It’s something about the
way you say pathetic,
the words sting and burn

like the shots of a diabetic.
Overused and undervalued
by a simply judged fanatic.
The looks you cast,

as I slink past,
are all but few and
far between,
let alone sporadic.

I cringe at what I see,
reflected cleanly, though
******, battered and useless.
The breath wasted on
such a life form is quite
simply astronomical;
astounding how pathetic
impressions turn out to be.

Hearts keep aching and
faking, just praying someone
will take heed, take the
lead on the excavation
of that diamond in the rough
that I so clearly see
hovering over the bathroom sink.

If the chiseling and the
scraping doesn't dissolve
the diamond altogether;
if the diamond exists
at all.

And if it doesn't
no great loss, merely
a few chipped tools
and a burdened mirror;
always left to survey
and report upon the
damage of a plummeting
self image reflection.

I've never wanted a rock
to weigh me down, anyway.

I do not know who I am writing to anymore.
Faces blur to pages to chapters
of the never ending story that I write
as I walk through the waves of indifference.

Sea foam splashes over drying ink
and curling parchment in ways that
blend background and foreground into
nonsensical images of insanity.

I write blank letters left with open
spaces and unfilled lines waiting for
a name or a pronoun or even a shimmering
idea of who to place there.

The final line is always the worst
with "love" and "yours always" and
"sincerely" hardly meant before
the name I know even less than yours:

     *my own.

It’s overwhelming.
The urge to scream,
and scream until my lips turn blue.
And my throat grows red,
and my hair stands straight up as though I were hit by lightning.

The will power
used to contain my never ending exasperation,
along with frustration,
is enough to shut down
all of the nuclear power plants in France;
although a meltdown might be more lethal.

But maybe being lethal is what I crave;
years of smiling and
moving aside built up
into an explosive pile of nicety and rage.

Light the wick,
and I promise I won’t fail to explode;
though it always seems
I’m more adept at imploding.

had we met each other when we were older,
i believe we'd spend the rest of our lives
fighting over the radio station
and playing rock, paper, scissors over who does the dishes
instead of wasting our youth loving frantically and
carelessly
before we even knew what we were doing.

the word 'unfair' spits in my face.

then i think it would be much easier to have those
memories
next to my pillow when i die
then it would be

to leave you behind.

Nights caress me with softer subtleties,
to lull insecurities into restless sleep.
Tossing and turning is bad for the soul,
bed sheets, twisting around legs, creep
into nightmares of suffocating solitude.

Darkness surrounds me with quieting conscience,
thoughts seeping through deafened ears,
from days of listening, onto blacketed pillows,
which only wanted shelter from countless tears
cried through years of reddened eyes and bleeding
hearts.

Sparks fly like rocket ships to remind me that
second chances only come to those in love,
showered in towers of rose buds and daffodils,
be them weeds or strange symbols of white dove
affection, raining on all stuck unguarded, sans
protection.

It sounded like whispers, you know?
The life dripping from your eyes.

It corroded like zippers, wet,

from years of spilling rain

onto an inconsistent raincoat.

Sometimes I remember, do you?

The amount of time found,

spent and all but lost.

We were children, then,

with nothing but nap times,

play times, and Lego shrines.

Second hands dressed up

as hours; and minutes, well,

they just didn’t matter. 

Splatter paint was a 
way of life and life

was just a way to live. 

The simple times

always flew faster

than the last.

Some things come naturally,
like breathing or crying;
they are embedded into us.
Other traits we seem to
acquire over time --
like a carefully raised
Thoroughbred, being taught
to clear the steepest jumps.

Some things come naturally,
like sleeping or eating;
we're born with the urges.
But others will fall
into cyclical habits slowly --
like a filly taking
her first shaking step,
I place a pen to paper.

The rapture is in the sink
And the war on terror just started in my knees
The night is gluttonous
It turns here inside out
Wood and brick this house is a chew toy
I’ve lost it in the corners now
The moon is almost finished now
What’s that? Even the house hiccups
I’m making chemo patients jealous with the hair that I’ve
Pulled out
You’re dope I’m a fiend I just want to get strung out
My heart can be callous but my mind is obscene
And if you know what I mean
I’ll make you half and half
The night I’ve been getting drunk
Drunk on all this noise I’m not hearing
I just think I’m perceiving
Humbly waiting
Waiting for the meeting
For the meaning
What’s that?

A house just creaks.

I will burn sage tonight
No longer will the figures
And shrouds have their way with me
I have become kindred
To the fourth dimension
They are not gods
But my ancestors
And evolutionary pathway
I will not fear what I am
Soon to become
The vibrations and
Partial enlightenment
Shake me to other realms
Reptillian, sprawling, heavy, and dank
Some have mated my flesh
Others share gifts
Reveal the expansion of
What I will receive
I will show them
We are one
I will show them
I am the realization
Of their efforts
And engineering.

The act has closed,
and the curtain been called,
so ignore the applause
as your heart lays; stalled.

The director yelled "cut,"
as you felt the crowd cheer,
it ripped through your soul
and "cut" you with a jeer.

The mask that you wear
and the lines that you spew,
show nothing of acting,
just a mock version of you.

So catch the bouquet
as I hurl it at you,
enjoy your new penthouse,
that empty room with a view.

You were delivered in flowers,

bright bouquets of indifference,

and you floated like lillies,

through vines of resistance.

Your green stems left untrimmed,

and your heart in a bow,

you slowly unraveled,

with your petals on show.

But the daisies all wilted,

the ones I loved the best,

and I realized you’re empty,

dead butterflies in your chest.

Write me a poem; a sonnet or a haiku.
Develop me in fiction; or a story, all too true.

Engulf me with your metaphors,
and string me from your scores.
Surround me with a hundred scribes
and I'll find, for you, some more.

Surprise me with suspenseful thrills
and write to me through winter chills.

Allow me some security
in charming ambiguity,
and set the stage of puppeteers,
the types I haven't seen in years.

I yearn for longing, hopeful prose,
detailing how your loving shows.

Just weave me through your dream machine,
and catch me reading in between
the lines of stories left half done,
through hearts you've lost, there's mine you've won.

I will disappear for hours, days, months, and the occasional year. It’s not something I plan. It’s not something I can help, and it’s not something I like. But I ignore my phone, abandon my computer mid-conversation, and like to sit alone sometimes. 

It’s not you, it’s me (the one time you’ll hear that and it will be true). There are times when I crave attention, appreciation, and acknowledgement. But then come the anxieties, the stresses, and the loathing that follow each of those. Occasionally, even the softest touch can send shivers of pure disdain rocketing over synapses. 

I wear a veil of invisibility, irrelevance, and though it is frequently lifted or brushed aside, know that it always remains, that it will always cast shadows.

You will find me bruised,

buried, and broken,

beneath sedimentary

silence and ignorant
igneous; pummeled 

and porous.  

You will find me 

deaf and defeated

under uprooted

forests, filled

to the canopy

with carnage.

You will find me ablaze,

alone, and abandoned,

as shivering shadows

make way for

an overflowed ocean.

And you will find me

dead in the dirt

you have trampled;

and I will bleed

into the sea.

We decide to believe
in the truth or the lie;
to insure our success,
or resolve to not try.

We become who we want,
and starve who we've been;
by deflating the conscience
of thoughts, all-too grim.

The past can escape us,
but from it, we can't flee;
the way to be happy
is to decide to be free.

people collect labels
like scars and gold stars
to decorate and define
the deliberately drawn lines
of their existence
dotted, pencil, pen.

sometimes people mistake names for explanations
e.g "I don't eat meat
because I'm a vegetarian"
but circularity
negates all meaning.

socially prescribed pigeonholes
don't determine
who you are
why you are
how you are
or
who you'll be.

I find the delicate pieces
of a human spirit
so hard to contain.

They reach out,
so often,
towards things that promise
only harm
and heartbreak.

Their optimism is striking.

Like a child...
  untainted,
  unbroken,
  and head held high with innocence.

If only we can preserve
that optimism and innocence
and hold it tight against our breast
throughout life.

Imagine what we could see,

       and all that we've been missing.

Santy comes in clusters;
clover fields of focus infused
with tendrils of marbled lucidity.
Gusts of foibles swirl with normalcy,
entrancing and enchanting and luring

    locks of golden silk within their grasp,
    gripping and slipping on floating clumps
    of what's left of brain matter, spattered
    onto white washed walls of consciousness;

         cleansed.

I left a note on your car today,

it sat alone in the parking lot

like an abandoned century,

set in place to guard the lost

and the broken hearted. 


The note wasn’t enough,

scraps of paper and shreds

of words can’t hold fast

to long lost dreams of simplicity

tainted with the purest hope.

I drove away, staring straight

ahead because if I looked back,

I always look back, I knew

I’d watch it’s tattered edges

burn from the fire left behind.

Second rate;
a moment too late
or too early to
be first.
Save the worst
for last because
that's all you have left --
for this heaven sent
inkling of perfection
is sick of the
tiresome wait;
the same perfection
that you'll never
have to reach my
"Golden Gate."

Judgement day
has declared
you scared and alone --
*isn't that
what you wanted
anyway?

I left you delicate -
dressed in ribcages and heart beats
protrustion leaving baby blues
I never meant to pick you, stem and all.

My idea was to leave you for the fall
aching chill across bones
a broken cage of wigs reeling you in
tethered to the wind.

But, I'll bury snakes in this -
your garden of falters
I never meant to rip you from the stem to leaf
fragile fingers pressed
between teeth.

I left you delicate
my hinges rusted from swinging
dressed in lavender lament -
compliments to your baby blues
patterns for others to see.

I left you delicate,
just as you left me.

In posing as a nautilus
he is a sun; a son, star
the quiet murmurs of ocean
in the darkest part of night –

his chest is a cave in which to sleep
a shelter in which breath tunnels through veins
or wind? He is the tempest,
the hurricane pealing as a bell,
pealing or peeling back landscape
picking apart houses, hillsides,
like the bones of a corpse

and his is the storm, the tide
as it bemoans lost love for the moon –
in his pain, he throws himself
against the Cliffside and he shatters;

in posing as an ocean
he furls, curls like fingers of water
clinging to shore; in reflecting
he is the sun, stars, moon and sky
the wind and whistling through his bones
and breath –

he is the softness with which we sleep
dreams brought to flesh
curled as a nautilus or a shell,
heavy with soft, unspoken words,
hours of quiet murmurs.

I don’t want to talk

because I don’t want to feel;

I’d hate to convince you

that these feelings are real.

I promise I’m smiling,

a bright shining star;

so don’t you come over,

just stay where you are.

Ignore all the phone calls,

mixed with my endless pleas;

I swear that it’s nothing,

I just needed to bleed.

My veins have stayed shut,

so don’t raise the alarm;

I spill out onto paper,

to save wrists from harm.

Just like the sun chasing the moon,
I followed you into the dark,
if only to catch a single falling spark
of all that once ignited to make me swoon.

black ink
           on the tips of fingers.
   I dipped them
         in to get a feeling for the thickness
         I would be swimming in.

stickiness
           left behind:
  hard to breathe in,
                            and even harder to define.

I'll compare
     to the trash on fire,
                        stamped out by rain
                              a thick, mottled stain.

black ink
           smeared across veins.
      I've settled for alternatives;
           Silly, sing-song alternatives.

black ink
           smeared across veins.
       the thickness remains,
       even after I've washed it away.

I am tracing
             the lines,
      drowning.
                                Heavy mottled lines
                                                              left behind.
  
               hard to breath,
                             and even harder to define.

Paint words
across my skyline
with fluent tongue
and softened hands.

Stream life
along my shadows
through steady step and
ribboned compliments,
flowing lightly
through carefree breezes
accompanying the bitter wind.

Etch hope
into my pillow,
cradled beneath my
heavy head,
and set forth flowers,
floating through river beds
and rivulets of tear drops
in tea cups,
slipping along
with the
current.

*Set them free.

To the greatest Englishmen I’ve ever known,

with thick skin quite like the strength of stone,

your charm has passed my comfort zone,

what a shame it is(not); we sleep alone. 

Forced into writing a poem “on you,”

it sounds more like some type of odd goo.

I promise this poem is almost now through,

just swear to forget it by the time the day’s new.

bandaged finger tips
I've burned myself on you
                                        -not once,
                                         but twice.

It is a damage I have brought upon myself.
My fickle heart and mind tripping on the wires
I have planted time and time again.

I'm burned to the bone --
                                            too damaged
                                            to know
                                            any better.

And, I tell myself,
you can never burn yourself on me
because I am not enough for you.
No bandaged finger tips
to trip you up.

I've burned myself--
not once,
but twice--

                                  on you.

You are so beautiful,
so pure--it makes it difficult
to resist a simple, loving kiss
or embrace.

Your eyes glow
and sparkle in the dim moonlight,
making it hard to turn
away from
your gaze.

I have been looking
for a long time,
for someone like you.

Now, I have
and I am not about
to let you go.

I'll take my chances,
so just take back your promise.
Because,
as soon as your interest advances,
you won't remember the time you said you were
harmless.

You said "Fall,
I'll catch you.
I was so small
before I met you.

Every night, I want you to call
so by the morning I won't forget you."

I told you I was afraid,
I said I was not sure.
Because,
every time I have been betrayed,
I think I have decayed a little more.

I said, "I've heard of forever,
is that a myth, or just a lie?"
He goes, "Take my hand, we'll can go wherever,
and I'll remind you everyday how our love will never die."

He took my hand,
and said, "Close your eyes.
Where we stand, is where we shall rise."

For some reason,
I believed you.
But now I am in a darker season,
one I'm still trying to weave through.
I just want to identify this treason,
even though I'll probably forget
just as quick as the naive
do.

I gave you my word,
You lent me your heart.
I thought you were my angel,
but instead,
you were the raven from the start.

So after I gave it my all,
I can only regret you.
Did you just want to see me crawl?
Well, you're a fool

if you think I'd let you.

Your words seem empty,

taking up space on

such a crowded page.

Toss them aside,

gently, so they might

live to see another meaning.

Pull them from their

roller coaster swing set,

the moods that you flip flop.

And I’ll work to get past

these empty words,

empty thoughts of us together.

I stand, like a ghost, on a crowded street,
Diffusing into the blackened concrete.

Shadows are entwined under flickering light,
Surrounding sounds melt into the night.

To their deaths, the stars cascade from the sky,
And liberate the shadows from my eyes.

In a sea of casualties, I drown,
Like a morning fog, resigned to the ground.

I pale, like a ghost, on a barren street,
A street so hungry it swallows me.

Small windows of opportunity,
creaking cracks of reason,
masked behind shades of indifference.

Like raindrops on windowpanes,
I'll touch one subject once,
briefly, and roll away.

So when the drapes are drawn,
if only for a moment,
you might just miss the rain.

The last thing I want,
is to be beautiful.
For beauty is shy
and thin as silk --
currents and waves
pass through it's
woven threads,
threadbare and broken.
For beauty is transparent,
translucent, and only
noticed on the surface
of what's slippery
and skeleton-like.

For beauty is finicky;
you either grow out of it,
or you grow into it.

And so the last thing I want
is to be beautiful.
Because if it were the first,
it'd be gone before the second.

Scanning the afternoon, he walks,

gliding on fallen leaves and trees

and animals he no longer stalks;

his sights set higher for humanity’s scare. 

Shots fired in a distant haze,

as terror erupts from pious pillars

and ruptured canopies, left dazed

by disaster in evening air.

Setting in the far off sky,

a reddened oval sinking,

longing, waiting, to die

in the blistering way it seems to fight.

No one gathers there among

the deadening light to mourn

the day he shot the sun;

no one watched it bleed its final light.

*The end was near, the dark in sight,

his need for fear, his ending plight,

the darkness ate the world for fun,

that was the day he shot the sun.

we are small
particles, atomies
and dust tucked away
in the back pockets
of the universe --

--we still exist

in seconds
in flashes across the sky
in sparks and matches
in drops of ink on paper
in love and touch
in movement and breath

and even in the dark
the stars remember

us.

Greetings noble wanderer
I know your journey has been long
the road has led you far from home
and now it has
carried you to my door.

Friend, what do you seek?

Enlightenment?
Sadly, I've none to offer.

Wisdom?
Again no, but do not abandon your search.

Answers?
Young soul, I too find only questions.

Meaning or purpose?
I've found none, and fear your quest because
may have thus far been in vain.

I can offer you nothing but the understanding
of one who too has endlessly trudged
this lonely solitary path.

If it's rest and the comfort of a kindred heart,
then, please, come in my dear young friend.

By all means,
do come in.

The hills are alive
with the sound of silence.
They echo back towards
deafened ears and
blinded hearts.

TImeless winds begin to change,
combusting all that's within range,
stripping trees from land,
and tearing souls from man.

So plug your ears
and close your eyes,
for here is where
the spirit dies.

Struggling beneath eyelids,
heavy and convincing,
begging and imploring me
to rest a while.

Yet, my brain hums,
steadily and nosily,
an uninspired lullaby
of thoughts and memories
that I cannot seem to sing.

Wouldn't it make a lovely song,
these theories and explanations?

If only they stayed a while,
instead of flitting away.

The skin                 I have earned
on the edge            I have made
of my eyes             see the worth
touches tears         in my mind
as the skin             I have earned
on the edge           I have made
of my hands          that I feel
touches tears        in my mind
and it grows         (and it grows)
and it grows         (and it grows)
and it grows         (and it grows)
until all of             the blood that
you have               given to me
been ******          through a straw
inside me              into you
until all of             the blood that
you know             I don't know
what it means       in the end
to be *****            or too clean
and free                from release

to dust                  from the dirt
on the front          not the back
of my shirt           with the stain
touches tears        in my mind
as the dust            from the dirt
on the front           not the back
of my chest           with the scars
touches tears         in my mind
and it knows        (and it knows)
and it knows        (and it knows)
and it knows        (and it knows)
until all of             the blood that
you've been          give me you
dropped dead      by the warmth
in my name          that is me
until all of             the blood that
you go                  where I'm not
to the time            if there is
where the             love that stings
cosmos is             oblivion

the blood             beyond blue
on my neck          that you kissed
from the sun        and the moon
touches tears       in my mind
as the blood         beyond blue
on my wrist         that you kissed
from the moon    and the sun
touches tears       from my mind
and it goes          (and it goes)
and it goes          (and it goes)
and it goes          (and it goes)
until all of            the blood that
you turn as          I'm standing
cold as the           earth in you
ice on me             flowing over
until all of            the blood that
you throw            for the time
all your lies          create eyes
and beliefs           to be free
out to sea             you were me

Disappear before I miss you,
and be gone before I care.
Take flight before I realize
that all I want, is to be there.

Simply a vanishing act.
Remain in one place long enough
to steal the hearts of few
before you retract,
detach, and abandon.

A circus trick to disappear,
leaving one you noticed,
one you inspired,
astonished by your fear
to stay.

*I didn't know you,
I never will

I'm trying so hard,
I'm running so fast and far,
to stop loving you.

Just stumbling now,
alone in the same **** crowd,
just stuck loving you.

I always saw
or seen
the vein underneath
my skin as
green

till it turned
black
and blue

then I remembered
this was all about you

the silver steel
needle
that promised to make
me feel

something that wasn't real
just like you

I became addicted to that feeling
you know

I guess
I don't remember now
why I bought that
silver steel.

Dear,
  
   Dream from over there.

And dear,

   I'll dream from right here.

And dear, maybe,
  
   These dreams will one day,
       Maybe one day they will collide.

And dear, after,

   After our dreams intertwine,
        Maybe then we'll make another dream.

Dear, we'll make another dream--

                *together.