Welcome to the feast,
sit at my table and do not regret
anything that will not be eaten today,
for this is our sacrificial slaughter
that must call out favor
to the Gods' fervor.

We dine without thought of
slave or beast. We, lords
of the second coming,
pass judgement upon those
who tread so softly at our heels
that a whisper of thanks escapes
from their chaffed lips and yet it cannot
be heard even in our pious silence.
They dance for us in cages that
arrogantly stretch from floor-to-ceiling
for their owners,
wrapped in ribbons of ruby and gold
and tops of blackened steel.
The bars hold the imprisoned steady
as they stand tall, true, and unapologetic
to their purpose.

They call for us,
and we, you and I,
as Gods,
must answer them.

Never been interested in
a conversation, just in
conversation itself.

I talked about the weather with
an acquaintence and a
friend of a friend last night
for forty minutes.
The latter isn't someone that
I really know know,
but you know what I'm saying.

We chatted about the coldness that hovers
over San Francisco and how
the heat in the summertime is actually frosty and how
the winter's warmth is, surprisingly, quite pleasant.
"You will only understand this from living it."

A conversation about weather
isn't supposed to actually play out
completely,
and yet, I'm still scratching my head
as to how forty minutes passed
with the two of them
in our Connecticut woods,
covered in striped longsleeves
and sunglasses to protect
our thoughts from a day passed under the sun,
walking around the Bay Area.

An old, sitcom-like joke
come to completion at a party, drowned
in ***** and musical-chatting,
chord-by-chord,
by guitar, drum, and bass,
in the room adjacent
to our tongue-chilled garage.

Generous coasting of the west coast
leaves me tangled in roots from roads
intersecting with waves surfed by
long blond-haired beach bums and
babes who pant at a muscular man
that pushups on the boardwalk
next to towels drying on the
handlebars of my bicycle.

I ride and ride and ride
through weather thought to be
unrideable by most cyclists
even if million-dollar-prize
tempted them at the finish line
and a set-for-life sponsorship
was promised to any and all
who could fight through the storms
of what I stoically battle.

No gear or goggles,
just legs of toned steel from
nights spent heating them over
a log-lit fireplace on spit
while keeping intense conversation
with lover across my gaze
until she escapes unexpectedly
into dreams, unaccompanied by me.

My legs are on fire,
no rain can extinguish them
and no slick roads
will stop my going.

I don't know why
my mind flies
through space and stars
to hit blinded satelites
in the hope of redirecting
itself to yours.

I don't know how
a homeless old man,
who only knows English,
picks up on the Arabic conversation
of ill will directed toward him
from across the crowded restaurant.
He begins to shake and scream and curse.

I don't know who is at fault for thinking of another
or if it matters at all.

When I was thirteen, I had a running coach.
He was short, lean, and muscular.
An Italian man
with a whistle hanging around his neck,
farmer's tan, and below his black widow's peak
sat silver aviators, propped upon his shiny beak.
I ran miles and miles a day, but,
no matter how much I'd run
he never followed. He always trusted me to
stride my roads and lift my knees high
during the kick at the end of the races
against myself.

"If you want to run
you gotta drop that baggage," he'd laugh
between sips from his water bottle
as he towered over little me,
panting and red. We both stood
tall under the blazing sun.
I couldn't comprehend exactly what he meant,
I mean, I told him,
"I have ultra-light, top-of-the-line shoes,
compression shorts and athletic toes,
a hairless chest for maximum speed,
sweat running rivers down my spine,
legs that never exhaust, and,
above all, Coach,
a spirit that can move mountains." His response,
silence and a smirk.
Who was he to teach me about running?

"You're weighing yourself down boy,
you gotta drop that baggage."
It was his motto for me
every time my time would increase,
because, you see, when running,
increase is bad. Except for hills.
I can still hear his voice in my head,
"Uphill, increase exertion."
He never ran with me, he just told me to go.
He showed me the route and I did as expected,
six days a week, sometimes three miles, sometimes ten,
day after day, again and again,
shoulders hunched and me out of breath,
"runners high," they called it.

I hated running, I hated my coach,
I didn't understand why
anyone would want run to anywhere.
Not now. Now, I love it.
It has become my hobby, a specialty
for when one grows up,
your body is built for it, and your mind
has been ready to run since junior high.
It starts as a seedling, when you're barely able to walk,
and by the time your cardiovascular system
has been assaulted by packs of tobacco
and rolled marijuana, it blooms green.
That's when you realize:
Running is easy.

And coaching?
Don't even get me started on how easy that is.

Night beckons to strange people.
Actually, if you can accept this premise,
then the mind makes everyone strange.
And still yet, there is something specific about darkness,
I cannot put my finger on it,
that sends odd sparks of real life
on a mission to city street corners.

I hide in my car after leaving the café
with the hope of seeing, "The Pigtailed Man."
This isn't his name.
However, I need say no more to any stranger
for him to envision my character.
We objectify him and his image becomes clear
even when spotted in narrowed alleyway darkness.

He has a beautiful wife
with locks past her shoulder
of auburn and lillies,
and two wonderfully bright children
who sit on his knee when listening
to nighty-night, bedtime stories.
Their ringing laughter illuminates
the darkest corners of their happy home.
They'll never know why he needs
to go bye-bye at dangerous evening hours,
hunting sour scowls from passers-by.

He's unkempt: legs unshaven, chin covered
by midnight shadow, beer belly hanging over his
plaid picnic-basket red schoolgirl skirt,
and his face sags as if a topical novocaine
was applied generously to his chubby, rosy cheeks.
Upon seeing his aimless strut
and dead-to-self eyes, I wonder: Where does he dress?
Does he put his outfit on from plastic grocery bag
around the block from the lamp-lit looks of
the neighbors' friendly daytime greetings?
More importantly, if I were friend
and was to catch him in the act,
would I say anything?

Darkness calls out the most intriguing creatures.
We're afraid to call them "human beings,"
because being human most certainly
does not look like this.
Or, does it not look like this?
Shadows claw walls around all
because not one body projects light.
There are some who know, and some who appease.
The pigtails hang to his knees as he stares
at the mannequins of pretty women
in the window of the closed department store.

A man poses at a dimly lit table,
a light hangs directly overhead
with a cobweb ribbon-wrapped around
the steel wire escaping the ceiling.
An inverted roulette table,
a man betting against the house:
It is always this way.
Light flickers, flipped on,
and off, and on,
without a switch
with which to assert control.
He is alone in the squeaking chair,
sipping tea and dipping his crumb-covered
hands into the napkin-covered basket
of water crackers and salted peanuts.

Sitting, he poses for practice, but for now,
he practices for no one.
The house is empty.
In the back of his mind, there is no worry
of what one will find upon entering
the kitchen: A scarecrow at a table,
full of straw and teeth dulled down
from night grinding,
sitting in, what could be mistaken
as, a pensive position.

The scavenger hand makes him look wanting.
It's partner is propped on chin,
accompanied by his half-sculpted smile
and the dark-light contrast of his hair and eyes
with yellow shining off of his two front teeth.
The color is not the fault of stumbling home
too late to care for the mouth, but of the old
incandescent staring him down
and the obsessively clean, marble surface
at which he puckers his face.

A tapping in the hall stirs his bones
and his body darts up.
A crow, it seems, with small grey beak
has wandered in from the overgrown fields,
the fields that haven't been tended to
since this boy began taking himself too seriously.
The both of them with stilts for legs
and no breeze of running feet
from scream to sway the pair of pairs.
Their eyes connect and neither moves.
Who should place the first bet,
black or red,
and who will set the ball in motion?

The light goes off.
Denoument is a bad time
for a bulb to die.
As calm as a hand
with razorblade against skin,
the scarecrow sits down once again
and poses.
The bird observes his motion,
calls, and waits,
but the man moves no more,
overjoyed with an invisible audience,
a full stomach.

Two wandered brazenly up the hill
and trip-tumbled down
faster, faster still,
while sheet lightning licked
at its manicured toes.

Once at rest
one woke up,
the other not yet,
waiting for a signal
of safety, safely he sleeps.

She waited on him
noon and night
as raindrop breezes blew by
from short summer showers
and cream daffodil skies.

They're laying in the field
awaiting the arrival
of Eternity:
she sits cross-legged
while caressing his brow.

"It must be fear," says one.
"I'm just comfortable here,"
comes reply.
The truth is,
he wants back up the hill,

wants to descend in butterfly spins
again, 'til spiderwebs and weeds
fill his knotty chocolate head,
and his sweet lover sings
of everlasting green.

She dead-still waits
while golden trees die
and powder begins to fall
on a hill never to be tumbled
the same way again.

She dead-still waits
while he heavy slumber sighs,
ear cupped for the call
on the hill never to be tumbled
by the two of them again.

I don't know if it's the caffeine
or imagining your stoic ****** expression,
but something's got me shaking, violently.
Not with anger, but with fear,
do I drink this *** of tea
shouldered with an innocence
in love without possession.
Part of me has died a very lonesome death,
and yet, with every passing
comes promise of a wailing newborn.
A sense of solitude is born again
and in that, I am
am born again.

I don't know with what blanket
to cover my silver, Saint-Christopher-shivers
from the cold, elated stare
that your eyes possessed.
Yes, it was the cold, elated stare
of your eyes
that chilled my spine.
A newborn you are,
a world inexperienced,
a longing fulfilled.
An empty me,
a teacup without the shakes
of spilling over brim,
and a table sacrificed
from experience.

Sated is the wood
from a lackluster lacquer
and spot-drops on the knots
that will never be noticed.

Caribbean waters wrench my gut
with an instinct to sail too far
into the blue plunge
of shark-finned waters
and sharp, yellow coral structures.
Those nature beasts rip wetsuit,
my sleek, stone shade wall from internal chill.
I am, feel, like a tanned fish
on these tire-weathered, cement streets.
Towering above are the heavy looks
down
from windows of sunned glass castles
of plastic and sweat.
They're calling,
pied pipers, to what is steel-stable
and rooted, in unforgiving fashion,
to the death of primal sense.
The urge to rip apart is tied back
around collared neck.

My boat is ashore
as I sea-dream-see of horizons unseen
while clenching an ill-fated
armrest desk of destiny
unexplored.

With each rap-tap at keyboard,
my shoulders lessen ground-downward.
Every line bears the weight of
three blond hairs lost from
stress-worn crown and temples.
They fall to freedom from pain
and stretch-clenched jaw
of words unsaid.
My mind bears witness to the head
of cold winds blowing north as
my body decays and illumination
seethes inside my being.
The coal-bearer brings warmth
to my lungs, my blackened lung
that cannot express through song
the path on which we travel.
We: Me, Myself, and I.
My pale lung runs against
sideways rains in a summer shower,
crackling lightening,
trumpets of thunder,
and such fear of finally being stuck.

Hit
with
brilliance,
scar-tattooed
by Gods.
Spiraled electricity
fills my mouth
and my teeth
chatter
no more
for lively
expressions
of weightlessness.

A fine mixture of smoke and breath escapes my lungs
as this letter flows from my pen this evening.
"This evening:" What does that even mean?
A moment in darkness, shadowed is the life-giver
high above us,
well,
me.
Strawberry tobacco smothers my face from hookah pipe,
eyes fixed on the lines before me,
and I have nothing to say.
We have nothing to speak, I assume.
I am wordless but maybe in the moment,
this evening, you have a tongue of prose
and no pen to mouth emotion back,
no way of knowing that your time is time is now,
and it's my turn to listen.
Wait, no no, not emotion.
Just "being,"
ways of being, strewn out like a fortune teller's
knucklebones. A lie, the truth, the way that
your eyes wander to the door as you lie
on the pinstriped couch across living room
from me.
I see you glancing, I feel your yearning
for skies where wings can spread against
a star-sun-lit moon and clouds of pink and red,
a longing to dive toward god-given green earth,
near to here, but so so far.
Needing clouds to dream-slumber in, as beads of water
mask your body in my mind, mixed with
thoughts of pure love and pining for your growth,
as dew drops form around my long blond-brown-blue eyelashes.

It's all I see, I've seen,
that's all I write to you this evening.

Black and White
create no boundaries,
just blurs of grey, of fighting,
of shade aspiring to color, well,
aspiring to be it,
enveloped in the folds
of canvases without brush
or artist,
and hands
stiff-stuck glued to table.
Constricted
within so much space
are snakes as serpents,
not vice-versa,
pulling prey apart
vilely, peacefully.

Yes, they do that, no?
I swear they do.
I’d bet my life on it.

I see white paint.
Well, not really "see,"
intend,
maybe,
and a wall appears,
is,
my wall
dissolves and doves
fly away
into death,
broken necks.
Another wall.

And so on.

Lines of light
form our forms,
as shapes glance shyly
at spot-dotted stars.
They shape you, you know?
Framing your eyes
with lashes so dark,
petals,
against a backdrop of lime
clear, wide, citrus,
for me, the slicing sting
in open wound screams.
But for you?
My arms wide
to gaily catch green gaze
whole.

My gaze,
a lens sans focus,
light bends and blurs
to bokeh.
It’s lost.
It returns.
The sudden impact
of complete regression,
dynamically hastened exhales
in symphonies of near silence.

Faith in finding
new seedlings buried
below cold spring surface,
or, if-luck-might-root-hold,
flowering perennials
of Love without Lust
claw up through dirt.
Worn out and in,
like rugged denim blue,
spanning one lifetime,
two,
yours and mine.
Endless desire,
for wear,
for comfort without fear,
each year, new tears,
again.

Again, again,
sun me with your stare.

Family is
not the humorous, "ha-ha" funny.
It more resembles the "ah-hmm,"
intriguing, pensive sort of funny.
It's the only unconditional love
you're nearly promised to receive.
It comes and goes with every
passing situation
surrounding an ember-filled fireplace
of an eve gone by,
blindly staring at the lights
as they flicker across faces
so worn from storied conversation.
An occasional outburst ends in laughter
if one tries to contain it,
it subsides in subdued breathing
from under-breath mutterings,
and upper teeth, cheek-strained smiles.

Maybe we're to love
only in this way,
only in the way of trusted, known,
unabandonable looks, for you,
only for you,
truly,
and those whom you love.

A blind woman stared at me
no, that’s impossible
without eyes one can’t stare
maybe gaze,
graze my soul
feel me
know who I am,
without I even knowing, known
sitting alone in a corner
playing with pen and paper
she can hear me, she can see me
so she sits and stares in my direction
mouth closed, lips form smile.
At what does she smile?

The mad woman, rocking back and forth
to and fro, as if to music
as if she’s seen notes on paper
writings about her, her defects
deflections, that’s all they are
she cannot see that I stare at her
no,
lovingly watch, hopefully she knows
I swear she knows it.
Why else would she smile?


Glasses block her eyes,
thick, black as night,
blacker probably,
but who am I to compare?
I’ve never seen like her, never not seen
like her
she draws in my being, I can’t look away
I can’t, must feel her
touch her face,
tell her, “It’s going to be alright,”
let her know I love her,
that I need her.
Her smile never leaves,
she sees something I never will.

Soon,
she will walk over, strut
magnificently, majestically,
unperturbed by my probing eyes
feeling her way across aisles
on moving train,
she will hold me in her arms,
her untouched arms
soft, yet weathered
begging to be held,
to hold
me
and tell me,
just tell me,
“Don’t worry, child,
it’ll be alright.”

I know why he laughs
everyday, every single day.
Telephone poles line the streets,
a young man giving message to loved ones
reminding them of his travels south,
to stay, to visit,
birds fly through air
upon hearing gunshots in alleyways
escaping to freedom, to cold winds,
away from dark figures in the night.
The postman drops off mail by foot,
in the golden flap-slot
at 312 Baker Street,
while waving hello to the little boy in the window,
the one who will surely die
suddenly
at the age of 20,
driving drunk, open casket,
bloated face. Mother blotchy from tears
and stress
for eyes that will never see another day.

I know why he laughs
day after day after day.
The ribbons tied around presents under a tree,
lights infiltrating closed eyelids
giving off colors never seen before,
never to be seen
friends, family, arms interlocked
whispering thanks, warm nothings
with nothing to be seen,
except deals behind closed doors
an uncle over a nephew,
unheard tears and gasping for breath
lost behind muffles of laughter and shouts of play,
just play.

I know why he laughs
all day, it never ends.
The work, the money, the vacations
the form of form itself,
the fact that form is, and that one
abides by it,
can even touch it, poke it,
poke fun at it, and yet live by it,
live their lives by it without question
whether it be above or under
grounds so cold, full of bodies,
bodies no more, just run-down homes.
Paint peeling and insects swarming,
devouring all that was, bringing life anew
for their comrades, rocks crumble
tears of granite, marble,
not tears,
just erosion of the face.

I know why he laughs
every single ******* day,
because with time like this,
times like these,
and everything in existence,
beauty is an open eyelid.
There’s no room for crying,
none will hear it.
Heads without ears,
and eyes
without lights.

You,
you cried
it hurts
to write
that tears
they fell
from leaving eyes
waving once
twice
more tears
on stairs
that creaked,
"Goodnight."

Your word
a sword
my throat
my legs
went out
fell down
and you
were gone
you left
me there
with darkened stares
that night
no more
would stars
streak skies.

That I ran into you
tonight,
pure luck
you stayed
with colors aflame
my pride, ours
is mine,
was ours,
this cold, winter evening.

Leaves fall
from my arms,
floating to earth
from hearth
of what happenstance
granted us,
rooted in heavy
snow-covered hills.

Orange kindling for the flame
that never negates
the darkness
that is
without
knowing my knots.

But the warmth!
Oh, my heart,
the trunk, it creaks.

Pure chance, others may call it.
Pure luck, it was.
It stays ablaze always,
but us?
Us never.

I don’t wish to be strong.
Falling, wind gust knock me over
nothing more honorable
humble
than that of grass
bending, adapting
enduring season after season
never-ceasing browns, yellows, brilliant greens
stones lie upon it
but,
weaving the way
through solid center,
breaking it so
using thoughts of water,
thought.
Never lost,
reaching for sun, for life.
How can something
so lowly,
so plain,
so overlooked,
be something
so beautiful?

It seems to me
everything is strong.
My arms, branches, branching,
reaching for that same sun.
Please.
Please,
just don’t let me be stone.

My dreams haunt me,
that is to say,
they aren't dreams anymore.
They're wishes
whispered into thin air
for no one to hear
but me
for only I have ears for
them,
these ghouls,
sailboats off to sea
without ports
to return to.

My dreams whisper back
just before my eyes
dive into daylight,
"Are you there?" they ask,
"I miss you," they say.
The voice will forever haunt me
and my voice
won't stop speaking
to someone without ears,
always awakening
to tears,
and longing again
desperately,
desperately,
for dreams.

Make candles dance
they love to, just ask them.
It’s no hard task to make them,
which makes making them,
no longer making them.
They gleefully step on the floor,
hum tune, whistle even,
into the wee hours of morning
performing breathtaking displays
of charisma and elegance
and eventually
their light shines no more.
Wax has wandered
away in search of better form.
They decide,
you, for them, that is,
that extinguishing is the ultimate.


Burn out,
well, burned,
so they
may
ignite again.

In the city, stars fade
no, burn out,
like streetlamps buzzing a grey
tangled mess of love,
lost in decision of whether to be
a guide
or depths,
where evil emanates,
tears fall through space
crashing, colliding
with metal, only to explode
in sparks of illustrious ice.
The wind, gentle, waning
smiling down,
all-the-way-down
wait,
smirking,
yes, he smirks.
Blessing holy water
in prisms, colors, seconds,
cries for life,
upon unknowing
lovers in the night.

Us, you and I
in rhythm
we dance
toe-tapping
in language
so intricate
and laughing
carefree
or carefully
at complexities
of simple
nothingness


only to feel
there is
somethingness
after all
of this
is hope
or not
or is
not
nothing
but something