Barely a buck fifty,
gift from some
far off city
that was given to me.

A soft gaudy snow globe world
with winter glitter swimming in
clear plastic that a snow man
must have recently move to live in.

Cute as can be
even though
it was cheaply
made, bought
and given
with little thought
or effort.

Dusk is dull and gray
but the poet
will not break
his addictive trance.

It is not a romantic dance
of swirling fools
twirling to
a concerto
we all knew,

but a dangerous stream
going full steam,
a watery dream
of the unseen
unconscious
activity,

pushing and pulling.
Till, he stumbles, drooling
like a mewling fool
not controlling
his roving mind
but being moved
with its rapid taps.

His words are marked
with a metronomic beat.
His face is flushed
with the rushing heat,
a side-effect
of his anxiously
overactive mind.

Pushing well beyond
his normal bedtime
he writes
like a recovering
word addict
who he has relapsed.

I see the trees
rotting diseased,
void of spring’s leaves,
Roots cleave
dry brown dirt.
Wooden daggers
pierce the earth.

Grounded,
they are my roots
hungry for all
life needs
drinking deep
of the natures
rainy liquor,
but we are each
still dying.

There are clouds
That obscure reality
While I wait
For the most
Probable
Eventuality
Knowing
That immortality
Is a lie
We like to tell ourselves
I wait to fall
Scrape my knees
Against the cold concrete
And hope that each time
The coarse grains
Will give way
See me sinking
Into a shining world
As hardness envelopes me
Vapors conceal
The way I feel
The affections that are real
And I hide a bit to
Till I find the truth
Visiting one friend,
Her or him
Walking and talking
Knowing
That they will be swallowed
That the earth will open up
Time will crack and rumble
Lightning to thunder
Splitting just enough
To take the ones I love
One chip at a time
Till their fate is mine
And I join them
In the dirt nap defeat

I play heavy music
as I move heavy metal.
Less than massive
muscles straining
shirt getting wetter
as I try to be better.

Don’t want the girl
at the desk to think
that I am a *****
even though a ******
is a powerful thing.

So, I pack those plates
though they are not
as impressively placed
as they used to be
when a younger me
worked out rigorously
with an anger and certainty
that motivated me powerfully.

I pushed my body
just this side of too far
three days still sore
from my leg exercises
with mediocre form.

I miss that younger guy
who liked to workout at night
to episodes of his favorite shows,
two hours or so at each go
then let eighteen more pass by
till he got to work out again.

Home or gym
it didn’t matter to him.
Now, I work and try to fit in
that same energy and passion
that I am frustratingly lacking.

A blur sharpens.
Vision returns.
Retina burns
as pain
takes its turn
to remind you
that dry eyes
might
blind you.
Headaches
make me
super cranky,
so I need
caffeine
to stay sharp,
with a gallon
of water,
and eye drops.
Until,
my mind is
still,
and I can sleep.

I let the wind ride me
Sending waves of beauty
Tiny lakes, thin tributaries
And pond like puddles
Destine to dissipate, disappearing
But for now they dance
In their dirt and gravel

I’m a dead poet
Ya’ dig
I don’t have to makes sense
The academics
Just have to think I did

The tension is always there
Cold steel coiled ready to rumble
Muscles strained to the limit
Life and work pushing
Till the flesh bulges and breaks
A ****** bulb busting
Bursting with life’s juices
The truth is we don’t need this
Happiness is achievable
The weird web we weave
To shape our destiny
Is not a trap to clap back
And smash happy facts
But to take the mind
To greater times
Traveling so fast
That the old corrupted institution
Warp and finally collapse
Leaving a space for us to make a better way

I never forgive myself.
I do not like to write
about my deepest truths
even when I lie to tell you
who I really am.
I still censor that man.

I never forgive myself,
but I let everybody else
do so much worse then
I ever did when I was kid.

I never forgive myself.
I set my standards to high.
I push too hard
and a part of me hopes
I fly so high that I die
when I touch the sky
and fall down
wax feathered wings and all.

I never forgive myself
but maybe you will.
I’ll give you my words
and help you feel
connected to the strangers
that you barely feel are real to you.

I never forgive myself
for not sacrificing all
to be the greatest poet activist.
I only visit this purpose
in my poetry and prose.

Who knows if I ever will?
I will probably die
unforgiven
and apart from everyone,
cause I never forgive myself
even when I am home alone.

To me it’s a dead man’s barren land
Barely functional mostly boring
Gravel road with only two solid streets

No one meets a stranger
There is no danger of the unknown

People pass away becoming
A checkmark on a checklist
Five hundred to four hundred and ninety nine
Not including me

One water sac down and then another
One by one my family becomes deceased
Till this town feels like a disease
Till my instincts scream death trap

Heavy hearted but lightly packed
The road beckons and I leave it like that
A ghost town fading with the sundown
All my past buried in innocence and memories

And even though they are still very precious to me
I do not ever intend to return their again.

The grave was wet
with well water,
sinking flesh
fell farther down
into the brown ground
as it all rotted.

But, if I could
I would
pull you up
and out of that
cold black
and damp
death spot.

I would
warm you with
a loving kiss
and a tender hug
as I massaged
life back in to
your cold skin.

I would
bring you back
into a bright new day,
see your flesh
refresh
returning from
your withered
rotting form,
not a zombie,
but the warm body
that I remember.

So, I could have
one more day
to hear you tell
all the stories
you might have kept
to yourself.

The point break
Pencil tip
Ill-equipped
To handle
Such creative rage
Pushed into
The blank page
Till white bleeds
Graphite
Till night seeds
The deepest poetry
And I find me
The broken pencil
In two parts
Taped together
Still writing

If the pain passed flowing to the past which spawned it
To be replaced by an angelic face of graceful love and calmness
If the conflict that burns me to the core
Where countless nights were spent in venting
All those hopeless aspirations that came to nothing more
Than flimsy water marked paper that was lost in a monsoon
If I loss all the losses that once consumed me
To become perfectly happy
What would become of me
Because I fear I only thrive in my misery

The water is a dangerous mirror.
Under a chaotic wind swept surface
I see myself, almost formless;
Clinging to old memories
like a drowning man
clings to the hope for air.

Nothing is eternal.
Even the beauty
locked in Amber
will be destroyed
in the void
of space and time.

It is so torturing
trying to only eat
healthy things,

passing on all
of those sugary treats
that I know aren’t
good for me.

Then later
I go on binging.

One donut
takes me
off the wagon
of healthy
living.

Then the
same shame
spiral happens,

no napkins
just two thousand
plus calories
of insanity,
leading to guiltily
working out.

What are
these cravings
all about?

I got an empathy infection
with a heart that won’t stop
burning inside of me
while the rest of humanity
goes on laughing and smiling.

I got tears of sorrow
that split my body in two
leaving me more than enough pain
to share with you.

Cause, I have been reading
listening and pleading
while strangers were crying
screaming and begging
watching their loved one’s bleeding.

But you are not seeing
what I have seen
cause you blinded yourself intentionally,
becoming separated by skin distinctions,
modern segregation that is a
pale imitations of old school **** clicks.

And any one not white American
can eat your ****.
Well, I’ve been swallowing it,
wallowing in the horrors you allowed.

But the vengeance demon inside of me
wants to bloom and see
you reap the pain you have sown.

Right now, I am dealing with
all of my insignificance,
the pittance that this peasant
employs to avoid
complete depression.

You are free
to dance
as you please,
swirl in a
thousand degrees,
burning like
a million
firefly lights,
a free from
swarm
of blinking
butts.

You are
the master of
the baptismal fire
that you made
your own
salvation
in.

It is not
their right
to define
your life,
so be the
salamander
or the butterfly,
the laughing
lizard
or the mighty
monarch.

You choose.

Her love is a disintegration of the self
A sacrifice of everything inside
An Identity suicide
Draping the void over life
Suckling on eternity
As if it was the lips of death
In one breathe
She erases her existence
With one verse her persistence
Finds affection to be a ****** mess
Red ribbons cutting flesh
Suffocating the best
Of her individuality
But we all got our vices
So who am I to judge

Does heaven have a place
for this pock marked
rebel angel’s face?

One ship two sails shorn.
Sunrise finds her crew
too far from the shore.
Wooden heart cracked
and replaced by cold metal.
Her fabric ***** furiously
sending the sounds of
wind slapping her ***** white sails,
only to find her soft cloth soul
replaced by a hot humming motor.
That engine of destruction which
bristles with fossil fuel's burning energy
or our modern nuclear fury.
My traveler's heart loses
its measured beats
and I gasp in arrhythmia.
In truth, I weep for a sea
that I have never seen
for waves and tides
I have only a passing familiarity.
It is only the fictions
of my fellow word smiths
that lend any resonance.
I see the shiny but choppy surface
In stories on tv, in movies,
or bursting out in beautifully bound books.

She is a pretty woman
with a delightful mind
strong and intriguing.
I’d like the time
to absorb the wisdom
that I might find
behind those dangerous eyes.

I seldom solicit
your consent
when I try to
penetrate
the mind you
hide behind.

The ocean ebbed from
her saltwater sea green eyes.
Shuddering breaths sounded
strangely inconsistent patterns.

The moon’s glow pushed her
porcelain face to
loveliness’s limit.
Anguish lit
all that was curved.
Soft lips pursed in pain.
Her long hair was locked in
a lazy perm.

I only looked once, ashamed
to embarrass to ask,
I let her sorrow pass
as she walked away,

Ephemeral beauty shivering
two days away from
an even colder form.

It is the sounds
of ivory keys
hammering strings
that I use to sooth
my tired self to sleep
or to keep
jarring noises
from waking me.

The butcher’s bane,
the ****** mess
I came to see,
a cracked carcass
laying displayed,
fetid, and crumbling
with rot
because the butcher forgot
to take a day off.

Now,
beneath the dust
the stench of
a week’s worth
of decay
sprays
out of
the doorway,
tempting strangers
who pass that way
to wretch
violently,

while familiar faces
face regret
for not checking in
with their old friend
the butcher.

The pillars of learning are acquiring information, retaining it, being able to retrieve it, then being able to adapt and use it in various situations

The streets are empty.
Yellow lines
run from
the horizon
as I ride them
to the end.

The houses
are boarded up.
Hordes of home maker
won’t wake up.
Soccer moms
won’t be
driving on,
because its all gone.

Glass windows
are shattered
with strange webbed cracks.
There are no spiders
to climb them
just long lines
of silence.

I can find this
lack of violence
everywhere I look,
because all roads
lead to a state of
nothing hood.

Nothing is good,
but it isn’t bad either.

I used to be scared
of big fat spiders
but right now
I would be happy
to see
any non-plant living thing.

There aren’t even any dogs
left barking at me
while I move.

Its just miles
of mind numbing
loneliness
and an eternity
of time
to be consumed
by many mad
states of
my fragile mind.

A simple storm
can washes us clean
but a bigger one
will blow through town
huff and puff
like the big bad wolf
and blow our houses down.

Everything is everything
while I walk in
human suffering,
buts that’s ok.

We’ll work the wreckage
if we can
build back up
from this here land,
and when
the floods
come back in
we’ll keep on
rebuilding.

Everything is everything
while I walk in
human suffering,
buts that’s ok.

The earth will quake
when the tremors come,
but we’ll still stay
while others run,
the damaged
cannot be undone,
but we can rebuild.

Everything is everything
while I walk in
human suffering,
buts that’s ok.

Tornadoes or hurricanes,
when they come
not much changes.
Stubborn pride
keeps us alive,
and we rebuild
resolute to stay
where we intend to die.

The laws of man
are stretched and torn
worked like taffy.
They are the
sustenance and armor
of the wealthy
while the rest of us
are crushed
beneath their weight.

Money, alcohol,
video games and football
sports entertainment,
movies, cars,
trips afar,
social networks,
****** relationships,
if these are the things
we are run by,
searching for that
purchase high,
working lives
fun put on hold,
as you hold onto
your nine to five,
if all we are
is the desire to acquire
and be distracted
till our clocks
stopped,
then what is the point?

We struggled so hard
and made it so far
to make what we love
to share who we are,

but people are gone,
they drove away
closed their accounts
had nothing to say.

We swallow our grief
try to accept what we lost
but we’re deeply entrenched
in the ones that we love.

They already gave up.
They never come back.
No matter how much you care
they do not care back.

2015 and as I look back
I cannot find the heart to laugh
Losses build shadow blocks
Oil and rot that clog tired arteries
Cracking my positive disposition

How many tears
can a parent give
filling the seas
with all of their grief?

For those who know
such sorrowful horrors
there can be no reprieve;

And for fellow human beings
whose nightmares
parallel those horrible waking scenes
how can they not weep as well?

How can they not fill a well,
knowing that their growing
children could be
suffering
and/or
dying?

So, many meager
minded *******
coming at you like
fat blind truckers,

stiff bodied rigid minds
making no time to find
the reasons behind
life's eloquent poetry lines.

So, I drown in sea humanity’s
sinking stupidity
whilst seeking some semblance
of our potential brilliance
which is a glimmer
I can only make out
in the far-flung distance.

Barely beyond January
half-way into February
winter should still be cold.
Instead, it is vexing me
fluctuating between
fifty to sixty degrees.

Now the weather confusion
unleashes the wanderlust in me.
My car comes rumbling
stumbling over loose gravel.

Still daylight,
but there is no sun in the sky
just cool blue, and grey clouds
with unknown animals
hooting and howling
out their own natural melodies.

I park to play
a video game
on my cellphone
then write down a couple of notes
while intermittently reading
two different books
of poetry.

The old empty elm tree
waves drunkenly at me.
Sparse spindly fingers ascend,
empty but imagining
that spring will bring back
the soft living green.

All this observed
in under an hour.
Until, my impatience
drives me back home
to all of my distracting
technology.

At twenty-three
I didn’t see
that girls would not
be impressed
by back rubs,
that they would not
want to get undressed
because for one
they thought I was gay
and two
they were not into
this Star Trek
X-men, Buffy nerdy dude.

There is a gap,
between that
which holds me back,
and that which
makes me laugh,
until I am able to
launch myself
right past
that *******
obstruction.

She sheathed her sword
inside my chest
from the middle
slightly to my left
and left heavy metal
to mar my fragile flesh.

An aching bubble,
broken spot of blood
puddled from my *******
into the mud.

This was the death
of my love.
For such a violent
reaction
was more than enough
to prove to me
I could never be
humanity’s
favorite ****.

People move
in fear,
migrating from
the dangerous militia
chasing them
with death’s gleam
in their eyes,
fathers carry
their daughter,
mothers urge
their sons
to move on
as miles pass.

Strangers
and
family members
are tightly packed
and stacked on top
of one another
as a world of choppy water
moves them forward
to a harbor they hope
is safer than the home
that they ran from.

Thin tired faces
hungry and anxious
hoping to escape this
nightmare,
easily inches from death,
move to march
across soft lands
and desert sands
seeking something
us soft bellied
cheeseburger
loving sedentary
men and woman
could not comprehend.

I hear the horrible hate speech
screeching out at me,
beer bellies bulging dangerously
with prechewed stupidity
denying the humanity
of these struggling human beings.
Tears of strained patience
crease my age lined face
as I try to explain
the reality of another being
who is suffering.

My peers do not hear me
instead they promote fear greedily,
But I see some strangers
holding up signs of love
speaking the same truth
that I eschew
to show all of you
that refugees do not walk
without a reason,
and we have enough resources
to be decent human beings.

In my life I have felt the bitterl lashes of despair. I have  walked in and out of the shadows of pain. I harbor not grand hope for a spiritual salvation, so in order to make my life count for something I have to be great, and I will.

life is an exercise
of humility,
and I am hemorrhaging
my sanity
waking walker
stumbling in futility
knowing my existence
is less than a pittance
knowing that
in the cosmic swirl
of heavenly bodies
constantly moving
I am not even a speck.
My power is limited
as is my comprehension.
I am settled on
shifting sands
and this position
is even more precarious
then I can imagine it to be
because this planet is spinning
while rotating around a star
that is the heart of a
moving galaxy
in a rapidly expanding universe.

There is no warmth
despite the
sweltering heat.
It is winter
in the middle
of summer.

Strangers are all stiff
with a frigid
temperament.
They wear cold shoulders
and give off
icy stares.

It is a painful boil
that we must burst,
lancing the tip
even though
it hurts,
see the center
bubble
and drizzle
up and out
of its
volcanic center,
so, the swelling
may cease
and we may begin
to heal again.

As a member of this limited species I am a bigger idiot than most. My heart yearns for a better world even though I know it is on a sad slow but rapidly hastening decline. So I spit weird verses out into the void hoping humanity will hear it and listen. Yep I am a huge *******. Most people are to egotistical to admit their idiocy. however, I believe that accepting our stupidity opens us up to learn more and not be trapped in the old style of thinking. Peace, love, and props to you all

They cast me out
into the open ocean
to float alone.

The choppy waters
rippled randomly
all around me.

As I sought to swim
I found a tree limb
adrift in this infinity
of water that was
trying hard
to drown me.

While I hugged the
thick brown wood,
my skin was
scraped and shredded
from the rough bark
and other protrusions.

After an unknown
quantity of hours,
daylight was devoured,
and the once bright sky
gave way to starlight.

Above me lay
an infinite expanse of space
which was reflected
in the water
where I struggled
to remain
afloat.

Then in an instant of fatigue
one wave captured me
and I screamed silently
as oxygen was replaced
by saltwater,
and I was swallowed
by eternity.

I find that many times in my life
there has been too much fear
where fascination would have served me better.

It’s not submission
but a positive disposition
towards those in a position
to be friendly
or a thorn to me.
Hopefully,
I can spread
positivity.