I'm awake because
I can't sleep,
because
there's still so much buzzing,
stirring,
whispering inside of me,
burning my bones and
shivering my skin.
I want to touch,
feel,
be felt and
be touched,
to inhale and exhale,
to ruin and create.
I want to be dreaming while awake
and singing while silent,
though my song can never get through
with just a keyboard and
some clumsy fingers.
The air vibrates in
anticipation
as life continues its course;
ever-forward is
its mantra,
and ever-quickening is
its stride,
as I get caught up within
the fleeting nature of
time,
life,
and the sleepless nights
that have slowly become my existence.

I arrived--
though I needn't a formal invite,
for you and I, we are two old friends.
Companions walking along
a similar trail.
The leaves distort and distress the
yellow and gleaming light of the
victorious Sun, who has once again
conquered Night and all
her iniquities.
Scents and colors fill the air,
pinks and reds and greens mix and match
and blend together, forming
a rich atmosphere of synesthetic remarkableness.
Each atom and molecule
of the wind
shivers and shakes atop their
invisible chariots,
perhaps the true location of Atlas
and those great, big hunks of
shoulders;
"Man, what a man."
Take it because you know you like it--
we are social creatures,
creatures of logic
of habit
creatures of horribly idiosyncratic and idle instinct,
rulers of fleshy bodies
which we hardly understand.
The Sun grimaces as it
retreats back to the negative air,
once again,
not to poke its radiant face out until
the next morning.
The Moon came shimmering out,
smiling furtively and compactly,
looking down like
my oldest confidante.
After all,
who else but our fair
Luna atop the stars
is the keeper of all our deepest
and most primal
secrets?
In the cover of her noxy cloak
we sin and hide,
pushing every secret under and between
the cracks in her space,
patching up time and
keeping dark and brooding Atlas
good company.
"You're one of the few great guys."
Oh, my fat and failing Atlas,
lover for the Night and
of my night,
you are a temporary stop on
my trail,
a brief twilight in my
life's journey.
The Sun creeps its
spindly, golden fingers under
the cloak of the Moon,
Night: the stitchings and
sewings of the sins of mortal men.
Playfully, the light stretches out,
first dancing along the stage of the horizon,
then inching closer,
desperate for living contact,
for the greatest warmth of
over 2 billion hearts
all beating at once--
perfectly,
in time.
Our world is a note on
this Cosmic sheet music;
you are barely a splotch on the sheet.
Our existence is the single beat
out of infinite others,
without a beginning but
possibly and end.
I know that
there will be twists in my path,
bending and curving to avoid the
stars' wrath and the Suns'
might,
but,
might it be
that our two trails
are simply
not meant to meet?

I float outside of my body,
a dermal prison dented into the ground,
doomed to never fly and never float
and never travel beyond the sound.
My brain moves faster than a
high speed train,
cars in the fast lane,
the pounding of the rain,
sane,
sane--
I've gone insane.
It's infuriating
this
plastic mind,
soul,
body,
all disposable and
all utterly insignificant.
I know the fate of history
and the destiny of humanity--
we are temporary,
a dream stuck on a floating grain
in the misty seas of the cosmos,
swirling towards a black death
darker than any night or
any universe could be.
We are a fleeting thought
caught within the arms and tendrils of the galaxy,
draining into an immense
super massive
black hole--
the drain at the bottom.
We are accidents,
sad ones, at that.
The stars formed randomly from
the collisions and crashes of
millions of atoms,
perhaps themselves
the containers of still sadder
and more pathetic universes.
From this early crib
Sol and his brothers drifted throughout the blackness of space,
most dying and
the mediocre remaining.
This is the fate of humans
and indeed all of existence:
that the interesting
the beautiful
the bizarre and
the intense shall all perish
while the average shall
survive, stuck on their tracks
and predetermined paths,
lines laid out by the random assortment
of atoms, of particles
of the refuse of the universe.
We formed from the cosmos' ****;
an explosion erupted from
the backend of existence
and out flowed reds and greens
helium and hydrogen
and burning water.
As the planets formed
from the wake of the exhaust
and the stars migrated to their final resting places,
the elements continued bumping
and colliding and crashing
until green ran the continents of countless and
insignificant planets, residents sticking roots down
and extending towards the mediocre light
of a wholly average Sun.
From this green and blue sea sprang forth
a multitude of parasites,
feeding off the grasses and the ferns,
the flowers and the moss,
warring and ******* and
laying their own universes down out of
their backends.
We are the **** of **** that ***** out **** to
power our **** and allow us to ****
which in turns ***** the ****
to ****.
It's all ****.
Existence is ****.
Existence is ****.
I am a dream in the mind of one
floating off into my dimension,
moving faster than sound,
light,
actions and existence
to cross the cosmic walls and
climb the galactic ivy
to reach out and say,
"I was here. I mattered."
I wish I could comfort them in my arms
to pet them and tell them it's all okay,
that they matter, but I know the fate of history
and the destiny of humanity--
existence is the most interesting thing we can do,
and even that is based on mediocre ****.

I grew from this earth,
green as a sprout,
to grow and grow and
touch the sky with
my puny shoulders.
I do as the Sun above
commands of me,
to keep stretching and
bending my spine,
arching my back to
its plans for
my overarching canopy.
They wish for me to
lie beneath them,
absorb their every
ray and word,
to believe fully and totally
in only them.
However,
these Suns do not shine
quite bright enough
and my nourishment
supplements itself.
I help myself to grow,
to bear the responsibility above
that I can never handle;
far too much to handle.
They don't know that
I am so tired,
so sick and weak
deep, deep, deep
down in my roots.
I haven't slept
in years,
years and years of
open eyed nights,
empty thoughts and
alternative music
to fuel and feed my
roots and trunk.
This could never suffice,
as only the Sun may
lift up the heavens,
may hold the sky aloft and
force the clouds to dance,
sending glittery raindrops
down towards me,
sweat running wet from
the pores of the wild
storm fronts.
I am too weak to handle
their high heeled kicking,
heavy foot stomping,
black cloud romping around;
I'm too far down,
down, down on the ground,
covered by dirt and
having only grown
a quarterway up.
It won't work,
honestly;
I can't be who you
wanted.
After all,
such small shoulders
could never hold
such large sky.

Sleep has been restless,
lately.
Rest
Less.
It is neither conscious nor unconscious,
and the undreaming is an issue.
My dreams have become
dimly lit hallways
through which I walk,
unsure of myself or
of my surroundings.
It is a dream because
my body is not quite there,
it is caught between the waking
and the sleeping.
I feel the sheets of my bed
and their maternal embrace
clinging warmly to my summer shade
of dark brown and olive,
yet I see the hallway,
dimly lit.
It is a dream because
the people I knew
are other people as well,
are ideas and thoughts--
passions I hardly knew
both good and bad
that dangle on the tip of my tongue,
waiting to dance off into my body below,
down the passageway of my throat,
dark and
dimly lit.
My mind has blurred out their faces,
though I know there is only visual blackness
behind my eyelids,
has littered their words or meanings
with the trash of reality,
the inferred paranoia that
masks the truth,
dimly lit.
These ghastly haunts come
to greet me by my bed
each and every night,
blank silhouettes desperately trying
to tell me something,
something not very important,
anyway.
They mouth the words
and I go with the actions,
but my understanding is vague and doubtful
and my comprehension none.
Maybe I should care more
about what they have to say;
where is this hallway,
why my vision is blocked.
But, I'm far too tired,
in these dreams,
too exhausted and
rest
less
to care.
I am never replenished,
never renewed,
only further fatigued
by the dark and
hazy ideas the ghasts leave behind
to wander
neither conscious
nor unconscious
in the corners and passages
of my brain,
dimly lit.

I left the table feeling gross,
nauseous and swollen
and altogether overwhelmed.
My ring finger traced the curves
of my arms, twisted into the
light hairs running over like
infinite eddies of shallow streams.
The world reeled around me,
nightmarish carousels careening
through the dark,
spinning around and throughout
my head, my mind,
every single sentient thought.
Life had gotten too much
for me to handle, though,
suicide never quite worked.
Feet dragged across the ground,
rubbing the wooden surfaces
and creating friction,
creating heat.
I felt hot and
restrained there,
like too much of me-
far too much of me to hold in-
was cramped into that tiny corner.
I needed a way out,
an escape route
from the fire burning all around me,
carousel on fire and
carnival flaming
to the ground.
There was no panic in
the destruction, though
it lacked the methodical touch.
There was no reason to
panic or to worry about it
as all had come to go
as it pleased and had planned
without any great
forethought of my own.
I wanted to burn down my temple,
turn the offerings to ash
and destroy all my gods and idols
that I had collected.
I itched and scratched
at a sensation unable to be traced,
of a small hovering
caught within the air
trapped within the hairs
upon my goose prickled arms.
I took my pillars in my hands
and smashed them to the ground,
satisfied at the crumbled
limestone and pretense
that lay scattered around me.
"This is what I need,"
I told myself calmly,
"total destruction.
Revolution."
And so as I had
revolted myself at the table
my mind revolted against
my body as my soul
revolted against my mind,
making the itch to scratch
a greater prickling feeling
than before.
Needles, hot and heavy,
traced the outlines of my arms,
felt the ridged contours
of my spine.
There were eyes on me
as materiality caused my body
to revolt against my soul,
making me disgusted
and fat in my indulgence.
I was bloated and needed
to be punctured,
to release the pressure.
I felt stabs all across me,
causing screams to erupt
from my mouth in almost-pleasure
and surely pain.
Pricking against me
were knives and daggers
where needles had been.
I felt the pressure recede,
the great angry mass
of rotting fluids within
spilling out of the holes poked
within my body,
mind,
and soul.
They had broken through,
broken me down,
revealed the decomposed
and near-dead individual within.
Suicide hadn't worked
and neither had ignoring it.
"Total desctruction,"
I repeated,
"total destruction."
And so I jumped
on his back, clawing at his face,
his chest,
kicking his stomach
as he punched my top.
My finger bent
in a happy sort of violence,
and I was all too pleased
with my feigned surprise.
He fled, retreated
to his cave of
lonely, musky isolation
and delusional regret
as I ran,
up the stairs and past the curves,
flying into what
was once my bedroom
and grabbing for my coat,
the one without my last name.
Putting it on,
I walked slowly to
the back door,
unlocking it gingerly,
as though the key might ignite
into millions of different colored fireworks
at any second wasted.
I descended the steps
in the way a monarch does
in his last hours,
the way a priest might as he
watches his house-
no,
his whole religion
crash to his feet.
Calm.
Demure
with the knowledge that
this world was not meant
to support it this long.
And so
the spirits of frustration,
the roasted spine and
too-afraid shadow flew out of
the debris before me,
to be caught in the
forever kinking and
knotting curls upon my head,
an infinite mess of
paradoxical equations
to be fully examined
by no one but themselves.
These ghosts of myself
hastened my flight,
spirited me off
on a mad run down the street,
ring finger throbbing from the scars of war,
I soon discarded this itch as I had
the last one,
as my ring finger was meant to be ****,
unadorned and
free of any promises
that it knew it could never keep.
A car stopped and picked me up,
drove off to a familiar place
full of smoke and magic,
friends that felt
about as sick as I had.
We partook in the
mystic rituals, knowing
they meant very little,
anymore.
We drove around,
watching the steam before the headlights
dance in the dark like
overjoyed spirits making love.
The road seemed endless
as the lines rolled into
then out of view,
forever reeling in
infinite streams of shallow
yellow on black.
Finally, our priestess departed
and I was given a new place to sleep
and not made to sit at
a table like before.
My ring finger smiled in agreement
as we figured our new place
in a world without religion,
bodies,
minds,
or souls,
carousels to mock us,
or flames to ******.
No threat of anger and destruction
boiling over within myself
to erupt on everyone around.
Just
stark sheets,
clean walls,
the drumming
in my legs,
and the throbbing
freedom held within
my ring finger
as it traced the curves
of my arms.
I left consciousness feeling clean,
refreshed and renewed
and altogether reborn.

We can escape, now,
it's smoky with a chance of curtain drawn,
our minds won't tramsit light
from our empty, covered windo- the train is here.
I'm ready to go.
And though I'm leaving on a train
with room for only one,
I'm hoping you can catch a cheap ride
hidden in my pocket.
Nobody checks your person, anymore,
Nobody cares;
Homeland Security lovingly fed
us fattened falsities
As the fat cats in suburban alleyways
tore off the thickest
pieces of marrow from the national animal
of our Fiction States of America.
I have known this
because I have seen it from my seat
in coach,
thank god, too, because the train is packed.
So fill up
if you aren't going to hop in,
wishing to distort
your mind with all of their public drugs,
community opiates
transmitting across electrical wires hidden
in the ground,
the trees,
the air itself,
stitched into the layers of
dark matter and cosmic foam insulating
our fragile and overdone Universe.
I hear their static,
that pantomimed reality,
caught inside carbon fibers running through everything,
running through me,
running through you,
running into and out of your brain like
a thief without pause or moral.
We could run, too,
the heavy bass notes of the
nurturing ocean could shield the screech
of the battered train's wheels;
the wheels need a rest from screeching, anyway.
Quick!
While the conductor isn't looking!
The wires will tell him you're here
until you're gone,
hidden in my coat pocket
inside a layer of my inner smoke.
Well, if you insist,
I suppose you may leave,
but once the wound of knowledge opens,
just know it never closes.
It will fester and
prickle
with the fetid odor
of truths turned into lies.
I know I'm talking
to myself, now, but I don't
want to let you go,
though I'll stay here,
safe,
in the train carriage,
hidden in smoke.
Smoke,
smoke,
smoke,
the train heats up,
breaths out smoke from its burning
and throbbing pipe.
The engine has built up
an overdose of heat,
trying to throw off the weeds trying
to grow inside.
They tried to enter me,
and they will soon enter you,
now,
without my smoke to shroud you,
to leave your naked wound
easily hidden in
paranoid dreams.
Screeeeee,
screeeeeee,
screeeeeeee,
the wheels screech out,
ready to go,
ready to run,
to run down the track,
to run through all obstacles,
to run through everything,
to run through me,
to run through you,
to run in and out of your brain,
blown away in a puff of smoke,
my memory has burned away
and blows off as ash
and smoke.