Sometimes it doesn't come. And you'll slam your head against the typewriter or notebook begging god and satan and the powers that be to just let it, but it won't.
But other times, it does.
And when it rains out of your fingertips, believe me, it pours.
With the fury of a hurricane it will come cascading out of you, doing everything it can to be born into the world.
And on those days you'll feel like a genius and you'll hold what you made up to the light and wave it in god's face and you’ll smile.

Those are the days worth living for.

Sunrise
sun, rise
is because it was because it will be
sunset
sun,

set.

When a lack thereof
is all my inspiration
I begin to wonder what on
earth
I would write about
if I simply
had
what I want.
maybe we're just doomed
to write about sadness
and to be sad when we can't write.
maybe I should just figure a way
to be happy
when everything around me
dies.

Up early today.























Got the worm.

Sometimes I'm low.
and quiet
not really despondent
or depressed
just
low.

And quiet.

She says she doesn't like the desert,
says it's ugly
and I can't help but wonder
why?
And she's sometimes quiet
but never low.
I think maybe the desert is in me
and when lowness abounds
the wind whips the dunes of my soul
and shapes me as it sees fit
that wind is the sound in my ear
just
before
sleep finally takes me.

and although we wouldn't know what to do with it
even if we had it,
we will pray on for
rain.

Not sure if you’ve ever
heard of
Phineas Gage,
but he was a railroad man somewhere
in Vermont
and one day he accidentally blew a
******* iron rod through his
******* think-box and
here’s the kicker:

He
*******
lived.

Now, this big metal cylinder,
on its flight path,
carved a cavern in Gage’s
cerebrum, more specifically
through his frontal lobe
and when the bleeding finally stopped
and they got his left eye all sewn shut
he told the first person he saw,
probably a loved one crowded around his
filthy hospital bed
to kindly
******* and Die.

He got out of that hospital bed,
eventually,
and when he did, he tried his damndest
to go back to work
but he just couldn’t.

What’s more his friends said he just wasn’t
Gage
any more. His personality
had changed.

He didn’t give a **** about
the sunset anymore.
He liked his coffee black and his pancakes
dry.
Which is strange because beforehand
he didn’t drink any coffee
and he didn’t like pancakes much neither.
He also became quite
the drinker,
which is funny considering he hadn’t had
a drop
of alcohol
in his life
before then.

You see I always thought that
personality
was something you couldn’t
touch.
That it was some grand unifying evidence
of the existence of the human
soul.
But here’s Gage,
who just so happens to take
a pole to the dome
and suddenly he’s just
not
Gage.

So maybe it’s true
that we’re all just
machines
and you can pull a man’s
favorite color
or his taste in music
or his eating habits
out of his head
and set them on a sterile tray
right in front of him.

That makes sense.

But everything in me
still wants to
believe.

The women drink the tapwater-
even the infants are drunk.

She said,
"you won't believe what I'm looking right now.
The flames must be fifteen ******* feet above the roof"

And I went outside and I could see the plume of smoke like it was a block up from the house
so I ran back in and got everyone out of the house and we hopped in the car and sped off
toward
the flames
-just like a gruesome car accident-
and when we finally came within a few blocks it looked like the revolution
gone and started without us
people were running and jumping fences
to get closer to it.
So we got out and started running
through back alleys
and back yards
and suddenly, we came around a corner
and there it was.

They said the building was abandoned, that no one had been inside when it started.
It wasn't much of a building now.
It was a skeleton
and the flames were maggots picking it clean.
Inside was like the brightness of the sun
and the fire crews were giving it all the water in the world
to little avail.
Gigantic plumes of tiny embers were jetting from its open ribs into the twilight-
falling all over houses and businesses

and all I could think was
"what if it
doesn't
stop?
What if this is it? and it can't be contained?
and the whole
city
goes down with it?"
We were standing in the middle of a riot ready to happen-
it was like a backdraft-
an explosion minus one ingredient-
a single exhaled breath.
So what if this is it?
What if the end starts right here, right now?

So I began to root for the fire, not the firefighters.
I prayed for it to collapse
and eject all that hot ash over everything
to end us all.

But it didn't.
and after fifteen minutes or so the firefighters were winning.
So we turned on heel
and we hobbled home.

Live to fight another day.

The sun is resplendent and warming.
on this bench in front of these shops in a town we’ve never been to.
Italy’s a lot nicer if you’re in a small town.

I’m watching her peel an orange
slowly,
meticulously
she’s removing the skin from the meat.

She reminds me of a boxer wrapping his hands
before a big fight.

The last moment of meditative solitude
before the **** hits the fan.

She’s finishing with the peel now, setting the pieces on the bench next to us
as she splits it in half, an aerosol of juice sprays from the orange
she hands me one half
and begins to eat the other herself.

I peel the segments apart, eating them slowly
and spitting the seeds into the gutter.
she’s smiling,
the juice running down her chin,
and neither of us are speaking.

Later I’m smelling the citrus on her fingers
as she runs them through my hair;
it’s barely long enough to run fingers through,
and I’m thankful for that.

I’m thankful for that orange.
I’m glad I saw that small town,
the one without tourist attractions or snakeoil peddlers
I’m glad my scalp ever knew her citrus fingers.


it came,

I saw,

it went.

I threw away an old pair of shoes today.
They were a few years old
and the seams had begun to burst
particularly about the sole, there was one hole big enough
to slide a toe through.
It’s winter and I don’t need them anymore
so they became trash.

Someone returned a relic of my past to me recently.
It was a dreamcatcher,
a furnace big enough to fit my most evil of nightmares.
It was a gift from a person I once knew.
I was looking at it one night
for a long time;
I took it from the wall where it had been hanging
and tossed it into a nearby garbage can.

I can handle my nightmares on my own now.

I’m shaking off the weights of the things I don’t need
because,
if there’s a lesson I’ve learned in my adulthood,
it is to travel often
and to travel light.

Plain and simple, I didn’t need those old shoes.
I have leather boots.
They’re warm and waterproof and will never get holes in them.

They were as good as dead weight-

so I let them go.

It’s not a question of
who
but a question of
where
I am.

I am the median between the street and the sidewalk
I am the threshold of every waiting room
I am the space between spaces
I am shadows looming
and fumes pooling above puddles
of spilt kerosene

neither seen
nor heard,
but felt
in the vignette of a dated photograph
the border between
fine
penciled lines

I am the mist after rain
I am scars
and streaks where tears have stained the shells
of crustacean people
I am crushing hangovers
and embers glowing

Who am I?

I am the
    spaces
       between
spaces

Stairwells and parking lots
unmarked graves
        condensation on a whispered word
     floating up into
     frigid twilight

          under an off-white
half-
                               moon.

Last night I dreamt I cohabitated with
Two beasts, both loved.
The one, a young lioness
The other a spry lamb
I had raised the both from infancy
But the lioness, who was then entering her adulthood began to size up the lamb.
And it occurred to me that in order to
save
the lamb from the lioness
That I must **** and eat it myself

It is the inescapable nature of a lion to
Hunt and ****
livestock
So while there was no scruple or problem for me to have these two animals,
They could not abide one another.
So I did it.
I slaughtered the lamb and cut it's flank and got at its tender meat
And I cooked it and served it with Marsala sauce and that night the lioness and I dined on the flesh of our old friend.

And I became aware eventually,
Between my ravenous gnawings at the meat
That the lioness was not eating.
She was
Staring fixedly
Directly at me.

She did not blink.

And I stopped feasting on the lamb.
And as I did I saw her eyes dilate
And she pounced across the table
And she gored me with her great claws
And split my gut and spilled my innards
And she ate me bit by bit still screaming
Still covered in Marsala sauce.

Before it was over I had but a breath in me and I cried,
"But why?!"
And I realized that it is the inescapable nature of the lion
To hunt and to ****.
Not just livestock, not just lambs.

She had hunted and killed us both.

We are balanced
Precariously
Over the vastness of the unknown.
Every day when we get ourselves up
We have a choice
To continue to walk the tightrope above the abyss
Or to let ourselves
Fall.
This can be both good and bad
Or one or the other
But the important thing is to remember
That the life of the tightrope walker
The fence sitter
The cliff hanger
Is one that is doomed
To regret.
We must cast ourselves in
If we seek to
See what life is and life is always
Unknown.

Like how
babies
laugh
at
nothing
at all.

The laughter that comes
as it pleases
without invitation
without joke
without ridicule
like something floating
on the rising
and falling
of the spring wind
the trees laugh
as they
bloom
like fireworks
without audience.
and the bees laugh
at their fortune
to have such pollen
they fulfill their calling
in collecting
and retrieving
the precious powdered gold.

They do what they are made to do
and they laugh
like children laugh
buzzing sweet harmonies on that same effortless spring
breeze
everything is laughing and reproducing
and the
season is
holy
and the
laughter
is
holy.

Did you hear that
so-and-so
was caught on film ******* into a bucket?
did you see
so-and-so's new
music video?
Have you
seen
those new
Nikes?
Did you hear
that child star
admitted
to doing
drugs?
Oh my god, I love this song it's on the radio all the time!
And the chorus line goes something like
"Up in the club, getting drunk having fun. Spending money like I don't care. All the ******* love me. This is what you want. This is where everyone wants to be. This is the definition if fun"

Is that really the absolute best that life has to offer?
They **** well write about it like it is.
And all the distracted people fall for it.
We humans are
so
good at distracting ourselves from anything of any importance.
Men no longer hunt-
they lift weights
and Women practically objectify themselves.
Art is dead.
Earth is dying.
And the people are perfectly happy
with buying things.
They spend their lives
seeking
sensation
and
feeling
nothing.

"Why do you box?"
I asked one of the gang bangers I coached at the gym one day.
"To stay out of trouble, I guess," he replied.
And all of a sudden I got kinda mushy over this kid and realized he really was in a
Hard
Place, trying to make the best of a
Bad
Situation.
And I said,
"Listen to me. Don't ever stop boxing.
School, whatever,
Work, whatever,
But whatever you do,
Keep boxing."
He looked at me kind of funny and
He said "why do you box?"
And I said,
"I've been doing this a while now.
Boxing's fixed me up through some
Serious ****.
So above everything else, above women and money,
Whatever you do,
Do not
Stop
Boxing."

I'll probably never know if boxing
saves him
like it
saved me.

But I do hope it keeps him out of trouble.

Everything I write is letters.
Letters to my future self,
my past self
my conscious mind from my unconscious mind
letters to dead friends
letters to living friends I can’t speak aloud to
letters to god
letters to everyone all at once
letters to you.

Everything I write is letters

ell
ee
tee
tee
ee
arr
ess

A book is made of letters the same way a body is made of atoms
letters make words
like atoms make molecules
and molecules make cells make tissues make organs make bodies

and then fire breaks us back down to atoms
to ashen dust

So try to see the individual letters
because that’s all we ever were,
anyway
bodies built of grains of sand

books built of letters.

I’m counting paces.
The distance between the warmth of my hearth
and my still-beating heart.

The shortest distance between two points
is just a handful
of measured steps
a mouthful
of tentative breaths
a fistful
of glove
and a heart full
of quiet tenacity.

with these tools I could walk anywhere-
name the points and I’ll join them
with a
trail
of
measured
footsteps.

The snow silences everything.
I walked,
nearly barefoot,
into the whited sepulchre
of my backyard this
evening.
And everything was white
and the same
and silent
like the
grave.

I hummed a low note
just to break the
silence.
Just to make
absolutely
sure I was not
in fact
already dead.

It was
almost
a perfect moment
of absolute oneness
and sameness
and purity.

And as I began to **** into the unbroken blanket of snow, I pondered
if we are not
destined
to break the silence.

The way down has been a screaming horse on fire blundering its way on

    Down,
         Down,
    Down.

Last Saturday was the bottom.
The absolute lowest the sun will dip the absolute earliest in the day.
So we drank ourselves more than half to death and spit whiskey at the sky screaming
"I made it this far!
I took everything you threw and walked the coals to this day-
I dare you to end me now!"
And the night drew on and I walked to a park with a pond with a friend
We threw snowballs at the sleeping geese
And talked about our losses and our victories
-And there was an obvious weight on one side of that scale-
We talked big fish and sea monsters until the church bells rang across town
And the Catholics walked with their guilt to the cathedral on first.
We stumbled home
-blasphemers, but free of guilt-
And talked women and war
Until we found our way to our house in the ghetto.

So that's how the way back up began:
Too hungover to work
Too broken down to fornicate
Too weak to wage war

And it occurred to me at that moment
That if we have crossed the first half of the valley,
we are now walking uphill
And the worst may well be

Yet to come.

I can't come back.
Sorry, pastor, I can't come back.
Sorry mom and dad.

I can't come back.

I have seen crippled men beg for pennies outside the mile-high walls that guard the glittering, gem-encrusted Vatican.
But I haven't seen Christ.
I have seen good men's funerals picketed by angry mobs all swearing to be the hands of God.
But I've never met the rest of Him.
We've seen holocausts, crusades and conquests **** millions in his name.
But I have never heard His voice.
And I think those men holding those guns missed the point as far as his commandments go.

But that's not why I can't come back.

I ducked out from under the umbrella of religion and I felt the rain
And every day since I've been learning to take the wet with the dry rather than seeking shelter in what's comfortable.
And what's more, I've gotten a clearer view of the sky than ever before
And without that umbrella
I have seen something.
Or the outermost edge of something-
Something unimaginably large
Something not only too big for words, but too big to see all at once.
Something bigger than me and you and god and everything.
And I can't unsee that.
I've surrendered to the fact that not I, my children, or their children will be able to fully comprehend the vastness of everything,
But I am willing to die incomplete before it.

So sorry mom and dad.
Sorry god.
I found my own truth.

and that’s why I can’t come back.

A steamy trail of particulate vapor issues from her lips
tracing the outline of her silhouette and rising
up,
up,
it diffuses into nothingness

Don’t listen to what your parents or teachers tell you, kids-

smoke is very ****.

she exhales again

slithers languidly through the still air
stretching for something-
rolls across my coffee table
like dunes in fast-forward
drips off the edges-

-gone.

She puffs a thick ring at me
it crosses through the void space toward me;
I reach out to touch it- to grasp it
and it dissipates;
she grins-

such teasing.

Smoke is-
and
is not-
it traces the airflow-
the negative space
like a jungle cat pretending to be
the light between the leaves

she knows this
and she can see that I know she does

Smoke
is why I am so captivated
So fascinated
so mesmerized
so transfixed
by her
and in general-

by women.

I am riding through the old-time suburbs.
The city of salt pillars
I pass a bike or three
A jeep
A van with a six-inch lift and chipped orange paint
I round a corner
And suddenly all is quiet
Except for the squeaking of my old bicycle chain.
And I ex-
Hale

If you were here you would ask me why I sighed
And I would reply
"It's not a sigh, I just forgot to breathe"

I just forgot to breathe.

And I'm breathing now
My shoulders are at ease
And my bike is squeaking.
I wonder how often pockets of silence bubble up in the city
For a moment-
In this one spot-
It is still-
And then a car drives by and we resume.
I found myself in a pocket of silence in the center of a beehive this afternoon
And I sighed
Because the silence made me realize that I was holding my breath
So I exhaled
And relaxed

And then a car drove by
And we resumed.

Madeline had visions of you falling down the stairs this afternoon. She was sipping her coffee and reading a scrap of paper that had materialized on her table from some article about a meteor somewhere and it hit her like a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks.

Doesn't really matter which.

She gasped back into the present and fell out of her chair spilling the tar-black grog she had been pawing at to the oaken hardwood and sat staring at her hands there for a minute or more.

They were pink against the tan-ish floor.

Pushing against it she regained her footing and reached for the home phone her friends chided her for owning and called me crying you won't believe what I just saw I can't believe what I just saw I think we need to call her do you think she's alright?

I had just gotten off my flight.

I don't know I said I don't know who you mean where are you are you alright I just got back into town I was going to grab my bags and catch a taxi do you need me to pick you up

She finally noticed the fallen cup.

Catching her breath he slowed her pace and started to stammer how she didn't know it didn't matter never mind I need to go and make a call I'll let you know when I get out.

I still had no idea what she was talking about.

She hung up the phone and placed another call after a half hour no six hours no six weeks of ringing someone picked up the line she had dialed and she wept and laughed and asked if everything was okay and if she needed to go and if so how far she was a primed cartridge in a loaded gun

Everything was silent and the room spun

A voice replied something inaudible and Madeline laughed and cried not cried and laughed and wondered how she could have been so rash to believe a daydream like this

She rose and gathered all her bits

And together they walked her down the hall from her sun room to the kitchen down the stairwell-

And she fell.

And for two point five one two three seconds everything stood still but her and the world stopped turning she couldn't hear her own gasp or whether she screamed or laughed or cried she just hung in the balance she hung from gods fingers she hung above a pool of sharks and a pit of lava and everything she had never done she fell far and fast and hit the ground

An no one knows whether that made a sound.

How could you have ever called what we had love?
When we communicated through text
And over phone lines
Phone lines that stretched across
Boundless expanses of desert
A string
Three states long
With a tin can on either end.

So I made you feel something.
Okay.
Well let's be honest,
Love
Is not an emotion.
Love is not a mood you can be in
(Although you certainly made it seem that way).
Love is lying naked
Trapped in one another's embrace
And shutting out all the noise.

Don't tell me you loved me.
Don't tell me that's what you call whatever that was.

What it was was sickness
Manifested in two teenagers
Saying "**** the world,
I just want you."

It was just teenagers being teenagers
Loners being sick
Together.

Do not confuse,
You made me feel worlds better
But don't call it love
'Cause love is not an emotion.
Love is souls dancing
And the space between two bodies
Touching
Don't even for a second tell me that's what you think that was.
Because it couldn't have been.

I didn't fall out of love.
I figured out what love wasn't.

Happy birthday,
by the way.
I just thought I’d write to you,
since I never really did

It’s been two years now
two complete rotations around the sun
since you died.
I probably think about you every week-
believe it or not,
you changed my whole outlook on life
But I’m sorry to say it didn’t happen until you left.
I think about you every time I leave the house in the morning
I think about how sudden it was
and how that happens every day to all kinds of people
even you.

I think about you every time I say goodbye to anyone
especially if the person I’m saluting is getting into a car
and when I say goodbye
I say it as heartfully as I can
and I hope that maybe they’ll realize that I’m saying
“I love you”
and “please, for the love of god, drive safely.

please.”

all in one word.
Because if I said it openly like that they’d all think I was totally mental.
I’m not mental.
I’m just a lover and a fighter
who lost something he didn’t even think he had the option of losing.

I think about you when I hug
anyone.
because you never know.
  and hugs are not ever worth half-assing.
                       ever.

  So maybe I lied.
and maybe I actually think about you multiple times a day every day of my life.
   not consciously i guess.
      but I can tell you for certain
that your absence is felt
          in one way or another
                      every
                             ­      day
                             of my life.

I wish I could have learned these lessons without losing you.
                        but you went all the same
                                         and here we all are.

             anyways happy birthday.
                          
                             Miss you.

Last night was one of those nights that makes your coffee a little blacker the next morning
And takes a few more cigarettes from your pack
And makes your ulcers worse
If you got ‘em.
Snuggled up alone
With a barrier three blankets wide
Between me and the rest of the world
Trying to heat my still-beating heart.

It was raining hard outside.

Inhale-
Exhale.

A smoke signal plumes from my defiant lips
Shivering in the cold
And rises into the atmospheric light of the city
It was never meant to be an SOS
It was intended to say
"Save yourselves"
But as far as I can see it has fallen entirely upon deaf ears
As just one voice in a confluence of voices-
A river of smoke signals climbing steadily into the smoggy air
Like prayers
To a god we know we don't believe in.

Inhale---------------------

Exhale.

Save yourselves
And it twists and bends and floats away
To meet the others
All screaming some collective emotion that will be left otherwise unexpressed;
And it is probably better that way.

I have been aboard this vessel for
Fifty months
Nine days
Ten hours
And some value of minutes
Which is unknown to me.
I am
Lost
At
sea.
For a while it was bearable.
I have enough water,
Books,
And *** to sustain me.
But now all I wish is to see a pair of sails
On the horizon.

I have nothing left
But to wander the seas
And find whatever is there
For me.

Days pass.
I have sympathized with the stars;
For it seems to me that they are also
Sailors
Lost at sea;
Traveling towards their own fate
In directions
Unbeknownst to me.

At night I look up
When the sky is clear
And greet them,
I wish them strong winds.
I wonder if they have looked down on me.
I have confessed all my sins to them
For they are all I have.

The stars and I.

And we sail the same sea
But we will never meet
For we are infinitely far.
This is our curse.

At times I have fallen asleep on deck
Beneath them
In my hammock
As the sea
Rocks me
And sings songs,
Songs of ports and
Sails
On horizons.

It was on the morning following such a night
That I arose
And at long last
Saw
With my own eyes
A sail in the distance
And I maneuvered so fast as my small craft would allow
To be near to him
And as I came closer
I looked with my dusty spyglass
And my heart dropped from my chest
For he flew a black flag
Which bore upon it a skull.
I am writing this now as they approach
For I know I cannot evade them
Nor outgun them.
I am writing this because I now know my fate:
To die by their hands.

I am horrified,
But there is
One thing that will give me peace:
That I may
Finally
Sail
Among the stars.

This is home.
A home full of life.
A home full of music.
The song of voices and laughter fills the walls and floors.
A home full of light.
And this light pours through the windows and drenches the rooms in warm yellows
And passes through the leaves of the trees without and the plants within
And soaks deep into my skin and warms my face
And wakes us in the morning.
Yes, this is home.
Not a house, not a domicile.
Not so simple as a structure to provide shelter from the rain.
It is made of wood and nails,
the floorboards are uneven,
And the silverware in the drawers are all different and span decades of use.
In the summer it is hot,
In the winter it is cold,
And it is old,
But
It is not dead.
For we live here
And we give it life by living in it.
And it gives back by being light.
It is our fortress.
And these walls can keep out exactly as much of the world outside as we want.
Or we can open the doors and windows and let the wind and the leaves and the world rush in.
This is our home.
And it lives;
because we live too.

My knuckles will bear a scar
From where they collided with your teeth
Until the skin heals completely.
I will bear a scar within
Until I learn to forgive
You
And myself
And everyone
For being what we are
Which is sometimes
Terrible, terrible
People.

But all this anger
These fifteen-pound chains I carry as weapons of self defense
Are not hurting
Anyone
Who is trying to hurt me.
They are doing
nothing
But weighing me down
And I'm sick and tired
Of trudging the streets of this city of headstones
With them in tow.

They are doing nothing for me.
And I will drop them
Just so soon
As I get over
Myself.

Thou.
I can't think of a more romantic word.
and who was the genius who first said "thou"?
who distinctified another human being from all the other
"it's"
and realized that whoever that was, that first
"thou"
saw the world just as he did?
and perceived him just as he perceived them?
brilliant *******.

He,
Whoever he was,
was the first man to grasp true
empathy.
To identify with another human not as an object,
or an animal,
"but as another of himself"
an extension of himself.
himself.
itself.
thyself.

It is one of the oldest existing words,
and has not undergone any major change in tenthousand years.
Perhaps this is evidence that we were,
in fact,
built
in pairs.

Which raises the question of who the first "thou"
was
and his relationship to whomever first said it.
I like to think they were lying across from one another,
he and his partner
or she and hers
and it occurred to one of them that the person opposite them
saw
them too.

Thou art.
as I am.

Next must have come "we"
or some variation thereof.
Thou,
I,
thou and I.
We.
Us.

What was the brilliant sonofabitch who first uttered "us"?

I wonder if he died alone.

Sit broken
Sulkin'
Softly weepin' wisps which then
Withdraw themselves from all of this
Fickle
And fiendish
You'd have my arms and legs bound tight
You're sulkin'
Broken
Without remorse, without respite
I'm nervous,
Workless
And functionless in all your eyes
You're girlish
And cutesy
You give them eyes to get replies
I've never-
You've never?
You finish thoughts and work your little fingers down my
Spine

-chorus-
Uproot the weeds inside you
Fine
I'm through with being fruitless and
Surprised
By old attempts to change our ways
Besides
We're newly polished anyways
We're newly painted, off the line

The bitter
And nameless
Are working after hours to reface this
And shame it
It sits and spins and multiplies
With frequence
I feel it
I feed a framework filament fire
And hapless
You're hopeless
I'm hoping on another line-
To find out what's been sanctified
Who sacrificed to tranquilize
And backfired by bullshittin'
So now I'm sleepy saunterin'
To see what life's like on the other side

(Chorus)

-breakdown-
If we cared
We could whisper cloudy whiteness where there
Used to be only filth and flies
I'm sick of sentimentalism
Sick of sinking in
I'm feeling fine.

-chorus-
Uproot the weeds inside you
Fine
I'm through with being fruitless and
Surprised
By old attempts to change our ways
Besides-
We're newly puffed up anyways
I've walked the line from Z to A
We're freshly painted hypocrites
At least this time I won't be so surprised.

-fin-

Imagine meeting
Someone
Who has never met anyone
Before
Who has never seen the stars
Or had a conversation
Or walked through the park on a day like today
Who has never listened to music
Or eaten pumpkin pie
(Or anything for that matter)
Or loved
Or painted
Or played
Or laughed
Or sighed and said that it's getting late.
Who has never prayed
Or written
Or read.
With no tattoos
Or scars
(Inside or out)
Who is healthy
And surrounded by people committed to their
Well-being.
Someone without clothes
(Or any possessions)
Without a moat and a drawbridge.
An open book full of blank, white paper.
Imagine meeting
Someone
New.

Forty seven nights
Spent sleepless
Or wasted, shitfaceded
Stumbling I'm aimless

And fear
Stabs at my mind
Porcupine hides
And bee stings
Wasted passionate ambition
An ad for lost tenacity

Cruel fate
Just world
Full court
Swine and pearls

Six months
Of restless days
Assurance didn't ever run
It sat and washed away

And my hopes burn
like turpentine
In a fire-breather's lungs
Singed ****** hair
And scorch marks
On the surface of my tongue

Forty seven nights
And just as many days
Youth never tried to run
Just sat and washed away

Youthful love,
stupid love
Happy gluttony
Waste of time,
In my mind
Says hateful heartless me

I live in a city of salty people.
We are all
at times
mean
crass
goatish
people. Like grains of salt
in a salty sea-
-or a salty lake.
but, we are not ever
boring.
we may be salty
but we are doubtlessly very flavorful.
we have more personality
and *****
and character
per square inch
than most of the cities in the world.
most all the cities I have been to, anyway.

anyway.

I am a salty *******
at times
and I have discovered that I
need
a grain of salt in my life.
cold mornings.
a shot of whiskey.
Something to push back
against.
For fighting fake conflict is just
flailing.
I’m trying to tread this
salty
water and keep oxygen in my lungs
just like all the other mouth-breathing saps in this salty pond
pushing each other down to get a breath of fresh ozone and carbon monoxide
and I guess that means I’m fighting
for something.

To walk until this gradual curve gives out-
Or to walk until the point where "up"
is sideways

and jump.

I'd fall for countless hours
pass all the stars and waywards
who, like myself
couldn't walk a straight line in broad daylight
I'm too sober
and too addicted to vice
I'm a pincushion of anxious
and when the tension releases,
explosions shake my achy feeble frame
or just plain mistakes get made
I feel like I can't handle life
I feel like I can't cope
with even the slightest feather's poke
I feel useless
a self-destructive nuisance
who speaks grandiose
and uses words like verbose
but couldn't tie my own shoes
-note that these don't have laces-
or might miss a bus cause
"**** look at those clouds"
or
"man, bees are super weird"
and meanwhile I'm crashing through china shop two.
I'm a bull without horns,
ever bitter, never scorned.

so I'll walk in silly circles
until this curve gives out.
I'll walk until I'm back where I started
and change course
I'll walk until my own head makes sense
I'll walk until I feel like I have enough room in my body
to contain me.
I'll walk until my legs give in
and my shoulders slump forward
from exhaustion or boredom
I'll walk until I figure out there is no
"up"

and jump.

Pushed?
Pull until they fall with you.
Shushed?
Make a silence so deafening it drives them insane.
If evil strikes your right cheek,
slip that right hand so fast he falls on his face.

Be aggressively passive.
Because fire plus fire just burns down the house.
Be the negative space
Invisible to everyone
but those who are
looking.

And if that maddening silence makes them scream,
(which it very well may)
reply calmly,
but give no ground.
not even an
inch.
and you will do more than win;
you will baffle them.

Because all the
pushers
know to do
is push.


They’ve never seen someone like you.
someone so
avoidantly
direct.
so deafeningly
quiet.
so precise in chaos.

You’re like negative space.
and you baffle me
because when I push
you pull
until I fall over myself.
When I roar a lion’s roar
you are a mouse

Yes, you are a puller
and I am a pusher
and I am so
astonishingly
fascinated
by you.

Breathe, breathe on.
let's sit across from each other
so we can
breathe
each other in.

I can smell the pheromones
in your hair
from the next room over
I'm listening to
you
pack the last of your
things
and I'm asking myself if you're really
trying
to make that much noise
or if you're just
******.
and you shout that I'm being an *******
and start to leave
and I wonder if you can smell
the *****
on my breath
when I say
"bye."

and I wonder if you really misheard me when I slurred it
or if you just wanted to hear me say
something
else.

And I wish there were something else I could say
to make everything better
and put you on the other side of that closed door
so we could sit
and breathe
each other in
and get high
on the tension
on the pheromones
on the *** stained on my breath.

But you're not.
You're outside
and I'm inside
and I can't hear you breathe
or sing
or cry
or say our names
separated by a miles-long ampersand
or whatever it is you're saying to whoever you're saying it to.

and instead I'm just getting high on cheap cigarettes and cheap ***
thinking about
everywhere
that's not the bed I have to sleep alone in tonight
thinking about
everywhere
you could be riding that bicycle.
thinking about
anything
I could have invented to say to you
but it has all been said.

So breathe on,
and I'll try to do the same
between the long drags
and drams of cheap *****.
and in time, maybe
there will be
something
to be said.

A chasm stretches itself before me.
And I will cross it
But it is not so simple as that even
I will make it so that no-one will have to cross it ever again.
Casting a chain from my side, I find a hold on the other
I swing to it
Then I begin to dig
Digging deep into the earth I pull the chain behind me
Together, we emerge from the side of the cliff I just clambered across
I pull at the knots I have tied for handholds
I pull with all the force I can bear
The ground shakes and I have slack
I toss the remainder of what I have to the top of the opposing cliff
And shimmy across it.
Reaching the fallen end, I begin digging anew
I emerge after tunneling once again
And
Heave
With everything I was born with
With all of the matter that comprises my feeble,
Fragile
Human
Frame;
Nay, with
All
That I am.
The opposing side of the chasm shakes
It groans in the protest of a thousand-year sleep
It presses even against me
But I pull it all the same
Inches
Closer
And with it a length of chain
Which I use to throw to the opposing side
Which I use to climb
Which I use to pull
Which I use to throw
Which I use to climb
Which I use to pull
Which I use to stitch this colossal divide back together
With all that I am I am pulling these two opposing forces
And there is
NOTHING
That will stop me
From burrowing into the ground
And pulling these earthen demons
This great sleeping wound
Together
I will mend this
Or I will
die
trying.

I stared into a void, deep, wide, and truly awesome
and felt as though I were a single grain of sand in the belly of the ocean
infinitesimally small
and the void stared too,
back into me
and I wondered how I must look to it
a blinding light?
a void of equal size?
perhaps it perceived me as I perceived it
More likely, I was virtually invisible
something to be ignored
for what is being in a sea of non-being?
and I grew tired of this, this void
this great and mighty nothingness
and I began to fill the space with being
faster and faster
I grew and it changed
from nothing to
something
and something filled in all the cracks where nothing had been
and twisted and contorted to form shapes
and waves of somethingness across a background of nothing
and this sea, this
great and mighty somethingness
surged high and drowned out the nothing
until there was only something
and there was no nothing
and everything was exactly the same.
but I realized this was the same as when
there was only nothingness
and without negative space
there was no difference
between what I am
and what was
before.

But,
there was one space.
a space
infinitesimally
small
which was blank
a point of something in a
sea
of nothing
I watched it for a long time
and I am
sure
it too, was watching me.

I’ve been going to this boxing gym and training every week.
And everyone there is fighting something
You can see in their
Eyes
They’re punching their dad
Or they’re punching
Whoever their wife is sleeping with
Or they're punching
Their kids who ignore them
Or they’re punching
Themselves.
Their boss
Their job
Their alcohol problem
Their poverty
And every week we get to fight our problems together
And we’re exploding inside.
What?
You can’t fight your problems?
It’s not only that I can.
I will.
And do.
Because crying alone isn’t good enough
Because all that fire you build up inside you has to go somewhere
Or it’ll burn you alive.
So you throw it into the heavy bag
Or into the guy you’re sparring
Or into the ground you run on.


We’re all fighting something
So what about you?
What are you fighting that’s so ******* important?
No, don’t tell me.
Tell that heavy bag.
He listens.
He listens when your wife doesn’t give a ****
He listens when it doesn’t even matter
Tell these padded mitts.
That one-two punch says more than a twenty-four volume encyclopedia
And speaks more concisely than Churchill or Hemmingway or Ghandi ever did.
Don’t tell me how it feels.
Don’t even try.
Let that punching bag know.
Because you know he’s listening.
And he doesn’t have anything else more important to do.

Every morning I must slay a mighty rusted dragon. His jaws gape as he waits for me. I climb his belly slowly, but persistently. When I reach his mouth I throw myself in. I burst from his stomach and slide down his back and he lies with his wounds and waits for tomorrow. I will slay him again today. These dragons are everywhere, waiting to be destroyed every morning by commuters and diabetics and dialysis patients. We must grit our teeth as the needle pierces the skin or as the engine starts again. We take that bitter pill and emerge victorious. But to what end? The dragon will be waiting the following morning as he always has, as he always will. It is the curse of the modern man. Each day we will slay this dragon until one of us is too weak to fight.

But I know, too, that this dragon is necessary. He is the grain of salt in my morning that seasons the bike ride down his back. I have learned to enjoy riding through the rusted iron bridge that is his throat, and yes, even the climb I must endure to reach it. Each day I must slay this dragon. I must. It is for me that he exists, not the other way around. And I will slay him each day until I am struck by an automobile or die of a blood disease.

So when I rise tomorrow, I will look him in the eye and he will wink. And I’ll know that he is not just a hill capped with a rusted iron bridge. He is the plight of modern men. He is the eternal struggle that must be, else life would be tedium. and we need each other, him and I.

When I wake, I will rise and slay him again.

And again.

And again.

I don’t feel very good
She says and she looks at me with those big doleful eyes and
I say
Oh yeah? What are your symptoms?
And she says I feel far away from you even when you’re next to me
And I say me too
And I’m listening to the staticky scratch of the needle at the end of the record thinking about how far from me I’ve been
And how could I have possibly been close to her when I was so distant
From the present tense
I’m tense in the present tense
And I’m sleepy because in the conditional tense I can do what I want
I want to sleep
And dream about anywhere but the present tense and my single bed with its yellow-tan sheets
And that record’s still skipping and has yet to be flipped and I’m
flipping
but externally I’m ice water
crackling on my wobbly coffee table singing me to sleep so I can dream about something else again
something like meaningless ***
because meaningless *** feels good
in the present tense
and I’m present tense
I’m present tense and future tense and conditionally tense and
I just can’t bring myself to flip that record
Because I lost the tracklist
And I don’t know the lyrics
And what if it’s worse than the first side
So maybe I’ll just listen to it skip
Until the skipping

Puts me



To sleep





Again

Motion makes me homesick, home makes me motion-sick.

I've seen some **** you wouldn't believe in the past month of my young life
I'm happy.
Makes me want more.
I want Guatemala
I want Nepal
I want the States by trains and motorcycles.
I want to make something tall enough to shake hands with god and strong enough to last to the ends of the earth
Or longer.
I want to give the world back all I've taken from it and all the damage I've done.
And then I want to do more.
I want to start a revolution,
live on a farm,
paint a mural,
play a symphony,
shake hands with the Dalai Lama,
write a book,
and be home in time for dinner.
I want to fold a thousand and one oragami cranes and set them free from space and while they float down to Mauritania and Portugal, to Argentina and Cambodia
I want to wish for a reset button.
Not to use right away, but just in case **** gets out of hand.
So we've got a backup plan.
I want to sit in my old age looking down that darkened tunnel and see my own birth pass before my eyes.
I want to embrace infinity without soreness or shortcomings,
without excuses or refusals
I want to watch the universe collapse back in on itself and be part of everything at once.
I want more than I can handle.

I guess that means I'm young.

I left my house today to find all things about me were wet.
Not from melted snow, but from legitimate, god-given rain.
I could smell the downpour in everything, all things ecstatic that they had survived so far.
And this is when I decided that winter had ended.
That's right, people, it's over. We can all go home.
Winter may pretend to linger, and it will probably snow again.
But I can feel it in my bones, the seasons have changed.
The trees cry out that they still live. The soil itself is stretching and yawning.
It seems this always happens when the seasons change.
Summer ends, and there is a change in the wind.
Before the leaves even begin to fall, autumn is present. An elephant in the proverbial room.
In late October (in salt lake at least), the earth enters the big sleep and snow begins to fall.

It seemed strange that I could feel this so distinctly.
But it's entirely natural, from a step back. Birds fly south, salmon migrate.
Perhaps, in fact, it's stranger that I would consider it strange.
The seasons are more natural than anything else we know. The cycles of the earth are at the core of our experience in terms of being alive on this planet.

Maybe we should begin to worry when we can only tell the seasons by the calendar.
Or maybe it would be worse if all that the seasons changing meant was a change in wardrobe.

Our ancestors used to rely on these sensory gut feelings to properly harvest their crops.
Frankly, I'm embarrassed that the term "sweater weather" exists.

I take pride in the fact that I participated in the plants stretching today.
We yawned and raised our faces to the rain and rejoiced as one.
It reminded me that the cycle goes on, and nothing really ends and yet everything ends but nothing really really ends.
It's just a little rain, after all.

Here I sit.
Clutching this ***** little transfer slip
As the darkness sips the light
and the sky's absorbed by dimness
I ponder in the nightlight
As my self-knowledge reels,
A database of feelings
but which holds the most appeal?
A choice of voice
with little indignations
of different vocabulary
stopped by writer's block syndrome
Cork a drain
Unplugged and let the hounds run
After the *******
After pilfering caskets
Who know their own fear like a monkey knows these branches
snap
Trip wires over wiretaps
Who's the fool now?
and whose shoes must you fill?
When the working dogs debunk the formerly favored gods
and ham sandwiches for the ill
Except those who prefer vegetation to the pleasure loaf
Expressing superficial favorites came down a bit
from last year
After hipsterism destroyed all previous conception
of what "cool" is and does
So soak another moniker
'til the loathing and the faithless
destroy those of us with names
and replace a kid with numbers
Can you reconcile that?
Or count lies 'til they pass as facts?
In politics
Deprived of all that whatchacallit
Respond a lofty little miss
who won't take bribes or bacon bits
who's tripping all the time
and uses fresh air for narcotics
I see her
The same albeit as she spies me
I ask her as a comrade
What in confidence she accumulates
As little life and dictators
would sell me but in reverse
A pause
She responds,
but does so gently
And in a softer tone than she uses with the game-players
Four words one chooses not to forget,
"baby, beware of naysayers"

In fever dreams
The city sleeps
and wakes with a dose of DMT
Daytripping inconclusively
Is yellow to you as it is to me?
For a people of productivity
surely feel no joy.

I want to build an obelisk
A tower high enough to touch water vapor in the sky
With no light at the top for guiding ships
And no crows nest for stationing snipers
Too thin and narrow to house people or goods.
It will not be a monument to god.
It will not symbolize the rays of the sun.
It will stand alone.
and it will shout with a voice of thunder,
With the roar of lions,
In a voice that is my own,
"I AM HERE!"
To the cold darkness above.
I want to build an obelisk
To make my presence known to no-one in particular.
I will build it of ink bricks and paper mortar
On the terrain contained in this journal.
And when it is complete I will do as men have done since we first mixed clay with water and painted our own image on walls and shout my existence to the universe.

I.
Am.
Here.

Yes, I want to build an obelisk.

And when it is done I will build another.

I'm nervous.
Like really nervous.
Like shaking like a blender full of gravel nervous.
Like atheist in a foxhole nervous.
Why am I so nervous?
Because I have a nagging thought that soon I might just be the last-next-best-thing that ever happened to you,
Replaced by another, better next-best-thing that blows me out of the water.
Because you might decide I don't have what you really REALLY want.
Because at the end of the day, I'm still convinced that your attraction to me is the product of an elaborate facade.
So yeah. I'm nervous.
Like sweating fifty caliber bullets nervous.
Like ******* cinderblocks nervous.
Like chattering teeth cold sweats nervous.
Like dying young nervous.
Like being forgotten nervous.

And it makes me nervous that you put me on a pedestal
Because from where I stand, I didn't do anything to deserve this
I got drunk at a party and picked up a guitar and here we are almost a year later.

So I'm anxious
I'm distressed
I'm worried and jumpy
But most of all I'm nervous
Nervous because I think
You might one day figure out what I already know:
I'm not that great.
I'm lanky and goofy and kinda dumb sometimes
And I can be just as petty as everyone else
And I'm still pretty convinced you're colossally out of my league
So I'm nervous
Like shake-you-to-your-*******-core nervous

Like really nervous.