Untitled
my childhood dog
died yesterday afternoon.
this morning i woke up with a head full of blood
that was falling out of my nose.
i called my brother to talk
about the summer
and the truth we turn from
that is lightly tugging
at the lining of our fathers heart.

i am moving at a pace that
resembles the shifting of
a two glacial bodies —
the formation of a stalactite
within the caverns of our
dust speck, swollen bellied earth space,
but i am still moving.

it will not always be this way.
it will not always be this way.

tomorrow morning
i will wake up on the floor.
perpetually unfazed, among the empty beer cans
and the ash smudges between the carpet fibers,
thinking about the way it started in
the very beginning.
today, on repeat for every day this month.

i can't hear out of my right earl,
and my body is punishing me
for not eating and drinking myself dizzy.
dragging myself through the morning
all the way to the middle of the middle of the night
and then again.

Forget, Forgotten.
classless scummy ohio whatever,

i once loved a firework, once.
she went off
midday
a puff, black thick smoke,
in what was otherwise
a pristine sky with an eye for some sun.
since then
i've been living in troubledays,
waiting for the cold to clear
singing to myself
when i get the chance
thinking about that black smoke
on a canvas of clarity
when i've got none of it.
i'm taking my chances with me
wherever they follow,
and i am coming back
just not today, and probably not tomorrow

electric pulsed,
ionizing under fake sunlight
getting fake sunburn
          but a fire is a fire is a fire
and i'm still,
electric pulsed,
man or artifice or god
in whatever order,
poetry is the art of everything;
          less about love,
         more about recovery

its
waking up in your coffin
the morning
after you've dreamt
of a past lover
the pain
that heals
like the continents
                               d        
                                       r      
                                               i          
                                                     ­   f    
                                                                ­ t        
                                                                ­             .

to this end
there is a beginning
that feels like

                      god             to                 man                 to            artifice

(what is man to artifice if not god)

heavier
than the art of everything
the poetry of inky blood and red eyes
the distant solace
in pain
wherein, words
always run out
and the end comes
with a clash, we're all going.

he coughs
          the walls shake
          the stress in one
          second is enough
          to ****
          but we feel it all
          of every day.


when i was younger
and less empty
he told me
about the autumn
leaves changing
and that there is beauty
in death because
it is life
but i can't apply  that
to anything but
******* leaves.
not now at least,
as the hole in his chest
can only be
filled with a clock
that talks away
whatever is left.

i am sorry
i haven't been stronger
than your pain.

i know
you can't
forgive me
for not keeping
you warm
when i should have.
and my inconsistencies
outweigh the
goodness in me
lately,
but maybe you'll excuse
the mess --
i am a bad day,
and i'm looking
for you
in everything
i do.

pavement scrapes beneath my feet
high on hash, howling at the moon
drunk on gasoline—
drowning in it.

i’m just trying to make it
to the promise land.
ya know,
where there is no road
and everyday is a ****** up holiday.

so i drag myself through the 3am swoon
with money on my mind
when i’ve got none of it.
its hot
i’ve been counting my
teeth with my tongue
and i am searching for god
in the cracks on the side walk
but i’m walking alone
and the blood runs thick.

i return to my parents home
nestled too far into the
battle field of mediocrity.
i am asleep in a bed much too large for
just one body,
but when my best friend is too tired
to make the drive home,
i find myself choosing the couch
while she sleeps too small in my bed
too large.
in that, there is something
particularly sad and sick
and i find it in myself
when she asks me
as i sit across from her
eye to eye,
'where are you?'
and i hold my words
in the back of my throat
and they choke me,
silently panicking,
and a clear lie is freed from my lips:
"i've just been really stressed lately.
i'm taking a lot of credits (i think about
what it would be like to die too often)"
and we move on
because she knows i'm lying
if only to hide,
but i return to my bed at night
alone and missing the feeling
of being lonely, because at least
that means i feel something

about this foreverlike distance
between me and myself
and myself and everyone else.

so i retreat to the couch
where i pretend that the cushion
is someone i can lay next to
without wanting to find
somewhere else to sleep.