The hollow I am, habit, cowl of the sky, hand
Of the holy, mouth of the most high witnessed all
The bloodshed of the children He should love. A bullet
To the infidel set to flight, bore the dove. I
Don’t know what it was that inside me died, at the
Sermon in the woods, they were preaching in the dirt
It was faith in silence made the good man convert.

Bore the holy cross, they would bear the holy sword
Those defamers of His name, smoking sacred an
Offer to Adonai, the poor lamb they had lamed.
Christ wept, held his face littered by the holy man
‘Till he disappeared from vision became just an
Ordinary man, to walk in the valley of death.
I took from my shoulders the weight of debts past on.

Centeries’ share of ghosts of the ****** lived and died
Like this iconoclast and I blazed on that path,
Now penitent for everyman for all the love
That he may bring is surely shame to everything,
And to all by it abide. I shall revere no
Holy man nor the love he cast aside nor He
Who allowed the righteous to bear His name in vain.

Thereupon the graveyard hill
The moonlight, the **** arrest me still
The forms that clasp my hands and will
Stood there as I stared into the dark.

Frightful, there, as I wasted merely
Watch Sol retreat, my beloved dearly
Left me to the crest of moon, so dreary
Whilst came the eve and her baleful art.

What emerged there I could not tell
Some ghastly mist wash’d ‘pon the knell
I knew I stood where haunts do dwell
And awaited my life, me, to thusly part.

In the dark of mind, of eyes
The visions growled with bitter despise
They laughed and mocked my bitter cries
Which rang in the frost’d dark.

From shifting tombs I heard a blast
And saw there distant the teeth that gnash
But stayed so far as my vision cast
And retreated from time to their glassy plots.

Left there was no hellish waste
But dazzling auroras in its place
So the earth mirror’d constellated grace
Here on ground, or aether was I not.

The sleepy moon produced a harp
And bid the winds to sing their part
To lift me from, to effulging stars
While forms spectate in intended spots.

The chiming bells and blissful psalms
Were to me some transcendent alms
And left their glitter in my eyes’ palms
Which refused the word, remained as thought.

Therein I saw my wrongs turned right
That evil in the dark is born of the light
And infernal black is at first white
That what I’ve feared was sun-taught.

I ran, then, from the graveyard hill
Whilst ‘cross the valley the dawn did spill
Crassly, the sun, the shades’ home fill
Leaving me blind just as at the start.

Set, did I, my pen to make
The beauties witnesses, tho’ too late
The ebon innocuous still to this date
I lost them, lost them as I stare into the light as tho’ the dark.

So upset am I by desire, a want that extends to another.
How unfair it must be on the other side of this transaction,
Invisible.

To think each day is the same evolution of the same sentiments
Rising and falling under the same horizon:
I see it as my own tendencies

Wake, contemplate, fight with myself, eat, elate,
Fall asleep with contention—no dreams
Want to sleep next to me.

For it is the root of philosophy to have your other half—
I am completeness without my other half whose existence
Is questionable,

Is irrespective of fate and, frankly, unaware. Yes, we’re all
Philosophers to the grave, to the ebb of human passion,
Of which I’ve been bereft by forces apathetic to my demise

I am alone—shall I always be? These and other serious questions
Come from misery. You’re a placeholder for something I lost long ago
And my watch is endlessly caught on the twenty-fifth hour

Unmoving.
I want to not feel alone—and so that is my relationship
Concerning the other person, whom is rightly not here

I am too wrapped up in the concept to think of others as people
But means to my own happiness. I am ultimately the selfish one
The only difference between me and other people: success.

Drink and bleed: defining moments in my life to discover both
So my problems can take on their own lives and breath,
And there is my distraction, my face in the display window at a zoo.

Though, if ever I were to break through the clouds, I would not
See paradise, nor if I looked down, see cities in the lake—no, there would just be
Another film too high for me to puncture. I can float in the endlessness,

Uncertainty glimmers like angels across the bold nighttime sky
I let the inertia move me, let poor mood speak my piece
Until I, like all other human interaction, fall out of place.

If I could be your guard of solitude, the shadow of your light
I would gladly stay, half-starved of oxygen
For then I'd be strong enough to cope with falling out of place.

1
Shh…the rain cooed, calming the flood that rages
Still a concern…or was
Now placed upon the wetted soil
Transfigured, blessed in holy oils scented with cinnamon.
#2
I grasp at the compass that Donne reassured,
Tragic to find it etched in notes
Of the Song of Swans:
It may commune beneath a firmament of birds
Yet, it seems divided in this steely sky—the color of wrathful swords—
I sniff: it smells of cinnamon.
#3
I am drawn by the scented bliss, anointed in general
That is, with the rest,
But somehow, cologned, it’s too sweet, too new
Now a criminal to laws of ancient Hebrew.
To the iron clouds, the necks will bend,
To turn from he who smells of
Cinnamon
That is, with the rest.
#4
Yet, they do not smell
Nor peel back its bark lest it poison the oil
As rain poisons soil,
And ignore, as they do, when rain is to come,
The oil is fragranced evil with cinnamon.
#5
And though I complain, clack to the mud
It, too, smells of cinnamon,
And so we’re the same.
#6
“****” is my cry. “**** them to their hell,”
Burn the concrete buildings, tear away social offal
That, with some entreaty, seems to plague us all! Why so much Injustice?
Who are you? A God? What makes one lump of clay
A clod, the other a home? Upon the heads of refused beings
How do you stand so tall? You can’t lest your empire fails
While the seesaw of suffering hoist up the side of wails
And smoke the vital oxygen,
Scowls, the first impression
Worried not about advancing goals but living day to day,
The things that move metabolisms, world-wide, subject to pay,
Wasting our lives not in 9-to-5s but looking
And failing to find
And toting excess and praising their holders
While blaming the others born from behind
Partitions drawn in world wars started for oil
For money, for wealth, both so glutted and glutting pride a nation wide
While its cells are tinged with cancer,
Both sides of false dichotomy claiming they have the answer, to answer the question
Of recidivism, the poor and they are to live or get along, dangling the carrot so high
It goes above their dreams, and it’s so blurry that it’s hard to tell
What exactly one pursues,
Or race, religion,
Of a woman’s place in the is to see how absurd such a question should be,
Here is a question that seems appropriate: why are differences discouraged,
Who says what is better but the powers that be
Lenses shaped for us to see only those things specifically made
To make the made untouchable,
And they do it, and will not stop, we’re left with no hope
But from where pleasure is wrought: drugs and sedatives that
Blunt the mind that worries, sober, replacing them until they’re over
But without any solution; a bandage to a bandage
Since a sober mind that cognizes problems can’t possibly solve them in the same state
Of mind.
A lust for love with no genuine conception,
*******, deflowering with cold, stony hearts
Fostered in a day and age where manipulation is more inescapable means
And less insidious art,
So broken by our broken dreams and forced to walk without contention
Compromising on who we are
No struggle to help make us strong
A simple shrug to carry on,
While the most powerful blood, the fire in our veins is given, given, given
To those we think we love,
While we sit dreaming and falling in love with love
Always coddling the scars, where the blood and sinew were streaming
Until they are closed and pink, taut and empty like a drum
Still yearning to beat the same rhythm again,
Needing to learn before synchrony may happen
And two drums may beat to the other’s tune,
Feeling some pulse that holds us feet from decay
All the warmth and butterflies
Come in a zephyr smelling of fetid, carrion meat
That makes true affection
Feel like maggots in the skin
And we leave to new horizons, akin in their process:
Where they end, where they begin.
And yet we’re so weak in every regard, being the forge of our own fortress’ petard
Sade-masochists that run, run, run away
Feeling as though we’re cast to sea, waiting for the problem to deal with itself
A shining light house on a miserable horn
Hides by our back, the shore receding out, and even in the darkness
The vastness of the sea, there’s still the light cast ‘cross the sky
With the same, though fleeting, periodicity.
And I can do nothing, least, nothing of worth
Being as I am, a whiny little white boy with middle class struggles,
Well-fed, well-cared for, and some domestic unrest
But I am minor, mediocre at best,
And have never had the muscles, the mettle, put truly to the test.
So I can only complain beneath the anthill of my worries
And all my attempts to make any change are thwarted by my failings, my comfort
My life,
Doing drugs, self-medicating because it’s the best I can come up with
Spiraling beyond uncontrollable until it is no longer
Me whose spinning down to destruction,
That was something of the past
Now, I truly have nothing to grasp
And I kick and I scream and I try and I try and I try
But look in dismay at any hope I may have for people to change, yet their conduct belies
A sense or desire to be anointed enspiced
Since the general oil has seemed to suffice, and that’s not enough, but I just want some change
Some honesty, but I can’t find it, I know not what I feel
All this angst piling up, like a chapter in the life of Holden Caulfield:
He’s my ******* idol since I pressed with all this
Stupidity with no venue but complaints
And this is doing nothing, this ******* poetry, neither solving nor affording comfort
Back to me. It is art and no one cares
It has no voice, save the face-value point
And I want meaning, and so I try to make it knowing full well
The intention is demeaning, but not in my writing
Its filthy fingers touching on everything that I’d like to achieve
Legitimately, but it’s all conditioned
It’s breakdown is imminent  
If only I knew how accept
Oils scented with cinnamon.
I wish I was different, or acted upon it, instead of just ******* in the lines
Of a sonnet,
Or that others may smell of their own fragranced oils
Then trifles, then problems may seem something
Of little toil
But, but, but, where am I to go, where do I begin?
I’ve gone in circles, where I stopped I’ll start again
And I’ll never escape because…
#7
Shh…the rain cooed, calming the flood that rages
Still a concern…or was.
In due time the sun will do as it does:
Show us what is, is soon to be what was.
The nature of me, with little consistency, is grasping for a dawn
I see it coming up
Now that I’ve smelled the breeze
Of cinnamon.

The daytime has come
But the daylight has no sun
Only a bright moon

The night has fallen
But the darkness has no moon
Only a dim sun

Horizon is blessed
By some dread revelation
Sun exists in moon

The day will exhaust itself if it keeps running away;
Shadows may fetch its hills as they fetch the floors—
There is all the grime of family life portraiting
Seamy corners perfumed with stale smoke
Blackened as it comes with twilight,
Narrated by cracked smiles and “some’re” teeth
Stories of the happy winds, the simple views
Pits of bromide comforts and steely prides
And all around resilience to spiting one’s face.
Even as the sky waxes intense the pink of waning day
I find no hope in the west, but a weight pressing
On the very outcropping of my birth—
These modern monks, these pretty babes
Calmly lie in for the new day; it is behind the mountain.
It is from there the stars themselves unfold
From their translucent dirt and the last beautiful word
Of home is heard, something like country tears
And watching myself grow too fast for my liking,
The stars are not ready for counting,
They’ve lost that allure
Puffballs glow on the hill, lost souls on the grazing lands
Finding, at once, where the winds of change will take them
Everywhere, nowhere, freed and sobbing and mocking the
Birds and the flowers all praising themselves natural,
Taking my lungs’ air to the milky distance
As it starts to run and on and so on…

1
We read the Titans in a ***** binding, stitches
Crossing in inspiring genetic code and though
Sweet winds in Elysian plans blow, peppered
On the fertile mind, great poets sowed these realms of Hell
Petite scholars pass cursorily, in attempt or ignorance
This classroom won’t appreciate, for years behind, years until.

There was substance in their parting wrists, or ninth ring
Of some divorce in descending rings of darkness and liquor,
And binding chains clasped too numbed from vacillation
I find the journey down their spiral, sad but beautiful
Who wakes with them on either side: design, ebullient suicide?

They lie before me, still vivacious, I lay on looking
In their papery autopsies revealing nothing but scars,
Nothing but the inexplicable, the inescapable prophesy of war
So distant, papery, eternally recurrent and so beyond us men,

Did you sacrifice yourself for the poem, little shred of self
For the gleam of light of day in time of the beloved belated?
What caught your heart, the one you slain, that looks past us all
But moves beyond tears—something ungraspable you had to shed
Life to attain, whose mockery was impetus, just as it was bane.

Pray tell, does it hurt to, in time, become absurd?
A living contradiction, a multiplicity, tiny strings, and blood
Black as ink and nihilism, but swooning, structured, and romance
Pure dialectic, two bodies of verse coincide; a black hole
Dark and Worse. The ultimate catharsis of poetry, lived in every line.

#2
There were abysses in those falling leaves,
Fullness of a lighted walk, irreclaimable annihilations
And empty existences. Now, we write them
Write them down, on these falling loose leaf scraps.
But what has been, is smashed to bits, eventually withering
Eventually splits; yet, something of history is fed from their breast
And we know the miseries that were forewarned.
Ever shall we follow, now that you’re died and died ever on?

To Hell with Socrates; art’s no imposter, but the rudiments
In fact it rears us philosophers, asks and answers all questions
We’re all philosophers: we know what knowledge denies,
Laughs at, and awes: the sole thing nihil cannot belie
Therefore, the pantheonic blood is spilled and I
Drink headily. Draw the same course and dark spirit
That plucks the ferns pushed through the crack
From the grains of aged monuments, past frisson of
Repeated denouement and Time’s cynosure has lent.
The poets may suffer but know what we don’t
And die just to find the panaceaic solution to death
For they, they will never die, and we will pass, unleft.

There is something, a more perfect flame
Born of the cold of its self-destructive Same
As all fire in every iteration.
Why does it consume, a being therefrom
Ash, budding in envy and infantile,
Itself? Where shall it return? Tragedies
In waves and yet I’m so affixed
To those weeping, weeping lost
Amidst themselves, wanting completeness
Or one leaf to survive them
Through the Spring. Here, amidst
The tragedies, red-eyed, disheveled
And hoping for rebirth.
I will stand here, bury it in earth.

The sun, so lover-like, ran her fingers
Through the glistening leaves,
Movements soft, so full of intention
Their waxy dew, shuttered in response,
A low moan played in the breeze,
The light of sonority contrasts the electric
Disharmonies in the stormy afternoon.

Though I could feel a forest now eased
The river that runs through
Carried the blood of a plural heart
Beating with a passion akin in power, though enemy in fashion,
As its waves beat the banks
Eroding them into, eating up the aridness
As though slaking were its due, muddying the sky’s blue
From its surface, piercing the eyes from its reflection
Discouraging, this turbid froth, from worth of further inspection.

It rages and rages over rocks so violently
Picking at its slimming walls, making and claiming
Detritus along the path so that all the beauty a river is
Crashes, collides, and disfigures—a chaos growing
Bigger and bigger—the speed of its wrath
Bespeaks of its wake, blasting the earth (Watch it dissipate!)
Out of my sight it runs its due course south
Spitting the detritus that arrives
At the mouth.

Piercing winds, fast and with malice
Whisk away, playfully, the revolutions,
The songs and smoky thoughts
Which I saw smoldering right in front of me,
I see them rising in the night
At the ceiling
In dull streetlight
Mere abstractions, soft and white,
But roar the horn
Of guilty pasts
To their image the smoke holds fast
What soured scorn and blackened mien
Reject my constant repentant whine
And I travail, until I sleep
Their jeers and anger
I choose to keep.
And worthy, still I lay in bed
To even look into a dome ahead
Finite, bleak, and hopeless that
I find only appropriate.
And so close,
I grasp its bars
And wince ghosts whip and slash
At my wrists which I hold out
And tell them “harder” ‘tween teeth gnashed.
The day light comes,
And illumes my worth
By my feet spelled out in the dirt
And just and fair, to dirt I pair
That’s why my eyes
Are fixed there
All I gaze on, vibrance to ashen waste  
Ask the smoke
The he and she, I corrupted chaste.
So my neck can take nine tails
My head is bowed in penitence
Yet, there is no flogger
But my own guilt,
My crimes, like flowers,
From proper minds wilt.
I’ll keep these eyes downcast,
Where they belong
And move without progression
For I’ve done wrong
And with the ground I stay
To payback what debts that vanish
To pay them everyday.

These ides have kept me thus far
Sustained, am I, eternal
By their food of self-sacrifice
The jester’s tasty wine
Imbibing insults wrought by fool’ry
Again, reciting the dirge for pride
But the ides have kept me thus far.
Despite the ru’nation
Hoist! Ye ru’nous hands
My repute in mortification
A fool by their and my demands
I see my shame, long shadow cast
In light of sobriety
Ignominy and truth of me
Divorc’d n’er they be
Still taste of cheap liquors, distilled society
But the ides have kept me thus far.
Full knowledge, have I
The disservice I do
Only time will heal the wound
To shy away, acceptance is
A lovely balm on par
My image in tatters, though brazen I be
The ides have kept me thus far
Let them laugh, for I know they do
Not to me, but within and among
I am your entertainment
The source of all your jeers
My life, a blund’ring show
I am an actor, my blight for years
A part to play, it’s pleasing though
To thrive upon your mocking and time
Comforting knowledge, that
A fixture, am I, your Thalia
The ides have kept me thus far
Erected austerity, enigmatic walls
Fortifications around me
Charged to keep the chaos in
My heart, it truly calls
I am not so noble
As the sun will attest
Know me as the ascetic,
See the shrieking eccentric,
Know me as the philosopher
See my wit pathetic,
Know what is outside is purely for show
See that is internalized, is
So ******* antithetic
Each and every time
I hide my face in shame
My pride and my name, my actions did thus mar
But I will heal, I always do
The ides have kept me thus far
This is my mantra, an empty cadence
A mist to latch on to
With every refrain of wretched debauchery
Each weekend played anew
Though I stay to bear the howl
Of my dissonant, ugly hymn
I listen to the hardened ones
Their failures but a din
I wish to change the thing I am
At least to those who know
I’ve heaved the chance to the icy mar
Onto the cracking floe
I feel the daggers of humiliation
Plucking at each stitch
I’ll just smile as though I like it
For in effect I do
But it’s becoming unbearable
The walls beginning to bow
Imperceptible, if my resolve she lasts
Though this is nothing new
But I’ll just grin and carry on, for
The ides have kept me hitherto.

These things belong on a shelf
Like a bottle of tears that looks like a stuffed animal
And a pillow case that became a great transport of rage,
Amidst the dust and clutter
Runs my subconscious animal seeking blood, meat,
Retribution and the slightest gain
Through the wires of the human body
Cut and casually rearranged.

These things are purposed
As notches in a Grecian urn
Cold reminders of a worthwhile mistake
Taken astride and antiqued
For me, for you, betokened at my expense
Because I need to eat, occasionally oddly,
And when the stomach can’t trust the hands
Your clothing stays close to your body.

These things are like dresses on a library,
Dressing the dirt underneath
As life preservers full of water, full of wine
But these are situational traumas
And never lacking their angel wings
Defective and cuckolding self-esteems next to me
Hold hands at the bottom of the ebb and flow
Of human misery or ecstasy,

Just maybe it’ll hurt too much this time,
As revenge for my laughing at its brothers.

Pursue anxieties through the arches
Grand clothes, in all, proscenium
Marks the flesh of fiction of which
We wear in pride and tears, breaking
At whimsy the sacred real. Born in
That repetition, the rebel who rips
With rage and striking tongue solidity
All to null. We hold the soul of the earth
In balance just as we know every second
And intense authority, conscious of the body
To mold the putty of your lives.
Absurd boheme! But this magician
This contradiction with no delusion of self
As close as any man may get therefore
To perfection in our nihil.
Running, running all alongside
The misted face of high Olympus
And greatly gathering elements
And crafting, as any god to waltz
In history and awe, Absolute from
Absolute None.
Meet us when, meet us when
All the words like leaves do die
We’ll leave you with the seed of it
From drama comes drama
To drama it will go.

I’ve had small rains beat on my glasses before
And they have been worse, from the inside, and quieter
And much less poetic;
At least, there is wind to lick me dry here
At least, there are petals fat with sweet water
At least, there are stars on the corners of my eyes
At least, it rains outside me now.
If it floods in on the pavement,
And my glasses fog up when I go back in,
At least the soothing patter was wanting me,
And didn’t care if I spoke or not.
I chose to remain quiet and let storms pass
When they’ve formed high above these
Mixing, curious hands because all that keeps me dry
I’ve left inside of wooden clocks
Around the mossy roof of fallen beams
The welling pool where stupid ducks land
Does nothing for thirst, but divines the oils
A laxness of my limbs and skin glisters like a monitor
No longer need to be told to go anywhere,
I see great whales of rains bold against the surface
Draining in a vortex a pierced reminder
I’ve washed my hands too much, an urge to break mountains
To level ocean floors, for love, for pity, for awe—
All taught and told with a whole dry face.
There is no hero but the hero of undoing
And I’ve not learned enough of comfort
Between the walls that crush moment after moment
And all I can call home, is a kind of dance in the rain
Adrift from the music and all on my own.

The wind that roars and shatters the night
Kills solace, this, and peace, that
What little balm is here for me
Is torn away
By the Wind.
Metal twists and whines out loud
These walls are bowing in
To entrap me like a seed
Encloséd hard
By the Wind.
Impassioned, is this wind-wracked night
Full of sadness, love, and spite
The wound inflicted long ago
Made gangrenous
By the Wind.
I see chains that shake and choke
Where their sleep is unpleasant
Bound by hands that do not touch
And laughed at
By the Wind.
There, those chains in brunette hair
And blue eyes and silver tongue
Turned away and turned back
Vivid life enforced on me
By the Wind.
Closer and closer the wind pushed walls
The farther you are away
The tightness, oh solitude
Your cadence carried
By the Wind.
The wind, the wind dissects the very earth
I split, it splits by loss of harrowing trial
The chasm it makes, pure anger bursts forth
I feel the distance as it grows,
An adult wound, mile by mile
We’ll soon be foreign people
Breathing foreign airs
So be it! I say, just let me rest,
You just keep walking from my mind
Blown back again, festering,
Blown back again
By the Wind.

Swoon to a tearful night, unknown to its grief
Dialogue of peace, and those of plight
Ringing of morphology, raindrops on the roof.
Such things heard from the peasants’ seat
In the many wet heads sopping
In the sonorous waves, upright in the city clime
Untending to their beds.
At the bottom of that something
All told are destined they will find
Be pliable to the ills they’ve dealt
To carry on, to work, admonishments
Said once to justify these red romances
That in every rain storm melt
As pity through the night, forever unclasped
From shackles of their blame
Since life and ideology somehow are the same.
‘Tis destiny for abating storms
As some will rose from their thickened thorns
These nights deliver their gentle morns
All the same as hemlock grows as poison
And is best to be avoided.
How—this, I fear only rain my know—
Can we still bathe in fraternal glow
When some still heal from Death himself
Each breath that enters is quickly prayed to leave
High on seated thrones
Those mean so quick to thieving, the poor
The lazy deserve no quarter
Those dusty pockets afford not one
So steal the heart upon his sleeve.
May we help man wrought our kin and kind
By common tongue, free, as we are ought?
Since another may make my world
He is mine to protect, not throw to bytes
So ludicrous and feeding back upon themselves
For destiny can be remade
If hatred weren’t so blind.

Expectation stands in Middlecreek’s waters, it toddles
In curious little hands, in Marylanders only up for the day,
And the snow geese hang like freed shapes of the sky;

This lake comes alive with fluttering wings,
The people around me keep their eyes close to the ground
While a new and weightless thing who walks in fickle grace
Stands in awe from every eye transfixed and terrified
Even the infant child, reborn like of us
Under what little sun 100,000 geese would allow
Through flight, into a world of charcoal.

Something happened in every eye. I don’t know what gods
Revealed themselves to us, or if we walked joy from scorn
But none of us felt human or pain only the swirl of the birds
Dancing inside one another like fire, like passion,
And all the words anyone tried to say were wrong.

Could I say my name anymore and still be right?
Could I call myself so separate when every heart there
Stuck to a single note, and every mouth struck dumb?
Could I speak beauty any longer, or had the geese
Renewed the tongue a fictive beast?
We never were what we thought we were
All but angels afraid of floating there.

Who, I ask,
Is this phantom I pen poems for?
What ghost
Is this, apparition of my verse
And greatly its inspiration?
None; that’s who.
Worse yet,
My insistence on wasting ink away
On mysterious “you”s
Whatever, whoever
She may be.

Tinderbox pt.1—Magic
At first,
I caught its eye
In the rolling smoke of fire
I ****** my hands
To pull it out
And speak with lighted words,
In light of brilliance,
A vital warmth,
But in the end just ashes.
And then,
The curve of silk waters
Which rushed upon and through the rocks
Wrote to me
A rich and liquid poetry
Not in bursts but subtle waves
I cupped my hands to catch its words,
But even then,
I could only hold so much
And only for so long.
               Tinderbox pt. 2—the Artist
Entranced in the world
Here and beneath the moment,
In the spaces and each letter
I saw the fire, the waves of silk
Each play in their environs,
I’d grieve
At their perfection,
Running my eyes over their hilly peaks
And dreaming mine had been there.
My worlds were ugly, incomplete
Extinguished at very moment
That the two would meet
The tinderbox was fire to my hands,
My cup was rife with holes
And there, I’d thought the artist dead
Or never even alive.
In my sleep I’d hear a voice
Like Milton, Coleridge, or Shelley
A babble arresting and forcing pity
From its infantile lucidity...
I knew this thing, but killed it.
Perhaps even now, I believe in magic
Though, to pluck rain from a furied storm
Or converse with tiny sparks
That become
Something of brilliance and solemn silk
That groves were wrought from tiny seeds
Long after mere chaos
That, from it, comes a universe
and white paper is all it needs.
What awoke me was not
That there was art
But that the words had tried to say something,
Something the heart could not speak
Nor the mind would dare to reason;
It was not as much the words that made it up
But the worlds in between them.

Tiny moving parts,
A spirit of synchronicity
That I had ruminated on:
How it starts,
And they stop
Wrought of genius
And simplicity
The dawn and fall of humankind
All seated on a wrist
Swinging forward and behind
In whose fate
The hands so twist.
Dusting charcoal from glitt’ring grin
Mocking in a single prayer
Each second, loud
And growing gayer
Penitence for that second’s sin
For blank, so empty
The vessel sat
Covered, not covering,
In the grayish-black
Wasted time in unused power
The watch but looks away
Meager, sour
Persistent still
‘Till wakened by the rested hour
Where dawn illumes
The hideous sight: a failure
A void in Dis’ sweet hall
God’s hand stained in graphite
And no grace upon creation
Did any of it fall.

The question is
Where to begin?
Why, with honest heart
And boldly sin!
And sin I must
Against myself
Pinning the inkwell
A bespoken purpose
--The poetic confession
Since speech commands silence
And advances regression.
My courage it falters
And guts turn all queer
Neither could reckon
With our distances near
And confessing this outright
Is just plain absurd,
I hope I have made
My cowardice clear.
True, this is petty
And prideful at best
Poem’s the proper vehicle lest
My weakness runs wild
As ornery thoughts
And binds up my tongue
And stomach in knots.
But onward! I bore you!
My pen spitting gibb'rish
Thinking sense and writing none  
I’m too far to turn back
And the day is yet won!
But can I be blamed
For nerves all on end
When the single string in every thought
Goes day’s beginning to its end
And all around and back again?
This whole semester
I’ve felt a fool
Beside this mind of eloquence
Of enervating sensation
Like, I, a simple candle
And auroras’ collocation
On the clearest luminescent night
With incensing breeze blown left and right,
Coupled with creative flair
And womanly chic, short, brown hair
I’m distracted, diverted stupidly
A boy's been made
Of the man in me.
I’m a mustard seed among
Religious men,
And profanation blossoms
Brought to transcendent, if divine heights
My words reaching an Elysian place
Touching new Heavens
With (excuse the pun) Grace.
Please don’t hold daft obligation
That you must reciprocate
The sentiments, here, laid before you
And mushiness innate
But the purpose is here
Not to woo
Nay, to salve this tiny,
Yet consumptive flu
So for stoic, normal me
This is something radically new.
So excuse the upheaval
And heavily borne load
It’s just perseverance
Through pessimistic mode,
I know this is weighty
And clichéd and trite
But I've been made weary
(And that’s creepy a mite)
Through countless embattled days
And resultant restless nights
With no intention to do so.
I hope this has struck you
Not perturbed or amused
Because right now I’m trembling
Sclerotic and bruised
And will follow, oh follow
This to its end;
To see this message
Read in your hands.
But until then, condemned
To sleep sad and wake gaily
To think only one thought
And think that thought daily
And thought is of you
Of you,
–.

Empty seats from me across; I sigh not, nor count it loss
But the drop of liquor and memory bits
Pieced together, but still a myth.

I question to the coffee light just why and what
Holds violence behind a wall of height?
Exactly how can he show his face around here?

Contrition is stretching unapologetically
For does it, too, know my fantasy
Or that I am vague to its reality?

Act or no, this marked giant infantile,
Acts on this, on me, my quintessence
As it's years from adolescence

A sigh, a sigh—my trick to think it good enough—
Peppered to my private ones an audience of extremes
Mirror use,

But if I speak would they care to know?
Hot coffee burns at it goes down
Have I faced a punishment fit yet, now?

Tight-lipped utterances and across town
They should feel the coals alight, powerful.
My better sense—my heart now, too—

Tell me this is not , nor ever true
Forgive me please if I have a few
Forgive me no, never, oh!

Feel fate on me when I come
Red-eyed and gritted teeth, meaning well
Father, forgive, though God’s not here

For more than mine, shed hath tear
Leave me to my silence, pay penance will I here
And in maddened eyes I avert

Just know in time (to that uncertain) that I
That I will rectify—invoke Holy Mary to this,
My heathen heart.

The sun rose pink over Lancaster;
Its frozen rains came quick in tow—
Here, we sense the passive and the active:
To take the drag or pull:
He is dragged by the way of the automatic hand-to-mouth;
The Other, is my command—
But that, even, impelled snowfully toward
A closed fist, a locked grasp, an unwilling departure.

I suggest a dislocation somewhere in parallax:
Take paper dimensions and fold them 104 times
And everything flattens out—
The ocular inversion becomes like-real; I’ll swim in that!
Puddles are dragged by the wind, whilst the pull thinks in spite
Of I, its strange corpus of author, and opus
Drags to the creature of appetite deign to call to order.

But a power powerless to its name given it:
Destined desiring of sunnier metaphors—
The alcoves of the thread, brought to just us
Caesuras of what satisfies, in food, in just us
The depth of image holds true: one cannot live on bread alone.
Thus, I muse and mull back to locks of hair and bellybuttons
Waiting, in time—the deepening of time’s cloth
Where my hand caresses her thigh—
One can feel the gravity pressing on the heart,
All the love that self-reflects, combs out the wrinkles,
And has faith in the good inertia.

By this secular host consubstantiate
And Other (surely a pleasing affair) is but moments away.
And she and I look so pretty together,
Our is of whom and what and the third conditional.

That which presses upon itself, the one dimension,
Cannot disentangle from name or alliance, nor faith,
Greedily picking at the oily ruptures, effulging in transparence,
Contradictions care not for astrology,
And whether you are poetry
Is not important here.

Look not into that hopeful scene, away and down the alleyway
Of your new life—new memories gambol and of them a new past,
Look not into that hopeful scene, nostalgia when comes as a new god
An infant-you beseeching you, “I’ll guide thy hand down two hist’ries.”
Look not into that hopeful scene, the past is clear and now empty
Autumn is sweet, exalted still though with this cold, and bitter will
A hopeful scene as it looks not, as car-exhaust mornings spray cool
The baby-sitter years, or days under the eye both looking in
That hopeless scene, the beauty of this never-was, never-had, likely
Never-will. For the reclaiming of past selves as wonton, fickle
As the purchase of small antiques and filling up those jars of brine
Today’s home is a present-past, recalled in ferns up through the cracks
Sure as coating on thy heart, it wants us to return, to call on
Doors that long ago inured to wailing of their theft, so it goes
And capturing the long-ago: look not into that hopeless scene.

Stepping on the pavements bits
That run into a concrete yard
A sprinkler spells its little yarn
Of countless **’rs, click-by-click

Puzzle pieces, broken brush
Make rough the plumage, dreamy air
In’t, surprised, pass others there
Since my own breath made them hush.

Autumn, were’t a talon’d hawk
Perhaps I scurry as mice do
Caught by awe and confusion, too
He dropped down, I, now free to walk

Maybe I will fetch the moon
A marble in the pocket cloud
Stays, but wavers, as wind does th’shroud
Safe, no pretense in its bloom.

Broken loose and freed from a tiring hand
One who, in restful dark, withheld just that,
And left me to wander
To trace forms in the dark
Where troubles and trifles and plain existence
Creep and whisper their damning allure.
How prone am I, at this fatal hour,
To marching idlely backwards through
A blackened torpor
And letting exhausted candles
The haunts that hold, illume the endless halls
That each corner and door
Some revealed appalls.
Drown their debauch which sensually fawn
Out in the words of Byron’s Don Juan
And still feel their tempts, by some form of folly,
That compel me to a world of licentious melancholy.
Looking back to my bed, growing all the number
Cursing the forces which denied me my slumber
And what I saw in rich, encroaching beryl
Reconciled the dreams bereft of me:
An air of such fancy, a more permanent scene.
A smell like the snow to the darkness betrothed
Harkened me hence to a frosted window pane
And out it I saw an occasion so mundane
But at his hour, this light, the glittering flakes effervesce,
I thought I a soul gone from this place
And sublimed to a world
Which cannot harbor, nor ever know, hate.
The sky was so pale which, blithe did it shed,
So many crystalline wonders falling from space
And resting with ease and settling right into place
At that I saw the immaculate ground
Uniform, sanctified, untrodden upon,
With such power as to ward away any notions of destiny,
And purgation of all that could darken the mood.
Each lambent flake a seed sprouted
‘till the lawn was full of snowy trees,
The boughs which bloomed like a placid freeze
Themselves wearing white and all encrusted with ice
Like holy men inept to the notion of vice,
Reached high to the Heaven,
That which I doubt,
To catch alms on their fingers and Gloria shout.
Miles off I hear permeating through the calm
Respire as I arrest,
Synchronized, with time, the lungs of the world
Until my being, minutiae, was that of the whole
And the heart of beauty, a natural heart,
Beat, my confederate,
In league with my own.
In the colors of preternature, picturesque they played
That even in my worst of lows,
My heart at that placed stayed.
The azure raiment bleached at the wakened hour
And my eyes could not help but look away
Blinded by some intense light
In darkness they reflect on the previous sight
And rapture still comes in recollection
How dull were the visions before me lain
Their memorial no substitute, all artifice and plain
Petty entreaties, my pinings for that place again
Though destruction of halcyon I durst not entertain.
Even in depression, it wiles ******
And at times is seizure upon me lengthy, despotic
I’ve something, a snapshot, a little dab of paint
Which even my horrors cannot fully taint
I’ll think back, I’ll go back to that very place
Which I did not wholly leave:
A place of pure bliss
Where I cannot grieve.

1
A dark September of the rising sun, lay it
Think on Nature’s belly, gaze to wide, and wide forget
All about the open, a shutter and a swelling,
As frost upon a filament, snapped and waving round
This cord could pluck amorous sound
Now it’s fat and dead vibration
Swallowed by Nature, her acoustics.
#2
He said I dreamt we made love on moss
Quickly his nature for it longs
Before and thence thereafter
Battered his own skull, the truncheon of those blast desires
All of their dreams, disillusioned by a rotting cream
Before he ate so gluttonously
And loath to think so freely.
#3
In the throes of such blanket miseries
He was a mountain climbing itself
Taillights seeking headlights
Middle of the line, seeking the end
Though this absolution of Dark September
Wretched and cold, has months as he miles
Towards the snow of Darkest November.

Pt.1
Love is a race
Gun fire to exhaustion
With runners, the lovers,
Kicking up rocks.
Digging, digging,
The stretch in sight
The thing, their body straining with all their might
And the crowd all cheering
The race neck and neck
Lauding the  winner, he loved
Gets the medal in his hands
I’m watching the celebration
Back at the start
I didn’t even move
Didn’t even start
Pt2.
I knew I’d crush
If Hope were involved
That *******
Held my hand
And told me it was hers
Though the door is tightly shut
That hope it still lingers
Last string on my harp, plucked clean
Hook, line, and ******* sinker.
Pt3.
Congratulations,
I hope he treats you well
I’ll retreat, again, to my little hell
Just goes to show the value
Of patience.
Enjoy each other, please.
Congratulations.
Pt4.
I never thought I’d win
And yet certain you’d be mine
Your boyfriend told me
Wordlessly
Just how pointless
Trying is.
Pt5.
*******,
I’m a loser again.
Who ******* cares?
We’ve all got our pain.
I’m nothing special,
But he certainly is.
Pt6.
Why am I *******
About this common occurrence?
It happens all the time—
All for naught
My romance.

A ****** countryside
Beneath the charcoal grey,
Whose bottom is alight
Shrouds the valley,
Blanketed in snow
Still and cool and quiet.
Gentle snowflakes kiss my cheek
Sitting fireside, with hominess
Warmed at the hearth of the sky
Hushed, the world, laying asleep
From holy halls, their lullabies
Smile, do the elements,
Their dream is what has become.
And so it is,
A dream, a dream,
Though I am awake
These little souls, their lanterns bright
Hold me to the end, across an endless earth
White in winter’s hollowness
I dream of you for all it’s worth.
Brave, must I, the motherly whitened path
And dream of distant you—
It keeps me warm, fireside
I thank the treasures, soul supplied.
My hearth is cold
With none to share
The brilliance of a chaste expanse
With none to help me stare.
I have a long way to that hearth
That I’ll call my own
The souls, the winter—Carry me home!
Soon, we’ll go
Your hand in mine,
Hearts akin,
Accoutrements of clothed embrace
We’ll go, so soon
Once I’ve stepped from this dream,
To have heated hearth of our own.
But now, I can’t
I follow the souls’ little lit lanterns
Through the valley in the snow,
I go alone,
In their solemn palms
As they carry my lost one home.

Predecessor of the morning hour
Bleeding through the gilded fringes that hang aloft in the wood
Breeze withheld its embraced dower
Humid casements held where I stood
The singeing lash did not come
Caged o’er the ridge
Melancholia, and the sky did shun
Ebon armada sent all the cavalry
Halberdiers and lancers, to contend a bitter rivalry
The brooding cataract washed
And I could only run
Towards pale shades and curtain rods
Towards uncertain suns
On the backs of Titans, the shoulder of Atlas my flight took rest
Before I, the ashen dome expands.
As though at my behest
And through the slaughter, the fray(!)
A presence of the light of day
Through the flush pillars
And fell beasts of rain
The bones of its enemies
Could be seen
Naked, exposed by eye so tiny and wan
Dispersed, did they
Frightened by valor of dawn

Velvet black plays coy in the breeze
Sashay ‘twixt those earthen palms, makes light
Dark corners of isolated trees. Flitting,
The velvet, intended candid yet so beguiles
The eyes that hide so much
And see so little
(That what they do see and don’t defile)
The ears the capture so small a sound
Only from fingers where machination’s found
And loud to the velvet that chips at the mortar,
Sighs at how incomplete is disorder, to harmonize chaos
And try as I may to dismiss, oppose,
I’m at a loss,
Locked in and froze.
Like veins in the hand and the blood therein,
Now, only now, the velvet tells my heart to begin,
Since, in solidity, my pulse was rescind’d
Now, only now, may my heart begin.
My forked tongue, it flicks, to spit thanks to the breeze
To capture the freedom of velvety ease, but then
As I look, in the highest of ken,
The velvet black shutters,
Then finally flees.

Search in the forest; you’ll find me there
Letting the trees
Speak my apologies
For those I could not, would not dare.

Along, along the broken trail
A single line
No one’s but mine
Familiar silence, mem’ries glint

Though that I have cast judgment
To never speak to you again
I would still lay you in the ferns
And hold, in mine, your lovely hand

But the trees speak my apologies
Behind the timbers of my teeth.
There you stand in the cast light of ease
Eden lapping at your ankles
Winged by thrilled and lucky leaves

Blind in light, your darkest mien
‘bove where I’ve fallen, disgraced, mean
In the ‘brace of ferns between
You see me as I am
Cloud-watching and quiet,
Needing to say more
But shame, shame is defiant.

Search in the forest; I won’t be there
For you are in the ferns, the breath of tress
A concluded jawline bitten down
Wayfarer of the broken road and scene
Turning an ear from the trees
Rest I and tight lips
Trodden away as they speak my apologies.

Wait for the day
That you finally have the guts
Wait for the day
When words finally come
Wait for the day
When you can hold her close in every regard
Wait for the day
When everything is perfect
Wait for the day
When the moment is perfect
Wait for the day
When your excuses stop making sense
Wait for the day
That you’re the twinkle in her eyes
Wait for the day
When she comes to tell you everything
Wait for the day
When she’s confident to come near
Wait for the day
When she’s holding on to you
Wait for the day
She finally has the confidence
Wait for the day
When she looks at you
Wait for the day
When she’s not with him anymore
Wait for the day
When she’s happy
Wait for the day
That never comes
Wait for the day
When you’re still waiting.

Walk me dutiful into love
Open my doorways, deliberate
Clear off the boughs
And the stars above
Walk me, dutiful, into love.

Pallor hearts of cosmic flame
Rush wax quickly, safe to say,
But, this, the tepid can warn no hand
Where Eros pierce and finger cove’
Rush me, dutiful, into love.

Yet, what ether of open mist
Can hide desire, away, steal a kiss
My, my how sane and cold in time
Do boundaries, up, the passion bind
What drives the lines, my heart it drove
Oh, walk me, reckless, into love!

Thatchen ardor incense the air
And leave me homeless, with luck threadbare
If my stars and hearts be flying doves
Away the fly or give a shove
At least I know I walked in love.
And know where I may fit.

What of exactly is a friendship lost?
Over minute trifles so easily tossed?
Or one that disbands in the cataract of Time?
Something worth pain and blood? Which is absolute and wonderful?
And so, too, can it be asked,
To which man is authority given,
Of such astute austerity endowed,
The man to pass such judgment in good faith and conscience,
Is none other than the crowd.
But, irrelevancies, I totter!
The worst is to be discussed,
For far beyond the scope of reason,
Have these travesties been concussed.
For here, I give to you the corpse of this bond,
This once turgid child of innocence
So, perhaps, its unadulterated substance may quickly manifest
Yet, I pray, I hope, I wonder, its marred and tattered mien profess
The noxious tonic it did consume,
Of ancient spleen and venomous ardor,
To rend its former pulchritude, to hands of untouched fury placed,
It suffered the most insufferable fate to befall upon any beast:
To reanimate, to thrive, to live once more,
In the hands of a tyrant and aimlessly exist
Necrotic at its very core.
This beast, this creature of hated stock,
Was my burden, my cross, to bear,
One, I weep to recollect, of part and parcel of my own flock.
But, I did this, I bore this, along with many others,
In spite of righted timbers,
In spite of rationale,
In spite of my fiber and moral code, that kept us forcibly constrained
For the sake of you, authority
For the sake of tranquil minds
I stood obstinate at the lineaments, between those contrasting foes,
In the self-imposed, childish Purgatory,
Completely indisposed.
Between the shining, gleaming face of holiness, and precipice of spite
For manner of serenity and cowardice perpetual,
Confronted this creature, I did not,
For the sake of you, dear authority, for the sake of stable place.
Children we were, yes, but no less severe the gravity,
For the winnowing of unity, at the yoke of caprice, is to blame.
A real friendship will endure, endure through the boreal,
Endure through the malice, the vitriol,
Will breathe new and longing appetite for breadth, for universality,
Of which all parts must maintain accountability.
It must stand resolute no matter how formidable the ballast,
It must be calm, objective, and outlast the harrowing feelings change may accompany,
Will sacrifice and encourage wellbeing,
It must imbue recollection, a past so beautiful,
Be a comfort in the presence of shame and humility,
Its essence, a friend itself.
But I can no longer pay, at the cost of sanity,
I can no longer give what little remnant humanity to forge another bond,
One made of dead and long-forgotten parts,
I can not, I will not,
I am sick, I am weary for all of the injustices I have done
To watch as the seed of hatred continues to bloom,
The veil of falsehood walk without shame,
To see her stride of perverting intent, tainting the world with touch,
Is a miserable folly to me,
A crime which I let permit,
A coward I was to not stop this, to not lay this matter to rest,
No,
My beleaguered hands put this evil in the ground, and left it to the tides of fate,
It grew, beyond my capture, beyond my strength to control,
Into this horrid ****, this miserable plant,
Which, still!, it grows sans disannul
To take responsibility to this, on me, I cannot err
But, naturally, none to the plant, it seems,
And this is only fair.

An icy January
And the birds have gone.
One used to sit on a branch
And sing my mornings in.
I miss him
Like I miss my smile,
Four years, their absence
And this January has gone on a while.
Shredded flocks
By a shredding breeze
Have moved him, the bird
To places where he’s better suited.
I still need him
I want him here,
His wings cut swathes from the high grey clouds
And pluck me from
The icy January
Down here, resting in a hole in the ground.
I want to fly with him, the bird
I want to be taken from here
Every fleeing bird is an encroaching fear
That this January with become February
And perhaps another year.
If not some escape,
Then I hope he lands outside my window
And sings my mornings in
For I miss him
Like I miss my smile,
Five years, his absence
Wondering where he’s been
And when
And if
He’ll ever come again.

What’s this, again? My favorite!
Whiskey and ink, pen and drink
And blood to punctuate
It all.
Cross-out the L’s and dash off the I’s
Filling the spaces where tears used to fall,
Fill up the keys, drained arteries
And I give them to my stanzaic-self
Who weeps on command, is a comedy
Since these dramas of the mind
Often too risky for poets’ traverse
The grey imprisoned between the words
Is home and salvage for us bleeders, but
Too often
A delight
For you readers.
Can I write drunk? And let the truth come out?
I could be at the end of the barrel of my own words,
Absolve the guilt, art itself or no,
I could find the beautiful truth at the end
—And hope I misfire.
What if I’m not strong enough?
What if this kills me?
The whiskey and the pen are the friends
As much as they are paring knives
—But, never have the dark times seemed so bearable.
I get drunk off the tears I hold back
All the faces I wear,
Who, like fantasies, from inside rend and tear
To get to the top
Until the hole of suicide surfaces…
And I stand a stare, pretending it is beautiful
And write a poem about it,
******* myself to become the empty beloved poet
The suffering aloof homework assignment
The voice of sadness
The joke
The cliché,
Always and ever
To hold me over till the next day
Distracted by a different kind of self-loathing,
Through that, I can go on
To forget it
Again.
Tonight.
Tomorrow.
And then again,
Till death.

I could take your hand
But then I would restrain you.
And why would I want to do that?
You’re so perfect you should be free.
I could draw hearts on your skin
But then it’d be as though you branded mine
And why would I want to do that?
You’re beautiful even without me there.
I could swim through your veins, dance in your eyes
But then I’d be trapped and invisible to you
And why would I want to do that?
You’re too special to waste from on the inside.
I could have you like in consummation,
But then we’d have ruined all that could be
And why would I want to do that?
You’re worth too much to just take and not give.
I could tell you I love you
But then you’re placed second to me
And why would I want to do that?
You’re always going to finished tied with me
I could marry you and clasp your hands in rings
But then you’d be, by statute, legally mine
And why would I want to do that?
You’re not the zoo animal destined to wilt.
Why make us apart-of when we’re grand wholes alone
Neither are we halves-of or the other’s-better
When we could be two, with lives of our own,
Standing, by divided love, beside and together.

You are a dawn
Vibrant, full of light
Behind ebon clouds
In the middle of the night.

…your faith, the pool on which
My pebble skips. Your faith only ebbs. If
I could, I’d steal ashore and
Cast a whole beach for…

…your HEART, a stump, grows,
it BREAKS, i nourish the RINGS.
See how much i LOVE…