I am just the lightbulb
Swinging in the attic
If you would just
Shut up
I am the static

Little ghost
Show me your play things
Tall bedposts
You are always swinging

That's the record
Play it again
If you speak up
You'll only blend in

And I wish
I wish to **** I was someone else
Take my bottle from the shelf
Grin, kiss, smash me

But here you are
Lily hand
Sail my ship
Read my stars
Kiss me

Crystal ball
Palm reader
Your eyes say it all
Your lips say it better

Be careful, child
My heart is cracking porcelain
Be gentle little girl
You're playing with the fire again

I said please, honey
Try to take it easy on me
I forgot what love was like
A left and right
Your house at the end of the road

Such a beautiful house you have, honey
Did you paint it on your own?
You have a pretty garden
Are those tulips in the yard?

It's beautiful the way the sun comes in
Through the windows
It's so great in here
I'm so happy to be here
Let's hold hands -
Oh I'm sorry

The Pale horse came foaming
From a dissipating cloud
The sound of all Hells army

Heat between our fingers
Radiating wonder

Draining bucket after bucket
On the alter we rebuilt

The color from your face is lost
Ravaged you like cancer
Arrows of fire
Poisoned you with fever
Hot sweat boiled between us
As I wait for you to go

But your dreams are perfect
Beneath a shaded oak tree
You fell asleep with me
Flowers growing and dying around us
Trails of sailing clouds
Thin enough to breathe
Fingers are a wonder
Touch softly on my face
Warm or cool it didn't matter

Heaven thank you for taking her
Heaven keep her
The mountains here are cold
I stumble on them alone
The deserts are dry
Sand no longer chokes you
Or cuts your eyes
I drag through them alone

Silent seas of blood
I only wish to drown in
So I can be with you

Hail of fire falls
And I cry for the rocks to fall upon me
Your picture now smeared and faded
As the seals are broken
I fight scorpions with the body of a lion
And the face of a man
As the heaven white ******
Walks on the seas
The dragon circles the shore
Searching for her scent

The wisemen bow before him
Giving gifts of gold
As the book of life is opened
And my name was not called

Breaking from the line to find you
But millions line the streets
Behind me he thunders
Depart for I knew you not

Sent to dine  with Hades
As your candle in heaven is covered
In the black sulfur
Heated beyond any fire
I can smile as you sit beneath an oak
In some corner of heaven
Dreaming about me
What god would not allow
True love to break the gates of fire

Twisted up in thread
Cobweb train tracks
From the window
You waved back
Handkerchief
In your hand
Bye bye to the moonlight
I'll close your eyes
Good... Good.... Come on sleep
I've spent so many nights
Up wide and awake
In a lab coat
Lookin for some answers
But all the test tubes are broken
The white rats have run away
So come on sleep
Take me
Punch my ticket
On the goodnight express
Train tracks on the cobwebs
And you lean out the window
To wave and ******* kisses
*Goodnight!
Goodnight, darling!

I retreat into myself
Into the corridors of me
I lounge on the well worn flagstones
Gazing on the marble columns
Arranging tapestries and paintings in
A more perfect order
I stalk down old hallways and explore unnamed galleries with a
Single candle to push back the deep
Sometimes rooms are filled with old Furniture
Sometimes entirely empty
Once feeling brave I held onto
The threshold of such a room and
Stretching out I hold the candle aloft in the chasm. Nothingness, darkness complete the light puddles at my feet pitiful.
When I recall that yawning abyss the silence of
It persists.
In ballrooms I play Chopin's waltzs' for no one  in particular
Yet I take my bow and my place at the head of a table set for a score of kings
I lay on marble steps trying to guess the riddles that my echo whispers
I climb the  towers and the spires to dizzying heights and many weeks I was lost in the labyrinth of cellars of basements of tombs beneath
I have seen strange things lately: a chair upturned or
Bed unmade, quills still wet, and doors open and shut of their own volition in the inky black
I swear I have seen before
A tall figure in a hooded cloak dart
Into the shadows, and it did not seem
Altogether human

I read for years inside my library  
And have spoken at length to Shakespeare and Plato
I have seen Yggdrasil and the seven hells
And sped through time with
H.G Wells. Of death and moon, of birds and galaxies I am enamored.
Tea with Julius Ceaser, chess with Captain Hook.
Breakfast with The Buddah
Coffee with The Christ
Did you know that Captain Ahab takes His water with a squeeze of lime? No Ice. Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain know me by my first name, I have fenced with the Gods of Olympus and of Asgard and I remain undefeated. The divine crowd my hearth and many nights have been passed here in quiet conversation, with Confucius, with Archimedes, with Epictetus, Davinci, and the brothers Grimm
I have lived ten thousand lives and Will live another ten

-Without a single thought of you-

I wander
To my garden
Gently lit by paper lanterns
The path is smooth and heady
The amber blossoms
And weathered sculptures
Make my eyelids heavy
Monuments with fists clenched beat my
Ego ******
New flowers sprout from the ivy throat
Always things are grown but never overgrowing
I steal through the hedge maze that only I know
To the secret center where no plant grows
Pavilion and pond
Where no bird sings year long
In that quiet I endeavor
To look without fear
Into the pupil of forever

Twelve seconds under a noon day sun
One that reflects from rocks and sand

She squinted her eyes to the sun burnt wind
And the dunes rolled like waves in the heat dream

************

But she was tempted in the garden
Among dripping vines and flowers
Fountains welled up among the stones
And gave drought to the thirsting night

It was the first night the clouds were covering all the stars
The moon was no longer seen
She lay her head on a pillow of stone
She slept and dreamed this dream

to even exist
anymore
is it I
or am I you
Television picture
Do you wish I did not
Reflect so white on your wall
Or that my fingernails would dig so deep
Into the black moist earth
of your mind
A glass consciousnesses
\can be broken in a crystal instant
Forever cursed or blessed
Once again
Nothing
Strange picture on the wall
Will not flash at all
A picture of you
Paper and ink
Do you think
When you die-
Is it everything
Or nothing?

Second Stanza
Broken apart
Like your sentences
In that last conversation
The air
Is so thick with politeness
So physical
the soft of white skin
Or mental
Thoughts becoming  
      Thin
Bones of fingers
or skull cap
The sing song
language of your eyelashes
Open me
Close me
I am at your command
Free to be used
Or left alone to rot
In the dark dungeon
even that water that is thick and black
The smell of that water sulfuric
even this water
will quench the thirst of any dying man
Gurgle out your last words
once more
(scripted)
Heavy words that


spill //
through cracked lips
porcelain teeth
"Do not leave me. Hold so tightly that last breath."

You stand in the morning rain
Wearing your plastic shoes and faux
Fur wrap

I am baffled
And I press against the windowpane
to glimpse

Raindrops pelt
and my skin is cold

Like a peacock the black umbrella opens
and you light a cigarette in the rain
(the umbrella held in the crook of your arm)
You are a demon I am sure of this
Smoke pouring from your nostrils and
Dark red lips

You do not wave
but a taxi stops
You turn with some sudenness
towards the window that I watch from


My eyes catching yours
In the cold rain  
Dark green things they are
Peering deeply
Peeling back
Each layer
and a whisper only I can hear
"Is this a dream?"

The taxi door shuts
And the headlights
Through puddles the tires
Churn

Like a million red nail painted dye-cast fingers
That push against my surface
Poking through like summer heat
Warm water
Reflecting back moonlight by night

Wind pushing her open back
Back Northward
And home

Only wanting to die
You sit back on your throne

Back to the wolves and road
Leaves falling and all that ****

Killed like my mother
Blood on the bathroom mirror

Ten dead smiles reaching ear to ear
Breathing in and out only smoke

After awhile
You start to drift
To any little town
That has a minute of music
And cold drinks

I plotted my revenge
Fingers round a dagger curled
Ruby hilt salvation
Paper white hips
Hearing a herd of elephants
Criss-cross by the sea

On the drunk lips of sailors
Truth is always spat

I don't want to weep for you

You have locked yourself in the glass tower
Up in the air
Where everyone watched you
Mourn your lover

It took fog to realize
There is no use in growing
Things that grow will always be cut down
Dew on the grass, peppered by spider webs
Hills full of red angry fire ants

It took fog to remember
That I could always go back home
That I could skip the canal
And pick an orange straight from the tree
Peeling it with a rusted pocket knife
Would you sit in the grass with me?
The stick of the juice between your fingers

It took fog to show me
That I can still walk down the rows of sugar cane
After playing hide and seek
That I can still **** snakes
And get cut by the sawgrass

It took fog to remind me
That the mangroves were
Full of mosquitoes and fish
And the yellow sun
Was only a round disk
Through the fog

Well look if it isn't sunset
The whole ground is black
As an orange sun slips
Behind the tree line
The call of birds
Where children still play at the edge
Glowing in lamplight

A broken vessel
Poured out on the kitchen floor
Dirt and dust
Chipped points of bone

I don't understand destiny
Or if it all hasn't happened
Dreaming in my bed

Even if it is just a couplet or a pove loem to the girl at the pizza place
I am going to write something
Maybe it will be about you? Or me? Us?
Or maybe I will walk outside and get hit by a car...
You know what on second thought, I might write two things today

Here she come
Don't catch eyes
She's a jaguar in disguise

Back on my feet
Money in my pocket
The apparatus
Of social status
He buys drinks for the girls all night
And he goes home alone and over

She's peered down dark Chicago alleys
She's driving and planting her garden
Sunday afternoons-so hot touching in
The parking lot.

Blue skies Cloudless
She. Is in my passenger sest
Her bare feet beneath her in her seat

I swear a kiss I'd long in order
Patient lips
Patient trigger finger
Ive thrown up the poison
The definition of her hair up
And a neck
Sunglasses dark
Blue veined
Blowing kiss bullets
In the rain

She's dancing to the radio
She's playing
Shaking like a fool
A gun to my head /I don't twitch
Looking into the eyes
Lisyening. Waiting

conversation
Worthy of a hospital waiting room
Your contact leaves my skin blistered

I didn't say it to be romantic
But informative disconnected emotionless your retaliation is the
Balled fist a hand I've studied
I know how the skin lays over that knuckle
Scarless you cross two legs I have known with my hands and my mouth
You turn away as if you didn't hear

Charles D. Jay died on October 12, 2011
My great uncle
I never said one word to him my whole life
In the will he left my grandma everything
He was crushed after the death of his wife in 2010
And then the death of his dog Sandy in early 2011
Then like clockwork colon cancer

Walking into that house
The smell of coffee and old carpet
A smell I was all too flamiliar with
Growing up in Southern Baptist churches
You can't get away from stuff like that

He left it all in that house
Just packed in
Room after noon
Were talking about a little mansion here
He had a dining room and everything
Big old piano that he must have enjoyed playing
I took that old thing and loaded up all by myself in the back of a pick up and now its at home
In the middle of my livingroom
With drink circles and ash trays like at some club

Making it back to the house
I checked his study
Filled with books
And beautiful black vinyl records
Every single jazz musician from Dizzy to Armstrong
He had em' all the standards- the jivers-big band-street bands
Even the priceless club jam sessions
People clapping
And yellin
Hollerin'
Trumpets and sax
Foot tapping
Needless to say
I spent the rest of that night drunk on Charle's most expensive bottle of gin
Jazz records
Pulled from sleeves
On the couch
Covering the floor
Every record he had ever bought
That was his real funeral
Because I know if I died
I would want someone to listen through every song I ever loved

Hypodermic dilauded crushed on the spoon
Feels like doom
Besides all my calculations
Beneath the angry boy
God's toy

Piercing my skin
Lie back again
Lingering a taste on my tounge
I see her sleeping naked in her bedroom
As I float on a sea
Of memories and warmth
Visions of crumbling completely
Just a minute from perfect
Her legs and black high heels
My imagination
I hate it

Before
When concrete sweet lips
Put me to sleep

Fragmented
Fragile
Moments of happiness that
Slip through my outstretched fingers
To fall between the ocean waves
Splashing into the depths of your dark hair

Even now I could say your name
So easily it could slip from my lips
A precious thing

Forget it

Forget
The shadow you throw
Sketched out in front of the sunset

Your voice
I could write each
Silly
Common
Useless word on my skin

The cloluds are cut from construction paper
Orange red and yellow
The sun is falling to the sound of your laughter
Each breath I watch
The rise and fall

The smell of your perfume
Skin
Fingers
eyes
eyes
eyes
eyes
eyes
eyes
green as ivy
Stitch by stitch
Sew the seams
Of a heart
Once broken

so love deeply you I. Though sadly I see in my minding eye. A life long without you. So short is my minds eye unknowing dark futures-I long will stop their hauntings. Lingering echoes echo soundly. Maybe dreamer I can hold your eyes. As artifacts in museums silencencing laughing boys. Eyes whose crystal stare read the heart of the strongest, and blink so heavily without remorse.

The girl in school
Who I think on
            often
    I write her poems
                 hardback textbook
        In between paragraphs
                     I lick my finger
turning the page
If I could only tell you
How the secret pencil marks I leave
                   Make me want to scream
She smells so boss
           Like grape bubblegum
                  
I Wrote her tonight
              Slipped the folded note   into her  pocket
        
My heart skips
         As she sits in Economics
Paper cut red
When she found and read
                   The wide rule page

I know you don't love me
Like I love you
I'm just another stupid
Boy to you
Skipping over words
Getting tongue tied
Shaking high school fingers
At your ***** line

Stupid boy
Shutup you don't know what love is
It's not something you put in a poem
Or a stupid metaphor about roses that are blooming
While others fall apart

I learned to keep my mouth shut a long time ago
Children seen and not heard
Keep that mouth shut and your ears open
And you learn a lot about the world
How people treat you and decieve you
And leave you for dead
Stop looking for good samaritains
They don't exist
Take why you can
The world is done when you die
Bite the hand that feeds
Then spit in his eye

Yeah they say
They say
They all have somethin to say
And if you dont believe something
You follow on anyway

I know one thing though
That I do love you
And I heard when you said
"Id leave you for dead
If I ever got the chance to"
You said you would rob me blind
And leave me broken
Rub dirt in my eyes
Give me a curse  
At the side of the road where no one will stop you  
Left to lick my own wounds
And bleed out under glowing
Silver full moons
Yeah
You've told me
I've heard what you say
That doesnt mean I'm not gonna love you
Anyfuckinway

I grow ***** poppies by a certain canal
A few seeds I got from a friend of a friend
I buried them an inch down in the dark
Black earth near a retention pond
I watch the sunset on the banks at night
There is even a good sized gator in the pond
I have seen him get some fish
He and I once and twice
Have probably shared a sunset
But the difference I
Go home to my warm bed
They sprout like a potato does
A good sized plant within a month
Until fat green buds began to swell on them
I plucked them when they reached an apex
And cut the flesh of one with a razor
Like a stuck pig it gushed
Rubbing a bit on my gums
I watched the sunset
And stumbled back
To my warm bed

You swallowed all the important puzzle pieces
Maybe when you pull your finger scissors out of the socket
You won't remember how sad this is

Doing all the downtown drugs
Gives you the uptown feeling
Ringing your head like a church bell

******* you for turning even a simple drive home
Into a knock down drag out
I don't need your mess of wires
I'll just wait until you sleep
And take a kitchen knife to your circuits
....yeah that's what I'm gonna do

Do you really
Blowing smoke into my face
In my pocket a razor blade
I run my finger against it
Pick anything
Anything you want

Cough Syrup
Cigarettes
Liquor
As if you weren't white trash enough

Walk in
You are calm and no one cares
Pick anything
Anything and walk out
You own it

Some lie to themselves
Pseudophilisophical teenage masturbations
As if shoving a couple cold beers into your boxer shorts
And downing a bottle of robo in the toy section of wal-mart
yeah bro, youv'e totally thrown a wrench into the gears of the corporate machine while we drink these cold cans of beer that were pressed against your *****

Marijuana
I wish I was alive for once
Then I wouldn't waste my time typing poems on my cellphone
While you finger your girlfriend on the couch
Sleeping on the floor is great for a while
You appreciate a safe place to sleep
Something different than the bus seats and train stations

I wish the universe didn't
Whose idea was this whole life thing anyway

Tomorrow you will wake up
And stealing DVDs from Best Buy will consume the day
I found a little bag of ****
And we are kings
Of a personnel universe
Your girlfriend
Is
eighteen
She still thinks I'm cool
Cause my General Education Diploma
I hate everything in my life
It's all breaking apart
The seams I have carefully sewn
I need to get out of here
I am tired of January
Appreciate each moment
Appreciate each moment
Because the tumor on my brain waits on nobody
I cant overcome the sense of meaninglessness
It's just the comedown
Xanax
Cigarettes 1:12 a.m
1:13 a.m
Follow my noble eightfold path to oblivion
#1 go **** yourself

Words act as arrows
Fiery bolts on the field of battle
You've cut me down before breakfast is over
Somewhere between the poached egg on toast and
A cup of black coffee
You would never love me
That is all

All your life you have been in a rush
To get somewhere
Yet you never feel like you've arrived


Money is time
That can never reversed

How you preach time is money from your death bed
Not even the nurses listen

As your eyes fill with tears you will ask

"Where have they all gone?"


We were always there
Ever-waiting
For you to return from finding something better

Deny the doctor's orders
Become tangled in the barbed wire fences
And kiss bar girls on the cheek
The grass will grow and the sky is blue
Even if you are on food stamps
Even if you are worth millions

I don't love you
I love the soil
And the howling of wolves on the full moon
the hair on my neck stands up
When a cougar screams in the quarry
Exclaiming his triumph to the sky
With a mouth dripping warm blood




So far
I have not fallen in love with the painted on faces
But a girl who works in her garden during the hot afternoon
She sings to the pit bull sleeping on the path and in real life
She smiles and laughs brighter and louder than Times Square

Put me down like a dog
I'm all but beast
My fangs snapping at your ankles
My fangs snapping at your throat
I feel your human incisors
Digging into my chest
Your tongue on my pulse
The pulse of your tongue
Over a stone wall
Under the brambles
Snagging at your hair
Catching thorns
A cut on your bared white flesh
Put me down like an animal
Or I will bark at your house until morning

My oh my dear handmaiden
The brevity of your eyes is a childish curse, but
Long is the chill of a single winter night
A basement full of taxidermed trophies
Death and dust fill flat stale air
Lying in a corner of silence
Bound in electrical tape
Gagged by a silk tie
There is no rhyme or reason
Or meaning to it all
It is the addition of numbers and variables
Multiplied by powers
Do you not understand the color of sunsets
The beauty of a passing day
Human passing is not a thing of beauty
It is a quiet tune playing on a record
The sound of cold water dripping from pipes
The feeling of sleep washing over me
With a thousand angels
Waiting to carry me on

A bag of skittles would make you God

I thought it
A carousel spinning
Music and light

Presumed 
It a blade of grass
Or shadow bent by
**** form

Maybe the strand of silk hair
Ribbon disrupted from a high place
To fall on cheek

But I am wrong
This single:

True love
Is but
Raw pain unmingled

I once held the sea
But I loved her so
I let her go
Every drop of her I released
All the hidden treasures
Lost in her belly

I once held all the birds
Because they were my friends
Singing stories to me
About long forgotten lands
But the only good bird
Is one not captured
So their cages I opened
They whistled their thanks

I once held the sun
For she only could keep me warm
But the moon was jealous
So I let her run

I once loved you
More than I ever loved myself
I would die for you
I lived for you
Everything your name
But when the winter bit your heart
You forgot my name
So I gave you all I had
My heart
My soul
My song
And you walked down Virginia Street
Hand in hand with him

Last night I drempt of longing
The taste upon my tongue
The voice of birds came softly back
The warmth of yellow sun
The sea came rushing back to me
Bathing me in love
But I waited and I waited
For I needed you the most
But you would never come back to me
The owner of my heart

Lunch time came
Restless and young
I had fingers in your hair
Red like the sunset sun
Skipping school almost
Every day, but today was worth
Going back a grade
We went to the ocean
To the white sand beaches
Waves roll and flow on
Even when no one visits
You put out your yellow and white towel
A place to sit and rest
We threw our shoes and socks in a pile
And felt the cool ocean breath
I remember how you put your hair up
I rolled up my pants
Still dressed up in school clothes
You came and grabbed my hand
Walking down to the edge
Where waves and sand meet
We stood and gazed at giant white clouds
As the shore swallowed our feet
You smiled big as I remember
The wrinkle around your eyes
You jumped into the blue water
With a little running dive
You stood up dripping water
Like a mermaid in a dream

*You stood up glistening in the noon day sun
With your hands above your head
For one moment I know I had seen you
The real girl who I really loved
There is never any faking
Fully dressed in the sea

HA HA skin and bones
Gotta love skin and bones
Crank
Shooting guns into the air!

Ha ha ha
Burning matches!
Yeah the fire

Ha Burn all your money and your stuff!
It's gonna be fun to sleep out under the moon
Im a werewolf too!
Can i feel your fangs?
Poke
That's not a joke ha ha

Don't worry so much! Tommorow will be fun
You'll see
We can walk down the street
Avoiding sunlight
The shadows feel so right
Ha ha
Skin your knees
Climbing up trees
We fought demons and cannibal Indians
With wooden swords!

Ha ha
Don't be so nervous kid
We can go for a swim
Jumping off rocks
Then talk talk
Till the sun falls off again
Werewolves again
Running through the trees
The bees knees ha ha
The bees knees!

But he became an astronaut
And had his first mission to space
Dear John this is Houston
You’ve seem to have gone dark
Please reply?
But astronaut John didn’t reply
Because his tether had broken loose from the fuselage
And he was now at the mercy of space
Quickly floating out into the endless unknown
Johnny was scared
As he floated for hours
And days
Off to find better adventures
Off to make better times
Off to find what I can’t

Looks at me
Quite pistol whipped
Cheap *****
A taste on my lips
Speeding down
United States
Federal Highway 1
I dream that I am
Dead in each ditch
I pass
David Bowie deep cut and
I want to be free like this forever
I try to explain
Using these letters
Cheapening
It just for you
Dutch courage
Nudging me
Neon Strip Bar Glowing
I'm a quiet person
Keeping to myself
But
Born a fighter
Hard fists scarred
Dirt under my nails
I never fail
To wake up
Hung over
On her words
Cautioning me
To slow down
Smoking ***
Playing darts
With old timers
And drunks
People and places
Long forgotten
Bloodied then
Whitewashed
Concrete
Wide awake
Always Dreaming
Dead asleep
In the driver seat

I bathe
In the moon-soaked
Ocean of you  
Sewn
Soul to soul

pretend that you are
Sleeping next to me
Breathing next to me
multiplied and added powers
By the gleam of your laugh

I am a bundle of scars
Ambidextrous
There are too many holes
In my arms
The veins are hiding
Warm fingers coax them
Come back to me
The dog returning to its *****
Hands well calloused
Smelling of diesel and grease
All fun no business
Makes me suicidal
I swore I would never become my father
But the universe finds that funny

If you would come to me
Tell me its alright
I would pass through
The blood-brain barrier
And warm your skin like sunrise
I am a son among the ******
My body feels brittle and ancient
My bones like old stone ruins
Covered in thick green moss
I prize your lies
Kept sealed in jars
Their dim glowing
Keeps me awake

Show me your claws
Show me your fangs
Scrape them on my skull
Play a song on my brain
Impulse control
Dissolved on a spoon
Momentary salvation
And eternal doom

Pincoushin
Nobody else can hurt me
Quite like myself
I've built a tolerance
To everything but you
They'll find my corpse
Tangled in the reeds
Fish eating pieces of me
And taking some home to the family

I am glorified fertilizer
A stacked up dung hill
I think I am something
In my monkey suit and tie
I cannot wait to die
And be at your side