess you can’t miss
the things you’ve never known.

Hell is full
of demons in the shapes of men,
sons, brothers, husbands, fathers.
Another place lies
not far from there,
where shades take shape
of things you’ll never see.
Ghosts of lives you never got
to live, of things said,
or never said enough.

I’ve not got murderous hands,
nor the simplicity for violence;
it’s my thoughts that scare me.