let this be
what you
need it to be.

so the lights behind the church—
do you think they are ghosts?
because i think it says a lot about
you if you do.
in a creepy kinda way.
i like it. i like that you don’t hate me
at least most of the time you don’t
but your brain tastes like butterscotch so…
i want to swallow it whole.
maybe i focus too ******* your hands
and not enough on your earlobes.
but there is something
we haven’t found yet because we’re lost in
a transient light.
like the ones
behind the church
that are actually ghosts
because
i really do want them to be ghosts.
i want us to be ghosts and i want
to talk to your aunt about Albuquerque
and touch your leg with mine.
i will always
watch you bend the moon over your knee
how you do every night.
i want to wrap the sky and stars in gold
and send them your way
when you’re feeling the weight
of the nighttime swoons
and craving the jazz music in my veins
that only play
when they’re close to your veins.
for every night i’m not there
i’ll sign my name on the sun
and send it to rise just for you and
simply hope it doesn’t burn you
midday when you call me
smiling through the phone and holding
yourself together with twine and string.
soon i’ll be home
and i can hold you together with my hands
my mouth
your mouth
let’s melt together.
or be ghosts.
i want us to be ghosts.

all these sad girls
with naked eyes
and mine, red.
hands full of
a messy mind
and more of
the same shade of
red.

laying down on the ground
in that diner
off the one street
i’m always walking around on,
putting poison in my own
coffee,
tying knots in my hair
and crying about the tomorrows.
and all of those yesterdays
yeah.
i don’t know.

athens is a dizzying place
and here i am
trying to increase the distance
between me
and here, and now.
starting with that boy
who told me
that i was too frightening
to understand— cause
i guess i’m more
and less
than i wanted to be.

or the place i live
falling in on me
while i sleep,
the sad girls with
their naked eyes
and drug addictions.
all of these things
sickening me
through the pasty
walls
i’m between
trying to hide some place
that feels safe
while my father
dies in a state
that is not this state
my mothers
paper hands
on his forehead.
her favorite color;
red.

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.

water
freezing us to shore,
the illusion of safety
and whatever else is left out here.
my clothes on the grass,
his and hers in a tree
this drug—
so unkind to the tortured mind.
i left my brain smeared across the
common room,
with bits and pieces on my best friends cheek
while she cried for me.

i’m walking alone
and i’m tripping through
the softness of a midnight
swing,
we kept talking about
california
like it was a solution
to a problem.

i’m still quite
convinced that it is.

but like i have said before
i’m starting to really lose it
and everyone likes to tell me
that most things aren’t beautiful
and i see it less and less in the
moonshook skylights.

but my friends came over to my house
and it was late
with lots of different vices
and we sink
into our addictions,
maybe they’re not always that bad
if they mean
i can share them with the only people
to watch me shrink under the weight
of all of this ******* agony
still thinking i could paint the sky pink

cause the night time is
always illuminated
with our words that melt into
each others skin.

learning endlessly
about each others atoms
and i want to take the pain away
for whatever its worth and
carry it in my shoes,
walk to the nearest sunrise
and talk for a while longer.

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.

wait —
saturating under
less-than-flattering
fluorescence.
something good will
come.

in between every thought,
a new poem shuffles out from
my finger bones
and i don't know how to ease
the restless movement
in that pseudo-extravagant light
that starts out in my hands and
works its way down my back.

the red stained wood panels
that dress the four walls
around me in permanence - - -
torturing my restless pursuit to run
in any direction
towards some freedom
from
a
        m  i  n  d
                           oh
                                   my,
oh
my,
it's
all
really
happening
even
before
the
damage
is
done.

he goes back in time
to think of things
he should have said.
he's got strong arms from
carrying heavy thoughts for so long
and it seems someone else lives in his
mind sometimes

but i want to live there too.

i’m afraid if i let go of the moonlight
gravity would find me again.
it’s not a bad place to live,
it’s simply lost its humility,
and show me one time in this
cannonball universe, where god spoke up
and said otherwise.
but the view from here,
from the craters in our moon
is enough to make anyone believe
in something boundless.

because i have been wishing
that clear blue sky was mine to catch,
to keep,
to shoot up into my blood stream.
you haven’t felt the way my heart  
will skip a beat for a chance
to venture out into this toxic galaxy.

but when the universe shifts
i’ll fall back into earth, and
divide into asteroids on my way down
gray haze blood in my veins
with history on repeat
and millions of miracles
sputtering at the seams.
i get scared to breathe sometimes from
struggling through
this endlessly inward
design of the human mind
knee deep and trudging through it
going farther than i should have.



so i’m still falling into
this eruption of cosmic frustration,
this ****** vengeance against 
the world of facts and figures.
this is a galactic unrest,
a testament to the earth and 
its long lost glory.
today, she hangs from a string 
on an tilted axis,
proudly knowing everything 
with forever left to go
waiting to be shaken by
some hard space matter
or swallowed alive by the sun.

still falling,
raspberry red and laughing
the whole way down,
exhaling primordial art forms
going out like a fire *******,
shaking the earth one last time.

sitting at the edge of everything,
hands folded neatly and eyes filled with light.

this is what it feels like to create the universe.

"everybody goes there sometimes"
sings in my ears. he smiles
waining crescent
and ****** drips
find the corner of his mouth.
indestructible and somehow
unafraid.

"well.. she gives beautiful hugs" he says
to my friend in the parking lot
as i sit on the roof of the car 6 feet
away drunkenly brooding
as per usual
and i thought about the time
i hit him, and
we sometimes hate each other.

when i come home
we don't have to talk about it.

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.

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.

my sweat is sweet with whiskey
eyes burning red with angst
i might be ablaze
but i’ve never been afraid of being burnt.

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.

there you are still-
still ablaze
like you were when i first left
and when i second left
there became all this space
between my words when i speak
but they never sound as pretty as i think they do
so there you go.....
you stole the show once again
and your skin feels
like a sunburn against mine.
i want to die sometimes
because i break my own heart
and i steal the show
the words drip off of the page
the world starts to sink in
and i can’t count on myself to breathe,
let alone write worth a ****.
my love is so untouched, never disturbed once
in a tragic kind of way.

He sleeps like the continents drift
In some wholesome solitude.

I’m watching the shadows grow
Quieter
And I can’t sleep next to someone
Who can’t feel the air pollution
Inside every unconscious breath.
It’s you
It’s you
It’s you
It’s all me.

it’s been a while
since i’ve written
because i forgot who i was
and i prefer not to write
as anyone else.
but strange
so strange.
just walking through
the aisles
of a grocery store
and suddenly
i’m no one
and i don’t know why
i’m even here.
between the bread aisle
and the canned goods,
and suddenly someone filled the
building with
water
to the ceiling
and i am now swimming
because i guess
that’s what anyone would do
and i might be drowning
but there really is no way to tell.

the earth turns
and i’m always up at night,
joking about ecology
with the pollenated air.
my lungs feel thick
with sweat and cinnamon,
but the silver-mooned streets
bleed sounds of angst filled poetry
and something about jazz music
and an undying endless fury
at 4 am after the earthquakes,
and bombs crash
so i wonder—

who stole the ribbons from the sky,
and why did the earth get warmer?
i’m back pedaling through
my no one mind
and when things get lost
they aren’t always found
and i don’t believe i’m alive
sometimes when i find
rocks in my mouth, or
i'm choking on the air in
my house, and my cheeks
are burning hot enough to
burn the place down.
be still, through the rattling
of my ribcage and the
foggy colors --
grey black and blue,
bar lighting and smokey hues
i’m going somewhere but i will be back soon.

the wishing well
over flowed that morning,
and she was true blue--
died with diamonds
still in the corner of her eyes.
i feel like crawling
back to myself
in this endless tempest
of a life
within a life unlived.
and i paint in onyx,
the details of my will, that is,
on the ceiling of my bedroom
**** it.
i really have lost it this time--
voodoo in my chest
my heart-
that moon.
******* and whiskey brains
so let the red show
because i’ve taken the stars back
and told the priest to *******
and still i am here,
overflowing, this morning.
swollen mind
i wear the dark of night
so proudly.

speak only to say something
beautiful. sinking
in the terminal kind of sadness.
toughen up kid,
this is it.
this is what we’ve got.
this is what surviving
with style looks like.

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.

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.

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

in that light
white makes white go black
and those electric blue
waves of radiation
screws through the skull
hours of poison
pumping through the veins
strings grow brittle
and your will
written on my hands
like you stole something
you wanted me to have.

and i would live my life
over again
a million times
if i got to know you
when you were moved
by wind chimes
and the yellow bugs
that like the yellow flowers
would you have
loved me less if
you knew who i could be?

this whole time i’ve been
drinking salt from the ocean
and when you sleep
pressing one hand to your chest
and one to mine
to remember
you’ve got a heartbeat
that makes moves like mine does
because the blood in my veins
is your blood
and it feels like
a wild fire in my ribcage
when i look in the mirror and
see your nose and chin
and i want to die sometimes
so you don’t have to.
and to hear you laugh
every day because i know
no one laughs enough
anymore

the whole time you’ve
been teaching me
how to live
and what you’d leave
behind

give me back
those two o clock's in the morning.
your warm mouth
the scent of whiskey in your lungs—
you speak,
everything is on fire,
and i have been wanting to burn with you.

you move under me
collecting stardust,
musing the inner stellar
planets
with your hot metal eyes
and they are looking at me
with all of their white hot
glow.

you see me,
quaking with a mouthful of stars,
kissing your hips
wishing we were somewhere more
explosive.

i never wanted to feel anyone
the way i feel you.

i've decided that
i could **** myself,
but instead, i'll find the words
that will do it for me.

Berne opens herself up to me
tonight as i drink weird Swiss beer
and choke on weird reality.

but i swallow —
like i’m really not in it, and i guess i’m
actually not because i made a flighty decision
and ran as fast as i could to the foot of a mountain
a different continent all together.

escaping beyond the electric
city where the people sit and
count the cigarettes they have left
in the pack, drinking the last bit
of their weird beer, and waiting for
love to come along.

so beyond that,
theres this eccentric magic
in the modesty of a calm night
in a wild city,
where will things come together?

Neil young speaks over the radio,
helpless, helpless, helpless.
something in me is ignoring the intoxication,
and rejecting relief from an untamed mind.
but the floor looks like a ceiling in here,
so i know theres enough danger
in my blood to flood the red sea.

all these many deceptions
just running gleefully through my veins.
         and i am
                 finally back
         in Lucerne.
The early morning gray that hovers
over the ambient light
settles in my stomach,
with all of the other toxins,
but that light--
that light is not strong enough to travel
the static air above the clouds where
Pilatus sits, littered with broken windmills
and snow caps in july
its peaks white with my tomorrow.
there is nothing like this wind
that will soon ******* away soon,
into a new love.
To a city that enjoys my drunken presence less,
where i might get the urge to run again,
but inevitably disappear into a collective disaster,
and into men who have fewer things to love with their eyes.

all these symphonic shifts in my pulse
as the universe chuckles
at my attempt
to be a part
of
anything
at
all.

lucerne, your hot smoke hues will
soon be missed once again
as my blood spikes with every word.

seeping in through the sidewalk cracks
hot water burns my hand
and this paper is yellowing by shadow light.
black tea slips down my throat
and a bug is stuck in the honey puddle i leave
behind.

the lights are ugly,
but i'm thinking about Pittsburgh
rolling around over hills and
housing a past lover,
always teeming with the blues
if you listen to the right places.

trapped in capital Nowhere, Ohio,
i miss the city that birthed me
and i'm never going back
to the arms of those
who have held me before,
and i dearly hope
i forget about writing this.

it’s been a while

since i’ve written

because i forgot who i was

and i prefer not to write

as anyone else.

but strange

so strange.

just walking through

the aisles

of a grocery store

and suddenly

i’m no one

and i don’t know why

i’m even here.

in between the bread

and the canned goods

and someone filled the

building with

water

to the ceiling

and i am now swimming

because i guess

that’s what anyone would do.

but i’m always up at night,

now a days at least,

joking about ecology

with the pollenated air

and my lungs feel thick

with sweat and cinnamon

but the silver mooned streets

bleed sounds of angst filled poetry

and something about jazz music

at 4 am after the earthquakes

and bombs crash

so i wonder—

who stole the ribbons from the sky

and why did the earth get warmer

i’m back pedaling through

my no one mind

and when things get lost

they aren’t always found

and i don’t believe i’m even alive sometimes.

through the rattling and the

foggy colors,

grey black and blue --

bar lighting and smokey hues

i'm still searching for the truth

in between every word.

oh yes
the late night swing.
29th street,
old money in my veins
drowning in the florida heat
and i keep thinking about Michigan rain.
so the dark creeps in again,

red lips and blood drips
i am far too reckless
in these muddy bones,
and no one asks questions.
drunk and always drunk
but where is the shame in that
when the world is on fire
just yet
and i am allergic
to most things
mostly love things,
mostly good things.
i am ******* in my own bad ideas
and it’s getting too late.
these years just groan by,
and i’m addicted to the unknowing,
i guess i'll just dissolve, goodbye.

4 am and i are closer
than ever before.
truthfully though,
i’m tired
of these
heavy boots.
i wear sadness like
lace
but
i’m addicted to
fast paced, blood rush,
and melted eyes
in the summer time.
the details feel like
poison
and i'm made of things
much less than skin and
bone.


searching for beauty in places
that don't exist, so
i’m alone on this nowhere road
kidding myself with every step.
ohio looks like **** in the winter.

the cold painted white over
my hot breath
in the middle of the day
might be drunk
or even on fire.
i don’t notice much anymore.