Just this last year, in August of 2013, I was introduced to this website by an acquaintance of mine.
We'd gone on a couple of dates together, but both decided things weren't moving mutually in our
favor. I'd told her that there's no thing I love more than writing. There's a quality in the transference of emotion from thought to page that I just can't find anywhere else. Sad to say, I told her, I haven't written anything in a very long time. Was it writer's block, she asked. I shook my head, but couldn't commit to an answer one way or the other.

Sometime later, maybe weeks after that conversation downtown at The Rialto, she sent me a text message. That was when my cell phone service was still active. She said that she found this website -- literally, this website -- where a large community of people post their poetry. Hard times were fallen on her and all that, and she said that writing poetry again was a great release. She sent me a link to the website so that I could check it out.

What happened after that was nothing short of a small, personal miracle. Words were coming to me again, fast, fast. For years, nothing genuine would come. Suddenly, the gates opened. Ask anyone who enjoys writing why they write and I'm sure you'll get many, many different answers. Mine is this: to affect. There's no greater joy for me than knowing I've affected others in a way that drives them to an end. A positive end, of course. That old saying, about being able to reach out and touch just one person. That's more than enough for me.

The pain. The drama. The isolation. The spiritual dissonance. The love. The joy. The passion. The surrender. There have been a lot of feelings that drive the words I write, and I'm happy to know that there have been people out there reading, even if only a few. In a way, it's like you've all been riding along with me, and that means more than I could ever say. Instead of trying to describe it in detail, I'll say, Thank You.

I have more piece of poetry I'll be publishing here. The final piece to the Arterial Winter collection. It wouldn't feel right to leave without putting the final nail in that coffin. In the meantime, I'll slowly be removing my older works from the website, one by one, until they're all gone. Over the course of the next few weeks, I'll be rearranging everything into new collections, and figuring out interesting ways to print and sell each piece. Needless to say, I'm very excited for what the future brings.

Thank you. I really can't thank all of you who took the time to even peek at my work enough for the fire you've reignited inside of me. These endeavors, along with a couple of novel projects I've started, have given me the justification I need to actually consider myself a writer. Regardless of situation or circumstance, I'll be finding you all again somewhere. See you later. See you soon.

Best Regards

And now there's a gap where the last eight hours should hang
sitting in a hospital bed looking at my boss across the way
arms crossed, thumbing his mustache like cleaning a brush
He says, "Forgive us, but we had your mouth reconstructed"
"As well as your wounds healed. We didn't think you'd mind."
I say, "I don't mind. I don't like liquid diets, anyway."
Why does it
hurt
so
much?
No work for
me
for
now.
He tells me I'm dying and that I'm strung out too far!
Tells me I'm putting too much in to what turns to scar.
Take some time off he says and give myself a chance.
Forgotten for so long to grin and ask myself to dance.
So I say, so say
you, and I'll try
but I'm fine.

And now there's a plan unfolding without my direct discretion
I can feel strings somewhere above as they're pulled softly
I sleep on the train after dressing up doll-like at home
Makeup and suicide tools wrapped around my curves in laughing walls
A women in red locks is taunting me from inside her ward, so familiar
"I should never have let you go," I say as I'm approaching
"I could have found you out," I say but she laughs once more
And sets herself on fire
Nothing but ash before me just out of reach
The dust swirling
Motes of adolescence tickling my fingertips
Why does it
hurt
so
much?
Waking I can't
place
her
face.
Arrive at The Roxy. Beneath her neon sign I absorb
cold rain in a way that makes my spine quake.
And inside the lobby, through my boots, I feel the floor
erupting from the music just through the doors.
Why do I come here?
Knowing there's nothing.
I'm nothing.

Blowing smoke into the night
inhaled from a mini pipe
twisted with colors
I did not choose

My wispy gaze into rain
summons from the gone past pains
the deepest red hurt
faded, cloudy

and grey

What lost I no longer remember in color doubles affect in its audible cracks
Following in footsteps wherever intuition leads. Happily? Misery? In madness and smiling
What lost no longer hangs over in color but lives always in minute hands

I chose

Often I sit cross legged
And move my ****** issues
As best I can into my brain
Where I can think about them
And then not think about them
By using some minor will
To hold them back
Right now in fact, I'm sitting
Cross legged in the backseat
Of a car with a busted tail light
Mary jane in the glove box
Backseat also full of groceries
So I adjust frequently, scowl
As I eat food
Licking my fingers after I
Eat octopus flavored snacks
I reach into the bag again
Noticing denim fibers stuck
Like cat hair on my hands from
When I wiped them on my pants
And that's kinda gross
So I stop
My back starts hurting

What are we doing spinning our wheels?
I ran when you asked.
I thought that you asked.
You told me you're more forward than that.
I ran for nothing.
I laughed and told you.
You gave me clearance, and I dropped the act.

What scares me, you ask.
I haven't been acting
. . .

What are we doing meeting for drinks?
Walking down Hawthorne.
Poking fun freely.
You told me you may move away soon.
I first idly shrugged.
Cringe now in panic.
You dropped your shroud, I dropped mine in tandem.

What drives me, you ask.
I analyze my moves
captive to Virgo suns.

You gave me clearance, and I dropped the act.

What's funny, you ask.
Still laughing I kiss you.
What's scary, you ask.
I haven't been acting.
Still you do seek me out.

Still you seek me out.
. . .

Poor courage,
break down pleasantly.
Feed the nameless
with siren calls.
Feed them all!
Their hungry bellies can have myth.
Feed them all
splinters of health in your absence.
Be a doll and let them feast.
Behold! You're tragic
after all.

After all drips have fallen
from the auto-feeder,
believing so much in -- no!
Run right back to mother hope,
covered in wire.
Metal bones frame our warm lit home.
Covered in wire.

Stares hurt too
much to remedy.
Breathe the pain in
your oxygen.
Breathe to mend
old bite marks on which critters gnaw.
Breathe to mend!
But breathe instead, poison
cutting coughs.
Begin orbit, notice your throat bleed.
Behold! Your answer
to their call:

Silence. Retreat.

Whisper frustration into bedsheets like a lover,
feel the warmth you radiate imitate another, to
take reward in the title "savior", to be reborn
in your listlessly pulsing head, and sing your solo
song, song, song,
Reborn, born, born
in leery echoes.

Fall all you leaves of red:
(I can't believe you're still lying and lying right to my face)
RUST and disintegrate
(There's nothing left in your lungs to which I should listen)
Labor onward my slave,
(I won't let you stand there taunting me like I belong to you)
on and on and on. . .
(There's no line left for this desperate charade to ride)

For all that I've done for you
(It's true you helped me survive)
You repay me in change
(This has been on the distance)
Of which I can't be a part
(Since our original night)
I've been hollowed

(Don't tell me you didn't know when you've always lead this)

I concede if you can defeat me because I
Can't commit suicide

Trailing ground, claim this ghost, this ******
This cycle spinning out of control keeps haunting me, drawing me, on again
All I need, all I need is an opening out of this
Biting His smothering hands all the way to His bones, even if I have to crash

Burned trees
Dead wood
Black bone
In the forest of dreams a violet light shone
Violet
Lichen
Creeping
Around the repeating scene until the night died
Derailed
Into
Darkness
Until the smoke and the ash swallowed

The last lonely, laughing glance of His shadow

Words
Brittle rings transcending silence in offer
(An offering)
To offer up trust
They break in the moment you speak
To offer your life:
Foolish. like all the rest broke me
I look forward to secretly building co-dependence
Just to disassemble what you thought you held
I'll drain your breath

Words explode and shred
They fly, genuine, from lips I'll lock with in pretend
Under bus stop signs you stoop to kiss with the impression I won't leave you gasping, gaspless

Burn
Folded paper if you feel they weren't heartfelt
(Emulating)
The offer of rust
Heard from a wet weak heart's keening
I offer it love
Hoping share of my warm blood brings
All pretense that lies in your depths spiraled to the surface
Hope then showing like pustules I'll crush each head
I'll drain it out

Slash rampant like the knife unleashes
In fingers soft, skin taut to the bone
There is night to find
Slash rampant like the knife unleashes
In fingers young, keys tuned to one note
And you can be the prey

But you don't have to be

Knock well on wood as you enter but
Know knuckles lend their skin for flood
Of the risk of entrapment eternal?
Well, few find their bodies stuck and
What's worth its weight in blood
Splays on the lit altar face

It can be warm
Only if you touch
If you touch first
You speak your secret
Farewell

Read through the words you spent sinner our
Real lines lie under thinner lace
Your constant wore hiding the venom crawl
Held below bidding inlay here
Half craving finger's trace
Specters bid sweet interlace

It can be warm
Only if you touch
If you touch first
You speak your secret
Farewell

Empty ones warn walls
Before little embraces
Creating lethal snares
Come
Catching worlds unaware
Come
"Empty ones," All say
(Come speak your secrets)
"I'm fine."

Once more return to the place of hate, hot with the warmth of the womb still after decades, receding like always into the presumed delirium held in that head of yours--but it's both the head and the heart that have ever boiled blood and pried tears and forced seclusion and withdrawal, and continue. Continue through the threshold keeping hidden decay at bay from the world of the waking, unnatural wooden floors keeping hidden the past inefficiency of care in your wrinkled hands, failing to the strength of the stench filling each passage and room in mist. I'm feeling now the way I felt for every instance within the walls. Towering over me when I close my eyes is the memory of the life I somehow saved and though living thoroughly broken beyond conventional means of disrepair, the despair now pales to the nightmare pressed angrily into the backsides of these eyelids. Days like print turned burning script against the black hole that might otherwise be home and sanctuary and ward to the intricate and frightful realities of the outer world, days that wind away and then back in dead drop and ascent that has not yet failed repetition, because of an inability to nurture nature that stemmed more from apathy and disinterest than any real shortcoming. Each time the world begins to end with the potential crashing sound of bone and flesh driving through the depths of the vacuum to pass through solid asphalt and concrete, I wake and the world flips. The trip to your bedroom sheds light on all the others, where once slept two souls aimless and needy, now sleeps decay that you began breeding from the spores formed in their lungs. Cats eyes like lightning slice through the mind as I wander your dark halls to the end where I myself fail at opening the door. I can't breathe. I can't look. I leave. There are things worse than the fragments of mind I clutch desperately as blankets under the Winter sky. What waits looks bad but I'll go if it's smiling or screaming. You. You can die in your numbered hole.

manifesting destiny comes when i'm weakest
i'm weakest now, when my shade comes haunting me
tracers of past, near and far, grasp my heart, seal my chart
forever licking me
licking my neck
biting my flesh
whispering words selling failures in the stead
of who could whisper all accomplishments

here i am, open, seeping all my wounds for you
hurt through the cracks believing that the scars i wear just may reach you
here i am, open, singing the only words i have left

your shadow
my shadow sneaks in
all too close
hovering beside me
your shadow
my shadow knows all
that it needs
to do to destroy me
and it seduces

blessings rarely come and tell me i'm okay
in absence i have learned to rely on things
deep within my emotion but lacking from my bed
forever taunting me
licking my neck
biting my flesh
whispering words selling love to my loneliness
of that i know full well would disable me

here i am, open, seeping all my wounds for you
hurt through the cracks believing that the scars i wear just may reach you
here i am, open, singing the only words i have left

what the hell does love mean, anyway?
well, open your arms, i'll let you enter the void.
what the hell does our love mean, anyway?
open your reclusive arms, i'll let you fall in.

fall in to the extreme
logic fails where the soul has been
fall in to the extreme
i'm warm,
i'm warm,
i'm warm

What I remember most is the ghost I left in the North that day
And how you agreed to drive--I almost didn't believe it
Not only not my body but not my soul, so what better an anchor?
Not my home and not my world--what better an anchor?

I-5 South to 405 driving like nothing, but leaving a smoke trail
S.O.S. outbound in denial with no signal return
Smiling beside the driver unknowingly burning, unknowingly smoking out

Could you respectfully decline an offer to wipe your feet clean at the door?
Outbound there's nothing that changes but the fear inset and instilled
It's just a portal
Could you respectfully decline an opening to escape with your devils moored?
Outbound it's better than ever if you'll accept it's not running away
Doorways are just portals

Stirring listless in bed under a patchwork of broken shade through moonlit blinds
It's 2 a.m.
My face has turned just as blue as the lunar white light as filtered by the night sky
Under the cold
I want you to know that even in growing old the trauma is ceaseless but I can't speak
My lungs imbued
Once with the strength of trees, pull in till my voice cuts, mute, and continue to squeeze
I see your face
Stir so listlessly close to mine, as if you were synchronized, and even closer with open eyes
We respirate

With the breath
From your kiss
Which you so lovingly demonstrate
Let us sleep, let us rust
Imbue me
With the hurt
That you so shamelessly share with me
Respirate

2 a.m.
Under cold
I feel your eyelashes slashing me
Let us crash, let us warm
The trauma
Is Ceaseless
The message is lost, I cannot speak
Both lungs squeeze

For once I'll cut the language play
in favor of getting to the bottom and being outright
Forthright with the motions behind
two eyes, emotions and notions like wind at seaside
Sure words work and we can know
because words hurt
words save and alleviate
Been twisting words more than a decade on
but when I stop and think what actually have I done?
Nothing much, just talk, speak, write
Once did and still want to be a novelist
and if I can learn to multitask at the keys I might
but as it stands, the wheels spin forever in the parking lot
only accomplished in the close-up shot
and when backing up the facade crumbles all on its own
then as quick as the pretense rose, I have no home
night is cold without the future wrapped around
the curves to which you're devout
the future slips slippery forever
whoops!
accident again and it's gone
that last shred of impetus keeping me strong
what if there's meaning though in the steps that I walk?
what if my mistakes raked up fuel the others who don't belong?
maybe being me means just rolling the dice
I haven't died or taken a life so maybe I'm doing all right
let these missteps and hiccups lead not to backspace
but fill the heads full of that black shrouded beast
with what earnestness I have
so that in hopes, though, perhaps vain
I might smudge the pain so that
when you look in the mirror while you eat the pills
and see your shadow looming in grinning and licking your ear
the shadows don't make it that far and fade into light

I don't know

TV light glints from pale fingertips.
For how long have I been passed out?
The longest I've been dead is nine whole days.
Stirring in pitch darkness to faraway sounds
delusion of two dark cracked lips upon mine
infect long loved texture with bitter hate.
Now from Heaven a hand rips off the roof
godly divine bound in rags soaked in proof.
"Drink of me, drink me down."
I'm left lone and uncovered under basalt skies.
"Drink now, drink forever."
Here I'm left vulnerable to you and that original knife.
"Drink down, drink down, now."
So swallow, I think, swallow.

Pressure from within building, pushing out
ruptures suddenly leaving a cold head hot.
Twisted highway we ride quakes spewing black
broken fragments through white eyes as glass.
Hungrily ******* for life, skyward again.

TV light glints from pale fingertips.
For how long have I been passed out?
Falling, with unfolded wings.
Dreaming, luciferous dreams.
Burning, brightly nine days straight.

I bring and bid you drink from two leaking lips.