"death wears the mantle of absurdity"

- and alight the cord
to see the inward lamp glow again
watch the room unroll
like eyelids opening,
let it fill the space.
the walls are bare and pale as bone
and the ceiling has been pried off,
like a cardboard box cut at the top,
and the sky: a mirror above it.
the light reaches towards the mirror
and there's no reflection -
the lamp has short arms,
clumsy fingers like a child
and cannot keep the sky
but for the stars reaching back
through pin-pricked holes.

the imagery whispers
quietly in neutrals,
bone white and starlight alike
speaking back and forth
on the folly of the universe outside
and how it only seems to exist for decay.
they do not laugh at the absurdity;
they feel as if they are the same,
living reflections of the stars' cycles -
life for the purpose of death,
death for the purpose of perpetuation -
and when their story ends
the inward lamp burns it's course to expiration,
but this is not the end.
you need to reach -

you who floats in my psyche:
be wary of this place--
this ocean is uneasy
and it will swallow up your ship
in little seconds,
spit up the boards and drown the sails,
drag your crew to the ground,
their breath to the sky,
and you to shore
somewhere you don't know
where you'll build a new ship,
pack more rope
and stronger sails.
not every thought you'll brave
is deep enough to sink anchors into
and you'll quickly run aground,
but some will stretch down too far
and you'll run out of rope
before the metal strikes sand.
find a place you like up there
and hold fast to the ground if you can--
double check your mooring
before you fall to sleep
or hang a hammock up high
and float somewhere new;
watch unfamiliar clouds
laze above your perch
and listen for storms

The result of my previous work
you’ve read is not something
that has just flowed down a
current of creativity, dont be fooled,
the amount of wasted words wilted,
stuck to wine stained cedar desks and
lost in distraction of cigarette smoke
and the blood of a workdays fist,
the open windows
on a computer of
unfinished work
is only proof that I can see
a reflection in the screen
when it’s turned on too,
the lament of the mouse
and “don’t save” turns the clicking
into grinding teeth,
oh, yes..
sometimes I can write a piece in minutes,
but other times, I’m either rekindling a
relationship of drywall and knuckle,
pouring drinks,
lighting cigarettes,
answering phone
calls, coughing through
fields of wet cement
in my throat,
or staring at the paper as
a mirror in a casket,
when I sit down and write
with cigarettes and drinks
the outside world doesn’t exist
but at the same time
reality has never
existed as much as it has
at that moment.

the doves that fly from my mouth
are simply crows painted white, plastered
with the lies i tell myself every day.

there's no master magician
behind the curtain - just a person.
a hypocritical, delusional illusion of a person.

and these sparkles that you see,
nothing but smoke-bombs and trickery,
a costume to hide the reality that i'm a sham.

the tides are impossible these days
moving in and out of focus,
leaning and falling back from shore
clawing the ground as they're pulled.
they sift through the rocks
like a child looking for shells
or burying his feet
as deep as he can in the gravel's warmness
before the cold comes for his ankles.
the water moves faster than before--
now that the moon's in an ice chest
shedding dust and gravity
somewhere in a ship far from shore--
and the men who caught it
have hopelessly lost their way,
victims of an all-too-sudden high tide
and violent, rushing winds.

it turns out it didn't take much
to take the silvered old rock down.
moonlight is spun like a web
down in pillars to the ground and water,
sticking to sea spray and the clouds,
suspending in the air.
a couple of fishermen caught it
while filled half-and-half
with sleep and moonshine.
they said it wandered near the edge
of the cliff where night meets the day
and when they threw the net up
the moon's web got twisted, tangled in rope
and pulled it right down with them.

some light floats on.
broken strands of silk take to the air,
still attached to the ground and water,
though the connection's cut at the other end.
they're waving away today, in the sky,
like a luminous greeting:
hello, or goodbye.
people watching onshore say it's pretty
to see the moonlight like this--
they say it looks like a field of tall grass
pushed sideways and whirling,
carrying fireflies and ladybugs away
from the overgrown--
and they feel like the insects
buried deep in their own glowing forest,
talking to the sea and moonlight with waves.