Come to me woman
as creatures of light often do
float into my arms,
dig your talons into my chest
exposing what lie beneath
my muscle bound flesh.
Lay kisses upon me;
in such succession
that they burn my skin
like lightening
and make my heart pound
like thunder.

Undo these buttons
with nimble fingers,
remove from my body
this disguise I wear for others
and see me,
I ask that you see me
as I refuse to see myself.
Touch me with soft hands
until I am a statue in your grasp,
bite my neck, as your palms caress.
Each stroke shortening
my every breath.

I will take you like this,
disrobe you, see through you
and your eyes will come alive
shinning upon me like great stars.
I bury myself so deep
that the lines between
what is yours and mine
become one in the same.
Now my darling
as my hands clinch your hips
And you ****** your body upon me
like Cato Minor  upon the sword;
call out to me, cry my name.

It was almost spring here,
the purple light snuck in
cutting the overcast sky
and the venetian blinds.

The last snow lay out in the yard
slowly melting there
like something sad
but also something beautiful.

My kitten crawled up under my arm,
she lay her little head in my lap,
stretching out her paws
and yawning the way cats often do.

Soon it will be dark
but for now I live in the twilight
almost spring, almost night,
almost alive and almost dead.

I have yet to know a self I can call my own,
wandering through these bodies
the way one would try on clothes
but far deeper
than this analogy could ever dig,
I live with these identities.

I fall for them
the way lovers do in autumn,
keen that the coming winter
will leave me yearning
for the comfort of another,
but no sooner do the bells of spring
begin to ring in summer air
does the necessity of this comfort fade.
The temptation of sweeter fruit
hangs above me in the orchard shade
and an affluenza of potential
almost coerces me to stay.

Though no self have ever felt my own
I know within my heart, within my blood
and in my bones, more than anything
I am compelled to grow
towards entropy and complexity,
ascending, never settling at any plateau
a silverback drumming his barrel chest
and roaring into the void of the valley below
“What is next for me!”

and the answer is silence
(I should have known)

The coffee had settled to a temperature few could drink with any pleasure. The cursor impatiently blinked against the empty word document as he sat defeated by the previous one hundred attempts to write a single sentence.  He could not be a writer, he thought, writers do not spend hours in front of blank screens, staring blankly and drawing blanks. They are full of original stories which overflow from the gray matter of their brains, spilling out from the tips of their fingers as they beat atop plastic keys like Mozart realizing symphonies as he glide across the ivory teeth of a fortepiano. He was right; he was no writer, not yet. In this instance of doubt like Schrödinger’s cat, both men, the writer and the not-writer inhabited the same chair, the same space in time waiting to be woke by a single decision. If he decided he was not a writer than all potential realities collapse into one and the writer dies in that chair. I'm no Edward Lorenz and I don't know much about butterfly effects but what if this is one of those microscopic events that changes the initial conditions and forever alters the data set? What if a masterpiece is lost on a whim? I so badly want to communicate all of this to him but I can't, because I am remembering a distant memory of the moment I lost the man I was suppose to be.

I hate the way you hold cigarettes
and how you never drunk text me
at 3am. I want to be the person you
think of when a sloppy drunkard
is kissing you at a bar. His breath
rank with stale stogies, light beer,
and cheap whiskey. He uses way too
much tongue and swears his ****
won’t fit in a ******. He couldn’t
spell ******* and even if he uses
his fingers, it’s not enough to make you
***. I hate bad lovers and that’s all
I imagine you with. Dudes who say
“wanna play just the tip?” and other
lame *** **** because nobody ever
told them “ladies first” and you have
to stimulate the ****.

The other day
I happened to see a friend
who had passed away.
It was not until I saw him
had I realized,
I no longer cared for him.
I had been busy living
and after all these years
he was still the same.
How does one explain
to a dead friend
that people change?

"You are what you eat" they say it so often you would think they were just chewing with their mouths open. You happen to be so many other things than the diet you keep. I think "you are how much you sleep" would be an equally fair claim to your self identity. We regurgitate these talking points with such little consideration and worse we build our lives around these quotations because they are embossed over a scenic, awe-inspiring image on Instagram. These metaphors are so far removed from their original context that they could almost mean anything to anyone inside of their own head. Too often in juxtaposition to one another these contradictory ideas subside inside of you disguised as a rational point of view. Maybe you are what you eat or how much you sleep but do you ever wonder who's words become your thoughts?

I could never get a straight answer from her, the words didn’t turn crooked at the edges of her mouth. They just didn’t come out… Her forehead would wrinkle, creating a fold at the delta of her brow and nose. She would close her eyes and occasionally flash those electric blues in my direction. I could not help but admire how beautiful she looked trapped in her own indecisiveness. This woman would be the death of me, but **** it, I loved her, I loved her so much that my unanswered questions would never be enough until she confessed to me, she was in love.

She was wild like skinny dipping at midnight, stars watching overhead and falling in love with moonlight. The way it lay upon her skin made the ocean envious of her depths within and sometimes between us. She was my sister, not in blood but in orbit. A Venus to my Earth, forged from the same collapsing star and if the universe was in fact to be infinite then this moment would happen again, and again, and again an immeasurable number of times. I found comfort in this thought, knowing though our existence was meaningless, it was still full of feeling, and this feeling, right now, it insisted on existing forever.

So I say to thee, sing of me to future lovers.
Do not hold words behind teeth in fear of grief.
For they must be freed if life is to breathe seeds.
Whom sow and sprout forth,
in this garden true love grow north
toward bluer skies from open wounds,
dark thoughts and even darker moods.
Passion swoon like most fevers do
soon to pass as wellness looms.

This is not forever.

I know this to be true, sing of me to future lovers.
No matter how off beat or out of tune
Sing the way most old lovers do
full of hate, regret and true dismay.
Make mockery of my poetry
the heart felt things I'd say.
Call me a liar, a ******* and a no good cheat
but remember with each word you speak
remember; to remember it was always me.

She spoke rather enthusiastically of her planned trip to India, of her love for yoga and her passion for the pursuit of enlightenment. I was never one for spiritualism but she seemed so full of life and she had this appetite for experiences that was awe inspiring. Her hands moved feverously when she spoke, almost spastic but my focus, never more clear in recent memory remained on her eyes. They were soft with nativity but they carried with them a profound sense of conviction. Many before me have spoken of the eyes as the window to the soul and I had never fully understood the sentiment until I found mine intertwined with hers. Like a bridge over a seething river; our gaze had brought us closer. I felt as though we were no longer divided by ego, pride or other such frivolous illusions.

The conversation flowed so effortlessly, one could only describe it as natural. Had I been a determinist I would have regarded the meeting as fated to occur. She could shut me up just by talking; I always loved that in a woman. My fixation slowly slid down from her eyes to her mouth and almost like a fever coming over me I wanted to kiss her in that instant but you can’t just lock lips with your waitress in the middle of a café during lunch. Once again the nuisance of social structure and etiquette impeded upon my desires or so I told myself; knowing full well I could have just as easily stood up, grabbed her by her narrow hips and pulled her in tight for a good old fashion French baiser. Instead I allowed my longing to fume up inside of me like a tremendous furnace clouding my thoughts with black smoke and self-doubt. It was not society who was stopping me; it was me who was stopping me. Regardless of socially appropriate behavior we humans had always had a choice but like fools we often idly choose to cave under the pressure of our cultural conditioning. I like all cowards before me, used words like "can’t" as an excuse to allow moments of beauty to slip from my fingers and into the abyss. It was like a black hole, an all devouring entity that consumed all of our potential greatness and crushed it into nothingness.

Maybe in some alternative universe, somewhere in the infinite there was me sitting at that café gushing over her and she was standing there all delicate-like, telling me how she wanted to spend a month in India. Maybe that version of me acted on his impulse and he felt alive when he kissed her; in a way I may never feel. I hope somewhere in the vastness of this existence there is someone enjoying that kiss because if I squandered the only possible chance for that instance to ever occur then I cannot conceive of a greater tragedy.

Sometimes when I think of you
I wish I had all the money in the world
because I want to give you all the finer things
the expensive dinners
the diamond rings
the designer clothes
the tropical vacations
the pearls
the shoes
and basically
every material
desire in this world.

Sometimes when I think of you
I wish I had nothing, nothing at all
because a man with nothing has time
to make love on a blanket
under the star-lit night sky
to kiss you a thousand times
to count the individual lines
inside of your eyes
until he knew them all
like his own reflection
he has time
to listen when you cry
and promise that it'll be all right,
even when he doesn't know
he wants you to know
it'll be all right.
He has time
to hold you tight,
he has time
he has time
he has time
for you.

Sometimes when I think of you
I wish I didn't have to choose

strange faces
in a crowded bar
6 PM
business attire
some are young
still full of passion
some are ready
to retire

chatter hums
about things
that may just matter
to them
but to me
it's nonsense

like a passing train
steel wheels clattering
against well traveled rails
strange faces
forward, empty stares
moving so quickly
they blur into nothing
and dissipate from memory

no sooner
do crossing gates rise
and we drive
as if nothing
has happened

The desert gradually turned to a grassy thicket
tamarack branches turn towards the fleeting dusk
above, ancient starlights fade in cimmerian skies
their ghostly glow choked by the sullen silhouettes
of churning charcoal clouds against the abyss.
The world feels as though she is being devoured
by nothing and emptiness.

Again the tortured-self awakes inside of Apricus
wrestling with its bindings merely out of gall.
It elicits ache in the belly of its captor,
the kind that only heartbreak makes inside us all
and once the tantrum cease,
it laugh a little before it speak

The darkness comes, not for you and I alone
but in the end all life is its sacrifice,
why struggle any longer to change the minds of sheep?
Has the battle not hardened our flesh, sharpened our teeth,
has it not made us hungry for what lesser men eat?

A thunderhead above him began to coil
tightening its hold around the moon,
each rotation siphoned the lunar light
till the well traveled soil of the trail
turn to a thin brush, then into a heavy wood.

Ask not if you shall stray from your path
rather ask if you will have the constitution
to find your way back in the black
of a stormy night.

The sun dripped with liquid gold
from the heavens above
to the earth below
coral, violet and red
hung over my head
revealing to my afternoon eyes
the very soul of the fatherly sky
and I heard the sea speak
oh so salty and sweet

She whispered to me
goodnight in a gentle breeze
against the fading of the light
sinking beneath the horizon line
turning form a wild fire burning
into cool and ancient black
slick with shimmering stars
like freckles upon a giant's back

I, just another grain of sand
among the many on this beach
felt on the scale of existence
that mine carried little significance
no more than an ellipses in a speech
so what would it matter
if the rising waters
were to wash me out to sea
or if I remained
and the world ignored me
What would it matter?

Why was it not enough
that I was here
and I was alive?

We no longer speak
but I conversate with you.
I transverse through
every syllable I ever spoke,
every gesture,
every lie,
every joke,
and every poem
I ever wrote.

We no longer speak
but I've been talking to you;
in dark rooms at strange hours
unable to sleep;
sometimes on clear nights
under a menacing moon
allowing its bright light
to wash me in its purity.

We no longer speak
and it’s time I stopped,
stopped reliving every mistake
stopped thinking,
stopped wondering,
and stopped loving you
because the gravity
that once drew us together
now pushes us apart
and with each rotation
I the moon go further
and further from the earth’s heart.

I find your eyes
to be like a trail less traveled,
one must first wander in them
before ever getting to know you
and just as soon as I felt myself
familiar with them,
we found ourselves
in the midst of a sun shower.
I still recall the cool air
kissing your skin
as we found shelter
under an ancient elm.

It felt as though the humidity itself
carried a hint of liquor as we walked
out into the night, wanting only to escape
our lives for a little.
Deep down in Vieux Carre
twisted brass clashed with a piano
running half step from the crowded clubs
on Frenchman Street.
We filled our lungs with the city
and found her to be like certain kinds
of dangerous doses--
intoxicating.

It was our second night
and the more we drank
the more I began to see glimpses
of the specters spoken of by locals.
They linger in my peripheral,
watching me with their sunken eyes.
You could faintly hear them moan,
only in defeated tones
and their collective scowl danced
in the heavy air of summer
as though it were a part from
all that jazz.

In the stranger hours of morn
I was approached by a ghost
a few blocks off Bourbon.
He offered up nothing but his ***** palms
in hopes of some false salvation.
I wrestled a dollar from my pocket
and passed it on to him,
only to watch him fruitlessly grasp at it
before it slide through his ghostly hands
to the floor below.
He looked down at the dollar
all helpless-like and he said
"It’s been slipping through my fingers
like dat for years now
and ain't nobody help’n me."

I walked from him, realizing then
why I had needed this trip,
I needed to remember all the love in my life
because the only difference between
me and the ghosts of N'awlins
was someone cared about me,
and I cared enough about them
not to destroy myself.

Nimble fingers feed
plastic buttons
through fabric slits
then zip up zippers
and tie ties.
Raised brow,
steel eyes,
cannot help
but wonder why
I am incapable
of loving just one
woman at a time.

I’m old enough now to admit,
I’ve slept with far too many women
which is practically less than a fraction
of the number of women I desired.
In a way I’m saying
not nearly enough, is plenty.

Streaks

from worn out wipers

dented cans, plastic wrappers

the glow of a cigarette ****

lying comfortably 
in the ashtray

white knuckles tight

on a weathered wheel

empty roads

cold and black

eyes tired but open

like trucker stops

or roadside diners

with the neons

still on

I keep driving

teetering between

my existence

and a sweet dream

I’d slip into that slumber

if not for the passengers

still fast asleep
in my back seat

So I keep driving

as quiet 
and as lonely

as it may be

I keep driving

because 
somebody

is putting
 their trust
 in me

There is a machine
it's hands driven by no singular man
nor collective of men but by the subconscious desires of whole societies,
possibly by all mankind.
It's will; perhaps passed on in our blood
but I suspect a more devious actor at play.
The augmented reality of language ****** upon us in our youth
with such tyrannical force it makes the rule of King Leopold
hardly a murmur in the heart of darkness.
It's reason as noble as it is useful. It aims to connect;
to help share the eloquent, heavenly images
that reside behind our eyes in our most sincere and naked moments.
Noble indeed are the intentions of language but they deceive,
make it hard for our pupils to see what needs to be seen
thus we live as Thoreau has said 'lives of quiet desperation'
blind to what our hearts cry for in the black of our deepest silence.
We deny them in the name of acceptance and comfort
for the fear of failure wear upon us like a heavy robe.
These words they echo such violent doubt
and in days past I had triumphed this lingering hesitation
with holy regard as if it embodied me with some super power.
What lunacy, what madness I endured;
twisted about by the contradictive nature of logos.
No more shall I wear this weight upon me,
cast off the coercive syntax and again like a child;
I think in images.
I may still write, even speak in fictitious representations
but I shall live my friends,
live to see these fiery reflections of light manifested into reality.
Live so that I am not remembered in words
but in the hearts of other men...

There is an algorithm out there,
somewhere on the web
it is calculating my every click
my likes, my comments
how many hours I spend at night
browsing poetry
or probably ****.

There is an algorithm out there,
somewhere on the web
it collects my style, my taste
it knows my favorite color,
it has studied my face
the way no lover ever has,
down to the freckle.

There is an algorithm out there,
somewhere on the web
it knows things about me
my friends or family would never ask.
It knows how many times
I have searched the word 'suicide'
how many times I asked for nudes
and how many times I received.
It knows my greatest fears
but also my most coveted dreams.
It knows things about me
I may have forgotten about me.

There is an algorithm out there,
somewhere on the web
it has created an image of me
I would rather not see
nor believe in its legitimacy
yet every time I go to type
its guesses my next thought
with pinpoint accuracy.

There is an algorithm out there...

There is an elephant in my head and a big one is he
he stamps his feet trampling my dreams into nothing but debris.
There is an elephant in my head, he is too strong you see
he leaves me no peace, no sleep, stomping on everything I can be.
There is an elephant in my head and I want to set him free
because deep down inside I know undoubtedly that elephant is me.

Their eyes met in perfect alignment
as he place a single finger upon her breast
and he pushed,
not so hard that she would notice
but he pushed and he pushed
until he could reach through her.

Though she had not felt his hand
as it sink into her skin and out her back,
she certainly felt it when he withdrew.
Each inch of his arm stabbing
like a thousand pin ******,
his fingertips cutting like scalpels
along the innards of her chest
until there was nothing left
but a hole where her heart once lay.

She looked down at her wound
and expected to see red, but there was none.
I guess for all she had suffered at his hands
she imagined there would be more blood

Her heart sunk into a half moon
before fully disappearing from view.
Her head hung the way clothes do
from coat hangers
and no words could be said
to raise these organized thoughts
into some holy clarity.

She wept now
not for the lack of love,
but an abundance of it
and it ate at her illusionary ego
the way venues of vultures do cadavers.
Warm blood glazed on their beaks
in exhausting Saharan heat.
Hardly a reason to ruffle feathers
for the scavengers who have come to eat.

His words gushed in devious waves
like raging oceans unsure
of the storm still far from landfall
but she saw through the salty cover
of his convoluted spoken screeds
to see the tsunami approaching
with such ferocity.

"Are you breaking up with me?"
her voice trembled
like the echoing hiss of a violin
as it struck its final cord
in an auditorium of empty seats.
His lecture ceased,
he had yet to reach the conclusion
she had foreseen for several weeks.

The silence grew between them
calming both wind and sea.
The tidal wave would have demanded
rebuilding and temporary peace
but the nothingness arrives
on the hushed breath of the heavens,
bringing with it both
the ship from Delos
and the poison hemlock ****.

He drank of it,
thus his love of her succumb
to everlasting sleep.
It becomes but a past life,
only to visit him in haunting dreams.

"My life has been the poem I would have writ"
But I could not both live and utter it.
The words- of Henry David Thoreau
echo in the woods outside my childhood home
but I can see a younger me with rolled up sleeves
diligently grinding graphite against loose-leaf,
I watch as he tries to capture snippets of life  
like fireflies in mason jars on summer nights.
He squandered the sands of the hour glass,
recluse in his room obsessing over a moments pass
but has he not breathed life into soon forgotten memories,
striking alive these Frankenstein ideas with electricity?

the tessellated tile floor of my existence,
once alabaster white
has sullied under the steps
of a muddied life
spent wading in the river bank
attempting to coalesce
a series of seemingly random events
into a fabricated web
spun of the finest thread.
only to find the ephemeral now
a fractious flowing river
so violent and cold
from the melting spring snow,
whitewater breaks
against primordial stone
like titan thunder atop olympus,
rattling our bones
because legends follow entropy
but chronos begets chaos in mythology.

One year I had a really bad toothache
it felt like all the wrong words
kept coming out my mouth
and I couldn't help but bite my tongue
just to the numb the pain I was spitting out.

It hurts to be hated
but it hurts worse to be loved,
especially when you don't think your worthy of it.
Put those lines next to all the other dumbs ones I've used  
swinging hammer handed words, scalpel-like terms,
some of the meanest **** you've ever heard
trying to break you in two and you might just have enough
between the half truths and the promises I never kept
to write one really, really sad tune

I knew better than to speak to you the way I did
but some people act like welcome mats
for other people's ***** shoes,
you left the front door unlocked
and I made a habit of wiping my feet
as soon as I walked on through.
I'm not proud of what I tracked in
and I take responsibility for most my actions
but lets not act like they took place in a vacuum.
You had to lay down first
before I could ever step all over you,
and when you refused to love yourself,
what did you expect everyone else to do?

One year I had a really bad toothache
and you were just too sweet a taste for me to take,
without getting angry at myself
for trying to have my cake
and eat it too...

I told her there was very little of me left to love,
and with glassy blue-green eyes she replied
*There is enough

I wrote a book once
but every page was breakup letter to myself.
It’s not you, it’s me appeared to be the theme
yet I found those words incredibly hard to believe.

We joke sometimes
about falling in love,
we talk in deep detail
about our romance;
the kind of house we want,
the name of the family dog,
would we rather have boys or girls,
and we argue over who will stay home
to raise the kids, I always let you win.

We joke sometimes
about growing old together;
we talk about thinning hair,
wrinkling skin, tired eyes
and energized grand kids.
We promise to one another
that we will stay in love,
still hold hands, hug each other tightly
and kiss both daily and nightly

We joke sometimes
about a life we could be living
and I just want you to know
that I am not always kidding.

What whispered words
linger on our longing lips,
they go unsaid at the hands
of our fingers tips.
These touches talk like old friends,
o’ how familiar
the conversation feels,
even after all these years.

Undress your formal tongue
and we will speak with the slang
we spoke when we were young,
when our bodies were still foreign,
even to us.
We were explorers consumed
not by god, glory or gold
but by lust.

So if we must speak
let it be with our skin pressed,
hot breath on sweat glistened *******,
biting at the napes of our necks
and fingernails breaking flesh.
In the morning we may regret
but we're both here because
we cannot forget.

I promise
this is not a reconciliation,
this is only ***.

Rarely had my vision been focused in the past
and maybe for this reason the passage of time
felt as if it was little more than a forgotten dream.
I often found my eyes on an icy reflection
of a naked man standing before a fogged mirror,
fresh with the haze of a hot shower.
I would gaze upon him and he back into me,
pondering to myself "who are you stranger?"
I could only assume he thought the same of me.
I would wonder when he walked away
from that tooth paste stained portrait
if he ventured into the world with that familiar vigor,
that naive sensibility to battle
the demons,
the contradictors
and the liars.
If he too would laugh at these same fallacies in himself
with a certain kind of madness that could only touch
the ears of the few free men among us.
Those tragic spirits who dared to dance,
to transcend ancient genetics and modern culture
in hopes of touching a god they had long forsaken.
We may have given it a different name
but we were no better then the theologians before us,
we clung to our most primal desire.
It weighed upon us with such force
that hunger,
thirst
or even lust
felt like a pestering annoyance in the shadow of its glory.
Our appetite for connection far surpassed our need
to facilitate our biological deficiencies
and in those moments of understanding we reveled in the irony
of being minds trapped in fleshy bodies.
A smile crept across my face and one grew upon him.
I knew this man who stand before me,
unafraid,
bare in body
with a dastardly grin.
He was my oldest friend,
the ghost who spoke to me
in my most vulnerable moments
when no others did.
He cried for me when I could not,
would not cry for myself.
He had always been there
for me and for the first time
when I turned away from his reflection
I felt him follow too.

Love is for the poor,
and money for the rich
but wisdom is reserved
for those who caught the itch
of curiosity for the fact that they exist.


Those sparse few who dare
to put their faith into people
but expect not to see the eyes of god
inside of another man’s cathedral.
Knowing well that these lies and laws
could never guide us past the flaws
of good and evil.


Only believe in the dreamer
who refuses the role of a follower
and shuns the idea of a leader.
Be not deceived by status or acclaim
because it only makes you a disciple
of a product and a name.


Hold in high regard the tired hikers
born to the depths of the deepest valleys
and yet they rise before the light of dawn
like a striker to set ablaze the malaise
of these pedestrian days
that mock our souls
with monotonous toil.


This life is but an eternal recurrence
therefore every morn we are born anew
and that potential is a shot at transference
into something more eminent than you.
Become the bridge my friend
because there is no future
in being an end.

Apricus came upon a beauty far younger than he,
she lay in the forest glade like a daisy among the weeds.
Her body wet from the emanation of the morning light
it coursed through gaps of green in the furrowed canopy
and wrote atop her flesh with the knowledge
of our ancient galaxy.

The fragile flower insisted she travel with the poet
and Apricus could hardly argue against her plea,
he took her hand, yet she held tighter
as they walk beneath the dogwood trees.
The buds of spring began to blossom
and blooms of white hung like gowns among the leaves.
He faintly heard the sound of church bells ringing
calling from a far off village he could not see.

Not yet ready to return to the societal herd
Apricus stepped back, his eyes turned crooked
looking towards the wilderness from whence he came
but her touch had taken hold.
He realized now to break from her
was to break apart from something whole
and thus he spoke

We learn when leaving those we love,
even as our paths have crossed and intertwined
that no matter how hard we try, our destinations,
they are different sometimes.

Yonderly forth does my mind travel
toward space unscathed by human eye,
vacantly naked my reflection unravels
distant are these thoughts of mine.
Untethered cognition free of man’s laws
his morals, his mission and even his flaws.
Thus I must burrow ever so deep
to find a single rigor of truth
I dig where other men sleep.

Awake,
Awake,
Oh wasted hearts
the first rule of living
is knowing: things fall apart.
What now is truth shall surely flee
as does the river's water escape to sea.
Clench not tightly to your current beliefs
they may not follow,
they cannot follow
where we intend to be.