Above all that is radiant and bright,
she floats above the New York night.
Neon signs and grey faces
look up, pointing, exclaming,
'Look how amazing
the human race is'.

Phantom girl floating, sifting
past and through all that's drifting:
empty eyes and the cracks on
every sunken, cigarette *******
ivory American cheek-bone,
belonging to a person, who
feels like any person: here
but sweetly alone.

All that is radiant,
all that is bright,
think what is beautiful
is flying past and
out of sight.

A radio perches on a mahogany end-table,
singing like a mechanical bird:
bellowing fuzzy jazz, reaching my ear.

Its sides are rounded
like the curves of a classic car.
The antenna is *****
like the arm of an eager child
I've had swinging in-between
phantom-bytes and sonic slush:
my mind: inexcusable and mush.

A deck of cards shrugs it's shoulders
before it climbs on top of the radio;
it's rigid joints straightening and angling.
It tucks the tab back into it's head,
concluding before singing along to
'Somewhere beyond the sea.'

The voice of the deck rattled and squeaked,
like a caged mouse doing a capella.
Shot spit of it's mouth,
like a translucent spaghetti noodle. Bloop.

- I stormed outside, inaudible to all,
unmoved by few, chosen by none -

Today I sat across from a girl --
across the room, not across a table
or across the universe --
Her hair dangled like a carrot's wig,
a carrot's impersonation of a blonde girl.

Of course, her skin was closer to orange than pale --
but I like that stuff. I want it rubbed off on me,
physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally.
Old-oxidized-green-coins invaded her eyes
and settled in the center of eggshell-white buffer.

Pants were as denim as a brush of shale
or the picture-pose of a flannel-clad beard,
holding a pick-ax and a dusty journal.
A journal of my thoughts, timeless
in their irrelevancy, until discovered
and claimed by someone else,
someone with a beard, a daughter, a smile;
See: Things I will never have.

What could I mean to this person?
How could I be desirable to her?
What am I but an alien,
coasting a galactic sea,
unable to relate to what I see?

- And what was your prize,
in this life? To be loved?
Or to be conquered? -

The deck of cards disappeared.
And I, I without consequence,
rummage through dust blanketed boxes,
hoping to cut my hand on something
I have mistaken as dull.

I have been told that my mother inhabits this box,
somewhere, sometime, somewhere, sometime.
A framed image, a polka dot cloth, a forever
unprecedented by a sunny-day funeral,
where I am the tail of the dying snake
that is my family: last to perish, last to wait:
a corrosive ingestion of unadulterated isolation.

My beige fingers wrap meat and bone,
but also a cheap-golden frame of my mother and us.
Our glasses are all too big, but we were all too poor.
My mother is wearing her wedding ring,
but I don't know why.

So young and vulnerable,
held by a freckled, strawberry blonde.
I don't even know her, any more.

The deck of cards reappears.

- But I've been alone for too long.
Even the winds have stopped whispering.
I have become a witness to my own death. -

There is a couch and it is where I fall.
My seventeen year-old legs,
bandaged with bumblebee knee socks,
arch like ****** pink lawn-flamingo joints.
Crookedness meets at
cigarette skin thighs: grape-kiss fingerprints,
like mental leprosy, projected.
My eyes meet at where fingers told me to stay
and where the knuckles followed.

Acorn ***** hair sleeps in a tuft,
woken by the brush of a thirty-three year-old soccer coach.

-

My Vans grip sandpaper tape,
preceding clicks: sliding up and down,
like graduation day maternal comfort,
like dirt-under-the-fingernails *******.
Clicking wheels, sound waves
smacking across asphalt jungle.
Sounds escaping and reminding me
of how I'll never.

I'm not in love --  not sure if I can,
be affectionate towards the things
I don't understand.

I'm not in love -- even if I could,
I don't think I'd care like I should.

It's raining.
And people are dying.
Somewhere. Everywhere.
Nowhere. On television.
And I don't care.
And their life is static
stuck in the waistband
of some dude's underwear.
And he scratches his *****.
He's shocked and ****.
He calls himself a "God".
He sent his son to die
as a guilt trip
and to spike book sales.
But he's scratching his *****.
And his wrist brushes
against his waistband.
He's pinched by the shock
of electic death.

It's raining.
I'm sitting on the edge
of my bed.
Closing my eyes
and pretending
my feet are hanging off
a shopping cart.
My parents are pushing me
and I'm facing my mother.
She looks young enough
to avoid
   every thing.

I don't care. I don't care.
There are snares
  hitting the cymbals.
And there's
a jazz musician. He's
nodding his
   head
back and
   forth.
   Back
and forth.

I don't care. I don't care.

It's raining.
And we zoom in on God.
And, clearly, I have a vendetta.
Have I been subtle?
He answers, "No."
Did I meet a jazz musician?
He shrugs, "Yeah, I guess."
And the room slows down
to a jumbled vibration.
And he smiles. Smiling.
Smiley-smile smiles.
There is no ******
like the second hand.

It's raining.
I don't care. I don't ******* care.
My dad yelling.
You have daddy issues!!
You ******* *****!!
And the room slows down
to a jumbled vibration.
What's true is a tumor
and it grows and grows.

It's raining.
Music is the shout
in a raindrop.
The wrists we forfeit
is the church of
an eternal solitude.
And we is I
and the mixture of
animal-speak
that swallows my
   brain.

It's raining.
There are joggers
in the park.
Their feet are smashing
the cement.
Slow down.
They don't care.

Then seven billion
joggers enter the park
and smash the cement.
My family is unearthed:
the swallowed inertia
of an undying thought.

It's raining.

On top of a stained mattress
There is no love,
just oxycodone-loading-
and memories, "Tender, please"-
take ten of these-don't fake a dose
because I am close.
I am close.
I am close to you.

I feel okay, I feel okay
Well, I don't know-I don't show.
"Wait, don't go."
I feel okay, I feel okay

We don't show, no.
"Wait, don't go."
There are only memories
of when we were young guns.
We are too true-
take your oxycodone-
and it's terrifying.

On top of a star,
"You'll go far."
I love you enough to go to L.A.-
I feel okay, I feel okay-
Take your oxycodone
to get through the day.
And kiss me goodbye
before you try
to swim through the stratosphere,
my dear-it's clear.
It's near.

"Wait, I want to say-
before I slow motion
this emotion
that starts with a commotion
in my chest-
that I love you best
and it hurts to let go,
but it's not because of you.
I didn't know.
I didn't know what to do.

And it's true,
and that's what makes it terrifying.
My world is salt,
my sluggish love.
So, take your oxycodone,
because you don't want to feel what I feel.
And you don't want to reel like I reel."

I feel okay, I feel okay
Well, I don't know-I don't show.
"Wait, don't go."
I feel okay, I feel okay

We don't show, no.
"Wait, don't go."
There are only memories
of when we were young guns.
We are too true-
take your oxycodone-
and it's terrifying.

She likes fashion and interviews. I like getting lost.
Sometimes she grabs my bulge,
as she drinks from an aluminum flask.
She told me to rhyme something with 'flask'.
I said, "Fine. In your life, you've been wearing a mask.
But I can see. And you can see. They can't see.
That you are a detached, blond doll
and your back is against the wall,
as I kiss your neck until you're dead."
She said to rhyme something with 'dead'.
I said, "Fine. You ******* in my head.
And it's quarrelsome
that they don't see that you're numb.
I'd pull on your lip, with my teeth.
Dig my hand between your legs.
Just to make you feel. Just to make you feel.
And I study your hairbrush
to see that there are too much
strands of memories from melodies
that lay dormant in ballrooms
and scented kisses
that drip of the misses
in your life and mine."
She said **** me with your words.
I refused because I'd rather watch her bloom
in my dreams than the seams of
a fiber noose that rings loose
the bell in your neck
that sounds until birds fly
and we die-
You look at me,
"Home."

"I really wish I could love you."
"Don't cry. I'll be okay."

Her cold hands blanketed my cheeks, as warm tears repelled from finger to finger.

I looked at her, as her eyes changed from blue to green to blue again. "I don't want you to die, Reno."

"Dying can't **** me, Josh. I thought you knew better." Her eyes were green again, as her iris exploded into a wave of grey. She blinked and they were blue again, changing the room to an eggshell white. We sat on a naked mattress, in the middle of an empty room, my face resting on her soft shoulder. Only orange, dancing pill bottles kept us company. They'd tip their caps, like a hat, at the end of each song.

We swam in a teal sea, inside of four brick walls. Our mouths didn't move, but our voices travelled through air bubbles.

Doing an underwater backflip, the bubbles broke, "When did you first fall in love?"

Kicking off the floor, towards her, "I was twenty."

"How'd you know?"

"She gave me a cupcake and was trying to light the candle, but couldn't. She kept trying and trying. At that moment, I knew I loved her."

She swam towards me, her legs like ribbons waving at the surface.

"His name was Lee," she cooed as she started to drown, "I was seventeen and he open hand slapped me. I thought that was love. Then, eventually, he started to close his hand and then I knew that it wasn't. It didn't stop me from loving him with everything I had, though."

I reached for her as her legs were being pulled up to the surface. She opened her mouth, "You'll be okay. I promise."

My pillow was soaked by sweat as I sat up and rubbed my eyes. The other side of the bed was empty.  I turned my head to see the bathroom light peeking behind an indecisive door. Getting up, I walked around the foot of the bed and over the blanket dying on the floor. As I grew closer to the bathroom, the sound of retching clawed at my eardrums.

My hand pushed the door until the bronze **** kissed the wall. An alabaster body was on the floor. Reno's face appeared as she wiped her mouth. She flushed the toilet. I walked towards her, kneeled beside her, and hugged her as the sound of suction and spinning water drowned the air.

I whispered in her ear. She picked up head, out of my arms, and smiled, blue eyes and all.

High school high,
from over there.
Mechanical hips,
wire hair.

Low count sheets,
cigarette burns.
All alone,
I have learned.

Initiate
what you will,
we chase love
until it's killed

****** winds
across my room
as I sleep,
my body blooms

On repeat,
my hurt is blue
don't feel bad
you can hurt me, too.

A ***** hybrid clouded his voice;
a southern drawl
and Midwestern daydream.
Mutt to himself, a fire to others,
a redundant reverie about a home
-- any home --
with pictures of bloodletting,
forgetting mothers, Adidas clad feet
belonging to hooded killers.

His hands sway in church
but his soul doesn't.
No belief in either concept:
God or soul.
Annoyed with the Christian claim
that one needs the other.
He speaks a voice that echoes,
then evolves into a rarity
too tame to flounder and fight,
too wild to sit and stare.

Laying on a sheetless matress,
day-drinking until bottled spirit dry.
Loveless in a ghost's nest,
never believing I
could be something more,
something from a Christmas card.
Take the long neck, smash the body
and fantasize to the shard.

Everyone
  is born pure,
    I think.
Imagine red-hot
  ****** metal.

Clay is given to two
  people. Two.

Sometimes one person leaves.
  The metal is too hot.

  Hey, this isn't for me,
he or she says.
  Shame if it's the mom.
Push it out. Check out
  of the heartbreak motel.

  But it's all the same,
I suppose:
  Mom or dad.

Red-hot ****** metal,
  sitting at the playground.
Teacher says,
  Play with the other kids.
Teacher says,
  Does the world seem big
    because it's so scary?
Teacher says,
  What is your nature?
Teacher says,
  Play with the other kids--
    think of it as
      networking.

  Time to graduate.

You ******* queer,
  said the news.
Yeah you,
  said the news.
Look over here,
  said the news.
Bombs, ****, *******,
*******, *****, spics,
******, school shootings,
drugs, suicide, famine,
STDs, rap music, Jews,
Obama, Putin, North Korea,
Ferguson,
  said the news.
By the way,
  said the news.
Have you seen
  Miley Cyrus'
nip slip,
  said the news.

Graduation night.

  Rumbling 'round the
warm, bath water
  city lights.
Her hand in his.
  She looks over,
What is your nature?

I had a teacher
  ask me that,
he said.

They ****** underneath
  an apple tree.

This is what the rain is for.
  What?
This is what the rain is for.
  To get us wet?
No, *******.
  Because I already
    had you wet.
Ha-ha. Very funny...
    No, it's for washing away
      memories of ***
        under a tree.

Birth.

Two people. Two.
  Let's name him,
she said.
  Let's fail him,
he said.

There is a line I cross across myself and beside myself I lay broken
With every sigh there is goodbye and I reside by words I've never spoken
I need help
Staying strong has never felt so wrong. Staying strong has never felt so wrong.
           Staying strong has never felt so wrong.
Staying strong has never felt so ******* wrong.
                                                                ­Staying strong has never felt so

**** me.
******* **** me.
Give me your lips and thrill me.
Perk up your shoulders as I lay there and smolder
thrill me.

Whoops, there I said it and if I feel it then I must really mean it
and if I mean it, then I must really want it
and if I want it then I'll eat fire.
And duh-duh-duh he's going to eat fire, ladies and gentleman.
Boys and girls,
there are seven wonders of the world
and you'll never see them, let alone be them.

You ******* *******
I trusted you
I was just a child

"I'm scared."

You touched me in ways that you thought would bring satisfaction
but all you created was destruction

"You do it or you go to hell. It's in the bible."

Just because you corrupted my body
doesn't mean that you corrupted my being.
And you will never know who I am
just because of my body.
I have heaven inside of me
and oceans so deep in my heart
that I can drown others with my love.

I am not what the TV says I am
I am not what a textbook says I am
I am not my grades
I am not the flames that have burnt me

I am love
I am hope
I am the fingers brushing her face
I am courage
I am ambition
I am fighting to fix everything
while you lay dead and broken under dirt that is above you.
Above you.
Above you.
Above you. Above you. Above you. Above you. Above you.

This is the one time I will not be weak.

If I can overcome this then I can overcome anything at all
and if I can't
then forever I'll fall.

Why can't I be
the spinny chair
in your office
for two?
There's nothing more
I want than to
matter to you.

Please, Please
let me be what I am
trying and dying to be:
Your lover that you'd
prefer to be some other,
with our kisses
covered in fleas.

I'm remembering to miss you,
but you'd have to
be here at some point.
I'd miss you so badly
I would dangle
your intestines over my mouth.
Can we kiss in the shade,
if we pretend I'm somebody else?

I can be the running car
in your suburban garage.
I want to steal you and feel you,
or just feel at all.

Catch me in your water,
smiling with the goldfish
and the flakes of snow angels
that bleed out every wish.

We can tremble
and mumble,
and stumble
in our darks.

There's no love that couldn't
hurt me now.

Different colored fruit
with various tastes
One hits the ground
and the others
go to waste

Different colored fruit
some bruised
some small
If one has a worm
you have to
destroy them all

Different colored fruit
believing in higher things
Worshiping their trees
Debating over the rings
they find when they
tear their Gods apart
Different colored fruit
some sweet
some ****

Different colored fruit
with evolving views
Growing with the season
some becoming softer
some turning darker hues

Different colored fruit
learning how to die
Some at peace
with falling
Some hoping
to float
into the sky

She wore a windbreaker as red
as her parents voting habits,
and smoked American Spirits
as rough as the next-door
skateboarder's hands.

At 18, she was bored by
teen-aged touch,
and looked towards the
thirty-five year-old avant-garde
painter, who meandered in his
sun room, like a soul
pretending to be lost.

At 20, her parents told her
to go to college, to go to
'some place other than here'.
So, she went and had skinny,
Greek fingers with chipped nail-polish,
dip down and inside of her, without
judgement, without thought, and,
with this touch, she felt free.

At 24, she was an undergrad with
an apartment and a guy named 'Blake',
and Blake said Brown and she said State.
And when Blake left, she felt complete
despite losing something meaningful.

And when her story started to go on forever,
her body spread across the pavement like
seeded jam on burnt toast, scraped thin,
without image and without future, lost
inside crevices and cracks, a memory
or thought, wandering nothingness.

Keep your eyes closed, we are blind tonight
You can sit on the floorboards,
where I've bled,
naked and dark with me.

"Where are you from?

"Me?"

"Yeah. Where are you from?"

"I'm not really sure. Somewhere. Where are you from?"

"Here. Well, I was born here. I don't want to be from here, though."

"Where would you rather be from if you don't want to be from here?"

"I don't know. Anywhere but, really. Maybe Alaska."

"Why Alaska?"

"Well, I don't know. I'm not sure. Well, you see, they have a month of darkness every year. Just complete darkness. Some people think it's miserable. I think I'd like it, though. That way everyone could be just as invisible as me, even if for only a month out of the year."

Do your parents love you?
Are you religious?
Do you love everyone except yourself?
Are people nice to you?

Swim into me, swivel in the air
your eyes are penchant stares
Try all you can,
let everything and everyone caress you
Let the cold wind blow
and the warm wind undress you.

"Do you know what you did wrong?"

"What I did wrong?"

"Yeah. What you did ******* wrong."

"I-I...I'm not sure."

"You have to be ******* kidding me."

"I tried my be-"

"Shut the **** up. Shut. The. ****. Up. If you want to be something, if you want to get ahead in life, then you can't rely on me, your mother, your friends, or anyone except you. You have to know that every decision is your own, and every consequence that comes along with each decision, is your own to handle. No one will help you, and no one needs to help you because it's not their responsibility. You handle your own ****, and you do better than your best. Perfection. If you aren't perfect, then you aren't anything."

Birds and flies swivel around my head
you sit under a tree with thorns in your hair
I say, "Hi."
You say, "Hi."
I sit next to you, and you don't get up.
You smile and say, "Where have you been?"

And death shall have no dominion?
Is that so much a hope rather than opinion?
Under the windings of the sea?
And if no air breezes by, for you and me?
And if the resolution of my lack of evolution keeps me free?
Is there any hope in harmony. Is there any hope in harmony.
Is there any hope in harmony. Is there any hope in being me.

"Dreams are dangerous, Josh. They're sedatives, not cures. Choose reality. Choose the bitter pill. Because whether you believe it or not, you will end up having it whether you're forced to take it or whether you choose to take it. No matter how much talent you think you have, no matter how much stubbornness that you mistake for ambition, you will be unable to attain your dreams."

"What if you're wrong?"

"What if I'm wrong? Well, let's see-"

"No. What if you're wrong? What if you say all this because of your personal experience. What if you believe all of that because your belief in yourself was stripped by those before you? You could have done something bigger, but you gave up on yourself. You could have been someone. You could have been happy, instead of what you are now. Don't take away the only thing I have just because you have nothing."


Fear is a deadly thing to bear witness to
The hollow spot in the wall,
the eyes staring at a coffee mug,
the words, "I promise."

Tear apart an inverted heart,
and disappear into reverse midnight
All alone with a telephone,
"You're still there, right?"
Dial-tone silence followed by
fist to wall violence
and to sit alone in a bathtub
crying
is a new form of living yet
dying

I can hear violins amidst the violence
And I can see your eyes in the dark
There will be hands shaking
To you, for without, every burn
that's been allowed,
a night to relieve
your weary mind from unkind
lovers, mothers, fathers, brothers
and a hope that you retrieve
yourself in the debris


"Why do you care so much?"

"Why do I care?"

"A better question would be: Why do you care about people so much?"

"Because there's more beauty than desolation in humanity, or at least I choose to believe so."


Sunset sonata
*** in empty beds, in empty heads
Our sweat is a stranger, just like you
and just like me
*** is like society
And we're so focused on ******* each other
no matter how badly it ******* hurts us in the process

Would you look for
the atlantic coast
Where your dad
dropped you off
and became a ghost

Could you come and find
that tree in red
The one they found him under
with the hole in his head

This is a robbery
  of what makes you,
makes me.
This is my honey;
  I fit inside of you;
you-you-you-you.
  This is melting.

Our malls are fiends
  and our soccer fields
are growing stronger;
  our sports are growing
trophies our children
  could never be.

This is daddy's blood;
  our hero, our stud.
Working hard to
  help the factory.
This is poverty.
This is you and me --
               a robbery
we love to applaud.

This is blood, blood,
            blood.
This is you and
         this is me.

Homegrown but hermetically sealed
from people, places, ways to feel.
Dropping a tablet on a tongue,
Korbel divides around pink sponge;
swallowing four or five, to avoid feeling alive.
There are cars leaving trails of thoughts.
Dare them to drive,
drunk on moments,
stuck on other people--
her freckles could fall to the floor
and turn the tiles into an oceanic remembrance.

-

We are lost trees, reaching out
but stuck where we say we'll soon leave:
rooted even after death,
relying on escape so much that hope
becomes our prison.

Gangling ghosts cause trouble inside
this meaty microwave--
I am on these streets and don't know
how I got here.
I'm carrying 2% milk, in my left hand,
and a carton of extra-large eggs in my right--
I drop the jug and it bursts. I joke about how
I still have 2%, but no one laughs because
no one has ever really been around to hear me.
So, I'm scrambling eggs and wishing I had that
milk because who doesn't like voluminous eggs.
I stop whisking and ask who is there.
Why am I afraid of you, Why am I afraid of you
the raw scrambled eggs on the floor, touched by
ceramic seashells.
And it's you.
You are the Lord, a naked lover, that absence
caused by my auto-pilot parents
Forever,
right here.

She has a shaved head
that reminds me of a
crooked-smile-ex;
that choked on cigarettes
and words too contrived,
painted in a negligence
for humanity and a
belief in uninformed
nothingness.

Her body curves like
backroads I've been lost in.
Skin as pale as an eggshell,
I'd imagine she'd shatter
under the olive robe
she calls a dress
and bounce under the
kickstep of organic flats.

Eventually she will become
too much of an idea, she will
evolve into a misogynistic
poem, and if I were
to imagine her naked,
guilt would flood our fleshly-
alcohol-stained-continents,
angry between every slur,
loving between the shadows
of phantoms I once knew.

He protects his phone
but not his ***.
Sitting on a cherry
withered-wood,
it's good to remember
that in December,
he waited for this
tired world, to pass
him by, for his mother
to 'please come home.'

Casper, undercut with curls on top,
plays a greyed banjo while wearing
the green-chestnut flannel his dad
wore before he disappeared into
vermilion sky, only remembered
with lullabies from a hopeful mom
that smelled like Pall-Malls and
factory-soaked-heartbreak.

White, chiseled with skeleton intention,
he sips from within himself,
hoping to harness new direction.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

When she died, I was jobless,
sleeping on her couch,
and a few months out of the ward.

My mental instability helped me lose friendships, love, and my identity.

I used to hope death would touch me
and I did not know why I wanted it to.

Death instead touched her,
drifting like a gas, underneath her door,
into her lungs, erasing consciousness
like lavender being blown by the wind,
into marked a detergent bottle.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

A blue shock spread throughout me,
like the ocean swallowing animals
and forcing them to adapt.

I began drowning in water that looked like gas station slushee,
my ribcage hugging frantic gelatin organs,
beating alongside the spindle of time.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

My carcass became Sun-kissed from the burning of change --
my grandmother died before I could succeed:
my grandmother died before she could see me live.

I crawl through the coarse, wheat-dyed sand,
hoping the blood I trail can be measured in her love.

I hope to make her proud, to learn to work hard,
then harder and harder and harder.
To become fully healthy,
to become what she stayed by my side for.

One of the few.

I lain in a half-sleep, hearing my grandmother's voice.

She said she was proud of me.
It probably was me and not her,
but at least someone is proud.

The darkest fields, an interlude
to parallel sparkling, suspended
watching eye upon vermilion sky --
like a harbored god pretended.

Killing trees, roots eating deep,
my father mercilessly alluded:
branches high and branches wide
found the sky and intruded.

Look at me:
I'm the captain
occupying borrowed space.
Thrown on fading campus,
grown through the cracks
of a forgotten place.

And I am tortured by regret,
things I've not done yet.
Thinking this defines me.

And I cannot deny
that I'm terrified
of fading to black.

I used to cherish every doubt--
now unsure in what I've found:
my instability was transparent
and now it's apparent...

And I now keep the lights on,
lay in a cold bath until warm.
My lips, so purple and svelte,
have sealed all I have felt.

And I stay a static transplant,
a homely nomadic infant,
stumbling towards the abyss,
thinking it's what I've missed.

I used to utilize the past,
stretching time, but at last,
the only fire I've consumed
will soon fade to black...

Capture my ocean side.
Surf my skin like you'd trace
  your fingers on
  VCR tape.

Wrap your hands
  around my neck,
  until I fade to black--
looking into your eyes.

Capture my ocean side.
  It feels like a diamond
is sinking into my chest.

  I want to hit myself,
            repeatedly,
until I can't feel anything
but my blue skin smush
underneath my knuckles.
  My fingernails
      kissing my palms.

Capture my ocean side.
  I cannot face what I have
drawn onto my mirror.
What I found measurable,
  has lost scale, has lost
          purpose,
immensely, breathless.

Rewind the tape
  around my neck.
I'd rather not see through
  the film
    or you.

Capture my ocean side.

Hello my forgotten hymn
I can hear you in my head
I can see your face again

Maybe we're from the same scar.
Maybe the same galactic gutter.
Maybe the same pulpy punch.
Maybe you were my sister
or you were my brother.

Maybe there is a place
where we used to go
to plant our feet
in what we didn't know.

Maybe there is a place
where the whistle grows,
the voices chatter,
the stillness slows.

And maybe, somewhere
or the whistle grows,
the voices chatter,
the stillness shows.

And maybe, somewhere,
or this place, you said to me,
"I hope you remember
that this is a false memory."

My sadness is mediocre
My words are bland
The thoughts I think were thought before me, I don't understand.
I don't understand why I feel the way I do
But that's supposed to be okay because neither do you..
or you,
...or you.

I'm sorry but I don't want to be like you, though.
I don't want to be a piece of the pie.
I want to be the pan that the pie shapes itself after.
I want to be a blade, a shepherd, and an imprint in time.

My hair is curly, brown, with bronze streaks.
My mood is fairly down with sullen words my world sinks.
Her hair was dark, eyes containing broken earth and lullabies.
My love was true, the only thing not mediocre and that isn't a lie.

Let's dance on a table in a diner full of orphans, and try not to be slaves
to our loneliness.
...Do you love me?
Yes.
...Oh, okay.

Sometimes I want to die so ******* badly, it's hilarious.
I can't **** myself in case she comes back. How amazing.
I can't cut myself because I don't want to scar my flesh because if I do
it may decrease my chances of getting her back.
Even my motivation is mediocre, and my tolerance so strong it could be
mistaken as pathetic.

Put me in a silver chair from across the room she'll stare. My love will go nowhere and I swear to God we are eternal. And you and I infinite, and the world is the wind behind our feet as we run into the inaudible where the world is mute and where our love is loud, in and on my lips you trace the words you did imprint and from lightning you strike the lettered indents you did or did not meant. I cannot decide.

My mouth tastes of chocolate milk, 1993, and 1996.

Insomnia stains my eyes. I can't go to sleep because I see you.

That was so mediocre.

There's a difference in these woods,
drifting between grey, scabby bark,
sifting into the moist, wormy soil,
beckoning for purpose,
breaking into the sound of a
becoming yet battered nature.

The footprints can be light, thorough --
almost a trait granted by the torture of eternity.
With head-weaves buoyant above tree-leaves,
a hyper-vigilance stemmed from the abuse
of a darkly philosophy weaponized;
an extension of the elbows, forearms, wrists
of huntsmen seeking inferno.

A hollow is an ideal resting place,
beyond the greased veins of trees,
fingertips delving into clustered black,
grasping an illusory livelihood,
only to imprison itself,
hoping for only a thoroughness
granted by the torture of eternity.

When love enters the picture,
it's best to fade into the skyline,
becoming a blue phantom,
hiding behind q-tip clouds,
balanced feebly, anxiously,
unable to realize
how easy you can be seen.
How easy it is to underestimate
your own significance.

You can drag a razor horizontally,
thinking the ink of space
will pour through, staining yourself,
watching yourself disappear,
hoping for only a thoroughness
granted by the torture of eternity.

-

I dance with her, a light caramel mutt,
in a purgatory of racial tension,
between black and white,
living in the grey area of society,
not knowing that it's okay --
and she is like me,
I've just realized.

Slumping over their shopping carts
like porpoises on parade.
Baskets overflowing with
fritos, doritos, and sugar-ade.

Reckless the dream that changed
what they couldn't,
to swim through foil bars
soaring from cash to vein.
Girl with scissors, cutting hair,
to reach a new brain.

Sofa-living, so much thwarting
thoughts of inadequacy.
Streams of image, money
-- and American Honey,
I think you are fine
the way you hurt.

In a dark and distant galaxy-
Upon a new world I seek-
You're healthy and smiling-
because, because, because, because
there is nothing as romantic
as dying on your kitchen floor-
There is nothing romantic
about waiting for you
to come home
from war.

Daughter, daughter
on the wall-
Why'd you let your picture fall?
Killing yourself for instant
pseudo-safety-
Killing yourself for nothing, maybe-
But the gun is still pretend enough
to put into your mouth and bluff
And say that no one can
save you now-
because, because, because, because:

You are your own lover
and you are your own daughter.
And you're left in hot water
but you stay in to try to forget
that you're cold inside.
And you drown yourself
so you can hide.

What to buy, Who to be
This is a harmless harmony
First comes love, then comes trust;
A defenseless memory in the dust
And what could I, so ever in motion,
could contribute to this ocean
that I call Earth and you call Here --
my eyes are a farmhouse portrait,
far and near.

With and without, give my E! take
Sometimes I feel like this hunger
is my and your mistake.
Withering windows give view to past,
give mention to something through
alliterative glass.
What could it be, When could it throw
my life and your life in a redundant television show,
where the laughter is canned, the love staged,
the buying and dying of products we have caged
ourselves in, in bulk, ourselves in a religion of none.

Time to blister with imagery, A delicate, bouncing light
traveling across a sea, moving towards me, moving
towards you, across the darkly shimmer of a reflector
blue, and the denim drugs and t-shirt ***,
the Fat Elvis rock in your lap, Nationalistic paranoia:
the red, white, and blue on your hat, fading, fading
among the shards of air, warm and vibrant,
Terror-Freedom clarity spittle-lip cat bath,
and my laces around the neck of the sound that skips
lids and rids of hipster brains and howling barks
from trees and boys with new noise, killer and robust
in the teenage, young adult, serial defenseless dust.

Poison ivy spreading all over my skin.
I brushed up against death and
never want to do it again.
They say with time it goes away,
but I can still feel it all over me.

The clock doesn't erode
the way I can feel inside.
I dance with the hands
but am, really, looking
for some place to hide.
I've used a neon bible
ever since she died.

And when she couldn't move,
the sirens blared,
she said it'd be okay,
but I felt so scared.
Maybe it's all in my head,
as the roof took rain.
She said 'I'm going far,'
I said, you gotta stay,
you're just in pain.

I'll never show her
what I am capable of.
I was in The New Yorker
and I'm not sure if
she even saw.

There's a paralysis
that comes with love,
related to every coffin drop
that sings from above,
and I wish you knew her, too,
as well as she knew me:
I am twenty-three and
covered in ivy.

We used to make paper planes
as flimsy as our confidence.
Nothing ever flew the same,
smothered by the thawing sky.
We counted the seconds
until rain ate their bodies,
"5,6,7,8".

Too afraid to go outside,
mom and dad are gone.
Hovering hips beside
the holes in our walls.
Staring out the window
as foggy breath falls.

Seaweed salad and water
before we sleep.
Thinking about
if the paper graves
are as deep  
as the cheap cliches
in our head.

French vanilla Converse,
  taupe-boxed flannel (too big),
and an American Spirit burning,
  real, real slow. What a hipster ****;
what a culture-eating parasite.
  He says, 'Read Proust with me.'
He says something about how
  his dad is dead but not in
a literal sense; metaphorically.
  I was never interested in that part
in the avant-garde spoken poetry Friday nights.

  I bust into the bathroom
and *****, grasping
  Bed Bath and Beyond clearance items.
The walls are the same shade
  of green as my skin.
A hand pets my thigh and I'm told
  it'll all be okay.
How those knuckles knew,
  I'll never know.

Eloise in a Christmas tree,
swinging a straight razor
at the children below.
  Never held enough
as a baby.
  Never in love
just a maybe.

Eloise's father
in the living room,
drinking the news.
  Those *******
******* and *****,
  he screams.
Never held enough
  as a baby.
His mother smelled of
  a late night and
pineapple blend *****.

Eloise popping Prozac
like Tic-Tacs.
  Fantasizing about
shooting the school body.
You sonuvabitch,
her father screamed.
He penetrated--
She screamed
  and writhed.
Wrists held.
Body pressed.

Beans and toast
  for dinner.
Mom left dad because dad
  isn't big enough
or makes enough money.
Enough. Enough. Enough.

Eloise was supposed to be
a miscarriage.
Her dad lost some toes
when he missed a log.
  Chop, the axe said.

The world is a swinging place.
Whispering in the dark.
A hushed frenzy.
  Mix and **** out,
her gun let out a shout.
Eloise, queen of the
  student mass grave.

Eloise's father turns on
the news.
He drinks liquor instead.
Eloise on the t-v.
Oh, woe is me.
He went to the shed
  and blew his head
clean off.

The world is a swinging place.
The world in a frenzy.

"...schizophrenic kisses in a reflection."

Fade in.

My eyes stick to one another like two slices of wax paper with faltering, yet desperately unable to let go of graveyard-shift-love adhesive.

Shifting sides inside. Shifting sides inside.

I stare at my naked body, as water, or something like it, rains from my head to my feet. Warm. Out of control. Gathering by the drain, mixing with the thoughts that won't fall asleep and the daydreams reserved for night.

My eyes are encased by the steam. My lungs filling with water or something like it.

I hope for a classic horror scene or a twist in a melodramatic rom-com. But nothing is funny nor scary and there is no Norman Bates or Meg Ryan. I am not Billy Crystal. I am unrequited love and future fame stemmed by heartbreak and three thousand miles of, "Please let me forget the broken heart I left in a hotel, by the shore, on the east coast, on a pit of dried firewood, in my parents' home, in my bed, in every book I didn't finish, in every sentence I should have finished."



Fade out.


Wake up.
Wake up.
Wake up.
Josh, how many oxycodone did you take?

When are you coming back?

My mother enjoyed shrieking
by the luminous Atlantic.
A place where she was sure
the salmon were scant, like
the bleach dumps, threatened
by a figure who loved binding
her to thoughts of terror.

Our hands were rough, at the
time -- so much so that we
would grasp at glass in the
white sand, pressing the edges
against calluses, without feeling,
before hurling the fragments
into the endlessness.

The sun would sit on the pink
and orange carpet of the sky.
And we would join it, with our
striped bottoms in the coarseness.

Praying for the glass to return;
asking for each piece to be sharpened,
so that we may be able to feel.

White Interceptors illuminate, cry, and leave ribbons of red and blue,
  accelerating north on Featherbed. Streetlamps hang like midnight ornaments.

It starts to rain, turning the tar streets into slick mirrors.
  I can see my lights lead me, sweeping the asphalt.

Kent is still too dangerous to gentrify. The trashcans are spilling
  cereal boxes and empty two liters. I imagine a two-thousand year-old
mountain of trash, corroding and forming this neighborhood.

  Barefoot children walk around aluminum cakes, reaching for the rain.

Skinny cats trot across the street, green and yellow eyes,
  leaking through the dark. I name them after sicknesses.

The humming of my Camry grows louder as I squeeze by
  dripping, patting hands. I now recognize the moon.

Buildings swoosh by faster and faster. Minutes go by and I
  find myself on the outskirts; the trees sway, dodging rain.

My phone rings like a frenzied roach. Picking it up,
  'Hello.'

'Sure. Yeah, I'll be right there.
  'Nowhere.
    'I'm going nowhere.'

The phone bounces on the grey seat. A screeching.
  Coming to a stop; my chest almost touching the center
of the steering wheel. All becomes still.

  A buck with velvet antlers stands in the rain.
It runs into the dancing forest. Much like me.

At first I did love you,
but then the rain caught up.
Always thinking of you,
laying dormant on your crest.
To drink until you blurred,
until as velvet as the mist.

When I grow up, I'll be cool.
Smoke until my lungs float.
Drink until my body's a pool.
Think of people with three felonies,
singing the same penitiary melodies.
Think of girls that said no,
love that diminishes
while a fetus grows.

I'll think of my dad growing up
under a different circumstance.
Think if my mom could hear,
she'd probably like to dance.
Think of my grandpa and my brother,
one isolating, one with too much love--
I wish it'd smother
me, under a Christmas tree,
whispering, 'I wish I could give more,
but all I have is me.'

At first I did love you,
but the frame spills metal guts.
Always thinking of you,
the way your eyes, wide shut.
To think of a turn,
I watched it blur,
the glass shattered.
The paramedics mimicked me,
lifting me up,
'What's the matter?'

When I grow up, I'll be dope.
Find a nice blond and maybe elope.
Shake into her what was stirred into me,
and tell her not to mistake it for chemistry.
And bleed no more, so she doesn't believe,
that there used to be a weaker me,
but it's hard to control a certain circumstance--
like, what if my mom wished to dance?

Green, stringbean bodies.
  Neon skin, the color of
a lime being crushed
  underneath a heel.

Tell me about earth,
  I could hear the voice
in my head. Like a
  radio being crumbled
up into a ball and
  thrown into my
train of thought.

Earth?

Yes, Earth. Tell us about it.

Us?

There are forty-million listening.

Oh. Well, Earth. Earth. Earthy-Earth.
  Earth is full of humans, like me.
People. Humans are people.
  And people are hell.
In No Exit, there are these--

We've read No Exit.

You've read No Exit?

We've read everything humanity
has published, in a matter of
  m o m e n t s.
You aren't as developed as you
seem to think you are.

What was the best thing you read?

We were partial to
Last Exit to Brooklyn.
Now, back to our question:
tell us about Earth.

If you've already read everything,
why do you need to ask,
let alone ask me?

You are the most
insignificant person
on this planet.
We are interested
in your thoughts.

I'm insignificant?

Yes.

Oh. I see.
Earth... Well, people...
People are beautiful.
The Earth is beautiful.
What makes us gorgeous
is our growth and our
desire to progress.
What makes us dazzling
is our belief that
a collective happiness and
an individual happiness
is both attainable
and sustainable.
Now, **** me
and annihilate
my planet, already.
That's why you're here,
right?

No. We're here to
harvest your women
and to colonize
everyone else.
You just persuaded us
to breed with your women.

But, that's ****.
And colonizing?
That's slavery.

We've read everything
your planet has ever written.
**** and slavery has been
encouraged on your planet
since your brief breath of
e x i s t e n c e.

It's loud.

Violet, Blue, and Green lights
scatter across the floor,
across a canvas of house music,
echoing back into itself.

She crawls towards me,
wearing only poorly inked tattoos
and the lights that kiss us all.

I touch myself,
wishing it was her.

- I leave the room,
the music fading away,
like retreating from
sound-carrying-birds -

The smoke that comes from the cigarette
forms a skeletal web, reaching for the moon.
With rain slapping the dark brick walls,
hugging and creating an alley reminiscent
of a salivating, crooked-cement mouth,
I stand drenched in silver forgotten.

I drop the cigarette in a petrol-colored puddle,
watching it sink, become hard to distinguish,
and fade away.

- I reenter the room,
the song has changed
and is more mechanical. -

It's loud.

The lights are now
Bubblegum, Aqua, and Tangerine.
She lays supine, watching dollars
drift down, slowly, almost frozen.
Then the splitting of the air.

Fat-Man's body does a half-spin
as I lodge a bullet into his obese shoulder.
The music still blares, almost meaning more, now.
Regrouping himself, Fat-Man is weaponized,
drawing a greasy, inky blaster, desperate to spit.

A supernova erupts and quickly disappears--
like the aftermath of blowing birthday candles--
as his black speckled, crewcut scalp peels back,
letting fragments of chalky skull and pink penne
***** out of his square, boxed head.

Blood appears black under these lights
and instantly whips across
Samantha's still supine body.
The remaining people in the room
scatter like light exposed roaches.

Haunted, she is a toppled statue.
My steps move with the rhythm of the song.

Fat-Man's leather jacket
holds more meat than some mouths.
I plant my hand inside all pockets, find $6,480
in greasy, bloodier-than-usual presidents,
and move towards her, with the music.

Crouching beside her, I wipe the blood.
I clean her pale, tense torso
and help her up.

On two painted feet, she looks detached.
Silence exists, now, despite the music,
while she studies me with the same brown eyes.
Her lips quiver, she remembers
and wraps me with much thinner arms
that used to exist in nothing but memory.

Your crooked smile flows upward
and I can see it from the ground.
Haunting myself with
a film teacher's creature feature
in black and white,
an old orchestra for sound.

You said you'd get nervous
when on our clunky telephone;
saying that customer service
could hear the fibers
in your voice
rustle like tall, dry grass,
with a wind whispering through
confirming, with every breath,
that you feel alone.

We'd recite fifties sitcoms:
Honey, do you --
do you have the keys?
Well, gee whillikers,
I could use someone to
open me, close me, and
dispose of me, please.

I write this for no one,
which is the category you fall in.

Sincerely,
signed Issues,
P.S. The television
is in color,
and I don't miss you.

- There ain't hope in the U,
the S is for Show me your soul,
the A is for Always forget:
the United States of
Killing it, Killing it -

She said that biting my nails was a bad habit,
as she pulled a puff from the lipstick stained cig.
Habits, I can tell you all about them, she croaked this,
Men, War, Love -- Forgive me for being redundant.
I shook my head and released a laugh that seemed to
float past her, with little acknowledgment, little care.
Men, War, Love, Drugs, *** -- I've had it all inside me,
I've witnessed it tremble through and pass, with gradual
recklessness. I've seen and felt it all, but I wonder if I've
experienced glimpses or the entirety of what life has had
to offer me, bad or not, true or contrived. And this, this
wonderment is my most terrible habit; it will destroy me,
through and through, until nothing is left but a smoldering
foundation; a shell, burning through cigarettes and life.

There are pleas
that disguise themselves
in trees
that whisper in the dark-
Like a crinkle in a kiss,
or the words that you'll miss;
too late for meds,
too late for sleep
this time.

We ride on the beaches
with cool kids and leeches.
We **** blow off the ground
because there are times you feel,
and some you fake
when everyone is around.
The bodies in red
that you leave in your head.

The trees tesellate
into nooses and goodbyes.
And I swear this isn't the first time
that you've loved me
like it's the last time;
when I've been something to lose.
The love you have
is the love you refuse.

Your cries are milk-
I wish your cancer was mine.
To be a mistake.
To be left behind.

The buzzed people
burn out on the street.
It's four a.m.
and cold toes are leaving imprints
on the concrete face
where the drunks and the homeless
beg for help
and for the past to change.

You, me, and every one we've met,
lean on the side of the tattooed bar,
smoking cigarettes that stain our lips,
slurring words that escape our souls.

You're wearing
Black Chuck Taylor All-Stars,
as we stand underneath
the black, starry sky.
You tell me,
as you put out the cherry
with your wet thumb,
that, "I busted my cherry
while riding my bike.
I hit a bump, then another,
and another."

We kiss and you whisper,
"It sounds better than the truth, right?"
I feel overwhelming sadness,
as I look at your freckles,
your speckled irises,
and I want to believe
the manufactured ignorance
that the world offers
and you take,
saying, "Of course, love."

Her eyes are like a bowl of cereal:
swirled with sweetness, soft but cold.
She lays in the center of a cobblestone intersection,
as tires bounce like knuckles off of teeth.
And ruby ribbons run from her mouth,
heading down the street that breathes south.
The sky above her stretches like notes from a guitar,
spitting acid rain tunes that'll turn into the pitter patter of a musical monsoon,
washing her body away from my sight and yours,
cleansed from our memories and the city floors.