What gives and what keeps giving
What do we keep doing with it
And what keeps living?

It hurts
Reading
The poems
Of a mentally ill man

I weence.

it's been a hard road since we lost control
i can't get right

i wanna feel proud to call me home!

i wanna move across the world like a comb:
i wanna leave it answered
sinch the world shut with a handsome smile,
stitch me right up for the next few miles,

i know...

things've been fine,
but things could be great if i really tried!
and now i'm in need of a surefire man
to put fire in your life.

and new fire in your eyes.

help me, i'm talking to the mirror...
i need
a very certain man.
a sure- surefire man.
healthy conversations with a mirror...
i see
a very certain man.
a sure- surefire man.

i wanna be loud in my own home!

i just want a place
where i don't have to be an adult,
and that's my final answer
my number one goal til i die from cancer

i know...
there's so much more to life
but i made it through ****
like punk rock wades through strife

and now i'm in need of a surefire man
to put fire in your life.

and new fire in your eyes.


help me, i'm talking to the mirror...
i need
a very certain man.
a sure- surefire man.
healthy conversations with a mirror...
i see
a very certain man.
a sure- surefire man.

i see the quantum of a phoenix
i see the calibrated pieces
i see a chance to make this right

don't blink if you think you see it
but you just might not believe it
you've got a chance to make this right!

help me, i'm talking to the mirror...
i need
a very certain man.
a sure- surefire man.
healthy conversations with a mirror...
i see
a very certain man.
a sure- surefire man.

help me, i'm drowning in glass
i need
to get off of my ***
(i need a very certain man
i need a sure, surefire man)
healthy conversations with death
i see
a broken ******* mess!
(and a very certain man
i see a sure, surefire man.)

reward your beast--
but love him dear.
keep your bullwhip
always near.

for at a feast
or in the field
a beast is eyeing up his meal

and yes right now!
to your chagrin...
your love has met the beast within.

there's a leg
ooh! there's an arm
and what could that be?
love, dis-armed.

Black things you do
That's not my religion
Jaw clenched eyes forward
Jaw loose now, loose
I neither celebrate nor disparage them
Slipping to no crazy place in my mind
Keeping all things balanced
With black things you do

I examine the blood on my wrist
It's not mine
I kinda feel like I learned a lesson

I shrug and lick my lips

I'm still hungry

he was a pet name
of troubled origin!

maybe a little more
than just a floating face
with some business behind it.

anyway, i wonder about her dead cat
hers, not schrodinger's
and find myself once in a sea of people.

some of them are weird,
some i haven't yet met
and maybe that's what weirds me out the most
is that i'm only approximately real.

oh, for the love of god...

someone grab me a Dos Equis.

I am turning with the leaves back home,
Tossing and turning and changing colors.

I feel the black stain on the back of my neck,
It hits me hard like a reverse sunburn.

It begins to insult my composition.

I envy quiet self-awareness
A deranged ruminant licking at its cud.
I want your stripped and tightened frame,
But at least I'm fodder for a better day.

You're a good mix all ways.

You're a damsel in distress.

You're a nightmare to conceive,

But you're a good mix,
All ways.

i want to write a poem about
"become a cartoon"
where you just become a figure
based on your surroundings
where you just become an image
and you lose your personal tether

become a cartoon, love
lose yourself in the static
get pixelated awesome
shoot yourself into the sky

make love to your surroundings
make sweet electric love
my name is Benny Saccharine
it's nice to meet you,
take my picture!

i remember when
you were a hungry hungry caterpillar.

munching on the leaves,
twiddling mandible,
buzzing eyes.

i would walk in the room
and you'd start spinning your cocoon

i know that soon
you'll be a butterfly.

Agatha, agatha
Mitchin magarkle.

Gorpaloff horpinsall
Titchy and tardle.

Weys hume lot bardin rodd
You ****** it up,
Now suffer the consequences.

She has worked herself into quite the predicament
Magnetizing love, running everything through wires
Inheriting the world diagonally again and again
Turning up the contrast until the pixels scream and bleed
Giving her children the nightmare of love
Giving her children saturated kisses
Giving them candy and drugs and hate and indifference
Breaking babies on her ******* knee with cold hard facts
Giving life to you and me

Now this may not be easy
And it may be way too ******* complicated
But I really love to see them come together
Love to see that support in hard times
Love to see that humility and working with what we have
We were meant to love each other
And that is an ancient thing

Mirror man was convincing
When he told me to die
He gave such good reasons
He had such sure eyes

Solid and angry
And black in the middle
Cute but he's evil, with razors
In his mind.

Razors pointed the wrong way
But just right.

Something like the antichrist.

But it left me confused.
I just don't see a reason to.

let's find ourselves anew

knowing gold to be
illusory,
just load me in
a cannon and
set the fuse alight!

a world away, a world away

blow your hands and roll the dice!
if the weather isn't nice,
you can hibernate
or migrate
like the animals do.

a world away, a world away

inspired by the moment
just as if you really owned it
let it go, it's here to stay
worlds away,
a world away

I never want your present
I never want your love
I never stop to obsess
Over where you are
Or what you did

I drank a glass of moonlight,
Enough to settle nerves
To say goodbye to forcing things
And be more at peace
With everything.

a swirl of white creative light,
a long, long talk with a palette--
the messy room of a man
who's just not there yet.

this half-artist loves
a loose order
and letting his room be moved
by higher forces

so what is quivering within him?

why such a tease?
an initial fluttering
perhaps (he prays)
before the first real flap of the wings.

but now,
see the rustle of complete dissolution
ah, yes
there and there, and ... almost there--
(so close!)
may overcome his maiden voyage yet.

******!
All your life:
Moonlit, drunk on ******.

Reek is squirming again
I can’t get him off my back
He clobbers himself in the head with
Sticks made out of bacon

I swear my life would be normal
If the world would just let me
I talk to myself all day
And **** your autumn moon,

It’s a little distant from me now
As I settle into this luxury deathsack it’s weird,
I find I’m still ****

What a load of crap

for someone not like us,
the strong, the stoic and calm
you left all that dust to the devil
without a moment's hesitation

i'll come and ride along
with ears for what is wrong
before i go off speeding again,
down the highway to hell.

ana's been fantastic
her cherry red lipstick
underlining sapphires
that shimmer in the sunlight

i've been to ohio
i've been to the rodeo
i'll be wearing green
and white.
ana's been fantastic

no one really asked if
ana was elastic
i guess i almost broke her heart,
but ana's been fantastic.

this is the institution of my heart.
this is the institution of my heart.
this is the institution
this is the institution of my heaaaaaart

it's starting to look like
this whole thing's
just gonna fall apart

but we do this anyway.

with schools and courthouses,
banks and parks.

almost made a correction
owed to stubborn insurrection
almost changed, "we"
to "they"

if you find me with an opened throat
if you meet me in a tattered coat
find the warmth left in my body
find that warmth left in my body
and call it ours,
call it ours.

Oh, artists!
Always losing things!

I have become
Bleak

Caffeine
Nicotine
Alcohol
THC,
Weak.

Shriveled up when I felt too much
Like some cowardly, lowly mollusk,
But vines

Vines rustle as they reach
The length of your spine

That stealthy girl
I bet she's still alive

Lou
Lou had brown skin like crumpled newspaper and a voice like muddy gravel
His skin and his life hung loosely from his skeleton
Having developed fat
Having developed a slight limp

We prayed for utter salvation from the confines of a two-man cell,
But I dropped myself off

Now I could reach down my throat
And my heart would slip around this mess of blood and guts.

It might take me an hour to find it
What's next,
My brain?

In my shell

Somewhere far away
You're a fire dancing in the rain
The very same one that sang my body, too
And I just draw up what I'd do
If I could--
To try and love *you.

That is true,
But you still have your edges
You may be deranged
But I love you anyway.

she rolls around her rock
her radiation cup runneth over
waterfalls, lush green, freshly
ground
sand...

wet clay

with all this activity
her core should tighten
she's eating leaves
with electron transport chains

but round and round she goes
and she has forgotten
the morning dew
the joy of life
the laughter of children
toothless people
confident speech
the push and pull
the way to say
i love you

Darna Trainer
makes me feel
Like a Fwanche

i'll
just
sit here

eating this bag of
sour brain

beneath
the sycamore tree
i never got high
that way,
that way

sir Jesus never had me
over
for dinner

with people passing by,
some laugh
some cry

some shake their heads and sigh

some look to their husbands,
never look me in the eye

All these tiny outstretched hands
Doing everything they can to hold me
When they get there that's where I take issue with you
You insult her with your sluggish attitude and careless demeanor!

But I'll take help where i find it
Cursing curses never helps
I do not find my hands lazy, I say
As the blood seeps back into them
A pale and nervous man said.hoping to excite life in the naked mirror

Oh well that's... That's coming along great!

"your bloom will only reach so far"
yeah, that's what the warden'd have you think
you may just find from your guitar
entire universes spring

you'll only speak so many tongues
you'll only be one human song
how small you are indeed, my friend
but there are songs that never end

where surely definition stops--
but wait, that's flowing through your mind
i'm wearing out this lyrical style!
i wonder what else i could find...

but settle down you ******* madman
the passers by, they'll start to stare
oh, settle down you worry wart
and don't you know i never cared

Jayson, Jayson
Jayson knows
Oh Jayson he knows what I mean
He'll beat his drum all the way 'Om
something here should rhyme with 'mean'

But Matt, you really should consider
Crystallizing something, bitter
Tastes the moment when you ramble
Ramble, ramble
Ramble, ramble.

the night's pale cheek
gilded with blonde hairlets,
shudders at something inside me.

i am like a forgettable painting
absent from Southern footsteps--

whatever silver dream spun
by that far-flung veil of flesh
and paint
since our singular rendesvous!

but i sleep in the husk of a memory.

so long ago,
you figure it matters way less than the last one
you just write
using a language made from sketches of her cells
having glanced at a handful of the ones
on her left hand

it's all just extrusions since the crash.

so every drop of blood you've nursed from that wound has made perfect, mind-breaking sense.
a greatest validation that indeed, it is red
yes indeed, we're all nested across some binding paradox
but there are good books and there are Rorschach tests--
i guess this poem is somewhere in between.

i guess the air is like a hummingbird
and she can taste the exotic nectar inside me.
can she bear the tension held
in my effortless decay?

a dizzy name, a silly song
an old, cracked joke
a dried bouquet.

when Marshall realized Lilly was,
in fact,
being just a little selfish,
and Ted coached the appropriate response.

moments like that.

like why did i hang for so long?

right,
but,
there's strong truth to that too,
when maybe it was just her style
her lust for life that was so hot
so exact, it was love
maybe she just stole all your breath
and never
*******
gave it back.

i don't care if you're married,
i don't care if you're open or closed
older or colder or kinder or both
i don't care if we hug
i don't care who knows
but i'll be ******
if i never see you again,

Disa.

in your clothes,
life is different
i can leave my body
and pay yours a visit
what i can't see
around your eyes
tears at me,
an Obscurity.

but without Me,
you'd be a void
at very least,
i'd be annoyed...
an envelope,
signed and sealed
empathy
is it a thing
to avoid?

but all the way,
you start to realize
starts to fray
starts to unrealize
false apart
you'll never get there
nerve on a nothing
nothing on--
the nerve!

so would you like to dance with me
sweet adeline, sweet mary sue?
sweet jessica and macy lou?
and emily and rachel too?
penelope and hot winona
soft-skinned grace
and fine fiona?
but never stacy
sorry, love
avert your eyes & kiss the sun

I'm the perambulator of body parts
I am scared to be dressed like a cat
I am walking along the Gulf coast
I am dressed like a **** cat
If one piece of hair comes loose
It's really something to laugh at.

I am a walking abstract painting
I am a face and a foot and fussing hands
I am emergent of buzzing molecules
I am emergent of the Philly suburbs
I am not who people say I am
I am more than my mistakes
I am shaped of some dimension
I am more than what I am

I am proving it right now
I am entropy itself
I am filling in my shoes
Now I kick them off my feet

I am everything you dreamed,
Only local to myself
I am bound, but I will die
And I
Will always be myself

I've heard this all before
I can drink it with my thoughts
If I missed a couple things
No need to tell them I forgot,
You forgot
Apricot
I think we all forget a lot.

That I'm the earth and wind and sun
And I am not the only one
One day I will untie the Giant
Microscopic knot

you were a flash of vibrant color,
then my back hit the ground.

suddenly,
my chest was breathless
and i watched vile things grow from the pause in my body

collecting by the Susquehanna when you never came,
i knew impotence would follow me home to Hatfield
and it did,

more rot from frozen frames
when being locked up got me locked up
a nightmare blossomed

i sang of black roses on your bedroom door

but there were red ones too.

i sat and played back colors on the projector screen
and said my favorite one was blonde,
so strong
so rect
Alive

feeling these new thorns
that were not yours
they made me wish i'd held you more gingerly

because then you were other things
loosing blood you didn't need
and staring at me from space with one black
empty eye
******* at life with your emptiness
keeping kernels that tell questions
and filling sacred chests
with ugly floods of color

now you unfold over that ridge,
San Antonio
far from anything and anyone
i've ever known

totally novel.

liberation beckons me

liberation from the past
from self-pity
from the dirt you shoveled early

& for the first time that girl
is fading from my mind
but i'm in love with it.

i don't think she'll ever really leave.

What is illegal is damaging someone's career the way you did
Sending lies to my place of work
Which resulted in my termination.

It was a good job,
And you took it from me

You got really creative in that letter.

No, this is not harassment.
It is right that I speak out to what you have done,
And this is totally legal,
Hate it or love it.

You silly girl,
You can't win with lies.

You disgust me.

You have slandered my name
Spread so many lies about me
You are so foolish
It doesn't matter how upset you are
You can't just fabricate
Your plan is futile
You have shown yourself to be a desperate, spurned liar.

You have nothing.
You can't damage me anymore.

Give up your crazy little war.
Stop making **** up.

Maybe you won't let go because you don't want to be exposed as a liar
Kick and scream, you redfaced baby

It's really hard to convince people of something that never happened.

roll your gorgeous bones
my way
all of your nectar taking a chance
on me

waves of porcelain skin
i know
let's get reorganized
inside

let's invite the devil
over
for dinner

well yeah,
i guess you could make anything sad
if you fought hard enough.

funny,
some people seem to fight pretty hard.

...

not me.

i figure, i'm alive to do things that make me happy, eh?
seems obvious enough.

but some people, man...
especially nowadays
some people love their sadness.

it never bothered me, you know
to each his own and everything,
except the ones who are really choosing it.

you know what i mean?
it's a reflex we all have:
you see somebody making a big deal over some petty ****,
you squash 'em.
you tell 'em, "stop whining buddy."

"aye, better luck next time."

"don't be a sore loser."

and that's half the world's problem, i swear it
is sore losers!
that right there is gonna get you in a lot of trouble...
and it's just downright wasteful!

i mean,
i just hate to see a good meatsack go spoiled.

i can never erase
the scars i left
on your heart

all the good days in the world
could never change things i've said

there is only one way
that sits right with you

and i can't do that

Yeah, I think something just fell.

Sleep is with the chemical stains
Gnarled hardness in the soft tissue
And sleep is with the obsession strains
A tunnel vision we never cured
My long and detailed daisy chains

Sleep is with his verbose rants
And how much kitty left is there
Sleep is with feeling out
Am I going to care?
Am I vital?
Like am I even there?

Sleep is with knowing i can rock this, but worrying I might forget
Sleep might be just a liiiittle too eccentric
And sleep is with bad bets

Sleep is with bad bets,
Sleep is with you.

On the other side of the mattress,
Sleep is with you...

Just a sliver of the moon
And sleep is with you
You're the thing my heart should have never seen--
A golden vein with blue.

Sleep must be
Somewhere
Out there,
With you.

Away and away and away
You keep pulling me out to sea
Away from the days
That felt vibrant and obvious
Where it felt safe to believe
I could be something great

I have become a sigher
The opposite of a designer
Wondering what's going on up in the citadel,
Selling myself short
Living in a privileged squalor

There's fruit floating in your red wine
Bobbing up and down
Drifting around
Swimming through this town

One of them is me
A single mango cube
Soaking in the deep red drug
Waiting to be plucked and cleaved
Beneath your lipstick lips,
By teeth

The palm trees sing a soothing song
They cannot see our skeletons
They cannot see our pasts, the breeze
It pushes us along with ease

So nevermind this silly thing
I'm dipping out and diving in
Vacation calls, vacation calls
I'm never coming back.

He scrubs,
And scrubs.

The Rabinet plays guitar,
He is bad,
He lives underground,
He never does anything,
He makes it seem like he cares,
He doesn't,
He's just floppy rabbit skin with no rabbit meat or bones,
He's just a snack for the next woof that comes along,
He wouldn't even make good soup,
He has some redeeming qualities but he's too ****** for them to show right now,
He spends money on **** that he should be saving up,
He's annoying,
I don't want to listen to him,
You'll have to speak up sir
I don't speak Rabinese.

Science caught you red-handed
Science found you out
Romance in your right
But in your left was always doubt

Dexterous and sinister
You pulled the money in
Now none is left for me, or mine
Or any of our kin

Science left you cynical
Chest and in the head
Just focus on the positives
And focus
...on the bed.

The star-crossed incident that broke their brains
Inspired re-enactments
And went largely unnoticed

---- doesn't exist.

That's the space they fold him into,
Easy with some lubrication though altering his form substantially,
Unnatural and making the grumblings of domestic animals,
Writing Orwell into this before even his mother knew it

---- doesn't exist,
The city of Philadelphia could use a good hero
But it sure is hard to find motivation when it doesn't exist

By the wayside,
Cast out by the hard steel walls of fate
Where I found my brother
The reason why we smiled

So put your strength into it and feel her warm blush--
You'll never know a finer thing than life.

oh no--
i must tell you
my ex girlfriend
she has done
some awful things to me!

i should be happy. i am.

like the black crayon that smeared into your yellow
will you remember next time
to use the yellow one first?