Thread knuckles into notches of your spine,
you were mine.
Held down as carotid fought hard,
to keep open your eye.
Staring vivid as clouds overtook.
I can taste you through your musk,
hear the quivering in your thigh.

Stomach acids crawled into your nose,
and petals bloom. Belly aflame,
throat bleat with each beat.
As vision tunneled from expanse
to pinhole spindle of our room.
Bared teeth like a wild animal,
eyes wide with excitement.

If you could breathe a word your smile soon'd fade.
Porcelain comtesse *** undress with maroon'd face.

What a rash of time we've wasted.
Drunken, displaced it all.
The hiking trails up solemn, summer
ridge lines. Jagged arrowheads lifted
out toward the sky and we feel gifted.

A crack in the rock a millennia old.
The dangers of going it alone;
the spy who came in from the cold.

Two open throated eulogies and scatter her ash.
Two years of time spent together, now memorized pash.

Sifting through sight lines of our mediocre city streets.
Sweating up the summertime together-alone,
and getting twisted as we jam to louder growing beats.

We took our hands and divined a place on the timeline.
Steady rocking for two revolutions until
she set over the horizon beyond the sunshine.
Look for her and see her in every which place.
It's never her figure and never her face, but
shower curtain blurs and the curls in hair of other girls.
She exists as every brunette that I'll never forget.
Not that I'd want it.

They say, "She loved you. That much is clear."
What a romantic gesture to abandon me here.

If you can read this from your heavenly repose. My heart has grown fonder and still it grows. I'm sure you can see me,
the struggle of having to be anything at all.
Your number is somebody else's now. There's nobody to call.
Summertime gives way to Autumn,
I'm sorry if you hurt having to see what I do now.
The glyphs in my mountain roots.
My rotting bark and lost spark.
My constant stops and false starts.
My swelling, my welts, the harm I cause.
You're not to be blamed, darling.
Not a single word from my tongue nor do I entertain
the thought of others who wish you disdain.
I've lost a bit of myself in the guilt and the shame.
Truth be told, I'm not sure I'll recover and be the same.
A jilt is one thing, a turn down is fine.
But I lost who told me she was mine.
I should've doted more and been more attentive.
You fell in love with me because I was romantic.
So where did I fail you and how can I improve?
I just want to make you happy,
I just want to show you.
There was no need to quit the way that you did.
We could have taken a break,
you could have hibernated, hid.
But it's fine you chose the way you did.
Now you're the punchline of my dark jokes.
"Oh, I'm sorry, no, I only kid."
Repeating myself like I've forgotten what I even said.
Loving is hard when you've never felt it.
But it's harder than that when you feel it and lost it like I did.
Do you think you can forgive me?
I don't know if promises will be kept forever.

She never minded the scars I carved.
She'd beg me for more, and as her wrists were tied in knots.
I'd make sure another night was never forgot.
Sure, she'd struggle, much as any of us must.
But she was lurching toward me wild and bewildered such.

She would calm as I tended wound and her panting
below became a parting of bloom. Springtime crept
in like a slow, low light on a horizon only meant
to be seen by us two.

Her struggle turned to sound and her mouth stuffed still.
Her lids heavy hiding stained glass eye windowed sill.
Her knees buckled with belt tied firm to keep her tight.
Her smile crept wide as tongue wetted what kept words inside.

Her drool ran and stained our sheets,
her eyes filled with tears which ran down cheeks.
Pleasing pleadings strung out by Morse code taps of her feet.
She was more than a canvas,
she became my tapestry.

If it smells dead, it probably is
Rot makes no mistakes
I sit and spin my wheels and it takes
Everything inside of me

To rid myself of her stink
Seventeen years of parental nurture
Two weeks of preying in search for;
Only six minutes of squeezing to be

Left only to be filth again
Passed over and forgotten
Are my words too heavy for your song?
Sing loudly so I can hear you

Again, my pale skinned love
As I hover above and sweat into your mouth
Quiet swan song sung, splash of **** all too loud
Calm I grow as from you, I take my cue

Does my breath not fog glass as much as yours?
If I crawl away now, I won't appear to move.
Silently shaking and praying in search for
Something less living, something less grand

Bedside stories told to you once at night
A lone little light plugged in low by your closet
You feared the wrong monsters, and I felt that fright
It clung to the air; you were my first as by my hand.

But my hand pulls away now--
My fingers hardwired, pulling, reaching
For something warm to touch
And you were warm once, too

In the most quiet voice possible while still being heard
Whisper to yourself a secret out loud, and with a smile.
Please, let it be your own, and not one you've kept for another.
Don't break a promise on my account.

Now, breathe. As if you weren't before-- good, like that.
Do you hear that now? Has the loudness returned to sound?
What was the secret? Not specifics, give me broad themes.
Did it involve a regret, something to have been done and not said?

Your secrets are mine, too. We share them now.
For what paupers we are we are rich in schemes.
Pathological lovers, and our smiles wider than opened meadows.
They might flood this town one day, turn it into a lake.

Did you forget to say, 'I love you'
You shake your head, your mouth quirks.
Eccentric lips kissed to heed a platitude.
Are you breaking up with me?

Why does hope feel restless and final,
does that feeling make sense the way I described?
Is it the contemporary nervousness known as anxiety?
Do you know a healthy person? Are they nice people?

Are you still with me? Willing to listen and reply,
Follow through on my few dictations with glee.
Now that I have your attention it's the last thing I want.
Everything I desire is meant to be unprompted.

If that's true then why did I leave my own surprise birthday?
Oh. Because it's an annual occurrence. There's nothing spontaneous in an anniversary.
Is spontaneity the key to my happiness, or is impulse? How related are the two words?
It's legal to marry your first cousin where I'm from, but we don't talk about that.

Sorry, I'm back. To the whispered secrets again, yes.
But, alright, hold on, I think I have something here for myself.
Is spontaneity the key to my happiness, or is impulse?
Do we lose choice if we're influenced, or ill? Only if you're cited a 5150.

Lost the thread, and mine, too. I'm sorry, this was meant to be for you.

Forgot what I was saying, can you repeat the last thing back to me?
No, before this and that, before I went quiet.
Right. Yeah. I remember now. I'm tired, get the **** out.
But don't leave me, please.

---------------

Morning, darling. Did you sleep well? Were your dreams strange?
Sorry to cut you off, I'd like nothing more than to listen, but I also have images,
the likes from which I cannot wake. Didn't Joyce make a similar remark,
No, his was about history. Am I a plagiarist for having ever read?

Neanderthalic poets were the best, I don't care for their new verses as much.

Brush the slept hair from your face because I saw it in a movie once.
Am I cliche for repetition? Pretentious for lowering myself in the lake
to see the creatures nipping at my toes? I didn't see anything down there.
It's too dark.

"Got a light?"
Scoffing a denial like I'm a better man. It's 2017, who even smokes anymore?
My thoughts are the myriad of flaws in my personality. Each one a used **** ******.
Adrenalinic joy pulsed into a tight fit devoid of any semblance of human contact.
That's my way of saying I hate myself, and the thoughts I think.
"Be happy. Smile more. Travel the world."
So I can be depressed in Egypt with more wrinkles in the old age I didn't want to reach?
This actress has phenomenal range. Who is she again? No, the brunette.

Who gives a **** about a blonde anymore?
I'd like to see her deliver some of my written lines, if you catch my drift.
No, I actually want her to play this character I've been writing.
Is my libido tarnished, or am I still recovering from an assault that only exists in my mind?

Stop talking, you're drowning out my favorite part.
Sorry, nevermind, we lost the station. Look, the state line.
White noise and static. I don't know the radio outside of town.
Why aren't we listening from our phones? I needed the nostalgia to feel bad about my choices.

Yes, it worked. It always does. Kissing cousins get found out,
and I wear my impulses as a tattoo sleeve. That is as scarred wounds on my forearms.
And thighs.
And once my neck, but it healed clean as an only slightly lighter shade of skin.
It took two weeks to heal. The grief from having to continually hide it kept me feeling fine.
Maybe I need to lie, more.
This isn't a picnic for me either. Implying picnics are worthwhile events and not cornerstones of an America that was painted into existence by Norman Rockwell.
The irony of hobos using the same red and white sheets to bundle their lives
as the ones used to create a slice of Americana cheaper than the cardboard cutout
apple pies at your local grocer. Is that even ironic?

**** the bourgeoise. Said a white teen.
Where dead end roads are called cul-de-sacs.
No, I won't judge this family further for your smug confirmation bias.
They are good people and you don't deserve them.
Who cares if dad is an accountant, or that mom is a criminal defense lawyer?
That daughter is addicted to the dopamine of comments and likes.
That son is a *** addict in training, and his next week's girlfriend will regret her nights spent.
Which one is worse? Let's dissect their lives.

They didn't choose their station. Or when it'd all turn to static and scratches.
"Change the station. Turn the dial."
To what? It's all white noise and radio signals, and it's being cut down through the air.
The density of space is frightening.
Did you know neutrinos don't interact with matter in the ways that a photon does?

Oh yeah, tell me about your dreams. I think I've calmed myself enough to nod my head,
with a crooked smile that barely shows my teeth. This is my listening expression.
It worked on our first date when I pretended to be interested in your major and we ****** after
bad garlic bread and cheaper wine. You weren't easy, neither was I.
But we had a fever together and needed to sweat out our impurities.

You told me to take the ****** off. Didn't even know I put one on.
What a minx you were, -- oh, right, your dream. So, what happened when you opened the door?
Oh. You woke up? But, wait, what was behind the door? Where did it lead? Was it locked?
Who directed you to the door, the concierge from that hotel we stayed at during our trip to--
Where was that again? Didn't that guy have a mustache, though? You said the one in your dream--
Yeah, right, of course, I'm sorry.

She brushes her hair before bed. Puts on this mask that smells of avocado.
Tastes nothing like it. Yes, I tried it. Twice. I've huffed kerosene with better flavour.
Oh, it's very bold, has legs. It'll swirl in your nasal cavity for days after you breathe it in,
if you breathe in deep enough. What's the point of getting a shallow high?
Now I think I'm getting somewhere, I desire depth.

Sorry, what were you saying?
Oh. You are leaving me? But the cheap Italian dinners we had.
I think you're overreacting, that doesn't sound right.
Okay, yeah, but. No, I mean-- well, no, there's-- No, but.
Fine.
I'm fine. I'm sorry.

Where did it go wrong? I should have known when she wanted me raw.
Nobody sane wants that from me. Maybe it was when I told her I hated her mother.
She hates that ***** too, the **** am I thinking? Clearly it was when I forgot
the tea she bought from the yearly festival in the hay maze.
We sought to get lost.

Maybe it wasn't a one thing, but the overall of these events.
Occurrences accumulate, and memories carry over into the next day.
Like when she woke first after our supposed one night stand,
and instead of quietly creeping from my bed, which I woke to expect
the lukewarmness of knowing there were two, instead she laid there and watched me sleep.
That bothered me to no end, because in my dreams I have no say in how I look.
What if my brows were comically arched, or expressed an emotion I wasn't feeling.
What if she saw the twitch I took a year during middle school to correct after I was teased.
I failed, a decade of quiet self-ridicule for a muscle that took it upon itself to act without thought--
"Did you know your cheek sometimes droops down as if you've suffered a stroke?"
No, I didn't know that, I've only lived with my face as long as I've known you so I appreciate your observations.
Still, I smiled, and pulled her closer without the thought of gravity.
Now she was letting me go.

We need to unify and get to the root of the problem.
There are four main forces in nature;
electromagnetic, strong nuclear, weak nuclear, and gravitational.
The crux is the unity of conventional with quantum. We don't understand gravity
as it works in a world that relies on thought experiments and metaphor to be
perceived by the general public.
**** the Copenhagen interpretation.

So, she woke up and watched me sleep. She stayed with me in bed and we did nothing but
cure ourselves of sicknesses we had yet to ever diagnose. She asked me where I got my scars.
With the gleam of a subtle sadist she traced them with her fingertips, then her lips.
What a peculiar woman. Why did she ever agree to marry me?
Wait-- no, why is she leaving me is what I should be asking.
Is it the baldness? Doubtful, she's who told me to shave it off in college when it went premature.
She found other places to dig her fingers into me. She was resourceful.
Why is this in the past tense, she's left me, not died.

Why am I feeling surprise when I've anticipated her dislike for me since we shared a Cabernet
I mispronounced when ordering. Why do I only reflect on the one dinner when we had hundreds?
We still have that old bottle. I bought the whole **** thing at the time not knowing you could
purchase by the glass. Looking back I wonder if she took that as a sign, that I wanted her drunk
to ****. Or did she sense my mistake and instead embolden me with the scaffolding needed to
keep up the facade of my crumbling masculinity?

As we got older together we poured more expensive wines into that bottle. It was a whole ordeal.
Every single time, from one bottle to another poured down a slide, which at first we made from stock paper, but then she saw a funnel in the store. We called it our little slide of heaven,
and down came manna.
Even during dinners where we had friends over, their pretensions worse than mine,
we'd simulate an uncorking of a better wine with an app on our phones.
You can download a lot of different sounds.
Our old Cabernet was a twist off.
And we'd see the eyerolls, and pour them a finger less than the rest. Romance deserves alcohol.
And the romantic need it most.

We wrote our own vows. For our marriage, that is, and we renewed them every two years.
We agreed to do that years before the idea of marriage was anything more than a thing
we told ourselves to comfort each other in the idea that the future is anything worth pursuing.
*******, how did we ever make it out of ours 20s with the thoughts we shared?
You crooned to me, once, it was this night where we had walked down to the playground a short half mile from your apartment. I mean, sure, we went there a lot, but this night was different.
Even you agreed the wind blew in a direction that felt strange. We couldn't figure out why
our scarves were billowing in our faces-- do you remember how you tore yours from your neck?
And with all the punctuation of an engagement ring being thrown at the accused you threw
the scarf I bought for you after a three week deliberation on whether the fabric blend would make you itch or if the colour I chose would clash instead of match whatever it was you wore, and it got caught in the wind without the embrace of your beautiful neck and we watched in the dim quiet
of a streetlight glow as the scarf disappeared into the rest of whatever was that way during night.

It took entire moments after we watched it go for either of us to speak. You crooned, like a kettle on a hob, or the hungry moans of a wolf scavenging the last remnants of life in the world, your regret for what you did. You apologized to me, and almost fell to your knees from passion
for your plea. Asking to be forgiven by me.
As if I cared about the money, or the colour. I only worried about your neck and decolletage.
It was cold, and a half mile is a long way to walk without a scarf when you expected to have one.

Instead of giving you mine we shared the one I wore.
Praise Solomon for the nuclear family, because to him divorce meant separation.
So we engineered a response to either of us being a have-not and we became socialists.
You didn't even have a toothbrush at my place, and the only thing we shared was an enjoyment
for ******* with people. Yet, wrapped as mummies in a romantic comedy we stumbled as nervous kids in a three-legged race back home.
Home. Where it was to us then. Your second floor, four bedroom apartment. Or my town house, whose rent was cheaper from a grad student's suicide the semester before.
I lived alone, because I'd tell gullible people stories of ghosts.
You helped me with the idea when I was afraid of having a roommate move in.
They left in tears. We laughed, and proceeded to **** on the floor where he died.
At least, I think it was a he. Is that sexist of me?

"Anybody can **** in a graveyard." I said for pillowtalk,
and that subtle sadism came back to your eyes, and it parted your lips.
But you never said a word.

How about the time.
Remember when?
Of course you do, you were the second billing in the same film as me.
But of course you've made a decision. Who am I to disagree?
Is this the part of the script where I fall to my knees?
Will it count if it's not done as earnestly as I actually feel?
Roleplay always excited me, but did you take my fetish too far by pretending to love me all this time?
I didn't want you to change.
But we grew older together. You barely aged, and I swear you got taller.
Idyllic and ideal, the small town feel of a front porch. And back yard.
Is your Eden elsewhere, Eve? Tell me and we'll leave. I swear to you we'll be okay.
That was something I told you anytime you were upset at something more serious than not.
Anytime you were actually in need, and not only wanting more attention.
It's weird how we come to sense the others in our lives. The conformity of time spent together.
Boarding schools make kids gay. I never knew you, did I?
Of course I did. If not, you're a remarkable actress. You should come to a casting session I'm holding.
In this fantasy I'm a ****** Hollywood producer with enough money to front confidence, and enough debt to break two knees. Meanwhile, in the time before I end up presumed missing and buried shallow in a desert somewhere, I go around and **** the fresh from Kansas teenage girls that get off the Greyhound around the corner from my house.
My ******* God. You're so ******* tight. Jesus ******* Christ.
Sometimes I'd use your actual name in the moment, too heated to remember my own direction.
Take two.
Three.
That's a wrap, we're finished for the day. Until dusk then, my love.

"Oh my god, hon. I was kidding." And she kissed my cheek.
"You're stuck with me, I'm afraid. Plus, the divorce laws in this state are ****.
I wouldn't get anything from you."
You smiled wide and stared at me in expectation.
"Yeah, of course, I knew that."
Why did I feel as if I had been drowned?
Why did that feeling keep me buoyant?
I'm sorry.

Can't write a poem right now.
Can't figure out the sound,
or how the rest of this should look.
My phrasings are obvious most times,
and don't get me started on my slant rhymes.
So what do I have, as a writer, to offer the betters of my peers?
Quiet conversation,
loud argumentation,
fingertips clacking mechanics and a penchant to steer
myself across the happy, golden union.

I sometimes forget the only thing holding me down is the force
of something much larger than I.
It's the firing pistons alive in the mind behind both of my
grey-blue faltering like the autumn to the winter eyes.

I live a breath's away from the oldest river in the world.
While I don't take much of nature in it is awe inspiring,
to be sure.
I live within the crook of the oldest mountains in our history.
Not the tallest,
nor the proudest,
but for now these ranges are growing senile within their misery.

The riverrun through it and exposes rock perhaps a billion years old.
Our oral histories, passed on legends,
scary stories and mountaineer folklore accounts for
such a small passage of time.
We built a bridge once.
It was at one time the longest single-span arch in the world.
Now it's the fourth.
Top five, and that's something for which I am proud.
The oldest river, in the world.
The oldest mountains, in the world.
The highest fatal overdose rate, in the States.

There is a beauty to be had here. Somewhat backwards, but
growing up our water was clear.
It's now choked from coal slurry.
The brain drain of young adults leaving, in much hurry,
hurts us as the ones that remain become grey and blurry.
We are living in a permanent winter and we have high roads,
that wind and curve. Dangerous when icy. veins filled with
heavy loads and nodding verve.
I live a breath's away from the oldest river in the entire world.
I can't touch Roman ruins with my hands, or
sift through the Dead Sea and float on salt above sand.
I can't touch the hill where Jesus may have died,
I don't know what it feels like to hold history as pride.
But our trees even when green have a dusty coal darkened sheen.
Summer is overgrowth from the Springtime rains.
The highest fatal overdose rate in the entire United States.

Where once we built bridges to close in the gap of travel.
We unzip black bags with rigs and object with obvious cavil.
Our industry is old, the world is moving on from coal.
For better, to be sure, but in the meantime we grow cold.
Not from lack of heat, we can boil our spoons just fine.
But we need a replacement from shaft or the mountaintop mine.
Let us worry about beauty again,
let us treat addiction with correction instead of levying it as sin.
Remove the pantomiming politician speak
of addicts or the sick as being weak.

Let's find ourselves again, West Virginia. You're the only home I've known.
Childhood summertimes sat beneath canopies of caterpillar home,
the happy baby butterflies eating leaves so more sun could shone.
Walking sticks used to play with me in my yard,
and at nighttime I'd still be outside mouth agape at the stars.
Evening meant lightning bugs and I'd capture a few in the cup of my hands.
There was a whimsy to how nature responded to us,
how bees would bumble and land,
on the dandelions whose seeds I'd spread as I blew on their white
polyp heads.
Maybe it's nostalgia and my memories are tinted rosy.
The smell of wood stoves burning in winter,
the crispness of autumn breezes felt cozy.
There was a trust held in communities, or maybe I was naïve.
Some of my friends made a choice and moved.
Others among us took a more permanent leave.
My brother, too. He himself got in a lot of trouble.
Over the cotton swab boiled to a bubble.
He died when I was young so maybe everybody is right.
It's all sentimentality and a lot of lonely nights.
But does the past being ****** up make the worsening now fine?

I live a breath's away from the oldest river and mountain range.
I live with the highest fatal overdose rate in the United States.

What's the one thing you could talk about without rest?

Who's the one person that made talking effortless?

Where is the one that changed you for the better,

where is the one that made you your best?

When did it all occur, was it recently, or more in the past?

Is this one something or someone you wish you could have back?

People aren't things,
and also, they aren't chances.
They're the same solemnness
between the sonder and the glances.
We all have our thing and some of us may have more.
But I prefer the passions of the focused
for whom hearts with pulse on sleeve are wore.

Mountains stand higher than we can build.

I got a phone call from your mother today.
Her lips were pursed and candied, I'd say.
I couldn't see her between the borders of states,
but she told me I should let go of the blame.

She called me up to build me higher than I've felt for the longest day.
We spoke a while and dreamt on a nostalgic plane.
She told me sweetly that her memories of her daughter
involve me, too, in some way.
She lingered with each breath as if to sigh,
before she told me she used to lie awake.
Rue in her wrinkles for having turned me away.
From your funeral that long-gone but not forgotten day.

Her sighs turned to shudders and her facade of being a mother
shattered like chalky, kiln pressured Ohio Valley clay.
She sobbed through hysterics and left me feeling desperate
of feeling a similar love for the ghost I'll leave behind
with a note lengthened in a shakily scrawled essay.

It was pure and powerful to hear the shake.
In her voice as it pronounced my three syllable name.
Hoping she got my number right,
not knowing there's a reason I've not cared to change.
Today I got the answer to a question I never thought to say.
Speaking is important to lighten how the emotions weigh.
She told me I should let go of the blame.

But you knew me best, better than they.
I can't quit the blame.
But I can lie to her for her own sake.
So she can move on and feel less of the dismay.
No parent should ever outlive their own flesh given.
The sound of her voice like a subdued painful frisson.
I told her a lie to keep her spirits intact.
To keep alive a promise whose corners are bent, but without crack.
I know you'd let me out of any dotted line I signed if I wanted
free of your Faustian contract,
But I digress,
I'm a mess.
Full of shame for how I handled you and your name.
I've written and talked about you like you were an old flame.
I tried moving on,
but all the old noises I hear them new, and all the same.
Your ghost has followed me because I asked, and you came.

I love you,
I miss you.
I'll come play with you in space.

A road made by walking where you shouldn't.
Told not to by the full throat,
taken aback by paths desired away.
A brand apart from the rest, but so, too, the others can follow.
Heels that graze floors in an apathetic stutter strut.
A stepped up out of time gangliness of lanky mellow.
Walk where one may, walk where one wishes.

To the limits!
And the heaves are harmed, in our lungs
and arms. Tendons flexed on their utmost,
and breath at play in the drowned coast.

To the shores!
And the leaves are left as specks of colour,
from the moors.
and vacations left the hinterlands
of the decayed, breathless holler.

For the greater good we stood as imagined heroes,
Yet for happenstance to lend a chance in our woes,
required a great many motifs
to clamour and climb
In glamourous time
to the raised butte
of a finishing sublime.

Modulate the past and harmonize the future.
Together tapestry'd, akin to patchwork suture.

We weren't raised this way.
To remain forever at play, workhorses neigh.
And sawing brilliance and sawdust eyes,
rapier wit with no equal.
But together a two-parter,
to the shores to see the sea quell.

Wildfire lick like lit flame.
Burn it all down and give me the blame.
It's a carried burden worth the worry.

In mountains some exist as prideful barons.
Barring the loss of their barren,
their smiles turn smirks of heathen carrions.
Which is fine, and the motif licks again.
And the motive is sublime; it's only sin.

Cherish the children and their rue of thresher-born,
Thomas Ligotti and his party of philosophy,
but I'm too caught in histrionics to allow the matter
to matter.
Beyond the kicking feet of the mirthful pitter-patter,
pitted against the coming solstice of time saving;
forward and back and ouroboros we may.
Hold on tight to this singular day.
Ignorant of the causes of our own decay.
Lost during summers covered in spittle and seaspray.
Only to mount a return, a loss,
to the area most unaccepting of the cost.

To the mountaintops!
**** what you see, and reap what you sow.
Push the mountains down into the crow,
and call out for the all the denizens below,
"Here's another landslide." As you call; Heave, and **.
Pile them neat and plant a seed,
of a tree that hasn't belonged or had a chirped song
in a placidity.

An ashen late Autumn was upon us,
and in our best worn coats and sundries we--
held steadfast by a masthead of a rotting boat.
Wooden on a shore of the lake we adored.

We held still as soft deer galloped their lanks through strange
lands lifted from grounds with brick built upon brick,
wherein now were filled, not berries, but hunter's saltlick.
We ravaged a place we called our own,
We stole from the savages their home.

But we found a peace amongst their nerves,
and we were fearful of speed and we'd swerve,
if ever we found in our path one that deserved,
to have the freedom to rummage through roughage.

On this solemn lake-side we found pride in the soft light.
Because what the **** else can we do,
but to sit where once grass stood in dew,
and instead of plucking and mucking about,
no, in lieu, we sat and stared and remarked,
instead about how we've done damage we can't undo.

My home is a wasteland of cigarette butts and coffee cups
Help in repose for better mornings
Where a bitter taste in my throat lays dormant
And I think alone, in regret of nothing

As fresh *** brews and *** ignite, thumbing my finger ring.
Tracing back words in search for other purpose,
realizing secrets as regrettable burden.
Clear throat for first sip, and light a second cigarette.

It is not insomnia but rather being too bored to sleep.
It is not knowing what to do with your hands
When someone says they love you.
It is wanting to discuss film, art--
Hell, anything, with anyone--
Only to talk yourself down
Before the words escape your throat.
And yes, All the words come from there.
Some guttural utterance only heard for those that care.
That pesters you too.

All the nerves in all the world with all the words,
and there's nothing wrong with them in my head.
Passions intermix and weaken,
with every passing moment of thinking,
So I speak of Russian filmography,
mingle as hands press to small of your back.
In an instant, a stutter, a wide expression.
But my hands were always in my pockets anyway.

"Sometimes the curtains are just blue,"
An old professor told me once
From behind his olive green desk--
In front of a whiteboard that made him look small.
Curled over, I respected him more
For the fact that he knew
Nothing everything has a purpose.

Purpose is as purpose does, "I know I know nothing."
Pretentious is as we may be, sentences full of stuffing.
Like our shirts and puffing chests, teach me like you went to university.
Analyze in caffeinated anxiety every word ever said to me.

For some reason I felt compelled to share with others, strangers I guess, I never met them.
Strangers then. Compelled to share with them you. To prove to people who never knew us that I loved you. That we were lovers.
I wonder if I harp on that word too often. Bet I do.

I do.

I connected the misery of your loss into The Antlers - Hospice.
In some cowardly preoccupation with signaling the virtues of  a luminous man I pretended in due process. Much of me as you must understand.

You were a woman and a girl.
And I forced myself under to suffer in some actual mourning.
So a world built on my word.
My hands need rest.
My mind needs rest.
I want to stop.

I'd swallow a breathful of Plath-itudes.
If it'd quieten the lore of some rolling hill of you.
Somewhere scrawled in a red oak desk,
Borders and plyings a mess.

I likened you to a spectre.
For a literal in lieu

Why can't I let up off myself.
Why won't I accept love.

You are the woman protagonist in a fiction
And only your performance merits applause.

High waisted jeans.
Converse with the colors faded,
Socks that are too warm.
Coffee that you forgot,
now it's too cold.
Goldilocks with a pixie cut,
but it's grown out.
And dyed red.

Joking about suicide but taking it seriously.
Alive on a bed with petals and thorns.
While autumn decays the terrace around to warn
you of the winter soon to storm through and
separate you from the torn.

His smile faded worse than your shoes.
And you spent a lot of time walking at night,
through puddles, trudging up dredged silt
and kicked loam
on your way half-buzzed to your apartment home.
It took a season longer for him to fade from bright
to held steadfast against the backdrop of vacuum
stagnant light.

He smells of sweat and sweetly crunched leaves.
Popular spice rub and sparkling water throat-feel.
Your jeans you bought with the holes in them are *****.
You'll wear 'em 'til you're thirty,
you're thrifty,
and frugal, but you still tip thirty percent per purchase spent.
Because you were in their black shoes once,
dressed shirt pressed and smiled to impress those
who spent less than you'd guess on their own tips back then.
Mid-20s and all you are is memories of nineteen.
A few more to even the score.

Yoga pants as pajamas. Pajama bottoms to class.
It used to be about the glances, and remarks.
Now it's about delivering yourself from the past.

You'll tip handsomely to the ugly people.
And nod your head with your chin bounce up,
in a show of recognition for the facade we all front.

You'll smile when most frown.
You'll rejoice amongst the vogue of cynics.
You will, because will is what does and you don't give up.
In a show of recognition for the facade we all front.

The soul is missed by me dearly.
It contained within it, simultaneously,
spark, spirit, care, and glimmer.
Lit by an inestimable null.

The escape of which I now suffer.
Is a daily sick.
Of waking up with shuddered groan.

I miss the soul when it had chance.
Even if my end were purgatory.
I'll take the grey to the decisive ends.
Focused edge where bright meets blurry.

Sick sweetness taking beatings, and still shoulders rumble.
Meek teeth passed lips, and words so soft to avoid being trouble.
You can't help but be who you are, and were modeled.
A clay beauty, ****** through air, for those hunters and shot all.

To pieces, my missus, you must lift and stand and shake.
The rest of the day, and must portray, tween dawn and dusk at best.
You're a profound expression, eureka not lessened, and you heave to and fro.

The ocean ebbs, and sadness flow, inundated even at rest.
But chin does bob, and body does buoy, as you float and kick feet in dark mess.
Above all water, you pretend not the bother, and laugh smile with all feigned jest.

For when the sun burns and turns colden,
The bright yellow spurns from beauty golden,
to a lack of interest for a system
relying on light to pour; listen
though sound travels less
in haste, it makes our bodies bounce.

For when the girl is burned and trounce
The bright mind spurned from evening gown
to a lack of interest to assist him.
He relied on her light to pour; her to listen
though sorry travels, lest
after distaste, it makes us pronounce.

For when a mistake is burned into history.
The stone cold as etched again, and sought.
Good will may be borrowed, entrusted, stolen,
but rarely bought.

For when a daybreak creeps into horizon.
The stones thrown as glass houses brought
Goodly upon their foundations,
in the naked eyes of all sunspot.

May those coloured fractals of which lurch deftly.
Return to shared *****, directly, swiftly. Freshly.

Who's the boy with the sickly eyes down the hall?
He looks so familiar. But his name I can't recall.
He's on my lips, I can feel him right there,
hope he didn't catch me with my mouth open stare.

He looks like he needs a nap, to get some rest.
His clothes all wrinkled, his posture's a mess.

But he has a thick line of laughter creased in his cheek.
His smile has some tatters, and he's got coffee stains
for teeth.
His glasses are fogged up ***** with that day's grease.
If he took a bit of care for himself he'd be looking,
well,
better than what I've seen.

Too bad he isn't better than he is right now.

The son's eyes set low as green felt feigns grass stains.
The son does not cry at the father's funeral. The son
holds them in.
He, the son, is now a rung higher
and lower. Simultaneous promotions and
disappearances. He is the last line.

The son does all the planning. For the day of,
the week next.
The month's end, and the bills due.
The son does all the fathering that the father
has now left behind.
He is now a caretaker. A husband to two wives,
his,
and his.
The son and the father
were not strong in their love.
Not a single day.

The son will find humility where once was cruelty.
Where once was impulse he finds patience.
Where once a sinner comes anew virtue.

The son is now a house where once was a home.
The son is now alone.

Frame your Sunday brunch as a childhood sweetbit,
manufacture after the capture with more redflags;
pour relations after kith and kin with feigned hit.

The brunch is done and so is our agreement.
The contract is as napkin math, undone and smeared
***** lipstick and cigaretted.

Forget about it, the millennium came and went and gone.
All we have now is a time eerily similar to another
without the escape of waking up and wiping face with yawn.

Cumbersome troubles on our sleeves tattoo'd for self-expression.
But what did you need so badly to tell us about yourself, what lesson
shall we learn through the sifting of eyefucks in Starbucks.
Through the popular apathy of shrugged shoulders when mentioned Sisyphusian boulder.
"**** happens."
What else could?
And in your gleaning of brilliant observation on the banality of complaints.
What did you muster as axiom within your world-view of constraints?
Did your unfinished novel and penchant for humanities,
remove you further from nature than consciousness,
remove you further from what makes us you and me?
The condition we live in, despite temporal and generational
bridges,
hinges on the livings of lives.
The thrives and thrivings of not,
cannot be captured nor caught
within the shallow swaip of a Sunday portrait turned to the side for landscape.

In the afternoon of a Sunday evening, all painted
in the dust lingered in sunshafts, a giant
though smaller in person, entered my life.

She spoke in common prosaic, until she didn't.
And when the sunshaft lowered itself as sun did
in the evening horizon; so did her native naivety.

She met once, or more, a man who with hands,
acted as God. And in her life he swelled around
her heart a strangling deluge. Inundation of temptation.
Regret like the pirouette of dust as faltered in dusk.

By now I saw her stature as looming shadow,
and in moonlight I read her leylines.
Runed with the abuse of self and worth a penny more,
than the collection plate gathered at friend's expenses.

I watched a stumble in her walk that never molested her gait.
In her a sprezzatura, and finally, a person deserving of the word.

She woke me with a lantern, once, and pointed to the halo--
the beam encircled as accretion disk, the darkness pulled
and we were the gravity.
And so danced the dust, again.

As of many thoughts, and her my imagination, she had to leave.
A must. A certainty. And I will never be the same.
With each stitch I sew, forevermore, her will shall exist braided within.

Somewhere in the sinews of my chasm breaths beats in pace with love.
Saudade creeps into the same cavern, now darkening;
sonatas with no moon,
shafts with no dust,
art with no art.

I remember with fondness the last worry worth the strain.
It was between the advertisements bookending the
bus stop bench, and I watched a woman no older than I
cross the street without looking both ways.

I panicked despite there being no speed toward her, and
as rapid as no cars were traveling my heart was ecstatic.
At her carelessness. Peered behind turtle-shell bifocals,
and they weren't rimmed thickly; I hate those. They were
wired, and she tugged my heartstrings. With her joy in pacing.

She met my eyes with her glasses and peered strangely toward me,
a stranger watching her with a knitted brow as thick as the scarf
she wore. She paused on the curb a foot about to lift her up, I
think I scared her. Her lips tugged as her hands stuffed themselves
into her tiny pockets. What are pockets used for on women's pants?
Surely not to look nervous and pull away from the world as mine are.

I almost begged the question to ask for her name, or to be a gentleman
and help her cross the stone-few-inch-threshold that seemed to have
stranded her as wide river from her destination; then I realized if she
could cross the raging streets without the help of even reassurance
then I was nothing but another obstacle.

She smiled.
I stared.
And off she went, and I watched her still.
I thought, "If she turns around to look at me, I'll wave her down.
I'll ask her name. I'll pour myself out,
even foolishly."
Her grey knitted cap, of which I am sure hid a knot worth untying,
turned and I saw her profile as her peripheral scoped the last remnants of her
slowly-forgetting-me-memory.
I lifted my hand toward her, and flicked my wrist.
She stopped.
And so did my heart.

Imagine and it begins, the mire sired from mind amok.
May have at once mattered, now the imagination is stuck.
Non-commit to all your projects, ideas strewn prettily.
In notebook crumble garland filigree.
You remember, only that you've forgot.
All work you do is nihilistically for naught.

**** that mess, darling. You are the best.
Calm be simple and be ******, indeed.
Even now you work heart pumping chest.
But happy in finishing you're not so keyed.

Back to the doldrums and foot tap astray.
Knit fury with hands excite, colour gone.

Back from the dead, dancing with blushes.
Ego bruised snide, coy imagination rushes.

You were a girl and I won the privilege of watching you grow.
So darling, the porcelain; how trite a description for you.
But it made you smile, always. Even when I didn't put
any inflection in my tone.
It was enough for you that I said it, and only sometimes meant it.

It was Summer, if I remember of any proper, when we met;
or, rather, spoke, for the first time.
Then the Spring where I lost the last line of your beautiful mind.
And that willful fruit bloom from your high hanging branches.
You used to joke, "Don't steal my sap, but lick my wounds."

Arrowheads fletched from your leaves and flew unsoundly,
toward the open eyes of glimmer for those of whom you
allowed near. I caught each one and bled, and with my
oily fingers I drew wilderness and art on your bark.
Spring was meant for you to bloom, my darling.

Maybe you didn't hear, or know. You forgot things sometimes,
like to stretch your arms toward the sun and siphon goodness.
A gentle axe tap to remind you. To make you familiar with,
the pain of the care. The stone was heavy and often deflected.
It's Autumn now. Our favourite time of year. We never got to
make bouquets with your hair.

Winter is coming. You would hate that reference in a poem to you.
Novels are always better, "Except Kubrick!" we would say in unison,
and how you, this time, would always remind me of the night I said
something wittier than the rest of all my life. You cheered up a suicide
because you feared the same loss twice, as all old wounds heal sharply.

How did you do it? Give me laugh lines.
So deep they soak in water and are vibrant.
I don't blame you, all things in nature must wilt.
The markings of calendar, and I know when the rains
wash away the snow and leave blades of grass heavy
you will be there in support, lifting the tiny sprouts with a fingertip.

That they never felt before.

I'm starting to not remember how you looked.
But I remember little things,
like how you'd fold half the page to dogear
your place in a book.
The smell of old canvas
which you stretched when you were manic,
and watched it turn whiter
as you grew depressed thinking of how to paint it.

The grinding of your teeth in your sleep, ******* it
it drove me up the wall. Still does, because
as I sit here writing it from memory I shuddered.

The smell of your shampoo whose brand name I forgot.
Because if I could I'd have a case of it.
Just to be nearer to you.

You used to smile when I'd read you something I wrote.
Now I've found a website where I can post.
You always told me I had some type of talent to capture
moments nobody noticed,
a photographer with words instead of apertures.
But aren't they meant to be worth a thousand more than mine?
I think you held for me a little bias.

You told me I'd end up as a paragraph in an essay
of some American Literature student's midterm grade.
She'd ace it, and I loved where you placed me.
In the middle of everything better than I was,
in this future of whimsy where I kept writing
just because.

I can't tell you what you gave me for those years, as short as they were.
All I can do is tell other people that any confidence or talent is all due to her.

Houses in tall grass.
Another one shut down, the mines.
Boon of pride, swollen like a tick caught in your sock.

Winds blow through yesterday and are colder now.
Ever wonder why some things aren't allowed?

Attention like reception, cut-down by the everything in-between.

The quarry used to be a swimming hole.
Now it's just a hole.
Memories are the only reminders worth remembering.
The second hand embarrassment of a word mispronounced
makes my skin ***** with goosebumps.
Makes my hair stand on anxious end.
Hope no fleas are underneath.

Stay at home. Stay inside. Stay put.
Hole yourself up in your room.
The chance is a drink you'll wake to regret.
The mistake is in believing you know best.

What greatness have you achieved to give yourself advice?
Everything accomplished within four walls you've lived in alone.
Your whole life.

Houses in tall grass.
Sleeping in dusty room.
Tread softly lest you disturb the might-have-beens.
The first step in succeeding is listening to the lessons.

I am sad again, but I have no idea why.
Living keenly with an idea of what I want out of life.
My favorite season, autumn, is upon us.
And my writing is frequent and fulfilling.
So why am I sad again and why am I an orange juice, spilling?

I miss the days where drugs meant fun. Where ridicule was a pasttime.
Between best friends, and Windows didn't force updates.
The Internet was an escape around which Identity was ignored.
You were your username,
and you were too full to be bored.

I am sad again despite selling two poems to a couple patrons
during an open mic night I frequent.
I hadn't been much, chose instead to spend
my time writing and feeling sorry for myself.
Now that I'm out again and re-befriending familiar faces.
It almost feels like belonging is as lost as context between the spaces.
I'm stark raving sad and I've only just arrived.
One year finally after the middle-age of twenty five.
If I make it until January consider me your unlucky kin.
A day without morbidity, how long has it since last been?

Too long;
So long, too.

Remember the suddenness. How it all came in pour, and not drips or drabs.
A dauber, you were, and how you'd have to paint barefoot.
(I used to love watching you take off
your socks)
Your jaw locked and intensity gaze magnifying and ablaze.
Licentious.
You taught me that word was more than ***,
and taught me to be archaic.

You would study my studied glare as I toiled my own art.
Mostly for show, because I didn't know what to do;
with my hands or the words that needed massaging
from their tense sinews.
Then you, fashion of a muse came dancing to my stag self,
awe shucks off to the side and we'd boogie in darkness.

I left you at the altar.
You blew me a kiss with a nervous laugh,
and told me your heart beat for me like free form jazz.
Even when the music stopped and our hips ceased,
from lips you creased and then from pout poured,
"I love you, Jonathan Lore."

Her eyes shake in her sleep.
Is she awake or is she dreaming?
Dare I ask her and bother to interrupt?
No, I'll wait for her to naturally wake up.

It's so loud in the nighttime. The silence is deafening.
The hums of the refrigerator,
air conditioner,
the small city rurality.
Crickets chirp like frog croaks,
dogs bark at bicycle spokes.

She murmurs in her dreams, words that make no sense.
Completely static expressions leave me in wanting suspense.

I wonder where she is now.
Blurry confines of pianoforte,
soft & loud,
like our bed sheets and pillow tops.
Comfort without a sound.

Sleep for her is an ease within which she slips carefully.
She wakes with dreams and stories, descriptions bare
vividly her soul for me to sip.
She happily spends a third of her life having the plaque
of her mind scraped fresh and waking anew.
From the autumn dusk to the spring dawn,
the drying evening to the morning dew.
I sit here awake planning out a future based on days long past.
Watching as dust lingers in the first reminders of sunshafts.

Have you ever watched a loved one wake up from a gentle kiss?
Feeling guilt in the hope of having her wake with your wish?
Seeing the smile split her lips wide and her eyes linger longer
as if she had been worried in her sleep that you had forgot her.

I was always here in the nighttime making sure you were safe.
I'm sorry I fell asleep on you while you were still awake.
But I saw your eyes and they were thriving in their shake.
I assumed you were dreaming, my darling.
Now I'm left with guilt and shame.

With the outset of your child
to a brisk, cold wind unfettered.
How do you stare starving virgins
in the face as they float untethered.

Lies are a currency, counterfeit only to etiquette,
and emotion, and love. We lie,
locked eye within eye, in ways
to boost pride.

When vainglory preaches to you from a
styrofoam podium.
How do you recollect your bargains
Made in dead of night,
blanket to your neck.
Lies can sate those fever dreams
crept upon you from *****.

Does love mean love if it is said with force?
Faint heart never won fair lady.
Without Victorian hysteria;
Our corsets are not so tight
We lack the need for chaise longue
May we lack the need for, indeed nor,
the lie?

If you speak of me in such oily vinegar,
then reply to me with joy subsequent,
I shall think of you as polar Cressida,
as she slalomed between bi-encampment.

To see your mouth forming my name-
Blisters peeled back so I may openly lament-
Of every rolling hill your fingers grazed carefully,
And every forged wanderlust you splashed upon my chest

Hellbent on spent days and evenings anew,
Lipped old promises freshly feigned undue.
Take me for bitter, and taste me all too sweet,
Storm whorled to ebb, still flow we accrete.

There is no more room to wander,
within the wild, blue yonder.
All the skies and seas are dead to explore.
No new ports, forgotten resorts; a lack
of ****** shores for rich men to ravish,
in search of riches much more.
Sea-faring clime possessed on the backs of child,
rode as destiny manifest,
wrote during storm, through mild.
More words than shores coalesced.

But the words explode from me—
Like some powerful wave meant only
To wash things that should not be, away.
Every syllable hovering, quivering
At the corners of my mouth—
As they carry me to beaches where feet
walk less timid, walk with less freedom
than I could ever hope to possess.

If we must be in hope and wish for probity,
in the minds and hearts and waters at sea.
Lift from masthead our daughters and brides,
so they last instead until martrimony decree.
And when vows written in logs of Captain
are all we accomplish lead by sextant see.
All things are permissible deep in our dreams,
yet chapel bell is rung not by sexton, but me.

I am my own Captain—
Luring those splashing wanderers not to safety—
No,
I lead them to drown with me.
The extra weight needed, begged for
So that we may appear as a sixteenth century painting
Brushes stroked in the last sip of black tea
to mimic some reality
Ive only touched myself to in sleep.

We are agasp toward bottoms, and fall from heights.
Whereas one of us sinks,
the other heaves into dives.
We are without fathom,
as water stings our eyes blind.
Struggle, you cannot lack fight, it will happen
whether you wish.
We are both rats, a Captain between us,
forgoing a sinking ship.
You abhor tradition in lieu to survive.

Set it afire,
So we can watch from underneath
As through some television screen
The world we knew, we know
rise up in smoke to signal no one.

Sunset nostalgia backlit by 1990s film grain.
Walks by the sea, but in reality,
it's only a small lakeside.
Beaches are broken bottles and liquor drunk.
River glass so smooth you could skip it as a stone.

What's wrong with living in your dreams?
The echoes can't answer you there, that's what.

Childhood nighttimes and dreams in black and white.

Face me to the east,
on a riverside run dry.
Tone callously
commenting as an aside.

Judge the unjudged, remind them at their peril.
Eskimos knew no god, and now priests send them to hell.

The sky is a bridge between which humanity sits.
Part the dried flake of my rest, I'll bear the split.
Then pardon myself for having ever exist.

There's a bear in my soul,
and she clamors to remain within.
First Nations knew no devil,
until we taught them about sin.

The port swallowed dry the remnants of the last season, dryer than the past and the reason was an unbecoming at the seams of the living.
But that seemed like a lie told by a child to an adult.
You had your own ideas swimming in your narrow canals.
For now, anyway, and tomorrow your thoughts would shift to how to pay the rent.
Which is fine. We aren't meant to live secretly,
with too much time and to draw lines between content
and resentment.
So you watch the thinning tides with intent on knowing how they've changed.
And even though the thick black line of watermark
that dots like mold on the dock tells you, "Here I was,"
the lower stillness of placid surface speaks a kind of whisper now.

You aren't listening. The writing has been written.
You're living even though your life is past tense.
******* work, ******* change. Do something to undo the damage laid plain.

But there are still boats buoyed out in the sea.
And for some that's scary but for some reason to me
"It's fine."

Wave that sweet handkerchief at me.
It is not a call to come over, or by, but
a wave of rejoice. Of revolution.
Wave those dried tears at me,
make me remember who I am to a
woman that looks remarkably nothing
as you do.

From atop the gates you sit upon the fence,
waving that sweet handkerchief; freedom,
free of the chaos of your long-lost lore.
Suffer no more, suffragettes.
Or, at least, suffer openly and not only
to sisters and to therapists.

Scream your pink and black lungs at us.
Coughing up the secrets that darkened
your heart, soul, mind, and finally your
lot can speak in time. With the same
sufferers. Kinship met in kind, as the
emboldened world wished to be blind.
But no more.

Tell us your stories, of heartfelt ache and
the dismal display of attention promised.
Of attention mustered through fantasy play.
Wave that sweet handkerchief at me.
As a test balloon of realising we are ready.
To hear your side of a story you helped write.
What's this chapter called?

Focus your attention somewhen else.
The somewhom you remember
is gathered dusty on the shelf.

Some other time.
A phrase some good, mostly bad.
Focus on the times in which you  had.

**** it. Keep in time, in the then,
forget the now and the soon to be when.
Get lost. *******.
Pout about it until you deign to sin.

Forget yourself.
Earn your regret.

Heaven, can't you get enough?
Marble orchards dedicated to
your sustenance. Your creation.
Love and mourning meant to be enough.
For us.
When do you have your fill?

Of course, you're abstract.
Not gluttonous; you haven't
the odd ends of humanity.
You stretch and warp and fill to a non-brim.
Forever.
That is comfort to some others.

Thank you for getting us to where we are now.
To feed our narcissism in washing our hands of you.
Who created whom?
Which came first, the despair or the divine?

Three soulmates deep into a mid-twenties lifestyle.
Where I say nothing, do less, barely walked a mile
In my own shoes, let alone the fortunateless.
And when she says,
"Oh, my bugaboo. Can you, for me, please,
ask forgiveness?"
I smile, for lack of a better expression,
at her rueless lesson for me, which is
as is,
all I can surmise,
to have been meant as
a surprise.

Shocked now, and a few fingers deep in the bourbon.
"Did you know it must come from Kentucky?"
Of course she did, and she spun my spinning back around,
and now wrapped up in myself, as I tend to be, sat half-tipsy
on the hallway credenza-- I thought, for lack of a better imagination,
about the station from which she heralds through some truth.
A flag raised but not saluted.

I regret for a few turmoils. The clicking tocks of ticking clocks.
A minute is such a long time when you expect it to end,
and I feared this romance barely a fortnight into,
"Look, me, you. I don't think this is going to work.
I don't think this is working."

Where was the loudness? Sudden, or not. Not.
Was this right? Expression was meant, otherwise
what is anything and its proper place?

I sat woke in my bed now. Looking at her chest, the curve of her nose.
And as I rose further and felt the warmth of our body heat trapped
beneath the comforter escape, I was jealous.

Comfort is not a guarantee.
5:30am, quiet reads while listening
to William Basinski.

Sometimes I imagine myself as a radio mast. Cold steel
built on a hill surrounded by forest and fog.
All I do is speak through tunes and blink my light.
And during the day I'm remarked as an eye sore.

The ocean never cared, only carried.
The universe never felt, but swelled.
At the start must have been a **** fine time
to be alive,
but there then is the here now.
Nostalgia proud.
Feasting on the delicacy from
a moment of childhood blur.

The rapture is not waiting for you, nor me.
The rest of them neither, just entropy and ether.
A dalliance, daily fawning.
Morning stretches and yawning,
two moments of apex excess.
Then the dusk rusts the sky,
belts tightened 'round younger necks.
Begging to be bled instead of sexed.

Every margin scrawled with the cat-calls of handsomer men.
Opinions stolen from anonymous ponderings of "Remember when?"

The fates would have us conclude, due to their rules.
That taut strings fraught with change are messy wirings.
But if a slant rhyme can still give your skin ******,
Then perfection for its own sake should be dismissed.

Be better than their best attempts to worsen you.

Bucolic bottle broken,
Bourbon bath I'm soaked in.
One more twenty four hour landscape.
Another week of feeling like I'm late.

Cryptic poetry written with a clear idea present.
But thesaurus ******* doesn't help the lesson.
To be learn-ed like the old Astronomer,
to gaze at space again on a blanket among her.
Outstretched and a yawn on my teeth and tongue.
Summer is a force tearing me asunder.

Send me your two cent pennies and I'll flick them into your well-wishes.
Fair weather friendships and texts'n'calls, all misses.
Hung up but without much care or thoughts about the pleasantries.
Yellow brick roadblocks down the lane of Missing You memories.

Raw is superior to polish.
Better is worse than before.
Spent a night on the rusted pier,
ain't nobody come here no more.
So, we've gone equals.
We've no settled score.
We've settled down in our hometown,
living life full of galore.
Glamor shots and tequila cops.
Ain't a single night spent alone.
A fistful of whiskey neat,
eyes full of buzzing,
and bonfires made of bone down on the shore.

I am only an author of a voice to silence your worry.
Listening is not my virtue, it's bloviating my lure-y.
An appeal to be appealing has left me reeling
For lucidity in a city that has forgotten who I am
Which is me.

I am only an author of a voice so silent, so worry.
I hate to live in my mind, yet it is the ***** I scurry.
From my mind's eye's **** I suckle with fury.
Silver-tongue, golden-throated, and nothing else
To be spoke of. With my chest swelling; pleurae
booming with the boon of pride to ensure he
is able to amount to another morning rise.
Which is me.

Since when have I become so masturbatory.
They say youth is self-absorbed and centered.
So full of themselves they think of fireworks and glory.
But what of youth misspent, snuffed whence
They were in the first chapters of their story.
The forgotten rue. The golden rule.
Somewhat few, follow that truth.
Which is me.

Which is me, the me I knew, or what others, to me, show.
If my personality is borderline, and that is disorderly.
How is my fin not to be written as a tragedy?
Will they paint my funeral with superfluous filigree.
Recite a remembered, and cold opened eulogy.
For a man they did not know.
For a me I did not know.
Which is me?
The me I knew?
Or what others, to me,
did hew?

"Debase me!" I say
Burn me alive, for I did not live.
I stole from you, my cherished youth.
I am only an author, let me rejoice in my depression.
My writings are not narcissistic, hardly a confession-
I am a writer that writes what he knows.
My Socratic allegiance agrees that God is wise
And men, surprise, know nothing.
And if men know nothing.
If men know nothing.
If Man knows nothing.
Why are we so full of discovery?

Man may not find themselves but in a quandary.
Mine is this, and it haunts me unjustly.
Which is me?
There's the positive, the plural.
The public, the private.
The reticent and internal,
Jonathan.
But I am awash in my self without knowing myself,
Engulfed in my blood, my bacteria,
lacking opsonin.
I strike at my heart, my mind, and my tendon.
Uncertain of where I end or where I begin.
I am the stalking horse and predator
An author with no editor
Which is why my poetry is so sloppy.
If writers write what they know,
and youth is all for show,
where do those like me stand?
Are we plagiarists that copy?
Chameleons sipping coffee
Bloviating about the bouquet,
Abusing sophistry?
Do I mean to deceive, is it impulse,
is it instinct.
I must ask,
Which is me?

I am only an author of a voice.
Perhaps I am a mute.
So cut my chords, snip them clean.
Let me live a life serene, as I work and doddle
away with my pen mightier than sword.
Which is me? Who am I?
No Greek poets or philosophers
can define.
The one question begged to be answered.
I am me, who I am. Son of God.
King Solomon.
My sin is idolatry. The commonality of my age,
stuck in neutral of self-display.
The world fell into dismay,
split in two,
The Judgment of Solomon.
Will show which is true.
But even in this *******
Of rhyming, scheme, and infatuation
I've still yet answered the question on my heart
Which lettered the head of my distracting start
Who am I?
Which is me?
Narcissus drowned staring at he.
And left the Nymph alone, all alone
Lest I be as pretty, as the rippled reflection
in the Spring dew.
Let me hem, let me haw
Let me hew,
say what I saw,
and I stared at my reflection
staring at you.
Which is me?
Which is us?
This poem has turned
into an omnibus
for a worried mind
to letter and scatter
everything the matter
from a mind stuck
or struck
with ardent aim.
Which is me?
I sound with glee, an answer unto thee
I am an author with a voice.

What folly is unoccurred reverence.
Strangers proclaim "You're loved!" whence
meaning is absent, context is beside itself.

When did platitudes rate as normalcy
Strangers fake muddle fact lest they be
labeled incongruent socially; with no dispel.

How did conversation come to demean
the capable of haves; have-nots serene
in their comfort of blissful ignorance.

Where did intelligence fray, the importance gray;
the have-nots proclaim, in shaky say, their thoughts lame
A bulb above head lacking the filaments.

Who do these ruins belong to, certainly
let us rebuild. Foundations held by you; me.
The minds of small,
not the small of minds.
The majority is always pushed forward by the minority.

I enjoy long monologues on the beach,
the warm grains and broken glass
beneath my feet. I can't help,
as dazzles of sun,
drizzles of spitting ocean
make everything
unique.

Hold your breath, children.
God is angry as the tide
rolls in high,
and rolls back deep.
He beats cloth into drapes
and wets the sand.
Once dry.
Cheeks as cherubs,
reddened from cancer spring.

Medieval statues and the moat is free.
Emoted servitude as you architect.
Hold your breath, children.
God is angry again, as father
treads water. Splash panic.
Too wide-eyed and bushy-tailed
to realize the spring Hell.
Of summer decline into
Autumn's work.

Speak to me in truth and I'll know by tone,
I enjoy long monologues on the beach.
Eternal sunshine,
no spotless minds,
as back is beaten by angry
tides.
Speak to me in ruth-less-ness and I'll know by
shone,
weather the weather, children.
He can't help his maddened drink.

I enjoy long monologues on the beach.
Wistful nostalgia too delicate to breathe.
Potent as ocean.
Tides are circumstances,
symptoms bearing no relief.
Bury me at the crest.
Flotsam and jetsam,
sea foam all alone,
no pretense.
Beat me, daddy.
It's okay to hate me.
You made me hate me, too.

Chimes bid farewell as the last wind to ever end,
blows its final charms through the hairs on our arms.

Walls, with bubbled fire gleeful for escape scratch-
out etches of their own cave paintings. I'll remember you.

Times hid beneath a soft surface the soul's foreign purpose,
to explore the alien that is land beyond here, a future mere.

Struck dumb, deaf, congenital heart murmurs and other gossips.
Fogged out windows bottomed at the last ends of an emptied quarry.

We dug the new digs and the careful resemblance to a rhyme we like to sing-
along to, in lieu of the high notes we contort brows and eyes high for a few.

This tumult of twenties gleam in stark contrast.
Made heavier with temptations, I forgot everything.

Finally tired of the past I find the future narrowing before my salted vision.
Too late to change course,
reef ourselves, then. The wind has harrowed a billow the last of its kind.
We are now safely where we must be, were told to go, were held and pointed
to by arms hairier than ours then, "That is your place in this world."
Carried across the sea in a pity as a great wind,
carried us, too, across the sky.

We act as rupture on this virginity.
A land with no wind is too new.
God, please, tell me what to do.
Guide me in, again.