I am the malcontent
The sentient
Flesh that breeds
The need
To plant my seed
Biochemical
Desire

However,
Beneath the superficial
There is a deeper well
A wanting to wantonly
Wave myself away
From the rational
Mind that I saved
Let myself be swayed
Caught up in the wave

Subsumed under the moon
To touch and be touch
To look at and be seen
To hear and be heard
To love deeply
And see that sea
Of emotions mirrored

To find my poetic partner
And not merely be
Someone she needs
To make it to the next step
I want to be wanted
More than an outlaw poster
But with an illegal passion
Deviant and proper
At the same time

Two bodies of the same mind
Consumed
By the nuclear
Smoking mushroom
That leaves us choking
Till passion is spent
And love is stillness
A sleeping form
That I can keep warm
And safe

My dance was discordant
Animalistic, trembling persistent
All flesh and bone made to be passionate
Holding in one hand
The hopeful destruction called love
And in the other fingers ****** facts
I gasp choked by the dissonance
Holding out hope while trying to be realistic
All I could do is dance to my own madness

So many rules and I broke them all
Like never let them touch me
Never let them in
Never let them in again
A rule I broke over and over

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.

The camera adds to many pounds
and the mirror man makes me sick,
but my shadow is debonair,
with cool black clothes and a full head of dark hair.
I wish that illusion would stick.

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

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.

When life is to hard and hurts to much it is love and hope that drives me on. When darkness and despair permeate my world it is love and hope that sustains me. So I thought just so you all know when times get tough when the tragedy is to much please remember I love you all.

How many years
have the shadows owned my heart?
How many times
have I seen
my hope for love
blown apart?

I don’t want to
be a burden to you.
I just want to do
what you need me to.

But it’s awkward
I feel as if
I am at the end
and this attempt
represents
a last-ditch effort
to believe
love is possible
for me.

Writing becomes an exercise in humility.
I strengthen of my vocabulary
by using words I am currently
learning
and putting them in my poetry.

Looking at old school photographs, I laugh
A sad little laugh, thinking of times friction
And how it grinds life, till bit by bit
Pieces of our past ware out and disappear

He sat,
sweetly serenading
the elderly lady.
Their hands
were clasp,
and she relaxed
as the pain
of living
slowly faded.

This was his gift
to take something
many were happy
to give.
With soft words
and strange energy
he channeled
his humanity.

A willing ear
open to hear
all songs
and melodies
of heart ache
and physical pain.

So, he sat
and passed
a chicken sandwich
to a strange old woman.
He listened and heard
all that she said
with and without words,
and for a moment
just a brief interlude
in the darkness
of her daily life
there was a sense
of love and kindness.

Hazel eyes
of cosmic wisdom
and compassion
he did not
see strangers in pain
and walk past them.

He sat,
with a sobbing stranger
who needed someone to listen,
gave him a ride,
let him use his cellphone,
and spent more then
a minor moment
willing to hear
what the stranger had to say
as tears moved
across a tattooed face.

Maybe it was
a fruitless endeavor
to expend energy
on people
society
had discarded,
the deeply scarred
and charred bits
of burnt out
hearts,
maybe one moments
is not enough
time to undue
a lifetime of abuse,

but he sat,
kind hearted
ears open
and willing
listen.

Language is the democratization
Of making shared meaning

Do you know how to love shadows
sit in a sick stew of solitary confinement
for a crime you did not commit?

Do you know the feel of someone else’s violence
the stinging lashes, reddening
rage distorting
fury unleashed
by someone who seems
to hate you
as much as they
hate themselves?

Do you know the flinches,
the constant guarding,
the tears cried
only when no one else
is in sight
cause why
give those ******* the satisfaction?

Do you know the self-deprecation
self-debasing
pretending that your pain
is so freaking hilarious?

Do you know the loneliness
of the vacuum
cause you distrust
any stranger
who might touch
you?

Do you know the shame
and pain
when people push
and claim
that you should let
the perpetrator
back in to your life again?
Do you know
how it feels
to press down
on the skin that swells
while tears and snot
stifle your breathing
after a beating,
how the physical pain  
of the abuse
seems to weaken
but the other stuff
leaves you wishing
you were never born?

The pains of now are provocatively painful and push us powerfully to places we would prefer not to go. However, the pains of memory hopefully lessen with the distance of time.

The grey road is a field
of young and old
metal plants
that are grown
in big buildings
where business men
take the workman’s
daily sacraments
and exhausting sacrifices
and turn them into
automated schemes.
Till this artificial industry
falls crumbling
to the rise of the profit machines.

There are reservoirs of grief
So deep
That they threaten to drown me
Wells that cut through the core
To the other side
Burnt
Lava pain
That erupts
Cools
And leaves a permanent crust

I revisit them in silence

They are as natural
As the geysers
That spit steaming hot water

They are the bedrock
Of my earthly identity

They are my history
Left in the sediment

They cause me to pause
In pain
To wake in tears

Yet I hide the years
Of sorrow so well

But the hidden truth remains
It is in my name
A line of loss
The terrible cost
Of living is losing

And all that is birthed from the earth
Will be taken by the earth
Even my pain will go that way

Darkness cannot love you back,
cannot unwrite the black pages
of pain that have been printed
on your meditative mind,
cannot undo those dark blue bruises
or see the red swelling recede,
cannot not help you escape
a parent’s unrelenting rage.

It seems only patience can take
those traumas to a safe distance,
giving you the time to do
what many are unable to
by taking those painful truths,
and making something beautiful
to help heal the world.

An average person can live within the constraints of their social programming. A smart individual can recognize how they are being socially programmed, but it takes a little bit of genius, arrogance, and madness to rewrite one's own intellectual and emotional programming.

The arc of our life
is a queer covenant,
burning out the porcelain
colored, electric smoking oven
that we were cooking
useless crap in.

The beat does not end
Just bends
Up and down
Faster and slower
Again and again
Through the denomount
And back again
Past the crescendo
Through the shattered window
Wet raindrops
Learn to be bop
To their own hip hop
While the thunderclaps
And brings me back
To thumb drumming
While I am errand running

It is a hollow hole.
The clicking sound
ticking down
is not my heart.
Instead inside,
I find the truth
to **** the lie,
that hope is an illusion and
order is an addictive and
overly optimistic delusion.

That the fleshy thing
I thought was beating
sending blood and energy
through me
was just a bomb
waiting to blow
laying me low
so I would know;

That we dance on strings,
not made of god’s energy
or fated things,
but thin golden lines
of our own mortality.

We evolved to be
nothing but
corpses in clothes,
whose flesh feeds
the next generation
which needs our particles
to grow.

Violent ambitions open their ****** maw
Sharpens their mangled claws
Readied to strike
Not for what is right
But for something
That turns friend to enemy
Call their enemies a state
Hurt strangers and lovers
Out of love for gain
And the hunger
Which moistens their mouth
Is never sated
Thus with every bite
Another wound is born
Not fatal but crippling
That leaves us tripping
And tipping ever backwards
Towards the dark ages

Sometimes it is not racist
It is merely a miscommunication

Two boats passing
Never merging
Never understanding each other

Just standing on guard
Waiting for hate to make
Someone fall hard

But wait
You just skipped a page
Stripped the skin and did not take a look within
Did not see or bother to read the poetry of their soul

So strangers yell at each other
Sling hell at one another
Do not hug or heal their brothers
Just perpetuate the same mistakes

As one man walks away angry at the injustice
Another man slumps his shoulder in confusion

As one man is plagued and played by the illusion
That we are separate races in combat
The curious remains unheard
Becomes disturbed

Because he loves everybody
But he was already declared
An enemy of the state
In this struggle to erase hate

My heartbreaks in reoccurring waves
In old stories, movies and plays
So you may wonder why I write this way
Because even in sorrow I love writing

Nature is weighed down by winter’s solid white water.
Cold winds break across the burial ground,
soft mounds where their family history is found.
Mother, father, brother, and daughter stand
struggling to hold onto each other’s hands
while the black clad tools of this corporate land
prepare to eviscerate the safe drinking water
with metal pipes of pure crude destruction.

Everyone knows
we are a bunch of
blustering bluffing
posturing buffoons
who cower callously
ignoring our own
broken humanity

I got the runner’s disease,
always on the move
with time chasing me.
Hourglass is running down.
The sand is almost depleted.
You will see me surfing
through the cosmos
in the stories
you are reading,
see my flesh receding
see old lines repeating
as I lose my mind;
But I am always moving forward,
always stepping ahead
the only time I’ll stop
is when I am dead.

My body stiffens
with the tension
of tight muscle pain
as the light brown halo
forms around
a purple colored bruise
slash sprain.

In sleeping
my dreams are strange
they range from space
to earth bound pursuits
but one wrong movement
finds me transitioning
from unconscious dreams
of painful things
to an awakened state
of annoying pain.

The day progresses
as I obsess
and become depressed
because I cannot
go to the gym
and exercise
all of my demons
without doing
more damage
to my current injury.

Slowly the bruising recedes
leaving only fuzzy memories
that sharpen with
a jolt of awkward movement.
My smile and jesting disposition
may hide the obvious truth,
cause I will laugh at my pain
to hide it from you
but my poems are where
confessions lay
and right now I must say,
I wish this injury
would just go away.

I miss sitting on the edge of a dock as the water flows around me, and just for a second feeling like I am moving

I live in my own fish bowl,
a clear stream
of silver strings
swimming gently
with and against me
as I am moved
in a mad and melancholic melody.

Pressing against the edges of my prison,
I try to see beyond
the light splitting prism
into a new multi-dimensional spectrum.

Opening old books of fiction
as my own teddy bear seams split
letting my mental stuffing slip,
I reach and read each page into
a brand new pre-used
mental picture reality
that moves as rapidly
or as slowly as I desire

We split the spiral,
shifting the helix,
and damaging what
shares the genes
between us.

We cut the chords
that stand and support
all that we are
and all that we were
with broken atoms
and mushroom clouds.

We radiate violent waves
of atomic hate
that breaks our DNA.

I saw her body
before she was buried.
All goblinesque,
all skin bunching,
so, she doesn’t make
cameo appearance.
However, I didn’t get to see
the little boy blond
who has been long gone
for over twenty years
or my grandpa
who died alone in the hospital.
So, once in a while
they stop by in my dreams.

Out in time
to see the last bits of sunshine
as I walk to work.

The moon is just this side
of stained teeth yellow
but after the night clouds clear
the white light face reappears.

A dark blue or black car
slowly drives through
like it is stalking me.
So, I move on as quickly
and quietly
as my anxiety
and feet allow me.

Thin dry brown vines
wrap around the black fence,
while the lite green
slowly dehydrating
leaves
line up on a broken tree limb
ready to fall
for the seasonal crumbling.

A ***** brown bearded stranger
lays in the doorway
perhaps he is
too tired to worry about the danger
or he is too drunk to stay awake.
His head rests on a white garbage bag
with indiscernible contents.

In an open-air café
two people talk
the night away
while a stranger sits
nondescript
on a black bench.
The patrons leave a tip
but the stranger grabs it
and swiftly walks away.

Strangers hold hands
and walk.
Stranger stare in the distance
and talk
on their cellphones.
Strangers do not make eye contact
but it is their silent plea
for some humanity
that makes me smile
and greet them politely.

Until, the night leads me
to where I work security,
an overnight shift
perfectly fitting to
my desire to be alone.

The road was hard.
Your eyes looked far
to see time roll on
forever.

An arrow’s heart
that never starts,
but always point on
until forever.
Punctured veins
dripping stains
of holy affirmation.

And to the god
you thought was there
hoped he stood with you
dreamed he cared
instead you found
he was never real.

You raged and cried against the night
to steal back some forgotten light,
but left this life
a bloated broken ****** fleshy blister.

Stars twinkle in your hazel eyes
As I adore you in this night of loving admiration
Even though you're a galaxy away

You are all idol worshippers
claiming to be children of
a specific god you love,

but now you bow to
your wage driven existences.

Your gods are corporations.

So, you sacrifice your rationality
to your favorite sports team,

and you sacrifice your health
to your favorite brand of
chemically saturated food,

and you sacrifice your poor
to the pocket books of the
politician’s donor,

and you sacrifice foreigners
to the military industrial complex,

and you sacrifice me,
your child of daydreams
and hopefuls scheme of a better humanity,
to the ease of self-pleasure
and precariously pursued ignorance.

She put a gray billboard tac
in her black backpack
then dropped a half lit ***
in her light brown knapsack.

I think I found that
this was just
her push to finish
her painfully persistent,
pessimistic
mortal existence,
Of subtle social cues,
and false acts of tact
that do more to confuse
then to communicate facts;

Making us strange strangers
that represent two tiers
of tearful danger.

I know better
I love life’s pleasures
Unlike the old philosophers
Who created grand systems
Of morality
That they could never live up to
Systems that sustained their ego
But I know
I am no hero
Half hearted
Hopeful
Maybe a word warrior
Working wisdom
Into my poems
But I do not sacrifice much
I am weak
I love
But not enough
To decimate myself
Not enough to give up
The pleasures of my life
I know myself
I would like to be better
But I am too **** lazy

Life is my office
corner cubicle
where Plato's Cave
enslaves my day.

Phone calls and data entry
till ones and zeros becomes me
and I go away
to become we,

a dull unknown
who goes home
for just the slim hope  
of finding myself
in quiet introspection.

Curse the scribbles
that stretch to form
strange and monstrous feature
of beasts unborn,
creatures of never were,
sharp and violent
nightmares
moving silently
like ninjas
who seeks to
eviscerate me,
such unlovely things
that would ****** me
if they weren't
abstract reflections
of my sick imagination.

Nothing that I know
lasts forever.
The roads
grow gray potholes.
The orange bricks
crack with
whatever it is
that ages us.
Someday
these things
will crumble to dust
but not before us,
because we are just
looser forms of
that same dust.

He is not here
and there is
a clear fear
that my dear
brother
will die
in some other country.

Perhaps, a plane will crash
split and bend
while it spins
spiraling
like a wild football,
and fire will rain,
and there will be pain,
and I will not see him again.

Perhaps, some religious sect
will find and collect
my brother and his new bride
to collect a ransom check
or **** him for his religious views.

Other deaths come in to my head.
Unbidden nightmares
that wake me.
Then I daydream
that he returns to me.
A small red breasted robin
singing joyfully,
a reincarnated being.

Sadly, I do not believe such things.
So, I still dread the day
someone comes and says
your brother is dead.

What brave world
That has such stolen lines
Borrowed times
Repeated in indignity
Never learning
But indifferent
Hero existing
In majesty
Only bare their images
In fairytales
And movie screens
Reality is far more complicated

Two waterways
race
from separate places,
gathering silt,
and soft soil
as they move
towards
a bigger body
of bountiful
water.

One river
of sorrow
spilling
saltwater tears,
coursing
with all of
the pain
carrying
all of the
grief we acquire,

Another
river raging
with wild
undercurrents,
and strange
sediment,
fishy ideas,
wonder,
love,
and hope
that floats.

Two distinct
things
converge
into a different world
making something
better or worse
then their
previous parts.

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?

My memory is a sea
of dark debris
swishing dangerously
all around me,
sinking ships
with vomited bits
of metal, and wood
leaving plastic that strangles
strangers whom I’ve met.

My identity
is redefined
with fractured parts
that my past selves
multiplied and supplied;
Tiny truths of perception
that fade then solidify,
liquid lightning broth
that breaks like glass
to fill a cracked jar.

I am shattered
and reconstructed
every single day
when I go from
a conscious state to
sleeping then
back to awake.

I am coming,
the quick trickster
slick heart enchanter
dark dancer.

I’m coming,
heart burning
as ashes paint
these concrete streets,
as people multiply
and walked with me.

Sidewalks peppered
with plastic flesh
that is packed with
everything that leaks
and seeks
its own death;

A house of rubble,
a home of dust,
but I am
a traveling man
in tattered garbs
trying to connect you
to those who are
just distorted reflections
wearing similar scars.

Change is scary
deranged,
contrary
to the arranged
and predictable
life,

opposite of
an existence
without
extraneous
variables,
boring and plain,
stable as a perfectly
measured coffee table.

But without change
there is no chance of
awesome growth.

You are wounded
and when you heal
You will still feel
The pain
The scar will still
Be there
A crest upon your flesh
But you will still
Be beautiful