I am a tree in Fall.
I stand still and watch my memories change
Color in the cool weather.

I feel them
Growing weaker
And weaker.

I begin to forget them
As they shrivel up,
Detach and are whisked away by the wind.

Their fate lies crushed under thick boots, once
Dancing like frogs in the luminous headlights
Across the ancient highway.

Forgotten.
No longer pestiferous in their existence,
floating on like abandoned enigmas.

Odious infernal vagabonds, tramps  
Camping outside the windows of my mind
Parading pitiful parasites.

Praying away they are swept
Like a room unkempt
At least lock the door so to forget.

The wind remembers.

Carrying their corpses to the world unknown
Ambiguity in promised eternal rest
Frondescent purgatory.

The wind, leaning in close
To hear their last words
Icy dread bequeathing an autumn chill.

She laid them down morosely,
Kissing their forehead,
Quickly turning on its way.

The leaves struggled to follow their stricken vessel,
Tossing and turning in its wake
But they were already forgotten.

By the boots, the wind,
the lights, the highway,
And I.

I look forward to the days of frozen landscapes,
Anonymity in the wake of omitted identity
Superseding a fragile existence.

Closing my eyes I shudder
As the wind seeks to rectify me
Into the uninterrupted blank slate.

A prepared cringe, a response
To impending sobbing at my feet,
Antiquities now quite bothersome.

Like a lost child,
They beg to be cooed and nurtured,
Loved and cherished.

I continue to look ahead,
Ignoring their presence like vexing strangers.
I hear their souls cry out in anguish

As they are tossed by the unwary wind
Bashed into rancorous rocks
Drowned in the rapacious rivers

Crunched under bellicose boots
Burned with their brothers and sisters
Stabbed, scattered,

Chewed and vilely spit out
By the grating teeth of a ravenous
And frightening creature,

Held on a wooden leash by a pair of coarse hands
That float above the thick boots;
They sift between its sharpened fangs.

The days grow colder.
Histories are soon forgotten,
As time begins to slow.

Shedding any remaining sense of self
I am at peace with my surroundings
I close my eyes and take deeper breaths.

The wind's frigid breath fills my lungs
My chest, my stomach;
It resonates through my body

Down to my feet so entrenched in the earth
And up through my outstretched arms
To the tips of my icy fingers.

As I begin to freeze over
I feel that I am about to take
My last breath.

I draw in the cool air around me;
It fills me.
I hold it in.

I am growing still.
There is nothing to hold me back
No past to regret.

There is no present to seek
No journey or quest
No first step or new chapter.

There is no future
For the moment
For time is standing still.

With my eyes closed,
With my last breath held,
The wind and time envelop me.

In their arctic clutch
I succumb to the vast white emptiness
With joy and peace

In my heart.
Time has stood still
And I am asleep.

"That's it! I'll take it to the scissors myself!"
Mangled, wrangled, tangled mess,
meandering tendrils coil and cross, clump.

Split ends,
knots so impossibly tied the eagle scout is left bewildered,
sun damage: fried, frizzled, frazzled, frayed.

Broken teeth in a gasping comb,
choking brushes enveloped in the furling mess,
hairspray, fruitless, face it:
(Another) Bad Hair Day.

"That's it! Today's the day!"
The call is made, the appointment scheduled,
you sit and wait.

X's mark the calendar, the day is nigh,
your do's judgement day is at hand.
It's time to settle this.

The day before, you wake up,
absentmindedly getting dressed, drudging through routine,
mirror's the last thing you see.

Crusty eyes suddenly open wide,
as split ends seal and knots unfurl,
sun damage heals and combs sing ceaselessly.

The day is met with a new life,
and the dark days of yore seem like a past life,
as this sunny day seems like all there is.

You laugh at what now appears to be such trivialities,
"Twas a bad hair day! And merely so!"
You allow yourself such a shallow deception.

Your hand grabs the phone, your fingers make the call,
your voice makes the cancellation--
"How could I have been so foolish to resort to such measures?!"

You hang up and scoff at yourself,
a hearty laugh in jest at such hastiness,
tossing and swishing your luscious mane to and fro.

You allow it to slip through your fingers,
on the cusp of the cure,
as the bad hair days truly outnumber the good (you know it to be so).

For the next day will come--
You'll greet the mirror with that heart-wrenching sigh,
in visible anguish at the chaotic mess that encroaches upon your head.

          Don't let a good hair day fool you;
                                                        make the call.

I am here to spread the gospel.
Yes I do declare I am a diligent disciple.

I have come to gaggle the good news,
to proselytize the perpetuity of heavenly wisdom.

I have come here to speak on behalf of poets everywhere:
young and old, alive and dead,
of all nationalities, ethnicities, genders, ****** orientations,
of every human being loitering upon this lush and teeming rock--
I have come to spread your word!

We, the poets,
beg you to hear our words
and put them in your mouth.

Store them in a cheek;
chew thoughtfully, and don't floss,
so we may linger between your teeth--

ready to eject with your spit we shall speak for you
and you shall speak for us.

We lie dead in the dirt until you breath life into us.

We sit poised on your tongue waiting for you to lash
into the air piercing thought bubbles with your voice.

We are instruments lying collecting dust in their cases,
ready to be grasped within calloused hands
and clasped between ruddy lips.

I have come here to tell you how to become a disciple as I:

Lovers, bring us to share!
Speak to your hearts from within worn and jaundiced pages;
we are merely ink stains until you make sense of it all.

Until you speak us into life
Until you soak us into your soul
Until you weave us into the very fibers of your being.

Fighters, bring us to bear!
Shout to your foes from atop grainy soapboxes
embedded within the grassy earth;
let your commanding footing propel you into the heavens!

Feel the wind carry your voice across the open plain and
SPEAK! BELLOW! SHOUT! BATTLE CRY!

They shall know the fear in their bones
and the goose flesh under their rattling armor
like death prickling the hairs on the back of their neck
until they become trodden in the earth like footstools--
until you walk across them head held high and victorious.

Pedestrians! Love if you dare!
Whisper these words under your breath,
holding doors and blessing sneezes,
smiling lovingly and making eye contact purposefully.

Take the joy in stranger's company or in solitude;
we will linger like pleasant specters,
like a lover's ghost:
waiting for you to follow me into eternity.

Yes, I do declare to be a diligent disciple,
and I roam through dusky towns with no pack on my back
nor a shelter over my matted head;

shouting through barren city streets into the desperate night,
roaming these dusty corridors praying a stranger opens their front door
and turns on the porch light
and lets me in for supper and a place to rest my weary head.

Though I'll soon be on my way again in the morrow,
my prayer,
the one of every aching poet in the midnight haze,

is that I'll linger.

Grandeur's delusion
                                                        ­                               is an allusion
                standing on the precipice of greatness
                                                    
  ­                                                                 ­    it's something intrinsic, ain't it?

The soda can rumbles in the bowels,
tumbling into the gaping mouth
into which I enter a hand
to protrude my sugar rush.

sssni-kah, then the slurp of an obnoxiously pleasing sip.
I let the carbonation tickle my tongue,
reveling in the effervescent sensation.

The smell of old tires,
malodorous oil and gasoline,
and stale cigarettes fill the air.

My vexatious sips go unperturbing the dense atmosphere
that thickens outside the small air-conditioned office
and into the gas station,

where the mutters and sputters of drills,
kakadoo, kakadoo,
the squeaking and squawking of rotors and axles,
the interjections of swears and grunts
fill the air.

I peek through the ***** smudgy glass window in the door
to see grimy overalled ants meandering
under the body of our red mini-van
hiked up into the air like a figure skater,
suspended by the rusty clawed accompanist,
not a tremor of strain, unflinching,
letting the greasy men crawl underneath, hiking up her skirt
to examine her anatomy.

I walk outside and sit on a dusty tire stacked with others
on the side of the building--
some growing forlorn in tall grass
weaving in and out of the aperturous rim,
the fingers latching onto fissures and pulling it down
into the hungry earth.

Another slurp and I set the can down
to step onto my skateboard--
rolling across the gritty pavement,
snapping ollies and pop-shuv-its
to add my timbre to the cacophony
leaping out of the open garage doors.

I look over to the barbershop adjacent to the station--

The off-white single room squat allowing the cylindrical swirl
perpetually pirouetting atop the door-frame
to dazzle in a placid manner.

It is there I get my close trims
and pull a lollipop from the cavernous bowl
sitting atop the counter.

The barber, working silently behind his dull gray mustache
and dull gray eyes.

Outside the barbershop to the left,
Leicester Highway ambles onward,
diverging at a fork just ahead of the lot,
and the road adjacent that winds down my neighborhood,
Juno Drive.

I've never embarked down either divergent,
and I wonder which one is the less traveled.
(Frost, guide me.)

I go to the mailbox teetering on the edge of the highway
and hastily grab our mail,
the wind slapping at my *** as the cars whisk by
in their infinitesimal haste.

I feel like time slows once you step onto Juno Drive.

I turn around and saunter back to the station to see Billy,
my Working-Class Hero,
who I mostly see strolling up to the driver's side window
of our dull red mini-van
to loosely rest his arms crossed atop the window frame,
resting his sweaty forehead on his sticky hairy forearms.

Leaning in,

his blackened hands with his greasy smile
behind a scruffy scattered beard caked with dirt and grime,
atop a dark red leather face--
but eyes bright and merry.

His laugh, a phlegmy two-pack-a-day sputter
hacking and pummeling through the van,
all the way to me in the backseat peeking around mom's shoulders
to catch a look at this superhero anomaly.

And his southern drawl wrenching out of lungs
caked in tar and exhaust fumes,
that torpid slur that executes like the garbled hum
of an Oldsmobile engine chugging restlessly--

His laugh, an engine that won't turn over, sputtering to life
but falling right back down into the dirt,
lying on the oil-stained cold concrete floors ***** boots slipping over
and sticking too like wads of gum.

The charismatic mechanic who knew the answer to all things,
always ready to flash me that crooked greasy smile
stretching across his ruddy leather face.

I step back onto my skateboard, with soda in hand,
mail in the other,
and silently say goodbye to my Greasy Eden
before making my way down Juno Drive
towards the first house on the left,

following the road as it snakes past the trees,
alongside the creek, around the bend,
and out of sight.

you make me want to listen to Alkaline Trio
ironically,
for their morosity
is no longer my own. and maybe

they'd be happy for me. happily
singing their songs
with a different
lung.

so he had my number because we met for tutoring on Wednesdays after class but he would text me really late at night asking me the weirdest stuff i would politely say this is incredibly inappropriate and i would not like to talk like this with you but still around two am he would text me lewd stuff again and again then asking if i would go on a date i said dude i am old enough to be your mother imagine if
a guy
          received texts
          like that
                    from a girl
                                  insisting to do ****** stuff BUT
he
would
have
liked
it.

I should have skeletons in my closet,
but they've yet been stripped of their flesh,
and I've let them loose in this small town
for a game of hide 'n' seek.

She returned a set of my pajamas, unwashed,
her intoxicating scent lingering on hooks in my closet
where her aroma constructs an illusion.

I bury my face in them,
feeling my damp cheeks pressed into her *******,
reaching down below where my hand grasps her posterior
where it takes a firm shape in the loose garments.

I dig into the scent until I go crazy;
I tell myself I'll wash them next week.

I should have skeletons in my closet,
but she's taken it on the road,
in a small town parading it down empty streets
where I can see it clearly,

her oblong sunglasses darkly obfuscating
what I perceive to be her pejorative gaze,
over a narrow ivory face,
sandy blonde hair flowing in the wind.

(I still feel, yes, that smooth pale face cupped within my trembling hands, that sandy hair tangled around my fingers reaching up the back of her neck, pressing her face more towards mine)

I look for the shallow dent
in her ubiquitous red minute two-door seater
on the passenger side, where she was gently T-*****
by a student driver practicing their three-point turn,
and the smiley-face lemon-scented air freshener
dangling from her rear-view mirror,
having lost its freshness years ago.

(I still see, yes, us in that hardware store parking lot,
in the closed evening hour,
sitting cramped in the passenger seat,
her knees on either side of me,
our shirts off and skin warm and sweaty, nervous,
trembling, trembling, lips aching and souls yearning--
where were we headed to again?)

I look for it so intensely,
I forgot my goal was to never see it again.

          Young love looking for little things in a small town.

For years I play this game of hide 'n' seek,
and part of me should realize
that at some point she got up from her hiding spot
and moved on with her life.

(and no, I won't look at her engagement photos,
nor the photos of her newborn child,
nor the Happy Anniversaries and the congratulatory sentiments--
I can see them without social media's derision)

I still scan the streets
like a vulture over roadkill,
yet I thought I was the one
engraved into the grainy streets
where she commutes over my remains.

I should have skeletons in my closet,
but I let them walk out of my life
so I can chase them all over town.

My fate lies beside
Two parallel lines
Their trust is a disguise
Behind their yellow eyes
If I could let my mind drift
Would this metal beast take the hint
And sway me over the bridge
To let me sink into the abyss

I see the past bearing down on me like a valley

I do believe I have the courage to take a step back

I feel the weight of generations past and the whispers they carry

I don’t know if it all comes full circle, but

I love the smell of old books.

I hate how we ignore those who came before us, as if we don’t walk across their graves every day.

I’m most passionate about understanding where we come from, and how we got here.

I hope people see me as a flashlight beneath a bedsheet, illuminating the written page.

History Repeats.
Regardless how many times
You may press delete.

I hold onto my prayers
Like freed baby teeth under a child’s pillow
We hope to wake up to an answer
A treasure to call our own.
The difference being my hope is not a fantasy
This is reality
And I trust in this
Whether I wake up
Lavishing
Or suffering.
I sing praises in your name.

Thomas, Tommy baby,
you are both hot,
and sweet.

Tom Cat you’re red hot--
when I catch you in your Tom Cat Strut,
sauntering across campus,
strolling like it ain’t no thing,

cuz it don’t meant a thing
if it ain’t got that swing baby.

So dig this, Tommy Gun,
you groove with the best of ‘em
when I spot you strollin’—

Your head, teetering left and right like a seesaw, boppin’ baby,
arms hangin’ loosely, swinging freely, wildly, go! go!
legs scooping forward in boisterous trombone slides--
Groooooove Tommy baby!

You’re Louis’s best blows--
ten feet from the mic and the Fives baby,
you’re hot, red hot,
any closer and I'll burn up!
Go!

But you’re cool, real cool,
and oh so sweet.
Super sweet--

in your beard like a pepper and salt shaker tossed across the table,
I look to see those rosy lips part,
and peep those pearly whites shinin' like the bell of Louis’s cornet
brandished in the air, under those ballroom lights--
you’re screamin’ Tommy!

Let me hear that laugh that shakes the room,
punches like Blakey’s bass drum,
thumps like Mingus--

T-Bird you’ve got that hard bop in your soul,
you’re gonna bop to the top TB,
into the third heaven where the angels fall in line to your swing,
that incessant strut that keeps the devil at bay,
Blow! Blow! Blow!

And I see you now Tom Cat,
up there in the clouds,
digging your way across eternity,
bopping and jiving, swinging and blowing,

in your faded khaki pants and worn tennis shoes,
loosely buttoned collared shirt,
tight rectangular glasses that glistened the bell of your eyes even more--
I gotta stand twenty feet away Tommy baby!

You glance down at me and wink,
rearing your head back to let loose that Mingus and Blakey
bottom-end laugh,
guffaw guffaw guffaw!!!

--so hearty and rich,
the backbone of every nervous first-year classroom,
and the sniggering seniors you continued to befuddle and dazzle
with your mysterious ways
and insatiable swing.

So blow, Tommy Gun, blow!
Go Tom Cat go!
Dig T-Bird dig!
Let loose Tommy boy!

Swing for us, swing swing swing--
Hot and Sweet, Tommy baby,
hot and sweet.

I come alive
when I silence my voice
and drink your words through my eyes.

I come alive
sitting beside the window pane
hearing the pitter-patter of the soft rain.

I come alive
in the steam of the tea
encircling me like a dragon's smoke wreath.

I come alive
in the still of the room
unprovoked, unperturbed, pleasantly alone.

I come alive
deceptively physically dormant
but inside my mind, a bombination; restless incantation.

I come alive
the voices of time as my celestial guide
the paths innumerate; infinite possibilities.

i dream of you i dream with you,
following the musings of the aching poet
blathering hyperbolic verbiage
into subconsciousness
where we leave entwined mortal bodies
for the impalpable enclave
we have created.

i dream of you i dream with you,
in sleep our minds meld
over aching bodies
and lift our spirits
to the ethereal nether-realm,
where we roam
for eons
sauntering through the fields
of ecstasy.  

i dream of you i dream with you,
where the groans of the spirit
and its insatiable yearnings
find solace in the vastness
of the tangent universe,
existing outside our mortal guise,
alluded in our mind’s eye—
it’s heaven
built by you and i.

i dream of you i dream with you,*
in lucid dreams
where we know we are asleep,
but we just laugh whilst
walking through the gates of eternity
flourishing in the eternal splendor
we have created.

“Well if the shoe fits.”

And it never does,
either too tight or too loose,
with my paint-thinner feet,
narrow, knifing through the canvas
heels flopping out at the back
toes mashing together at the front,

pacing between shelves at the store,
growing anxious mom impatient
in the waiting chair,

shifting between sizes,
walking prison-style with shoes zip-tied,
a second, third opinion,
salesclerk gets out the foot measure,
I take my socks off,
put them back on (are they too thick/too thin?)

feet either mashed or cavernous
if the salesclerk crouches down and presses a thumb at the end
and gives me an okay sign
I’ll walk around with ****** toes and bruised heels the rest of my life

because only others can convince me what my body truly feels
because mental illness is impalpable and therefore
unbelievable
and broken bones and black eyes
will perpetually surpass what lingers in my troubled mind
for I know not what the body wants (it’s ***, I think)

no,
I don’t know how it’s supposed to act,
or feel,
so I can let someone else decide for me,
as I let mom order my Happy Meals,
and buy my clothes she picked out,
and tell me what kind of girls I like,
and make my doctors’ appointments,
and file my taxes,
and pay my bills
(I just give her the money),

and I am convinced my body and mind
do not exist on the same plane,
and whatever signals they send each other
I render skewed
and the messenger disabled

and tonight I told mom
the shoes I’ve worn for five days straight
don’t fit
and my feet hurt
and she sighs and laughs simultaneously alongside the family
as she hands me the number to the store

and I halfheartedly wish
she’d make the call
or lean down and press a thumb
to the end of my shoe
and convince me it fits.

--Home, August 19, 1:41 AM

I watched the fan blades rip furiously
on the pale ceiling of my snug room
The ******* of silent airwaves
in auricular, circulatory fashion.

The hum of electricity burning steady
trance                                        inducing
I feel eyes wired poster boys
for a sleepless                               mind.

Thoughts and conscious dreams of
Life:
        Incessant,
                          Voracious,
                                             Alive.
Above small town fantasies:

an Artist.

I'm an artist, by God!
I don't have time to sleep!

I left
immaculately folded tan chino pants
cuffed and disheveled
atop the department store rack
in the Young Men’s section.

They were too big at the waist,
letting me swim laps in them,
stretching out the front with a thumb and forefinger
looking like a successful weight loss ad.

Atop the rack they sat,
cuffed and disheveled,
amongst immaculately folded
tan chino pants
its kin
and they looked human.

Something about them,
factory made, dime a dozen,
not on sale,
but with the spectral imprint
of spaces and wrinkles where legs had been
amongst all those patient, forlorn folds
gave humanity
to the anomaly.

I must write!*
The transient words pass by my consciousness
like the piercing lights that take dull eyes aback
and linger for a few brief moments in the peripherals--
before disappearing back
into the heavens.

Curse these confounded ink-stained fingers;
your scribblings barely get the thoughts out in time,
and you do so with mortal wounds
of aches and cramps,
and god-forbid,
your pen runs out of ink!*

So you keep your tools sharp
and your stone tablets at hand,
for when transcendent light strikes again:

You will be not be caught off-guard
by serendipity.

I need love like a contradiction
To hold it at arms length
So I can push it away.
I need hope like an intervention
Tell me it’s gonna be alright
Tell me it will be okay
When I go insane.

It wasn't God

                      that chased me down dark recesses

            both seen and unseen

                             but the allegory.

I want the poetry to mean something tonight,
              as I pace in my bedroom for hours
                                      under jaundiced fluorescent light.

                     I want to write something profound and true,
something of solvence to rid the demons to which I'm glued.

I wish I knew the name
Of your perfume
So I may buy
For lovers new
So they may smell
Just like you.
I wish I knew the taste
Of your lips
The taste I shall seek
In every kiss
So I’ll never tell
What I miss.
I wish I knew the game
That you play
So I may try
To weave the pain
I won’t go through hell
Another day.

Can we jam, brothers and sisters?

Dare we meet at the impalpable chat room
that exists beyond our third heaven?
Dare we to speak in tongues and timbres,
our skin taut across hollow shells,
our veins strung across cadaverous bodies?

I'll grab my drumsticks if you grab the guitars,
and there's somebody on the bongos
slappin' the skins with zealous fervor--
where my tambourine girls at?

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten our forlorn hero
sitting behind the keyboards--
Tickle me those ivories with pious hands and aching fingers,
shake em down sweet Jerry Lee!

And so we begin--
I lay down the drum beat that bops heads and scatters feet,
and the bassman always on top of things
slaps and slides and skips and sizzles
hot diggity dog!

I hear that sweet guitar scream and moan,
praying for death under hazy lights
and we all coast with eyes rolled back into our skulls
and torpid lips drooped open over slack jaws.

Not a word is said from a human voice,
we speak through hands and feet,
basking in colors eking from every kick drum stomp
and the desperate wail bleeding from amplifiers.

Feedback sings and screams, fighting the silence we taunt
and hold at bay.

Around every corner the colors trail
coursing through our vesselious bodies
propelled along the dizzying venture.
We somehow spot every pothole and take detours,
embarking down backroads and backalleys--

We can turn the wheel,
but don't think for a moment we know where it's going.

And the mirror's have all vanished,
we know not from where we came.

Someone shouts from the discovery
as we exit a phrase to enter serendipity,
toying with destiny, clay in our hands,
stretching out the ****** perennially--
We laugh as the gods try to remind us we are Man.

And the screams and the moans
sensing the ****** is getting close
so there's a crescendo I ramp up the tempo
ahhhhhhhHHHhhhHhHhHhHHHHHhhhETERNITY IS NOW AND WE HOLD THE KEY TO HEAVENS GATES AND TIME STANDS STILL AT HIGH NOON IN THE TOWN'S SQUARE WHERE TRIGGER FINGERS TREMOR AND WE SPEAK TO GOD ON HIS PRIVATE CHANNEL COMING THROUGH WORN SPEAKERS CELESTIAL CREATURES IT WOULD BE SACRILEGE IF WE WEREN'T SUDDENLY SO HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY

So I say again, brothers and sisters,
can we jam?

SO I SAY AGAIN, BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
CAN WE JAM?

SO I SAY AGAIN, BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
CAN WE JAM?

So I say again,
brothers and sisters,

can we jam?

I'm going to hold onto my birth certificate
like my mother holds onto receipts

and when I write my last rent check
addressed to whomever lives upstairs

I'll knock on the door

and when they open
I'll kindly flash them the paper
which never expires
and I'll ask
for a refund

and they'll say "No,"
"We only accept exchanges,"

and then I think I'll believe in reincarnation.

I know love not as an arm around a waist,
nor fingers teasing hair and running down a neck--

but as a temporary tattoo,
and the fleeting taste of Zebra Fruit Stripe Gum.

And just like Da Vinci never slept,
but took several naps a day--
So do I fall in love daily,
but tenfold!

The deep yearning that wells within my soul
and sits as the lump lodged within my aching throat,
I stumble through the day tripping over my enamoredness
towards any kind soul who dares to look my way,
or speak my name,
or touch my hand--

and I want to set up a kissing booth
in the middle of a shopping center
or my college campus,

and solicit others to grant me a taste of their humanity
in the holiest of ways,
man or woman,
young or old,

to but press their lips against mine for a second
and I would become illuminated,
rejuvenated,

and I would leap from my weary mental confines
like a grasshopper springing out of tall grass,
and love would well up within me--

Not as a transient fix,
but an anchor in these uncharted waters,
a cool glass of milk to a parched throat in a late night hour,

outlasting any cheap ****** or content stomach,
and shying away the facade of complacency.

I would burst forth like a battering ram
through the prison cell doors I weep and wallow behind,
and I'd have a skip in my step
that would ferry me across every pond and great lake.

For these hands do not pray,
but they tremble, and they ache.

And these lips do as hands do,
as they rest upon a placid face
that looks in the mirror and reads
of the anguish seeping out of inflamed pores
and burrowing between the creases
alluding a furrowed brow,

and if but a kiss could render one free
from such odious palpations,
then I'll gladly set mine to the liberator,
whomever it may be--

And how many lips does it take
to get to the center of my frozen aching heart?

The world may never know.

Kiss me to "Mr. Brightside"
with that same sense of yearning--

It came on in the gas station
at 1:00 AM
and I thought of us

locking moist lips
in a desperate embrace

slipping on the slick tile floor
and knocking over the candy boxes

smashing into the frozen glass
and spilling peach tea
all over us--

that guitar riff is weeping with lust
and I am
insatiable.

Lay with me,
Sweet Poetry.

I prostrate myself
atop your holy temple,
amassing desperate yearning kisses
down your strong-legged pillars.

Weaving in and out of your corridors,
through the garden, your hair falling around me
like roots, like falling leaves--

But I dare not enter your hallowed chambers.

I am a ******, Sweet Poetry.

I have sauntered through the courtyard,
never the courts,
I have tread in the waters of your fountain,
never submerged in your bath,
I've danced around the holy fire,
but never touched my flesh to the healing flame.

Are the walls to your inner sanctum made of concrete,
or something impalpable?
My mind can play ***** tricks,
flagellating a million reasons why our love is for naught,
and why my body should shrivel and fade away before you.

I am a ******, Poetry,
and what love and demons I have in reserve,
I lay at your feet.

I'll linger if you'll stay,
sleeping sound at your side,
your breath on my skin,
your body warm against my shivering frame.

Pluck the maiden fruit from my aching tree,
lay with me,
Sweet Poetry.

My grandfather peels an
X-chromosome off his liquor bottle
skips it across the pool of my mother’s genes
until it reaches me
yellow cigarette stained walls
green ashtray carpet on his tongue
blue back room full of old guitars
black mechanic oil stained hands
sandpaper voice
watching Jaws 4
homeless woman on couch
feeds dog black coffee
brown belly dragging across tongue
Thanksgiving dinners
my brother plays “Purple Haze”
out of a reluctant amplifier
the old folks applaud
the colors are beginning to
fade
he
battling cancer his way
watching Jaws 4
dog now dead
homeless woman now
no longer homeless
back skin where left ear
used to be
old guitars pawned for
drugs
Purple Haze fades to
black as colors do
and they say
it skips a generation
and now when shades
of pink appear white
my tongue grows thick
smoke burns my nostrils
and
I can only think of
how terrible of a film
Jaws 4 is.

Childish churning chickadees--
chastened
in the dark denim confines of the bulging pocket.

Chatting urgently only in touch,
when their bodies grind together
where two or more gather--
like prayers, like lips do like hands do--

Uncomfortable shape-shifting;
feeling tense as legs shake loose the bunched up mess--
digging into skin like silver teeth or a silver bullet
encroached within a werewolf's flesh--

Musically: creating new timbres accompanying
suddenly aggravated gaits--
Ching ka-ching ka-ching ka-ching--
Fumbling in the darkness.

Ka-ching ka-ching clawing incessantly,
as the forlorn children of burdensome currency.

Soon, their captors retire to worn couches
to engage in aggressive loafing--
growing sluggish and torpid,
legs slacken and jeans loosen--

their lips at the captor's hip bones
spilling out their shiny contents like dripping saliva--
and down, down the children go,
choking between the cracks of the worn cushions.

Bodies shift, aching for comfort,
the farther, farther down they go--
their cries drowned drowned
by pillows acquiescing to mushy bodies.

Those that survive the dreadful encounter--
clinging to their prisons--
feel once again the stifling hands of death
reaching grasping groping in their huddled fretful presence

to be tossed loosely carelessly onto bedside dressers;
for a fate unknown to themselves, nor the hands
that toss them absentmindedly.
It is rare that they are brought to the light of day again.

(It would have been better,
to have sunk acquiescently,
down into the bulbous stifling purgatory
alongside their unlucky kin.)

There is worse; for those who are left in their denim prisons
are thrown--cage and all--
into the jaws of Poseidon's mechanical canine,
who sits on its hind legs patiently and consumes ravenously.

They amass at the bottom of its belly,
until intense gurgling acids arise,
reaching higher and higher til
all are submerged.

They are tossed in voracious waters,
twisting and churning and gasping and drowning--
holding onto each other like prayers;

feeling pulled ****** into the vacuum--
cries lost in the gaping pores of the gargling volatile beast--
lost, lost, lost,
in the cries of forever longing.

Goodbyes: *Goodbye,
dear friends.

It’s strange to be
nostalgic about a
grocery store. But
there it is.

In the lobby were
quarter machines. In
exchange for coins I’d
dig from couch cushions
and mom from the bowels
of her purse,

I’d watch colorful gumballs
spiral down a slide and
tumble through the open hatch
into my awaiting palm,
and another with wax figures
which I collected.

Inside to the left
past the magic sliding
glass doors was a DVD
rental section. Rows and rows
of movies I’d peruse
looking for something to watch
on a school night.

Across from that were
the magazine and
candy aisles with
various furniture—tables and
couches and chairs and sofas—
spread out
in the middle. I would

read skateboard magazines
beating my short legs against
the static incline of a sofa
chair and
one time a lady watched me
placidly reading on a comfy chair
from the security cam
and thought I was reading
something pornographic
and told my mom at the
register.

At the register,
mom would let me get
Archie comics and
bubble gum—

One time when I was five
I stole a pack of Fruit Stripe
gum. In the mini-van I
revealed my sin to mom
and she had me (alone)
walk back into the store
and hand it back to the cashier,
apologizing for my grand
theft.

When my dad would
take me to the grocery store
he would like to play
games.

He once took an egg
out of the carton
and tossed it to me
down the aisle. Too
scared to catch, I let
it fall to my feet with
a wet crack spilling
egg all over the gleaming
porcelain.

He grabbed soda bottles
and junk food from the shelves
and consumed them
then and there, handing
the cashier the empty
containers.

There was a coffee shop
inside the grocery store
he would stop by every
morning. Some Saturdays
he would wrench me from my
cartoons and take me with him
and I would play the 25 cent
slot machines while he got his
venti mocha latte.

Once I had a
nightmare I walked
into the parking lot
and couldn’t find my
dad. I called and called
for him but couldn’t find
him anywhere. Suddenly
his voice boomed at me
from the clouds.

In a thunderous yet
soothing voice of one who
has passed on to nirvana,
he said I would be okay, and
to take care of my mother
and my little brother and
sister. I cried and cried
out to him, searching for
his earthly body in the
grocery store parking lot.

I woke up in my parents’ waterbed
choking on my tears;
dad ran out of the bathroom mid-
shave to his side of the bed where
I slept and I threw my arms around his
neck.

Years,
and a decade later,
I drove my fiancé through
the old town I was raised in
and told her stories of the
pawn shop,
gas station,
video rental,
Mexican restaurant,
and grocery store.

With the video rental
now a tire station,
and the mom and pops
in chains,
we drove by the old grocery store
standing tall and proud
still as colossal as I remembered.

As the memories flowed
from my heart to my lungs
babbling from the driver’s seat,
that old grocery store
I gave my time and quarters to
carried a greater weight
than I ever thought
grocery shopping on Saturday mornings
and Sunday afternoons
could ever have.

madness! madness! madness!

the mad ones are madness!
the minds are destroyed by madness!
ginsberg is madness!
kerouac is madness!
shakespeare is madness!
"perhaps" is madness!
duality is madness!
dichotomy is madness!
juxtaposition is madness!
oxymoron is madness!
paradox is madness!
love is merely a madness!
and it's all in my mind--

perhaps it isn't madness,
after all.

We're bored like monks
in the margins
of ancient scripture.

We want to leave behind lazy hieroglyphs
and accidental red herrings
feigning illumination

rendered by the deviousness of time
in its enclave,
running a brush of flaky gold paint
over delicate decadence
and sprinkling dust like a fairy--

we are to believe it is all
some ancient treasure.

We prance in the ether of the material world
in junkyards where we sift through the wreckage
coddling memories like drying uteruses,
realizing our generation will not leave behind artifacts
worthy of nostalgia's ensconcing embrace.

With that realization we weep and

We continue to dig.

Dontcha just hate trying to finish a poem?
It's always like there could be just a hint of this, a dash of that;
too much seasoning, not enough time spent simmering;
did you use the right amount of ingredients;
was it tablespoons or teaspoons?

Dontcha wish you could just pluck one out of the freezer:
One wrapped up in a neat little package?
Leaving it on the stove-top to thaw a little,
before heating it up at your timely convenience?

I wish I knew when these **** things were done;
Wish I could stick em in a microwave, clock in the allotted time for a work like that to be well-cooked and consumable--
Wait around zoning out to the droning tone of the toasting note,
then awake from my spell by the sweet dinging of completion.

I'd take that steamy sucker out of that commodious kiln
in such great haste I can barely hold it in my hands!
"Boy oh boy does this one look tasty!"

I'd sit down with my necessary utensils and have a go at it, chewing thoughtfully and enjoying this wonderful piece I have prepared by myself for myself--and without all the hassle and wasted time
spent slaving over books and pages and pens and inspirations!

But ****;
Nobody likes poems cooked out of pre-made packages;
they're a little too rubbery, a little too mushy, a little too bland--
and worse off they were made by the assemblyman's hand! (or claw).

Nobody likes their poems coming out of pre-made packages;
They ain't nothing like the real thing.

The hopelessness in a foreseeable car crash--
an emotion lasting a split second--
is unlike the crippling anxiety of a passenger
who fears the leather-bound mobile mercy seat.

Yet the mirage renders the victim just as helpless
in the impalpable facade of doom.

To never leave this room.

I've always felt
mirrors worked two ways
standing naked gleaming
dreamily gazing
unknowingly staring
in God's hidden eyes
either boastful or ashamed.

I've got the world's best kept secret
locked in 2 AM screenshots--
her late night musings over a crusty joint, a crushed pill,
or some ***** cigarettes.

She sends me her thoughts,
fears,
anxieties,
insecurities--

at her most vulnerable,
absolutely the most beautiful.

Her anguish stressed in the digital scroll
(though she doesn't like Kerouac, I let her borrow my copy),
her stained fingers mashing all their hurt and nicotine
into the keyboard--

and her pen aches and her paper stains
with the unrequited love she empathizes with
in the somber pop punk songs that explode from the stereo
she sings loudly on cold and lonely night drives
(I shiver in her passenger seat).

And she made for me the greatest of mixtapes,
her holy scrawl expounding upon a dull grey donut-shaped
slowly fading form of intimacy,
a blank CD--

"This mix is a good time"

and when I jammed it into my car stereo I was illuminated.

She is so cool, she is so punk,
and in her clandestine drugstore car charger thefts,
broken poems,
impalpable aesthetic,
impeccable music taste,
illuminated or even further obfuscated drug trips--

I have the world's best kept secret,
and more than anything, I wish to share it with you--

                                     so she can make someone another mixtape.

I love the way you
say my Christian name
without the faith

My Jesus
does not shout his father's name
in a victor-trodden written page
in scenes atop mass unmarked graves.

My Jesus
does not begin sermons
preaching the "White Man's Burden"
treating a "Savage" as ill vermin.

My Jesus
does not parade down busy streets
holding signs of scorn and deceit
casting dour faces in their fallacy.

My Jesus
cries out his father's name
from a splintered cross in agonizing pain
his blood the payment of sin washed away.

My Jesus
tore the holy temple curtain
lifting the veil of the voyeurs uncertain
washing their ***** feet a humbling servant.

My Jesus
In the crowds victim to the zealots' decree
Widens his arms in the wake of their hypocrisy
He calls them all to him, tears streaming down his cheeks.

And so here it is:
My secrets, my fortune!
The untold treasure harbored within my mind--
impeccable wisdom, and tormented genius!

I come to find illumination
and write poems--
in such a fashion as this:

It is I,
with heart on my sleeve
where I cough and sneeze,
becoming mired and virulent--
utterly human and fraught
for the world to see.

The magician who empties his sleeves,
overturns his top hat,
shying off his smooth pallid gloves!

Lies down on stage,
in a pool of my own blood and *****,
retching, trembling, aching,

gasping for air
roasting under an inquisitive lonely spotlight
I stare into
with a distant and longing gaze--

Eyes vacuous,
bulbous in sick contortion bulging veins popping
cracked lips gaping mouth tongue waggling speaking in tongues
choking air and body trembling in hideous convulsions--

for what benefit have I,
to purport and distort myself
in such a fashion?

It is for the sake of humanity,
in the flagellation of the human conscience
as it queries further
into the ambiguous amorphous impalpable
dark matter of the universe--

it is for our sake,
our illumination,
that I retch, and I ache.

Take note.

I again glimpse of eternity.

I saunter where the shadows stain the streets.
I linger where my essence is silhouetted in the moonlight,
or beamed under a street light,
                                               or doused in headlights.

I loiter with friends in parking lots of frozen yogurt shops
in a small town--
listing torpid quadrupeds,
whose shells glisten and dazzle in the myriad of lights,
scrolling down the boulevard.

I find myself behind the wheel,
grazing among pavement pastures,
hungrily consuming the open road
on a silent night,                         in the still air.

          Night makes everything seem to go on forever.

From the speakers I hear the sizzle of ancient synthesizers
envelop the interjections of pulsating snare drum
slaps and snaps, cracks and claps.
          Hypnotized, I hit cruise control and drift ceaselessly.

At home, face illuminated in the television's glare,
my body buried under the weight of scattered sheets,
staggering dreams, snacks and drinks,
          my eyes burn steady into the void.

The television, likewise, burns into me,
as I ingest films that depict time travel in all its ambiguity.
I rip through the portal, feeling simultaneously
expeditious and sluggish.
          Did I stop time with breakneck speed,
or did I freeze like a river in the winter solstice?

Either way, I now stand outside the confines of mortality.

There's the sands of perception (identity)
muddied by the breaking waves of time,
where my sunken footprints
appear
and
disappear.

Relinquishing the captain's chair,
my mind fills with lucid dreams,
          from the TV screen.
Surely I know this is not reality,
but I cannot help it--
I am an accomplice in these chronographic schemes.

Though I appear in control, or at least aware,
I surrender my earthly duties to the conductor of time,
or its deviant: The Vexer.

The Vexer, the mischievous time traveler,
who dances between the dimensions,
with black holes for ears,
the speed of sound for a voice,
the speed of light for eyes--
it is the pestering worm digging throughout the galactic space apple.

The Vexer, who has wrenched me from my mortal footing,
to cast me adrift among uncharted seas,
with gloomy waters murky but heavenly
in its dark and rich violet glow,
like fires that burn hot hot on the color spectrum.
          A color less seen and therefore depicted as serene,
but all the more potent in its mystery.

The Vexer, with a wink of its cataclysmal eye,
grabs me by the wrist and tears me across the night sky--
I stretch thin between the television lines,
the endless roads and the mystic synthesizers,
peering through the night sky,
where human senses dull and the mind wanders--
          I have found myself in the Twilight Zone.

I am bound for eternity, ****** through the
tunnel vision telescope of man,
refracted as I bounce among the mirrors within,
expounded among the stars and the space between,
exploding in a brilliance in the vastness of its bliss.

The youthful laughter that ejects from the parking lots
of frozen yogurt shops,
the night drives with eyes that gloss over as it peers into oblivion,
dulled human senses that leave room for the mind to ponder,
the television screen that burns steadily into the mind,
the Vexer who oversees the mind's pondering of night life,
who like the court's jongleur skips and leaps
around the immensity of time's preponderance--  

Feigning insomnia to reap the benefits of illumination
in the infinitesimal night hour,
in these lingering hours that warp around somber hands
frozen on the midnight clock,
where thoughts of poetry flow and still bodies collect dew,
          the proximity of night life as it pertains to time travel:

The two are entwined.

Nostalgia
is a poor excuse
for ignorance

yet it pervades
with a tenacity
stemming from fabricated desire
for the smell of ****
we're told
is roses

and it's blasphemous
to question potential "isms"
lurking behind the veil
of Saturday morning cartoons
and black and white family sitcoms.

Yet by the time the sonic *** organs
have lain into us with repressed emotion,
the holy spirit has spilled its ***** in the dirt
to traverse onward floating apparition
out of the room and down the hall
closer towards progress.

and we are left reeling
stumbling into the hallway
buttoning our blouses
and yanking at our zippers

wondering what could cause
such great haste
and we follow blindly
in the wake of the first high

or we turn backwards
and plunge into fading bricolage
as a means to cope
with the rapid and fleeting *******
of the electric eye
in its shape-shifting pylons and appendages
getting smaller in the naked eye
and gargantuan in the mind.

Clutching our *******
in great amorous heaves
of lust
or donning our father's clothes
in a mask of artifice
and enlightened cultural pretension.

Moaning for the days of youth a week ago,
the epoch squeezed in the space between thumbs,
looking for treasures in the trash
craving something tangible
in an increasingly intangible world.

The semblance of touch lost on a generation
who knows only of emotion through hieroglyphics
and never through direct sensation.

So we dig through the toy boxes
and leave Generation X puzzled
as we dig into their records
in Guns n Roses T-shirts
and high waisted jeans.

We're just looking for an immaculate conception of something palpable.