Your heart is a black crystal,
glowing soft and slow,
like the *** of a cigarette.
Ember-like, but depleted of all color;
an oxymoron of idea,
opposing ends of a magnet.
Impossible yet somehow one being.
That is your heart, and it is also mine.

I have been blinded,
guided by my desires.
Hopeless and tired.

My favorite is
Sasha Pivovarova
She's always so nice

She'll be off-duty
On my 19th birhtday, so
I think we'll hang out.

She's my favorite
Off-duty model for she's
Never off duty.

Simple thought.
Beautifully phrased random line.
Expansion on simple thought, no rhyming.
Abstract theory.
Troubling question.

Simple thought.
Pretty words.
Really abstract thought that doesn't belong!
Super elusive sentence structure.
Less invasive thought.
Something overheard from the people next to you in Starbucks.
Simple thought.
Simple thought.
Pretty word(s).
Super confusing theory to leave reader with no choice but to call this poem a masterpiece.

I say to myself: "I'm going to write a poem."
So I situate myself in the proper place to do so.
But then, what to write about?
I look about my room, as if this is supposed to inspire me.
A teacup, a candlestick,
Box of unopened fig Newtons,
Mess of clothes on the floor.
Phone.
Sweatpants.
Boredom.
It turns out, I'm not a poet after all. Either that,
or I'm in the wrong room.

My laundry tumbles away
and tonight I've chosen to stay
In the building's basement lounge
And maybe scrounge
Eighty-five cents for a candy bar

The sugar keeps me alert,
Though tomorrow's going to hurt.
          It's five AM oh-one.
                        And I don't want that sun,

When the rain comes, the police cars always skulk around town because they know trouble is coming.
Especially in the early summer when it rains without pretense
In the after noon when the sky is still clear
And a rainbow is expected.
There is a certain tangible energy in the air as the water comes down in unperturbed lines from God to Earth and momentarily wets the tongue of Paulding, Ohio for no other reason than it is marvelous.
For a moment, puddles form in now glossy streets and the world sags with glory and peace.
I always fetch my navy blue umbrella and walk around slowly like Audrey Hepburn
And pretend to have nothing else to do.
Because it's summer now and it's true.
But the authorities already know what's afoot.
They cruise the streets with shark eyes and let the water wash they're vehicles.
When it first comes, what is it?
Is it the rustling of trees?
Is it a sign of the apocalypse?
A heard of angry locusts?
No, I see, as I look out the window. The rain is coming, it is a whisper from heaven. A sigh of choral Angels who saw the need for beauty on the ground.
The rain comes at random in the late spring and early summer,
that intermediate time of wonderment and rapture.
When the rain comes in straight lines to earth, tangent to the arc of my soul.

When I get tired,
My legs just want to move.
It's funny in a way.

The ways my body works against me.

Suddenly,
buttoning their jackets and making sure
their sleeves were straight and perfect
as the train quickly approached her stop
became more important than
anything she'd done.

Only child. Straight A's. Good athlete. Church choir;

But this suddenly was the most
important moment of her
life.

Man.

You.

I want your pizza.

At times it seems I
Feel nothing. Other times I
Feel everything.

It happens most nights when I'm feeling sort of sad,
but mostly really tired and confused.
I've been thinking too much, about too many things.
And my brain has finally quit.
And all I want to do is cry my eyes out and feel better.
All I want is to be held and to be loved without reason.
I want to lie down in my bed, and feel a body wrapped neatly
around me. I want someone to cry onto,
someone to understand. I want something so cliche, it would be perfect.
I don't want to care about life,
about art, about my future, about myself,
I just want to cry and cry and cry and
lie there with someone and be held and be understood.

And then the snow came,
Covered the world in white.
A music box of listless thoughts
like pictures out of frame.

It whooshes by so swift,
so quick and beautiful.
One side of the street is slow.
The other is fast.
Opposing ends,
cations.
Magnets,
pulling, tearing,
into one beautiful waltz of latewinter hurrah.
It is so beautiful because not a sole has touched its fall.
Perfectly ****** and smooth.
It is infinity,
never-ending
and terrifying.
Only until the morning breaks
and the people will scuttle from their perches and they will tread
all over its happy white sheet.
What a shame when the morning comes.
Let it stay like this forever.
It is all white
Turbulent
fast
scary
blurry
Nowhere, not anywhere will you see a tread.
It is perfect and always.
It brings me closer to myself
and further from all else.
It won't require a signature
and it doesn't run out of ink.
It is suppliant and healthy.
It will always be.
However, it will melt when the sun beats down.
The sun will come and **** the core.
It will shun out all of my comforts and leave me to be where I want to be the least.
God of night,
shun that terrible sun. Let it be gone forever.
Never let it find me.
Forever hold me in your embrace.
Fall fall fall fall fall fall fall fall fall fall
forever and ever more.
From heaven to earth
the designated gift from God.
Down from the fat lady into our palms
fall fall fall fall
churn my mind water, churn my dreams.
Me, on the ground.

There is a light in the distance. So small and halogen.
It is amber to the core.
A siren in the storm.
Hearth of the madness.
Half-moon of serenity.

Oh I will never understand my words.
Never will I begin to learn my meaning.
What what what does it mean?
I never will understand.

God, what a great and terrible beauty.
What the hell have I done to you?
You were perfect and now a mess.
It is all my undoing. Why have I done it?

Please forgive me.
Or let me learn,

Let there be light tomorrow. Forget this night.

Now I can never stop, for it never stops.
Why should they be mutually exclusive?
I cannot rest until it is gone.
IT WILL NEVER BE GONE.
I can never get proper sleep.
I SHALL FOREVER BE A SHELL.

Sleep, says the amber half-moon.
Sleep and let all your troubles fall like a cell in the storm.
Let your mind be lost in the drift of snow.

I'm living on the edge of this life,
Looking out like a pensive seagull
On the Cliffs of Dover,
The pristine white edge of my life.

Looking at the people below play house
And play job
And play love
And play smart
While I pretend to be what you tell me to be.

I smoke light cigarettes
Alone on the bridge
And blow smoke up the trees.

I'm on the edge,
The sharp edge
And I yearn for trouble.
I want turbulence,
I want ****,
I want earthquake,
I want for the earth to shake,
And I want nuclear fallout.

The badder the better
Is what I always say.

At least as of late.

Suit & tie,
make you look so nice. So official.
You've got it all now.

You came to this ****-town--
why?
For a job. You would never
ever
set foot in this town if it hadn't been
for that.

You're perfect now. Now you can sit and
watch the show of your life unfold.
You've done a good job setting up all the
pieces, all you do now is sit back and
watch and get fat and die. Congratulations.

You have the wife you really like and
the kid you were supposed to have, because
what the hell else would you do?

But now you've got this job, and now you're really
doing it.

You're surviving.

sometimes
i just want to dip myself into a piece of music
lukewarm
and swirl around
without hunger or fear

Reading the words of a woman of flames
gone up into the sky at her will
with greater forces inside her than in a planet

I feel quietly disturbed

sad that I cannot help her
make her happy somehow
but she was smarter than me to be sure

smarter than most.
She knew what she wanted,
I only wish that it had been happiness.

I read her words sitting on a rock by the lake,
the rusty green water licking the large white stones.
I take a long flat leaf and tie it inside itself,
once straight, now making it form an L.

I toss it with some vigor into the water
but it only goes inches in front of me,
oscillating in the shallow,
wanting to come back to it's creator.

I knew that she saw beauty in the world around her,
I wish ardently that I could know why it was not
enough.

What great awful power must have pushed against her.
That I am in the same world that once carried her unsettles me;
that a world may be ****** and cruel by one's perception,
and not by another's.

I see a dragonfly with it's impossible wings
trying with all of its self
to go against the wind of an indifferent lake.

Into it she plunged
I sit but on the edge, looking.

This is the last poem I'll ever write
in order to do the world some good.

I no not where to place line
breaks, wether to capitalize or punctuate,
I always forget the latest trend.

I can't seem to be an artist no more,
much less a wielder of words,
so I'm going to stop the flow write now,

feel honored that you get to see the end.
I can't promise this last poem will amount
to much,
But I can promise you this:

I know a lady who waits
Down on Wall Street,
Snaps her fingers
At brokers
And licks her lips for Madoff.

She adorns her body
With black lace and feathers,
An elaborate facade to lead her men astray.
She whips her hair and
Cackles at passersby,
Opening her rouged mouth wide,
Singing verses without pitch or rhyme.

She yearns for the NASDAQ
To touch her,
Waits ardently for grease ***** to
Work their magic.
She gives willingly,
Unabashedly talks ***** to men in
Tom Ford.

This lady I know asks
For trouble. She is
The ***** of Wall Street,
A slave to modernity,
Snapping her fingers at Cadillacs
And bending over for Madoff.

Rolling down the road, in a sunset town
A pop from the tailpipe and a rumbling sound.
Never before have you seen the town like this.
Friendly faces, children running. Bliss.

A sweet voice, humming over the airwaves
Sultry and definite, like the end of this day.
It's stampeding to a hault, to an end of days.
It should have always ended this way.

The raccoon, his days of mischieve cut short,
Forever stagnant and flat on the black.
No one will build him his tomb, an animal mosoluem, no funeral fort.
What will happen when I die, what will be lax?

We all stride to and fro,
Oscillatory on this wavelength God-given.
What happens when we finally go,
When our own life is not living?

Men may say that life is long for fear of the afterworld,
For that untrodded territory in which we know not of
But I say that life is too fleeting,
For the fish which swim, the birds above.

What is life, when put to music?
Can you hear it better when the melodies mix?
Is the world more rustic?
Are we fools to its tricks?

Sunset falling on faces of a sprawl,
One day over, one to end them all.
I feel an ocean rushing over me
I find myself floating at sea

You told me it was wrong.

The magnetic pull of my body towards the need.
The way I feel it, the longing, in my chest,
how I place my hands absently on my neck,
sultrily telling you what I'm feeling.

Perhaps it's a ripple of something that has been brewing
for many years. Something always there, underneath.

Heightened by loneliness and summer heat.

Maybe it comes from a lack of normal things,
things which usually accompany
young boys.
Those things I didn't get.

Maybe it's someone's fault.

Maybe I should ask Freud, maybe he
could place his hand on my delicate cheek bone,
how it comes it a gentle hill.

He could stroke the freckled valley underneath my eyeball with his smoking pipe
and tell me pragmatically
the reasons for my feelings,

why I wanted a man to touch me without asking,
to make my face his baby in wrapped cloths.

You told me it was wrong,

like the smoking
done after the house had gone to bed at hushed hours
in the ***** garage.

like the tequila shot I did at the kitchen counter that summer
how it tasted like heat and pine needles,

how it tasted like the wooden chest in our home,
like the inside of it, the dark unvarnished interior
that could hold my tiny body if I had needed to hide

where my father kept his winter sweaters.

And how I ****** it down with the lime that I didn't bite hard enough,
my eyes were red and flooded.

It was wrong.

A man,
reduced,
to a plaque
with gold lettering and
a smiling picture in the corner.
so nice and official.
so beautiful and honorable.
a man.
reduced.
to a room,
four walls,
in his name,
with carpet and
chairs,
and tables arranged
for meetings.
a flat screen tv,
framed pictures on
one of the four walls.
so nice,
so bright, so common,
so good.
a man,
fought in a war,
got blown up,
gets a room in his name
and his face on a plaque.
so beautiful,
so good, and right and true.
and so forever too.

Separate
but forcefully
one.

Only together
do we

move.

Haphazard, misshapen, colliding,
yes.
But one.

We are moving. Where are we going?

Collectively the captain of a ship which holds us all.

Where are we going captain?

Wind,
Pass through me.
I'm a window

I need a vacation.

I need a break from my life.

I need perspective.

I need someone to hold me without asking me what's wrong.

I need to cry until the sun rises.

I need to not think.

I need a break.

I need time.

Some measure distance in inches and feet,
but when friendship is added, the hearts will meet.

For a distance is a slim match to a hope,
to a laugh, a smile, or a single allotrope.

Water still hung on the grass,
so I laid myself down in the dirt for a while.
My back against a tree,
upright,
trying to fall asleep.

Sitting in the dirt, up
against a tree,
underneath a sky.
You:
far away from
me.

What ever happened to touching real things?
The brisk rapture of sand against cold skin,
the intensity of sandpaper to your finger?
What happened to things made by the earth?
Things not of space but of time?
What will happen to the things here before us,
when all we do is touch with our eyes?
A world,
a blank white room,
you touch and drag projected pictures,
and have fun with your awesome toy,
which will be upgraded next week,
left obsolete,
rotting along with trailer parks and
abandoned roller coasters.
What happened to digging down in earth
and seeing what she had to offer?
What happened to real? What ever happened?

You can tell she's a designer by her
fine-tuned dishevelment, the

unwashed bob, the unkempt wool sweater &
the neon green belt under it all. We're trying
on costumes and making adjustments with
safety pins and measuring tape.

Actors in and out, hands everywhere, lots
of slow looking and tiny movements that
change everything.

Morning still hangs
in the air like a slowly falling arc, it's
eleven o' clock. Smiles from
Artist to artist. Little moments.

The sting of caffeine still surrounds my
upper chest, sending shots of pain and exhilaration
to my brain. Morning light graciously floods
the windows and spills onto work tables and
gem-green linoleum.

Back and forth,
          back and forth.

I really feel like
This abandoned Mountain Dew bottle
On the side of the road
Perfectly captures where I am in
My life right now.

The other day, walking to the dining hall,
someone passed by me
and smiled at my boots instead
of my face,

which was clearly marked,
and not hidden by garments
like you might think.

Boots, one.
Me, zero.

Your soft green shirt must
mean that your soul is kind
and your spirit must be wise, and

clearly your heathered socks are
telling me that you are of independent mind,
you're a lone wanderer, a barbarian.

Your red tee is intriguing me, it
means you have an appetite
for adventure, or perhaps it
means that you have an affinity for classical jazz.

I can't remember, but if I
lean in closer, I can hear your clothes clearer.

The clothes tell it best.

When draped in cloths of purple and the finest crimson,
Gallivanting through the summered forest,
All covered in flower and magic and light.

When heavy in the swoon of a summer afternoon,
Or bathing in the lukewarm embrace of our troubles,
Wallowing away the days
And counting down to the ones when we never have to think.

Or if by chance on the silvery moon,
When gilded with fantasy, and sitting on a happy cloud,
Overlooking our town and falling over from laughter,
For we can finally see how small we are.

It's when we find the golden afternoon,
That special time when birds never die and fairies fly,
That we will truly be content with the way of the hour glass,
And only then can we replace the changeling
With the actual thing,
No longer lost in the green and the mess,
Standing tall in the eaves,

When on our golden afternoon,
We shall be forever friends.

With the warmth of the air,
so does the spark of my soul leave.
For a momentary dance in
other places, places other
than my life.

capricious
arabesque
undulate
clientele
juxtaposition
visceral
il­luminati
illustrious
canticle
piecewise
chantry
tealeaves
evenson­g
quixotic

The thought of you

quickens my stomach, turns my skin
cold. turns my head in a hundred
different directions.

Your power

is endless.

You sit there,
a black spot,
a contrary notion in a world of blank paper.

But you don't scare me.

I can twist you and shape you and wield you with the best.

Because you're mine.

When we were young,
A universe was erected in our home.
The walls of our home were infinite and magical,
They were impenetrable and everlasting.
When we jumped, we thought maybe
We could fly.
When we were young, we could
Get lost in our house.
It was a whole world,
The outdoors were only an extension.
When we were young,
Dinnertime was solemn and thoughtless
Snacks came and went.
Floorboards held unknown delicacies and treasure troves.
When we were young,
We believed in the magic of mankind
And the infinity of a home.
When we were young,
We never expected to be anything else.