I'm laying in the ruins of my own new lifestyle.
Tipped over bottles of ***** aside,
I still feel okay.
I wonder if the world's crusted over pedestals still condescend to me
or if I have gone beyond their gaze.
There are little plastic fairy tales dancing around in my head like tipsy gumdrops.
What wonders shall spring from this:
(the new day,
the old day,
the ever increasingly frequented day)
except hangovers and light thoughts about how I'm handling this well,
I'm handling this extremely well.
Again.
I still feel okay as long as there is 80 proof to wake up to.

Sing softer to me,
Oh fading masterpiece of my own discrepancy.
Let the tremulous vowels resound furtively upon your delicate lips.
Fading swiftly we have only just begun to transcribe the messages underlying this fantastic fever.
So shiver with me in the cold of my own vacancy.
Trust that the smoke that escapes me now is only a product of my own frozen tyranny and that you are the foundation of this great work which I lay down my discrepancies upon;
the alter that I sacrifice my pride at.
These stone monoliths enclose my memories half-constructed,
the other a moiety of truth.

Every time it happens she can feel it breaking off,
branching out and reforming.
Every time she utters a word,
she is walking down a new path constructed a millisecond before she steps.
She is choosing her realities with no particular discrimination.
It isn't that she wafts through the wind without care,
it is that she calculatedly assembles her existence but fails at being an active member in it's design.
She could be,
though in doing so she would doom herself to a path of bland ever-constant introspection and would have to forgo living life altogether.
A billion or so versions of her move in unison so perfectly that even the most scrupulous judge would not find fault in her chorus lines.
However there is always something amiss,
even if it be nothing more than a hair they are all separate and un-touching.
Which of these 'perfect' copies is the 'real' one is an utter mystery.
I think it is safe to say that they are all the 'real' ones,
what is important here is the particular one.
There are trillions of paths that hold her,
but not quite the her that we are speaking of now;
not the her that moves her pencil to the left in such a way as to create a stray mark on the paper;
not the her that wrote this.

I looked at him through a haze of Pall Malls
He held me briefly and fiercely in dirt encrusted finger tips.
When he spoke to me it was whiskyed and dry.
I'd writhe in sheets covered in sweat,
marred by too many bodies (only one of which was mine).
But we laughed that hearty laugh that comes from knowing eyes.
We danced with the weight of flesh and bone.
We held no pretense,
and my eyes stung with the knowledge that we were genuinely ****** up.

I'm leaning on a stand for support of something or other,
he's putting the mic closer to the speakers;
feedback.
It's a response to questions I was caught screaming towards the back wall,
only to hear them break at the far-end over the tops of 'them'.
Vibrations making my skin tremble,
in fear,
in repose,
in envy,
of those whose lights shine brighter than mine do.
In this dark secluded resting place of weary alcoholics and cheap lays,
who am I trying to impress but the bartender who gives shoddy looks through ***** glasses.
She's squiggling on the floor and I doubt she even knows why,
but he can dig it.
Nobody gives a **** what's playing as long as they hear it.
So I have them hear it,
they have them feel it
and we go on like this for forty-five minutes.
They're grateful,
but their drunk so that's not saying much.
This is all the fantasy I psych myself up for,
I'm projecting.

Stranger things occur to mock you darling in the subtle mornings of a rainbow's kiss.
I exist, only in this ever wanting,
I digress, into this mirror image of justification that we both missed on feelings outstretched.
Fading figments of ever-longing trepidation,
my love we are like the tears of the ocean;
over swept and baring no great elegance or depth.
Faster. Shall we traipse across the furrowed brows of our former keepers?
Or let lie the soft negligence of doubt?
Sinuous hopes, fears and phantoms play about the skirt of this magnificent oak that bares down upon us.
What of it's age and wisdom will it bestow upon our humble countenance?
Far be it me to describe such forbidden things.

confined to your own head, you might as well be a steam engine.
burning little holes in your turncoat.
making new friends in old dens.
masking proclivities.
barking at intruders like a dog.
what caused her, so many times,
to remove herself from the same line of thinking?
the man with the cocktails doesn't know,
but he knows the solution.
the solution to all life's problems,
to be imbibed and controlled.
the embrace for the embittered.
the fuel for the fire.
the stoke for the engine
the energy to keep chugging along at a good clip.

I've succumbed to the fact that I am not good.

That I am some sadistic crusher of dreams, fates, wonder.

I am thus, I do thusly.


I am a destroyer of dreams.

Of all those good things.

A crusher of moths.


Foaming at the mouth.

Drooling at the prospect of all at once.

The want.

The need.

The cake and the presence of cake.


You look at me.

Sad.

Pathetic.

Endearing in being so weak.


The conquering of the mountain of you.

Done.

Complete.


I am the master here.

I win the game.

Every game.

Pick a game.

I win.


Everywhere I go

I can get you.

Have gotten you.

Could drop you and get you again.

Could craft an army of You's.

Them's

Us's


The luck of being the shade that I'm looking at currently.

So finite a selection of people.

Raise your glass to that if anything.

Enjoy the ride while you're on it.


At least be conscious of it.

Set yourself apart in that way.

Impress me with your special qualities.

Make me notice you.

Don't lose my interest.


I grow bored.

He stood quite still on the sidewalk.
Stood there for hours, actually.
Stared into another place that wasn't here,
wasn't there,
just sort of muddied in the two feet in front of the glass he looked through.
Static went crackling in the depths of his mind.
Sometimes a spark would jump from one edge of the gap to other-
and a flash of recognition would pass like a tankard barreling past a bus-stop.
Violent but brief.
He doesn't speak.
He doesn't move.
He doesn't anything.
It's as if existence put on pause in the self-contained universe that was his body.
Then, he walked away.

Oh here I am in the back room while you sing my praises
cohort with the neighborhoods and their dogs.
They spin around you and you laugh a hearty laugh.
An honest laugh.
The laugh of an honest man who does good for good's sake.
I torture myself in the back room and listen to the conversation over some desperate woman and a guitar
as I write about my mother.
How did we meet and why?
I don't think there is an honest answer to it.
I just love you, simply and purely.
The way you are with everyone else.

I'm taking a bath.
Scrubbing it off of me, if you wanted to know.
The dirt you left there.
The crevices crust-laden with guilt
and all that good stuff.

Steel-wooling it away from me.
To cleanse the deeper parts of me.
To scrape off every layer of dirt
you've encased me in.

'Til I see skin again.
The pinky swollen skin of mine,
that I lost when you buried me in soot and ash.
When you tarred and feathered me.
When you doused me in gasoline and set me ablaze.
When you mocked me by pouring flour over my head.

Once I've stopped scalding myself to sting away your leftovers.
Once I've ridden myself of every speck of you.
Then we can discuss-
if I 'had a good time'.

Our lives are set-up in beautiful hypothetical.
Propositions swirl around like conveyor-belt sushi- delights to choose at semi-random.
Light and fluffy brightly colored choices.
Candied aftermaths of promise.
We stare at the world like through a pane of glass that houses every good thing.
Select a sweet impermanence.
Finger a whim.
Cast yourself onto a game of chance.
Play your favorite song on the jukebox of 'nowness'.
Skip all of the imperfections in a sidewalk.
Dandy through your daydreams.
To want is to behold.
To wish is to brush the tips of splendor.
All of it free for now.

Oh ****, I’ve found myself.
Lurking behind something.
Covered in balloons and discarded afro-picks.
Funny out of all the places to find me I never thought it would be in the remains of an ill fated trip to buying ***** at a CVS
or while contemplating why I haven’t thrown away empty soda cans.
So be it then I suppose, I kind of missed her.
My dog looks at me like she’s pleasantly surprised about the whole ordeal;
knowing **** well I’m putting her back in the box once I’m done here.
Once I’m done cleaning up the party favors.
Still I must say, I missed you chick,
it’s been awhile.
Thanks for sticking around even though I keep you locked away places and then forget where I put you.
That’s gotta take a level of effort I can’t reproduce.
Paradoxically.

I feel that old twinge of bitterness creeping up again from the shadows.
I almost don't recognize the pattering footsteps of the old fiend.
never the less, the hair on the back of my neck stands up and my eyes glaze over.
Next thing you know I'm foaming at the mouth speaking gibberish in-between nips at your ankles.
Ah! the familiar pang of imaginary injustices,
piling up and filing in to rows of sentences without pauses.
Oh what a wonderful feeling is that of the raw ball of hate caught in the throat!
Venom drips from the fangs hidden in nonchalant inquisitions.
Tread carefully for I lay in brush of amber straws waiting for the perfect time to lunge.
Needless to say, I did not seek out the dog that teethed upon me. Nevertheless, I've become unforgiving and rabid.

What would happen if everything just suddenly stopped.
Like the world literally did stop turning.
At the speed were going we'd all fling off in one swift defining motion.
all the CEOs
all the kindergartners
all the bus boys.
Flung off like a towel
In one passionate revealing motion.
Then I suppose the world would be naked again,
Like the day it was born.

But that's just morbid so I digress.

Everything's closed down.
It's like I could feel the 7-11's halogen lights flickering off and everybody shut the **** up for long enough for me to feel the silence.
For once, it was as if somebody gave respect for all the dead in all the countries at all times for all reasons.
You didn't have to be well known or do anything exceptional
you were counted, even though you weren't conscious to revel in it.
I think when I die I'll be my own moment of silence.

let me be the first to say
if this was "a good run",
i'd hate to think what a marathon with you would be like.
if i had to venture a guess
somebody would lose miserably.
not that i'm trying to boast,
but let's just say,
in "the long run",
i go the distance.
you huff and puff somewhere behind me,
gasping for air,
trying to mouth the word 'water'.
while people place little shiny pieces of metal on my chest.

She plays black, then blue, then green and red and yellow,

Then translucent and impatient;

Messy and aggravated.

She fumbles,

Then runs full speed -

Touches the wall

and back again towards you.

Spread arm'd and clinched fist'd.

Clinched teeth and mismatched socks.

Haphazard hair and ****** complexion.

You slit eyes and wink and shine on oh great shining thing,

Until the dust of her lay at your feet.

If blood came solely from my chapped lips and the spit that issued from them,
maybe you'd know I meant it.
The force that only comes from the letter 'f' flung forth with great ferocity.
The fear induced by a sudden change in the airs humidity.
The fever that comes from fire stoked in between my four burning lids.
Pardon me for feeling such things,
for facing the truth that is the sham of these past few days.

"Forever my *** you fake *******, clean your face and *******."

If you are going to be dramatic, be dramatic in some new way.
Because the way you are being now wafts the scent of that old worn out you.
The one from years ago,
pining and whining and all together unpleasantly reminiscent of my younger years.
Oh to be young,
but never to be that again.
Yet there you are somehow captured in time.
Trapped in amber forever so as to perpetually present the same shade of tortured.
The same DNA ****** out of your bones to recreate that 'brand new you' into infinitude.
You haven't evolved
and I'm afraid I haven't devolved enough for us to be on the same end of the food chain.
I would shame you and wag my finger in front of your face,
but I'll hold.
One doesn't go to a museum to bemoan history.
I wanted to see how far I had come and man were my boots made for walkin'.

Somehow I know you're not worried.
Because I'm busy enough to be filled up to the brim with socialite;
a veritable butterfly of connections.
Like little electric currents that I watch late at night when I asked for rain.
It's delicate though.

I'm watching it run-through
like tape in an old movie house;
Us on the big screen.
(one single tear runs down her face)
'Perfect shot... but this time look into the camera'

I counted the droplets on my windshield last night,
talking about being ethereal,
being someone's 'one'.
Having that simple girl call me a drunk,
watching Independence Day,
thinking about being '******' for life.

Every fifteen minutes I'm wondering if she's okay
and those that don't deserve worry are still calling me to fix them.
I've got the band-aid for everyone else's 'uh-ohs'.
Watching the Olympics,
thinking about death, then you, then death again.

Avenge me darling.
****** up lullabies,
and perfect vision,
cutting ties and *****.
Going it alone, without the team atmosphere *****.
We're so good at it, it's a shame.

Any week but this one.
But here is the run-through
so it's almost like you're there.

Everyone is up to their knees in **** talk,
They all word ***** in mass.
So I sit back and I watch them eat each other,
whilst falling over themselves.
It's something akin to the end of days.
Revelations revealed in all it's gory details.
I'm just waiting for the ravens to pluck out their eyes.
It's ravenous and disgusting the way they drool at the scent of blood.
It sickens me the way they tear at their own flesh.
They're so consumed with blood-lust and so attached to their own need to feed that they lost track of where their skin ends and their prey's begins.

Check your back pockets.
Did you check them? Because I think you might have left your mind in there.
Since you can't find it anymore, I've learned its always a good thing to check your back pockets-
before you wash yourself out.
Because maybe then your mind will end up being banged against loose change, wrapped and unwrapped in receipts and gum wrappers.

Just like mine was.
Now my whole worlds been dyed pink with confusion that bleeds through that one red sock of a mind of mine.

Don't be silly.
Don't obstinate.
Check those back pockets of yours.
You might find it befriending some lint in the left back pocket of some jeans left on the bathroom floor for the past week and a half.
Stuck there, having been kicked around by fumbling feet that ***** in the darkness at night;
Splashed with hot water and trampled on by moist feet fresh out of a scolding shower.
check them.
I'll wait.

Told you.

Ah, transactions.
Collect your free tote bag when you buy three
From our new spastic collection
Smell them,
Taste them,
Free samples for all
I bought three just the other week
Fantastic value really
A fair decent bang for your buck

The bills you get from an ATM located in a Headshop called the Refinery in the Valley are not going to be the same that you cash out of your local Wells Fargo.
They've been used before.
You can almost imagine the staff feeding the all-cash green you give them back into the machine (once a day when things are slow).
These are just facts.
When you say you don't want a 3:1 you want a 3:0... They show you a 3:1 anyways.

You know, the marketing system has really changed.
I get a discount for bringing in two newcomers.
My coworker keeps saying we are buying 'drugs'.
I tell her 'it's not "drugs";
even before the legislation passed, all you needed to say is that you had cancer and they would drive away ashamed for asking'.

I tell the staff I want something that will get me through the day,
nothing too crazy and I don't want to fall asleep.
I end up with a 3:1 CBD hybrid again.
I pay my 101.00 for the hybrid and a bit of gummy 50/50 Sativa and indica hybrid 'for the road'.
She giggles.
I remind her we have a whole department dedicated to this **** now,
she should act more professional as she selects her joints.
My other coworker gets a salve because his joints have their own problems.

Just another day with the work-family.

If I'm going to survive the night, I'm going to do it with grace.
No more head tilted slightly resting on ***** bar tables.
No more pirouettes into the sidewalk.
No more fingers ****** into the air as a universal sign for more.
Give me more than this.

If I'm going to survive the night, I'd like very much to do it with class.
No more slurred speech.
No more mangled sentences.
No more off-tune renditions of 'Under Pressure' while I try desperately to keep from falling under the table.

If I'm going to survive the night,
(though at this point it seems unlikely)
I will not tout my youth in front of older strangers,
waiving it in the air like a gun as if to say,
'Who wants any?'

If I survive the night, I will have survived it with my dignity.

That's why I'm so desperate to die.

You're spitting blood at me instead of words,
grasping onto clothing,
retching onto your knees,
pleading,
begging,
stupid.
I'm simply kicking the chair from underneath you,
you strung yourself up.
Consider it the lesson of your life,
and the end of it.

Cold limbs can't tremble in ecstasy.
They cannot hold the backs or clasp the body of anyone.
I am but lifeless flesh that moves only by the assistance of others;
a heavy marionette with too weak strings-
dragging along the bottom of a well of sin.
(Simple gestures as music plays in through the windows)
I don't know where the winds breathe and simmer in the open spaces between you and me.
If you could be anything,
I would love to play you like a piano.
You would lie in front of me, naked,
with all the princely dignity of a drifter from back east.
If ugly is pretty,
let me breathe into you the sickness that trembles somewhere deeper than my flesh,
seething beyond my decency.
In sickness and in health,
I rather prefer the poison in your veins as a pulse in tandem with mine.
I wish to scratch against you like bows against strings.
maybe not to become some beautiful piece written by some composer of utmost pretentiousness,
but possibly just one note and then another-
back and forth through the evening-
as would the whistling of trees outside.

Fear me.

I fill all spaces.
I break all walls.
I convalesce in tight corners.
and piece all the pieces.

Such tiny things are goals.

Such a pitiful want is sleep.

Fear me for I fear nothing.

Run fast for I sprint forward toward the world,

And you are in my way.

Shhhh,
It's spoken.
Spoken like a dream in handcuffs
Broken like a relief in progress,
and single as an eyelash.
Trusted in darker hallways.
Sinful as the walkways of a stolen word,
Crash to open.
Send it to a brighter world.
Let the dim light linger.
Never let your finger
touch the lips of babes.

In this place things swim around slowly,
every color bleeds into each other.
You can't make out what you're looking at or why you're there,
but more specifically,
how you feel.
You're sitting in front of a pool of absence.
Dipping a toe in and watching it ripple on down to the edges; change course.
I, of course, sit in front of it for hours pensive, worrying.
And all my thoughts change the mixture.
And all my moves trouble the water.
And at times there is the great upset brought upon by rain.
When it rains the silence dissipates.
The surface ends up fighting against itself.
The little droplets spring up and begin spurting out towards whatever incomprehensible answer will suffice at the time.
The commotion is only settled by focus and time.
Then, everything turns to whispers.
Here and there of words drop phrases or concerns.
Ultimately it quiets and it's back to swaying like reeds and still moments like these.

She's wiggling her fingers in her throat.
Got something caught back there;
some words she spoke.
But I'm not sure I want her to bring them back up
So I let her choke on them.

frailty
in beauty, as if that was the way it was supposed to be.
with hollow bones, like sparrows, just a stones throw away
if she was wicker, someone paid a hefty price.
and the bed sheets smelled twice laundered.
thin and devoid of meaning.
such a silly thing,
that moved like wind and breath would sway her
willow tree, that one
bent over in eternal weakness
like a daisy, wilting
but how she lorded over all the thoughts of men like a sovereign

Broken boys make broken girls
who break the pavement down the road.
And all who follow best beware to tread quite lightly, tread with care.
Because broken girls make broken men,
who fall head first and break their shins.
With broken bones and broken hearts
and broken pathways from the start.

The last time I saw you,
was the last time we spoke;
and the two words I said to you,
got caught in my throat.
So I'm writing you a letter
and I hope you get it safe.
Because the words that I write here
are written on my face.

Time hasn't stood still here,
I have; stopped mid-step.
I'm a statue that gets climbed on by small children,
quicker moving than the eyes of their parents.
I am petrified
like wood in permafrost.
Forever here for thousands of years.
Trapped within this moment.
Always and forever about to commit some great crime,
or to do some beautiful act of kindness.
Always about to make a movement, but forever doing nothing.
I'm reaching towards something that has long escaped me.
Holding my hand out begging for it to return
for it to nestle itself into my hand without the need to lean closer or grasp it.
When will I learn the only thing left to collect while in this frozen state is bird crap?

The parts that switch on,
flicker and hum to hesitant life,
when you come walking through the room.
Reluctantly, I feel all of my emotions begin.
There is a clicking and whirring, a sputter and a cough
There is a squeal and a backfire.
I sound ugly but I'm still alive.

Hello there old… friend
It’s nice to see you again

I suppose it’s been.. years

But I can’t help noticing you’re there and I’m here
As timeless as anything ever been put in one of those mason jars.

It’s strange to be a product of an age
Or how nothing’s really changed
You still, you
And I unabashedly I

And I love how there’s no forgiveness needed after all this time
For what would we have to say?
What do we have to say?
Here, now, in this quasi reminiscent place?
Nothing but pleasant ‘hello’s and ‘how was your days’

Still it’s comforting to know that there you are

The proof that they hide in pudding.

Its getting about that time
that we all switch pictures
define ourselves in some new way
write plays about the years we didn't pay attention to whilst in them.

She glows.
Shifts in the distance like shifters do
mirrors the parts of me I cling to
splices in the new shade of blue

that some commoners cooked up one summer

I want to move like you do
I want to follow a tune that you grew
up out of that dangerous mouth of yours

I want to slip in unnoticed into your background
I want to leave you in the wake of a spellbound
insomnia silvia nightgown.

I'm a remix of secret decisions
that I would love to let you and your friend in.
Take the tour of the wicked and old sins
that I wrote when I worked for the lived-in.

But she's still staring loudly at the floor.
Forgetting what project I wrote for.
Forgetting what score I produced.
Forgetting why I haven't noosed myself quite yet.

She shifts in the distance like shifters do,
mirrors the parts of me I cling to.

"It's not me!" she broke in, hands still shaking,
heart still trying to headbutt through her rib-cage.
"SHUT UP! I don't know you!", she screamed at the wall of her bedroom,
panting.
Making memories right then and there.
Born like stars in the darkness.
Dreams that let loose into the silence of the real world like breaking through glass.
Dreams to make the grown men weep in panic.
Dreams to drink an extra cup of coffee for,
on your way to work.

There is a cold wind that sweeps over this place
and I'm staring dead at you.
If you ignore the fog around our feet and the ominous smell of mildewed death,
you can almost see a point to this little adventure of ours.
I'm about ready to make you an offer to get the **** out of here and go somewhere else a little less, depressing.
But you're staring right at me with that look again;
that look that says you're not all there.
The one that says 'I'm sorry you have called the wrong number'.
To be honest, all I want to do is run,
but all I'm going to do is stare dead at you and pretend that this whole little adventure of ours was worthwhile.

I've been nervous all day
and finally-
at the end of the day
I love it.

I guess I'm not as 'above it' as I wanted to be.
I'm sure my mother could see this more clearly-
than me.

But the butterflies in my stomach have now morphed into an odd satisfaction
I guess I just wanted the action-
after all.

It's all for the greater good,
and shouldn't I-
be proud of that.

Give me a ring, to slip off my finger.
It moves to my right hand.
I move to my right hand.
and you raise your right hand at me.

If I was to write home
I'd have to tell them I died under a horse I beat far beyond death.
I'd have to tell them that I caught a disease from breathing in the atmosphere here.
I'd have to tell them I fell into depression on a milk farm out west.
I'd have to lie, I'd have to lie a lot is what I'm saying.

Sometimes you wake up and your plans for the week have burned down.
You find the owners of the buildings got into a fistfight,
blaming each other for its destruction and were arrested.
I guess that means we can check it off the list of things to say goodbye to.
Time to renegotiate and go for something like that hole in the wall pizza joint with all the awards on the wall.
Time to kayak on the only part of the LA River that isn't concrete.

Your bullets mean nothing but void.
Void where matter should be.
Absence where substance once was.
Darkness where light should be housed.
All of this for nothing.

You pulled a 'My Sister' straight down to the ground
down, down, down
no one's going to miss her
my sister, my sister
no one's going to want her around
the sounds of the well as you wished her to hell
as you shivered and shook all around
you pulled a 'my sister', my sister
you pulled her right down to the ground

Fix me up a fine web to die in.
If you don't mind.
If it's not too much trouble.
Can you just hit me upside of the head a few times
until I forget where I am or what I was doing?
Shoot me in the face if you like.
If you find it prudent to do so,
dump me in an alleyway and leave me for dead.
Because I can't stand being stared at and waiting.

Pour me another one of these.
I'm going home with death tonight.
I love the way the strobe light dances off of open bone,
I don't want to be alone anymore.

Oh, she says, I’m going to wash you away.

I’m going to wash you so far down stream,

Out to the sea.

I will dilute you in the infinity of the ocean.

The rains will come and off you’ll go.

So far, so far away from me.

I will wash you down with what’s in front of me.

Goodbye to the rain, goodbye to the streams, the sea, the oceans and you.