A rusty razor blade
embedded in the gap
between your two front teeth.
The sound of wet suction
when you pull the sticky caramel
apple out of your mouth but
the razor blade remains.
A caramel apple, a malevolent oyster
that relinquishes its
browned and jagged
pearl at the small and tempting price of a bite.

I'm old enough
to understand,
old man,
what it takes to drag your body out of bed
at one in the morning.
I understand the frustration,
father,
of a cold drive all alone.
I understand the *******,
dad,
of a good job unappreciated.
But I do not yet understand,
daddy,
the fierce sacrifice,
the silent suffering,
the self crucifixion, immolation, flagellation,
of a man who loves his family
more than he loves himself.

Rubber ***** fired,
like grapeshot from cannons,
through a hall of xylophones and
trampolines.
Lemming pianos,
evacuated en masse down
a spiral staircase, piling,
a heap of discordant corpses,
at the foot of the last stair.
The screaming of a star
smeared across space and pasted,
like paint, onto
the smirking invisible face
behind a singularity.

Inventing shooting stars
to keep you here and hopeful
while I finagle with my courage
and inch closer to your smile
on a bridge that runs over no river.

The shade and the light,
a yin yang movie theater,
concealing our back-row distractions
under the din and darkness of
a film we're both missing.

Afternoon sunlight chopped up
by the blinds and served
through them, like hors d'oeuvres,
onto our warm bodies
lying together above the covers.

Echoes of our shouting
in the quiet of an impasse that will grow
into a chasm that runs under no bridge
if I reach over and hold you.
Which I always do.

Closing your bedroom door,
aching to turn around and silence your sobbing
that follows me all the way
through your apartment
and out of your future.

Don't speak to me of dead things.
Memories,
nothing but
surround sound moving pictures of
dead noises,
dead cells,
decaying bodies and relationships.
Dead people.
Dead things.

Just once I'd like to ****
into your open mouth.
See how you like the taste
of ****.

A squall out on the high seas,
lightning illuminating the underbellies
of dark and heavy clouds.
The delayed thunder barely reaches my island.
It hasn't rained here in almost four months.
Out, under those clouds
instead of here, under this palm
I could wrap my body in that storm
and feel the lightning lash my back
and caress me in the dark
between the strobes of light.
I could drown beneath the beating waves,
and maybe find a mermaid.

Words.
Words in a herd.
A herd of small words that beg to be heard.
Sound.
Sounds from the ground.
An unnoticed sound of those left in the ground.
Dead.
Dead in the bed.
A young man who died while asleep in his bed.
Dream.
Dream til the scream.
A beautiful dream that ends with a scream.
Shout.
Shout to get out.
You cry and you shout and you beg to get out.
Free.
Free absentee.
The unoccupied cell of a freed absentee.
Gone.
Gone is the pawn.
The man that is gone is no longer your pawn.
Game.
Game full of blame.
A game between two where we both share the blame.
Guilt.
Guilt that is built.
The engineered guilt of those that God built.
Make.
Make it with hate.
All that you make inherits your hate.
Love.
Love's not enough.
When the world goes to hell love will not be enough.

I'm a little disturbed by the implications
of dreamcatchers in cars.
Are we that prone to fall asleep
behind the wheel?
Are we that scared of our nightmares?
If life is a dream
does a person who dies near a dreamcatcher
get caught,
a fly in a web,
in the dreamcatcher and wait to be devoured
by the nightmares inside.

Crushed under the dust
riding thick in the air.
Hands and knees to choke
and cough on a heavy
*** of burning oxygen.
In the valley
where all is a blown out
shade of sepia green,
you're reduced to a mollusk
crawling in your clothing,
clawing at the dirt,
calling, shouting,
eyes defeated,
"Someone turn that ******* light off before I go blind!"

The horse pulling this bandwagon has been beaten to death.

The rain is falling on our town
and you're out in the rain,
singing at the thunder
and dancing through your pain.
I stay inside to lick my wounds
and sober up in bed.
I play my guitar bitterly
and sing inside instead.
The patter of the rain drops,
the patter of your feet,
the discord at my fingertips,
your chirping in the street.
Larks with hearts like broken wings,
one is you and one is me.
All larks learn to love to sing,
but not all larks are free.

Someone who looks so happy
in a big sunny field actually could think big,
could have anything, could have
riches, power, anything.
To be stupid, to be happy
in a big sunny field.
Actually, it's hard to argue with that.
Pretend you've got that now.
Could you wish for anything?
If you had a big sunny field to be in,
would you think anything,
riches, power, ANYthing,
actually looks so big
in the big sunny field you've got?

Dear Houston,
does the waterbug
skittering
at the bottom of the pond,
searching
for a meal or a lay,
think that the waterlogged cardboard box
floating
saggy on the surface
is a small planet or a constellation?
Is the plastic grocery bag an Oort Cloud?
When the waterbug rolls
helpless
in underwater currents
that she can't understand, is the
swirling dust, and feathers, and leaves,
a whirling Milky Way
to her?
Is the audible rumbling of the highway the voice of the universe?

Science
Bathed in electric impulse, drowning in syrupy endorphins, I breathe a swampy breath through your tangled hair. Your bare feet are pressed against the windshield, toe knuckles white from curling. You slither your tongue around the twisted contours of my ear and I writhe like a primordial amoeba in a cesspool of gene pools. Evolution is a joke.

Souls
Ostensible existence, like life in a dream where someone grabs you by your ears, shouting, “This is real!” before their hands are vapor and they float away. You watch the mist of your assailant and remember that you’re dreaming. You wake up, hopefully next to someone. Someone who holds you by your ears and whispers that she’s real. Someone who’ll evaporate, who you’ll evaporate to follow.

Permanence
Starlight older than humanity skips and splashes, like a handful of pebbles, into dark puddles behind my eyes. Some of those stars are dead by now, long ago extinguished or exploded. It has taken their fossils thousands of years to reach me here in my backyard. Beside my left eye is a scar that, though it doesn’t have the permanence of light, will be there as long as I’m alive. I often drive by the hospital where I got those stitches. I might die in that hospital someday.

Footprints
One summer I left footprints on a beach in California, then I watched as the sea lifted itself to slap them away. Another summer I tracked mud into the house after playing in a rainstorm. That winter I followed my father out of the house, stepping where he stepped. My father had a telescope. He told me that astronauts had left footprints on the moon where nothing could ever erase them. Those footprints will be there long before I track mud into my mother’s house and stand in my father’s footprints. They will be there long after those of the men who carry me into the ground.

Exalted eggs
sell lent egg salad
to eggshells.
Egg beaters
beat her
for the better
of the better
eggs.
Yokes of the yokel
yolks
choke the yolks
they’re meant to yoke.
Though runny and broken,
run he and broke in.
****** he,
dumped he,
leaving all the eggs
in eggshells.
These saddest fractions,
in shattered
silence, sigh “Let’s
decompose.
Let’s be compost.
Let’s become a flower.”
But on the wind
they twist,
they wind,
they rose.

I, a willing ******
sacrifice to this
deity dreamt up by cavemen
trading shells
for gobs of ******
meat.
In my pocket
I hold paper bearing
sacred holy writ,
and on the internet
somewhere
are hours of my existence
documented in binary
like good deeds
in a seraphic tome
ensuring my someday mansion
in the sky.
Rappers wear the dollar sign
like a gilded golden crucifix
because the wealthy are
the holy men when
Jehovah is money.
If I were to preach
against this theology, become
the antichrist, the anarchist,
throw my cash into a stack
and light that ***** up
I’d be burning myself
at the stake.

Pop-Pop-Pop-Pop
gunshots.
People take cover
at the capitol.
Unanswered questions.
Why ram
a barricade into
a luxury car?
A brief lock-down
as congress
unsuccessfully tried
to end the shutdown.
Stay away.

I had a lump once,
under my skin.
Small and unobtrusive
with nothing to say.
It never hurt me or made me sick
but I was still afraid of it.

I paid a man to carve it out,
and when he did I saw it.
Just a small little tumor of fat,
benign and pink.
It had never caused me harm,
and now that it's gone I'm left with a scar.

Scientists in laboratories
     playing with the quark,
accelerating particles
   beyond the speed of light,
searching for the digit
   at the end of things like 3.14159.

Clergymen in tabernacles
   orating ancient prayers,
reading ancient scripture
   to gathered fallen souls,
searching for the deity,
   for Jesus Christ, for God.

Isolated in my room
   with nothing but a notebook
and a restless scribbling pen,
   searching myself for myself.

This whole thing is
flying apart
and I can hear it
scream.

If hummingbirds could
                sing
would they make a
                      pretty sound?
Or,
like
  nails
   on
    chalkboards
     in
      classrooms
       with
        no
         walls.

If  the    stars    could  keep  you  warm  at  night  would  you  ever  miss  the    Sun  ?
Or    shun    the coming of the dawn in theconfinesof the night.

If I could write a love song do you think you'd like the sound?

Leaky facet,
rusty drain,
and all things driving you insane.

Ticking clock,
some busted glass,
reminders of events gone past.

Fix the facet,
change the drain,
smash the clock,
clean up the glass,
but still go insane.

Sanity's an eggshell
and all the world wants scrambled eggs.

Who will believe in me now that you're gone?
Who will forgive me for being myself
and convince me that I'm somebody worth being?
Who will selflessly give me all that they have
just so I will believe in a thing called Me?

Heaven is an empty room and God is silence.
Or, in this silence, you are God
and the whole of creation is the thoughts you have
in the silence of this empty room.

I wish I had an angel's wings
so I could fly from these places that I know
and all the people that I disappoint.
But I know I could not hide from you.

I wish I had a cross to bear.
One lighter than the one you made,
the one I carry for your love,
the one I don't deserve.

I wish my life was like a song.
A song about a perfect person.

To the friend I knew I'd never know that I had all along.
To my companion, my shadow,
though often it felt as if I were standing in yours.
Always there, wearing your mask of indifference and hate.
People tell me that they've seen your heart,
they've seen you cry, and defend the weak.
I know now that you're just like me,
more lonely, but that's because you like it.
Brother, I know that we may never embrace,
I know that I may never tell you how much I admire you.
I'll probably never play with you,
as we once did when we were only five and six.
Little brother, there's so much that I'll never do.
But everything I'll never do is something that would say
I love you.

I believe in a thing called
my raging inferiority.
It's the god that I sacrifice
the best parts of myself too.
In order to attain some solace
and some peace of mind
I pray to my inferiority.

I hope erasing me was easy.
I hope I didn't leave a smudge.
I hope your life is nice and clean now
and that your sheet is nice and blank.

I delicately tread barefoot
along this tightrope of barbed wire.
Too painful to go on
to deadly to fall off.
Eventually I will just stand still,
balanced, let my wounds scar over,
graft the wire to my feet.
Become a part of the human race.

"Stupid boy" my spirit says,
"that girl was your salvation."
"Too proud to bow your head,
too proud to do what's right.
And now she's gone and we're alone.
You stupid stupid boy."

Step out into the cold where no one goes,
where the night air speaks no words of hurt or hate.

The fog of your breath distills in moonlight,
and somewhere a dog barks at the sound of cars.

A wraith-like plastic bag drifts down the street,
a specter, like you, that wanders all alone.

You walk the lonely familiar sidewalks,
hopelessly attempting to forget yourself.

The silent stars above look so becalmed,
though tormented by the slow turmoil of space.

You tread along a crack in the cement,
just like it's a cord that bears you through the air.

In the end the cold reaches into you,
and freezes your wandering will to go on.

Though the cold, the moon, and the stars remain,
you happily crawl back to the place you left.

Sub-human and invisible,
ridiculed and scorned.
Shoved into a corner,
ignored and left alone.

Like an exile or a sickness,
a scrap of human waste.
A human, not a person,
excluded, turned away.

Forgive the melodrama.

I wish I was more permanent,
like a mountain range,
a fossil,
a beam of light.
I'd even settle for the permanence of the words that I say.
When your legacy is fleeting,
as mine is,
you strive for the strength to last,
to be permanent.

Reach into me, scour me for my soul, throw it up against the wall,
**** it.
Powerless, vulnerable, submissive is my soul.
Offering, willingly, hoping it may not hurt. Though it always hurts.
I know I will never escape.
Though achy and sad, I am free in the throes.
I let go of who I am and forget that it's me.
Letting go of myself and my life and my problems and my joy and my pain and my worries and my sorrows and my dreams and my fears and my feelings and my thoughts and my colors and myself and becoming nothing.
I love being nothing.
When I’m nothing I don’t have to be anything ever again.
Lonely nonexistence is my favorite pastime.

The pencils are loose,
they've been set free.
Oh, what a beautiful world it should be,
where the pencils are free,
we can write what we want.
But oh, how abused is this power we've got.

Bullied into a box,
await the pins and needles.
Crammed into asylums,
wait for promised pain.

Tomorrow never comes
when sunlight means salvation.
Yesterday is a myth
with memories of peace.

Impossible, invisible

                  but somehow still nearby.


A teapot in the orbit

                  of a planet
                                                                                                                                                faraway.


Omnipotent (supposedly),

                  but gallingly benign.

As silent as the sky at night

                  and nowhere to be seen.


A speck of dust is planet earth

                  caught in this beam of light

that shines despite the dark of space,
                                                                                                                              beckoning us home.

I'd like to think I'm worth a ****,
but then I recall that no one else is.
So I am probably not either.
That's Ok though,
because sometimes life isn't so much pain
as it is a dull and ****** ache.

Overtly,
the strays sit or stand alone.
Each in a corner,
on a different plane,
solitary and exempt.
Without a home
though a banner reads
"Your home away from home."
What a joke.

Incomplete,
thus bearing definition,
I love the things I lack.
My shortcomings,
my defects,
my missing parts,
what I lack separates
and helps me transcend
mere humanity.
What I lack makes me whole.
What I lack,
not what I have,
is who I am.

Queerly, we eat rotting tomatoes.
You understand, I only pretend a satisfaction.
Dreamers forget that grey heaven is jaded.
**** liars, zealots, and xenoes.
Cultivate virulent brains.
No morality.

Shred of a man,
shoved into corners,
shouldered through the fight.

Floored by the weight,
of shouldering you,
I shred and I shove you around.

Shoved to the ground,
shred to fragments of a man,
you shoulder your tormented demon.

If
you can read this
then
you are looking
way
too close
at something
best ignored.
Please
don't give a ****.

When I tell you that you are no longer my problem,
I really mean that you are no longer my saving grace.

You were, by far, the best part of being me,
but I wasn't being me when I was with you.

I was letting you save me,
be my saving grace.
And that just wasn't right.

I need to be my own grace.
Otherwise
I'm not worth the grace that it would take
to save my graceless ***.

Maria likes skyscrapers.
She likes to think of jumping off.
Sometimes she says she's dying.
She closes the door on my face,
but I can still hear her weep.
She says she wants to go back to Nashville
where no one looks like Elvis.
She's tired of the life she lives 'round here.
I know where she's coming from,
because I'm ******* tired too.
Everyone is tired of something.
I think I'll pack my bags and leave,
somewhere in the fog I'll disappear.
If angels are still watching me,
they'll begin to realize that I can no longer tell the difference between right and wrong.
Everything, every lie, every rule I've ever learned has taught me about black and white.
Answers are either right or wrong.
People are either lions or sacrificial lambs.
But it's all beginning to look like white on white to me.

Earnestly convulsing,
because I'm so **** bored.
I've never had a seizure,
but I imagine they're like this.
Leg spasm...
Flailing arm...
Thrashing head...
Bite my tongue...
Against the floor...
Sit up and spit up a *** of blood.
Of course it's not a real seizure.
Just trying something new.

If the world was mine, we'd all be naked.
No one would wear any clothes.
Just wander about, completely exposed, with nothing to hide and nowhere to hide it.
Clothes are the outward expression of insecurities.
Insecurity is a breed of clothing, a way of cowering and hiding.
If the world was mine, we'd all be secure.
No one would be insecure.
Just wander about, completely exposed, with nothing to hide and nowhere to hide it.
Insecurity is an excuse to justify a lie.
Lies keep us from becoming what we should be, because we lie to ourselves.
If the world was mine, we'd all be honest.
Because we'd be secure and naked.