sometimes, there is so much boiling over in my chest
that I must stare at the moon and pour out my excess
into her generous craters,
filling in jagged sidewalk cracks with apologetic cement.
sometimes, my heart is a jackhammer and I crush my bones to dust under the pounding weight of the love I carry for you,
I am a beggar who continually
accumulates debt to throw roses at your feet and watches silently
as you don't miss a beat walking on them to longingly greet
the shadow of another's ghost.
sometimes, I catch a whiff of your lips in my morning tea and a moan slips into my cup splashing burning liquid onto raw skin
pulsing ****** regret and chagrin.
sometimes, I wish we had never met,
and sometimes I wish we had been the first sight in each other's newborn eyes.
sometimes, I reach for you at night in my empty bed
and roll off past the missing guardrail your body used to create,
stuttering and floundering on the icy floor sometimes I pray for Lucifer
to burn your fingerprints from my skin -
the blistering sores would hurt less than this.

lulled into a false sense
of pure and final release
i let my resentment assemble silently
under a sea of single malt whiskey
and layers of unfinished poetry soaked
ink bleeding blackened tar
to suffocate the forgotten and blind my hands
to the universe hidden in your worm hole.

sand crusted eyes
blinking wildly to **** and clean
shake the dust
bleach the dirt
wash and preen.
my long lost darling
i wonder what evil is lurking
round the razor sharp corners
of the looping maze that's
spinning from my center manically.
maybe if i burry pandora's box
she will no longer haunt my heart
or whisper in my ear
when i lie with lovers in the dark.

the accidental spark of anger
burning at the mention of your name
sets wildfires raging over woods and sea
massacring entire ecosystems in flame.
the only way out is to call a flood, but -
i've drowned myself too many times to keep this up.

I found god
while cleaning out my childhood bedroom,
he was buried all dusty
in the left corner of
my mothball closet
underneath the boxed remains
of other men who have left me
guilty and
hungry.

Excuse my bliss-trance
I've been seduced by the fragrant floral pheromones flooding the air,
The lilac-laced wind has wrapped my lips in splendor and
Left my eyes heavy lidded hazy
Enraptured gazing at the velvet vulvas of lilies.
The blossoming world casts it's spell of subtle sensuality
And I am left stunned in a stupor,
Heart oozing out of my orifices,
Falling in love with everything I see
Simply because it exists.
I'll caress every snapdragon to uncover it's mysterious caverns,
Stretch to kiss the slender necks of tulips,
And weave violets into my crown so our essences intertwine.
My collarbone is blushing crimson
And my head is drained of reason -
Tis the season for romantic abandon.

Laying in a dewy bed,
Lullabies from humming crickets,
Echoing waves through my head
Thats hanging with hazy clouds,
Drifting through darkening blues,
That blanket you, but never cover
Your luminous glow -- magnificent,
Mystifying, marvelous, magic moon!
You celestial goddess, my guardian.
Tonight my bones are quivering
Waves of undulating energy,
Injected from white rays of
Etherial light leaking out,
Reflected from your face to mine.
I can feel the furnace that's feeding you,
Within the pit of my belly burning,
And as I breath in the summer night,
You wrap me in subtle assurance
That a bright new day will rise,
For your gentle guiding light,
Reveals that sun is still shining
Just around the corner.

I felt your spirit follow me
ten thousand feet above the sea - floating,
flee(t)ing over aquamarine mountains
in a metallic bird with frozen wings.
In my dreams,
you are a wild sycamore tree who sings
lunar symphonies to bumblebees
sun spotted eyes,
sight of a man searching after ephemeral mystery.
I will whisper your name into the wind, send
my spirit back round the earth -
we will breathe the same air,
after passing through a million lungs (heaving)
see the same clouds,
after traveling distances unspeakable..

And will you remember me:
eyes brimming (in silence)
hips twitching (in stillness)
biting lips and picking skin and
itching to hold you with palms and fingertips,
head in crook of shoulder,
hand pressed upon chest,
stomach to stomach breath stolen,
heavy, wet -
having communion without the wine or bread
just the body, unbroken
no call to repent.

its said you can only lose
what you call yours
you can only miss
what you hold onto
you can only remember
what you choose not to forget.
so in the hazy moonlight
of this dreary summer night
ill be letting you go, darling.
ill release my love away, into the sky
ill watch it dissipate in the thick air
floating away on a soft breeze.
and ill breath in deeply,
holding the scent of us in my lungs
and when i exhale, nothing will remain
but my empty, barren, wasteland.
and that too, i will surrender into the night.
leaving just a distant memory of memory
of what once was, but  is no more.
and soon this dream of a dream will pass as well.
and i will be here, now, breathing.
and i will not feel loss.
and i will not long after you.
and i will choose not to remember
the part of me that i let fly away with you.

chained up on a visceral boomerang to your apathy -
disembody, then shrivel back into my chest.
infested with a vile peanut gallery
snickering in the belly of my ears.
cursed with an over-active mental ***** reflex,
born with the habit of re-ingesting bile and lies.
gag-order on the heart so it doesn't whip me
with it's crown of thorns
twisted from plucking the horns of dead roses.
he loves me, he has no room for me,
beyond the tip-tap of trembling bones upon his shoulder.
i've trimmed myself down with neglect,
i've perfected the presentation of deception
as a romantic encounter,
monotonous plunging of doubt across layers of skin.
carouseling a patch-worked mantra of ambivalence,
motion sickness riding on my collarbone dressed with a grin
heaving and green.
i caught whiplash from sneaking glances at you
while creating the illusion
that i was forever turning away -
always leaving, always shaking out a no,
always building up a wax paper wall
(always clumsy, always patching holes with cotton).
i'm wasting away on the offerings you drop at the pit of my stomach:
all lead anvils and hurricanes.
i wish i could carve out the part of me that thinks of you,
drown it in cyanide, and mock it's funeral with fireworks.
i am toddler-tantrum-flinging my limbs wild at the sky,
eyes pinched shut, and teeth blooding my lips.
loving you tastes of salt and iron,
what a balanced palette for dining on a soul.

There is a calm center within me;
It flows from deep rivers of breath,
Spiraling up and out in every direction.

There is a calm center within me;
Grounding me with sturdy roots,
Soaking up the sweet soul beneath
My rocky hard surface
Through twisting tunnels, tumble torrents.

There is a calm center within me;
Laying soft and still under rushing currents,
Reflecting patience, serenity, consistency
To my mistaken misplaced preconceived perceptions,
Oh they appear to be everchanging,
While the truth is they're stuck going round and round and round
Over the same cyclical trap, making me dizzy.

There is a calm center within me;
It is my mountaintop of mercy,
Where my mind meditates and marvels
At the we of conscious connection,
Spreading from me, reaching out to other frequencies
Emanating from peaks which surround me,
Where the dichotomous
You-Me, ******, Us-They;
Melt into a spectrum of WE --
And oh, I am just beginning to see.

There is a calm center within me;
There is a calm center;
There is calm.....

There is a calm center within me,
Let it flow out.

One Thousand hands holding
One Thousand suitcases stuffed suffocating
One Thousand costumes and memories tethered to expectations,
One Thousand pieces left behind that
would not pass inspection like
fragments of self and habits to lean on,
One Thousand pairs of waiting eyes wistful and worn and wondering about
One Thousand ways to say goodbye,
One Thousand stories swimming in minds
reasons to stay devouring reasons to depart
parsing apart
One Thousand unfinished thoughts
stacked upon each other as layered
remnants of crumbling towers,
One Thousand coterminous beginnings and endings swallow
One Thousand middled narratives,
the taste of
One Thousand lives flavors the air
circulating in
One Thousand lungs huffing the
breath of
One Thousand neighbors estranged and silent save
One Thousand unsynchronized heartbeats
bleating and bleeding and belching
One Thousand rhythmic intricacies into
One Thousand hands holding
One Thousand suitcases.

it's okay to let confusion drown you, pour over you like the wind sweeps the Great Plains clean.
it's okay to mistake up for down, and have to wear a compass rigged with alarm bells as an amulet.
it's okay to forget your name and make up a new one.
there will be days when you can't see out the window past the dust and sun-charred veneer,
and they will serve as reminders of the universe in the bathroom mirror and it's impossible reality.
it's okay to feel like mundane chaos, or a deflating balloon in the dessert sun.
it's okay to save secrets for yourself and to wear your mistakes as medals on your chest.
it's okay to doubt all that you've ever been told.
there will be days when no amount of coffee will cure the weariness compiled in your bones and you will have to set a timer for breathing.
it's okay to squeal in ecstasy and in fury and in despair.
it's okay to miss people who do not think of you and wish that they would.
it's okay to wonder if you have every truly loved anything.
there might not ever come a day when it all makes sense, and that is okay too.

metal mountain majesty,
rest your weary bones with me.
calling all concrete angels to the streets
time has come for spirit and sky to meet.
transmutation of me to infinity,
intimate touch inspires divinity so
treat the porcupine souls with an extra kiss,
remind their soft underbelly of the
strength hidden in bare skin vulnerability and knowledge from within.
there, there delicate dandelion,
keep finding cracks in the sidewalk
to push up through,
beauty and life will follow you even into
the unforgiving jaws of iron gods
that rip bone from sinew.
and remember:
all life is but cosmic comedy,
the universe giggling in paradoxical remedies
riddling harmony in a discordant key
unfolding rigid arms into gentle giving -
notice the earth's truth still living
in the metallic city.

smoke stacks babble their chemical love note to the gods,
huffing and clawing
and spewing their pumice
at the morning sky,
a milky stairway to heaven
dispatching
the greasy whims of a faceless man with an unquenchable addiction.

it towers over the overstuffed veins of the highway,
where a once square body
contorts its aluminum frame to mimic the spiraling form of nature,
spilling its fleshy guts into dry winter wind.
the steaming rubber neck of the world cranes itself
longer than the Mississippi
to gawk at its own mortality.

in the distance,
the steely blue city veils her face with haze,
stoic and sturdy, she stares into the thin air
past the ardent, bleeding
display of humanity
gushing
awkward onto her concrete stomach
and staining the stubbly black and beige
with sticky finger prints.

the city takes a long drag off her metallic cigarette
and sighs
exhaust,
blanketing the sky in morgue sheets.

would you please drop me a line
send out a space in time where,
we are intertwined in serpentine spinning.

my mind has been imagining
the harmonics of our laughter
and how our limbs would fit together
resting weary muscles against each other.

trying to decipher your eyes
foreign tongue, flitting broken morse code
across thick air, heavy unspoken load.

doubt wields a sharp sword
that splits my desire - reaching & running
backwards, retracting hands that yearn
for things they know will burn -
searing truth into naive heartstrings,
that tethered themselves to dark misgivings.

a spindly girl scrawls narratives
upon her walls in red ink,
candle flames splash shadow and light
flickering across the window pane as rudimentary morse code
to Venus who hangs heavy in the night.

the howling of invisible wolves
ricochets round alleyways and up crumbling telephone wire,
crawls inside the ears of a hypnotized veteran
"remember the bodies of crooked mountains,
remember the barrel of steaming guns,
remember praying to a god you never knew
crouched into submission."

big brother's hands don't rest in the dark,
every silent minute the masses slide into their coffins
cushioned by LCD screens and soundbite slogans.
an endless barrage of information lullabies people
numb into their heaving dreams, and they don't question
when they wake shaking and empty.

a stiff lesson in letting go.
a fastball to the chest.
an image of death
approaching on his warhorse.

got a lot to accept about catch
and release,
about the karmic patterns chasing me.

i'll eat my own tail before i acknowledge
history is repeating itself.
a recursive curse
of love unreturned,
rebirths.

dizzy at the sight of my own bleeding/bleating heart,
i howl in frenzy and
deny i was bit by a werewolf
in the new moon's dark.

am i as translucent,
as you are opaque?
does my breath feel like an earthquake
as i quiver at the sound of your name?

nowadays,
i am sure of nothing
more than my spinning.
your elusive grin
pins me to the wet dirt of august,
and dares me to chase you all over again.

a lesson in walking away.
a slow burn in the stomach.
a never-ending plummet
into this fever-dream's abyss.

there is a universe inside your chest
infinitely expanding
though infinitesimally slow
at times
boundaries stretch, breathe
though confusing at times
destruction feeds growth,
dichotomous paradox forms whole,
stars implode, give way to supernovas,
give way to planets filled with lava and snow
there, inside, a universe
constantly churning,
the incessant spin of all burning
that births light and shadow

here I stand on the precipice.
here, in an amorphous dusk and dawn,
unclear if day or night
is about to kiss the horizon
unsure if I should call to moon or sun
or neither,
or    you.
here in limbo, arching my spine to
sneak under the guardrail of loving
here, instinctually shoving myself
into bottlenecks and genie lamps
oh, how my gypsy soul wants to run,
yet feels so enchanted it stays, here
on the precipice,
itching to gain entrance
into the universe brimming
inside of you

there
there, inside your chest
there I said it.     and I'll say it again,
and I'll say it even louder:
I confess! I'm enchanted!
I'm enamored, enthralled, enraptured,
I want my heart
to know your heart,
I want to dive chest-first into your outer space galaxy nest
an astronaut without a helmet,
I want to explore, awestruck
never trying to label, box, or understand - simply experience
your universe

there, I finally said it
I'm finally starting
to write the poems I'm afraid of,
the ones I don't want to say out loud
I'm starting to write out shadows and solar flares and floods,
starting to let my heart bleed out of my pen, cause
what the hell am I hiding from?
what are we all so scared of?
we were ****** into this strange world
blind and wet,
groping in the darkness for heaven
meant to rip ourselves open again, again
meant to feel with the depth and tempest of oceans
meant to risk and be fools and fall to meet rose-hued ends

I just want to make love with the light
of a thousand candles, a million stars, and the moon turned on
and panting
silver dripping from her tongue,
dizzy with the heat of solar undulations,
stripping down to the heart of the matter
down to the simple truth of it all:
I was born to feel,
and my god, you...
you make me feel universes
you make me feel thunder and lightning and bedroom churches and power surges
you make me feel sunrise stillness
and it makes me fall silent.
so here I am, writing the poems I'm afraid of
and sending them out, messages
in bottles, adrift
in the endless oceans of your universe

does your mind ever wander to me?
flash visions of my face
across the inside of eyelids
movies of slow motion embrace.

                                                       ­                                    do you hear my voice?
                                                          ­                         moan and giggle and hum,
                                                            ­             whisper profanities into your ear
                                                     and beat the pace of your chest's bass drum.

do your fingers feel my ghosting skin?
brush across those calloused tips
sliding closer, slinking clarity
calamity coincides with conscious choice,
i clutched the corners of certain collapse
clinging to clumsily curtained clues.
crawling cat claws over a carcass.

                                                       ­                  do you remember the very start?
                                         the moment when one of us - i'm still not sure who
                                                             ­     leaned in too close to the other's face
                                                            ­                and sealed the unspoken space
                                                           ­                                       with a deadly kiss
                                                            ­                             which dropped the rain
                                                            ­                                 which broke the dam
                                                             ­                             which released torrents
                                                        ­                            that had been held leaking
                                                         ­                               by tense bones creaking.

and when you gazed into my
melted honey eyes
with you piercing black pupils
and earnestly said:
"they were all mistakes,
but not you -
you
are not
a mistake",
were you lying through your teeth?
did the tumbling
kiss
that followed
seal your deceit?
grasping for my puppet strings
to dance me to your beat,
fog my mind with steam heat
to save your ego from defeat.

                                                        ­                                         i gallantly applaud
                                                         ­                     your flagrant charade darling,
                                                        ­                                                though flawed,
                                                         ­                                    your mask of interest
                                                        ­                             fooled me to blindly trust
                                                           ­                                              and helplessly
                                                                ­                                                            fall
                                                                ­                        into a bed made of rust,
                                                           ­                     glass promises, and folk lore
                                                            ­                              of men who transform
                                                       ­                                       in the womb of love.

does the last night haunt you
stuck on repeat
below the surface?
                                                        ­           do my words float through dreams
                                                                                 ghosting over melting trees
                                                                                       fleeting sinking feeling?
does your running
tug at you,
ripping loose seams?
                                                          ­   and did you feel the weight of my heart
                                                           ­                               as you denied my truth
                                                           ­                      and our harmony fell apart?

i feel i knew from the very start
that this would simply bring
seven layers of pain,
broken nails twisted into my brain.
but hammering down loose memories
and painting over fantasies,
won't cure the disease that sprouted in me.
i crave the impossible,
insanely desire to hold onto those who run.
i surely cursed the sun,
when i turned nocturnal
to answer your cicada phone calls,
because though i have returned to the daylight,
the blight of night-vision
engulfs me,
and i can only see your love's excision
and the remnant debris.

rigid steel creaking,
squeaking to announce
it's monumental motion,
defying once static devotion
hear ye! hear ye!
the rusted machine is
jolting back to life
like clockwork, completing
patterns encoded by
calloused fingertips, pressing,
pushing, prodding, pleading with
stiff, achey keys to
punch
the storyline
back
into
place.

naive program under illusion
of sentient choice,
springs open arms
to rejoice the repeated reinforcement
of recurrent information,
fed & regurgitated & re-ingested to be fermented
in crystalline form of mind,
tinkered into alignment
by sinister hands with crude cracks,
leaking oil.

discordant dance of metal,
twirling tango
wrought with perilous footwork
to outline the model of assumed complexity
that shrouds the simple harmony
of one-two one-two -
one step after the other, followed by another
steady rhythm of cause & effect.
go head, neglect, or reject, only to
crawl back in reflection to beg for
one more turn round the ferris wheel,
to glimpse the heights of insanity
that reach ultimate clarity
of infinite perspectives unfolding,
one into another, projected onto lovers
and strangers - all alike.

add your rambling writing
of realizations, remembrances, & rehearsals
onto my hard drive,
I want to reiterate - I am learning slowly.
rereading &
restructuring pages
of this minute history.
maybe one day I'll recall
that practice
precedes progress.

chugging bile and liquor closed eyes smell the innards of a joint wrapped in oilslicked stain shoveling sugar thrice processed into vocal chords left silenced but for the coughing up of shriveled lungs set ablaze to ease the twitching triggered by the mistress doused in white who scaffolds into crumbling nasal caverns to numb the brain that dreams of god in guilty refrain and whips thorny obedience to words siphoned through ghosts of men and obedience to the inflated heads of state and corporate banks who play Skinnard's game and always win millions of yes-men nodding their heads in addiction to artificial green leaves printed with blood and even lovers twirling passion in their beds have their eyes squeezed shut clutching at darkness slick and disappearing at the touch of pulsing fingertips racing to bury themselves in skin and forget the achey organs that lay waiting within weary and smothered from covering up thoughts too sharp to breathe in...

--it's all hide and seek.
running and running and running
from bare and open
vulnerability
shrouded underneath
layers
of reflected identities
and neuro-chemistry
and material fortresses
and snarled teeth
and synthetic bliss
wrapped in bitter bumblebees.

don't you think it's time you swallowed
the wince it takes
to glimpse your fear's shadows?

jumping jumbled thoughts
hop-scotch, double-dutch, criss-cross
getting lost in mish-mosh
scratching a vinyl
stuck constant skipping,
unfinished rounds of loop-de-loop spinning
speeding down stream
leaping across time warping lilypads,
memories interrupted by what-if daydreams.

my brain places haphazard bookmarks
when it runs into a lump,
then hops on a new train
ka-clunk ka-clunk-clunk ka-clunk,
tripping over decaying stumps
and mountains of over-processed junk.
always falling back to distraction,
instant satisfaction
was taught to me habitually,
so i look the other way when
my will bends instantaneously
at the mention of insane
raucous romping renegades.

i throw hand grenades
to prevent unfinished fragments
of insight from cementing.
wishing my words would
spit themselves out,
or dive off a cliff to utter calamity
cause effort is lost on me -
passionless revere
and bottomless see-sawing.

just stick me slack-jawed
in front of any cookie-cutter size of
plastic rectangle-god,
they all repeat the same chant
commanding me to stare endlessly at
screen after screen after screen after screen after screen -
my screaming pacified by flashing lights
and buzzing jibber-gabber.
infinite scrolling consumes isolated nights,
meticulously crafting a self-projection
made from inverse other-reflection
to deflect nagging fear of
detection and rejection.

can you really hear my inflection
from this typeface
and condensed pre-packaged mind-space?
i feel like i'm speaking,
but feedback is empty and misplaced
only muttered out by thoughtless mistake.
well once i pin me down
ill stick you beside,
and we can melt into cork board
a collage of disintegrated insides.

I wear my watch on the inside of my wrist keeping time by the pulsing of overfilled veins.
If I'm honest, the seconds pass blurry when you are around, red pounding at the blue surface reminding my life of it's vigorous momentum as the watch face marks it's disappearance.
I can do nothing about it's circular cycle, nor the manner in which I mirror it, recycling threadbare thoughts and feelings in ostensible new purpose.
I am a walking contradiction formed of practical mysticism and coffee stained teeth, spinning poetry from numb fingertips onto the ghosts of birch trees, fleeing from my wildest dreams.
Meet me,
half way between belief and reality at the junction of duality and I'll reveal I have no true identity - no creed no name no history,
only chaotic shifting and angry bumblebees drilling sinkholes for visitors toes to curl into as they fashion temporary homes in me.
I am solar soliloquy.
Astrological antiquity curses me to orbit you habitually.
Eye of the storm, hand of the beast, souls of the many downtrodden and hungry, asking for shoulders to stand upon shaky.
Grant me your three wishes, and I will conjure infinity from our palms clasped tight in secrecy.
Tell me,
neglectful lover,
when did my beauty become a pleasurable void, to be touched
yet left unseen,
when did my spirit become matter
buried under the mind of desire and empty chatter.
Humor me,
say that the meeting of our skin is more than physical proximity say,
that you dream of my flowers growing from your ribcage say,
that the gods granted us an opportunity for greatness,
say that our kiss is a portal to Andromeda and that you could get lost there forever - I know I have.
Yet, even light years away I hear the tick tocking ticktick of my heart bleeding into itself.
I am fleeting.
I am deafening.
I am a forgetful timekeeper,

late to my own re-birthing.

darkened dreams
lead to clouded thoughts
and misplaced steps
of hazy intention.

twisted down underneath
gilded dreams of demise
don't you let the demons rise
out from the land of maybes.

well this turned out exactly
how you thought it'd never be.
giggle and throw that heavy head back
now forward into another drag
of a cigarette laced with promises
of eternal pleasure, endless bliss -
you know it'll never be this color again.

the first is the sweetest darling -
all that follows is singed with
disappointment, or discontent.
pour another dissonant tone into my cup
and i'll drink it right up
drowning my expectations
in sweet, sensuous sorrow.

but hopes are easy to borrow,
and i'll sign up for two thousand
just to watch them fall again and again
into utter darkness-
i know the game of muffled secrets
too well to spill this toxic dump
so lets keep pushing the buttons, harder
til the pump steams in overdrive,
and my scarred scaly skin
is burned, cleansed, and shed.

seconds
     ticking
          tick-tick
    flip-flop
         ti-
             tick-
                  ticking.
poking     at      me,
c o a x i n g me
        to move:
stand up, get out, be, hear, see, do,
everything's right in front of you!

those two
        idle hands
                
should be crafting a cat's cradle of cathartic creation…

but easy comfort
         in apathetic

                                                               ­ nothing,
in slowly
         being e n v e l o p e d
cuddled back into, back into, back into my bed of
                                                                ­                                        blank…
slate, blank mind, blank hands.
blankets covering a blank stare at a blank ceiling.
smothering the murmurs
of the matador
in
     my
          chest,
I  s  l  i  d  e  into a hazy half-dream.
the light slips past,
going home with the sun
and listening to
lunar lullabies,
I
         sigh & hum
              slinking
                            into yawns
excusing myself for d r a g g i n g
        tiredness
                     pulling on   my   strings.

sinking,
       sinking
                   into sulking.
staying
        to sit
                 in sadness,
                                            sinking.
tic­king
       ticking
                   t i c k i n g
TOCK

the blocking of
      my eyes,
             ears,
                 hands,
                      feet,
                          heart
stymied by my own will.
and it will
continue
      for
             e t e r n i t i e s
of absolutely
                   arbitrary
                               nothing.

expect for cookies.
I will pledge my honor to soak up all sweetness so that my bones might
      rot
          faster,
             sinking,
                 weighting,
                       wearing,
                          tearing,
                                        s
                                           i
                                              n
                                                 k
                                                    i
          ­                                            n
                                                         g
                                                              .­

spiraling out faster,
                                              sinking
into another
                                               sinkhole
black void of destruction
                                              *******
the color
the dimension
of
me
into the next bed
                                             dungeon
for sleep,
dreaming of
                                             sinking:
plummeting past plumes of poisoned plum trees
plop perched atop an immobile glass-sealed sea
yet,

I
        sink
                     in –
                                            apathy.

Thunder claps blood red,
Splattering souls down from the sky.
Rain pouring in sheets,
Undulating waves of shhhhhhhh,
Shining lightning, lighting the land,
Pictures in negative contrast.
Purple pop, poisoned pole,
Hit with pristine precision.
The storm gods must have seen
The sinking holes in me,
Since they're filling them all in
Floods of fragrant liquid,
Pouring out from me into the
Sob-soaked soil below --
Symmetry of the sky and I.

i'd love to tell you that i don't mind sleeping alone,
that i have tough skin, that i don't sink into my pesky thoughts
and let them marinade me as raw meat to be devoured
down a ravenous cavern burnt to the point of
tasting only its own fiery scabs and blisters.
i'd love to tell you that i never whisper obscenities
to my chest about itself, that i am in love with the way
my hips bulge uneven and wavy, that i don't pinch at my
skin and curse it to dissolve, that i have explored each
inch of my earthly terrain and found it magical
and full of life and wonder, instead of finding
unfortunate mountains bubbling forth where they should not be
and unwelcome things i want to scour from its surface.
i'd love to tell you that i am full of humbled pride,
that i don't question every move i make,
that i am bursting with more of myself that i know
what to do with, but the more i live the more
i discover i am not my own, not an inspired
or unique soul, but i am piece-meal plastered,
shafted together from cherry picked muses
and i find my form unraveling as i wade through
these foreign seas.
trust me, i have long since
woken from the illusion of my permanence, but
i still long to feel true, honest, unmistakably myself,
and each morning i grow more and more and more
aware of my subtle shifting and morphing and reconfiguration
and i find that my environment is constantly reshaping me
with my hands helping.
and i don't know when i signed that permission slip,
but i find myself barreling forward out of my self-conception
my past, my roots, my image,
and it feels terrifying and terrific, trying to listen to
things i have ignored and shhhed for decades, but as i
attempt to reclaim my ground, my existence, i
find it disappears as soon as i think i have a grasp on it,
like chasing ghosts and playing with jello in zero gravity,
it keeps me reaching, fumbling forward,
and at night i wonder when i will be standing still again
and i wonder if i will even like it anymore.

the first rays of morning light
tip-tap at eyes lidded with stardust.

remnants of galaxies tumble off onto pillows as
fox-hair lashes blink
open to greet the shining face before them
and close again to feel:

the weight of steady arms encompassing
a body melting into feathers,
the even ascending and receding
of an open chest upon bare shoulders,
the gentle breeze breathing from
one face to its lover's,
the warmth of capillaries whispering secrets
across porous boundaries of skin,
the pulsing signals of a heart's morse code
teaching the process of recognition,
the subtle scent of complexities
compounded in spiritual intimacy,
the longing to stay suspended in early hours of sun
inside the tranquil essence of another's being.

there's a certain feeling
that creeps up
through the hairline fissures
in your brittle bones,
on frigid hollow nights
at the bewitching hour,
when silent stillness descends
a muted film of
forgotten bittersweet memories
over the darkness.

and honey-yellow street lamps
cast ghostly shadows on the sidewalks, who
hold your hand in solidarity
as you trudge through
empty space,
and the dampened humming of the buzz saw
never really fades,
playing tricks on the music in your ears
spinning haunting discordant loops over
sullen sugar-coated melodies.

it's as if you've stepped through a portal
of time and space
where there is no singular destination
but transportation to the
eternal place
in you
where that feeling has lived
every time
it has arisen in the past,
where that feeling will return
in all the visits to come.

and the place is familiar
so you settle into the bed of nails
comfortably,
breathe in the sharp sting of ragged pain,
and float through the museum
of recycled thoughts
on angry waves.
reluctant transparency
plays its hide-and-seek game, and
you re-learn the methodology
of picking up the particles
and packing them
into steel cages
into cardboard boxes
into dusty attics
into black hole space ships -
sending them into the void.

the mundane madness
in the
mystic mirage of memorializing  mourning.

the sea is roaring over herself hoarse and deafening
summoning her darkened volumes to surface
churning ceaselessly
with no purpose but to churn
against porous boulders raised sharp into salty air who swallow her spit
kiss after ecstatic kiss
biting lips and
breathing
into her fullness.
tree skylines peak up as cardiograms pumping, plunging
daggers into the sky and raising valleys in dusty ground
kicking dirt plumes
to mix with the low hung clouds
drumming up potions where
earth meets air
fuming
and beating soil into the certainty of sustaining
life and decay
decomposing symmetry to divine disarray
nature circles it's prey
all are one
and the same in her eyes
she bows to none
yet loves blindly
providing without agenda, taking without malice
equaniminous
balance of zero
random nonsense coalescing
to a flat line
emptiness
so vibrantly
alive

oh darling, i wish i could be
your big ice cream cone in the sky,
but i am no longer searching in the rye
for a catchers net woven
of arms, heart, legs ****** open,
i am just beginning to arise
on my own horizon, arise
into my new wild garden,
and my nectar is ****,
but if you'd stop *******
all the berries from my bushes
dry dry dry,
maybe you'd stop being poked
by bare twigs in your eye.
see, or rather UNDERSTAND
my side of lines crossed, and don't bind
in hindsight my once defined mind,
it was cracked wide open
with the strike of pure lightning,
skies poured in to no end
and i learned to float on remnants
of half-baked sentiments,
you barely took the time
to stir the eggs shells out,
or maybe you never noticed
them crunching in your mouth,
but i saw every last white message
of your hastily harnessed hostage.


you keep telling me that you don't know what to do without me,
but frankly darling, you never did anything with me.

as the fingertips of my heart
reach out to yours, we intertwine -
I am you & you are I,
there is nothing that holds us separate
besides the illusory vision of our eyes.
so close your blinds on this physical plane
and open your intuition,
invite in another domain - infinite connectivity.
let your bruised ego stop playing its game
and join the endless chorus.
dare to put your spirit on display -
there is no jury, judge, or gavel here,
only open arms to grab ahold of
while the walls you've clung to fall away.
bask in your liberated weightlessness,
there is no fear in true selflessness
for a singular organism will not compete
but practice generosity to its full being.
your puzzle piece in this mosaic
is a morphing tapestry,
let the wave of colors wash over you,
soak in every brilliant change of hue,
and know that as you are in all of our hearts, all of our hearts are in you.

the leaves of the forest are erupting into flames,
flaring orange and honeysuckle red,
swaying, stretching their fingers, dooming their neighbors to burn.
embers catapult skyward and tumble to the ground,
the fire devours itself, withering to reveal hearty skeletons beneath.
the sun is perched atop a golden throne
ever slip-sliding down the earth's dome
to embrace the horizon.
his smoldering gaze fans the kaleidoscopic furnace,
igniting ****** pockets of wilderness,
hovering for only a hushed breath
before bending to kiss another expanse with incandescent pigment.
the wind fondles scorched leaves as they sigh
and curl into their chests.
after sailing the departed to their ashen graveyard the breeze disappears, whistling through a maze of branches.
it carries the scent of the inferno on it's charred palms to the city beyond,
running residue swiftly under the noses of sidewalk dwellers
who absentmindedly look up from their shoes
to see if signs of smoke hover in the darkening sky.

you felt like a new texture, a fabric i'd never slipped through before,
but darling,
you and i are merely old habits gussied up in
tulle and a paper mache artifice - ghoul masquerading as prima ballerina
fouette for me baby, twirl me dizzier than a whirling dervish
and flounce me on my head to spin out over this choreographed failure.

i've shoveled so much chocolate in my mouth-hole this weekend
i think i'm rotting from the inside out,
made of only sugar blisters and quicksand sores
that are bursting new caverns to life
crafting a base relief depiction of my longing into my throat,
how deliciously destructive!

i'm loony-eyed swooning over this 90-watt moon replica
and these reflector paint stars!
oh, i think i'll trade the entire night sky for this masterpiece
and a macrame bandage for my chest,
much more utilitarian than the atmosphere i drown in these days.

my reckless howling and witchcrafting whimsy
have loosed my lungs from their cage,
wheezing out an incantation into the far-reaching wind,
Everest is ablaze under my spell
sobbing it's ice into the earth and
melting it's bones to ash in my palms.

some men just want to watch the world burn,
i, however, merely want to reconstruct it
from the bottom, up
shoveling all of its innards to the surface
and making the unseen
known.

is my emptiness
bleeding through, into
silent conversations
lying heavy in my mind.
laughter blanketing constant
lack of words
and blank stares.
stripped down to reality,
from a shared shelter of
vision, painted with
radioactive mist.

what once resided
in holy tabernacle,
dwells in the shadow of doubt,
projected back from an
insurmountable shattering of truth.
that which once appeared
to be covenant & sacrament,
heaven-sent righteous intent,
now only heavy sealed cement.

but a chance to reinvent
is beckoning you,
from the other side
of the torn holy veil.
step into a new color of light -
your eyes might squint,
but adjustment is processing,
slowly running through those veins.

but god knows how I love
to cling to old ghosts.
so I buried you in the
bedside table drawer
in a dogwood box.
& I may not believe anymore,
but your spirit still haunts me every night.

your mind is screeching over itself
fast forward looping
stuttering to sta-finish it's own sentences
before they begin
begin again
again rephrase
in a foreign tongue
sputtering auditory train
each song sounds the same
same thought new place
pacing backwards yesterdays
yester-year's dream spawned oiled seas
see the lochness creature seeping tar from smokestack wings
cleanse the river
boil the stream
seems where the hydrogen and oxygen meet
the breath drowns
defeat
retreat to your fiery cocoon
lace your wounds with spit and delusion
dilute your medicine til it tastes like lover's skin
again begin
begging the stars to swallow you
howl til one becomes two
rebrand suffering to resume
your pleasurable consuming death

a river runs through a ghostly town
soaked clay red with the blood of the earth,
the land is marked with tire tracks like an addict's elbow crease
sweating oil and electrical wire,
fields tilled with the claws of a paper beast
sprout telephone poles and generations of debt
amongst indigo coffee beans,
rotting tin roofs striped with rust
creak folklore in the pouring rain,
muddied palms clinging to trust on mala beads
are stung with poisoned ink leaked from shrines golden and winking,
an ornate temple carves god sharp into a clouded sky
its steeple piercing his hands
shards of bone spilling ash onto upturned foreheads,
sun scorches unsuspecting soil and it cries exhaust fumes,
the sputtering song of a motorbike is answered
by the howl of a stray mutt in an alleyway
reverberating pleas to a clenched fist,
an unremitting flame sweeps ruin
across leaf barren trees
wind choking on smoke coughing up skeletons,
and the planet heaves
and the planet heaves
weezing on humanity's delirious daydreams

the factory workers of my prefrontal cortex
are on a raucous strike because,
the train chugging them to lunch breaks at my amygdala
has been broken down for days.
and the now strained relay of packets of faxes from this neuron
to the one all the way south on Abbey Lane,
is creating untold pressure for Wernicke -
so forgive me if i ask you to rephrase.

despite the absent hoarded salivating mouths,
the deli in my amygdala keeps on producing
thousands of ******* italian subs,
so now the place floods with grease-sweat from old meat
that would make a carnivore remit...
and it's seeping, leaking poison to Broca,
who is now refusing to explain herself
to the confused face projected on my retina's blurred screen.

the mitochondria housed in my somatasensory
are all comatose from last night's debauchery.
so everything is still,
numb to the touch
blank on the face
dead in the eyes -
unaware of the incessant twitching
that's rolling through my joints, muscles, skin, sore red thighs.

every nucleus of every cell
restarting again, again, again,
but rebooting isn't clearing the glitch in the system.
so just lie here with me,
broken machine to broken machine -
our hearts still glisten.