We are hands,
and eyes,
and feet, and ears,
lumps of skin,
and bone.
We are puddles of blood
filling the cracks
on the side of the road.
We are mush,
and porcelain teeth
knocked out and embedded
where the steering wheel used to be.

We are hearts, and veins,
arteries clogged up
with a midnight treat.

We are alcohol in the blood stream.
We are 60 miles per hour,
on a residential street.

We are a corpse,
Limbs thrown out like a compass,
Guts spilled out like a teenage poet.
But what we are not,
Is a soul.

We are objects,
We are play things.
For higher species,
Godly beings.
To smile like kids crashing toy cars.

We are empty,
We are just vessels in a blood stream,
Giving life .
We are white noise, screaming for our mothers.
We are a name in a notepad.

A statistic in a book,
Passed out at clever Christian fundraisers,
For old ladies who like sugar cookies.
We are a pop punk song
With memorable lyrics
And a catchy hook .

-Kevin T. 6/16/10

We sip green beer bottles under lime lights
With her ginseng tongue talking calming evergreen
And her eye’s are envious and big like granny smith apples
And now we’re downing absinthe on the other side
Laughing, getting drunk, and eating green grapes
Her skin is smooth and cool jade
But fragile
A cut under a blade of grass
But it’s emerald, and it’s all the riches we need
Because while everyone was playing life like a game with rules.
We were breaking fences and creating unfair stipulations for others.

No one is passing the finish line if I keep moving it up.
It’s not me raining on a parade
I’m closing down every street.

But still…
We have the pill poppers and the drop outs
The can do’s take up all the good face time so they say
But all I see is a weak person
Socially awkward isn’t an excuse

So if we’re all
Wild animals
Then we
Eat our young
And if you’re into that
Then we’re talking business
But until then
Write your eulogies on crumpled up bath room paper
I get the bland fairy tale story, rock band, slam poetry, baked cookies, digital photographs.
And it’s force fed down my mouth
Like a baby
**** it all
I want things to better
And I expect so much more…

If our lives are just a waiting room for something better
We’re stranded
So I’m leaving behind the white walls
And the cool
Linoleum
Floor
So I may be wildly foolish
But a slight chance at splendor
Is better than misery as a sure things
I'm moving up the hill
to see the other side
-Kevin T

All my friends they smoke this things
And handed me a Chesterfield King- Jawbreaker from Bivouac

Lyrics I tried to memorize
with my friends, while *******
on the syrup crusted
mouths of  glass coke bottles.
Singing loud and off key.
On the side of a Ralphs in the stagnant summer swelter.

The soundtrack song when being a punk skater
was a profitable venture,
and landing a kick flip was an achievable
*******.

When we could play Lane’s boom box
just loud enough to drown out the whimpering
from our sprained ankles
and scraped up knees
that left the sidewalks on Foothill blvd. so ******.

The music we were hearing now,
was way beyond Sunday school.
It was the sound of the sixth period bell,
and rushing to Jeff’s backyard
to smoke his dads cigarettes.

As we got older
We tried to quit the smokes
and forget the lyrics. But sometimes
we’d still  proposition people
on the side of that Ralphs
to buy us cigarettes.
When we succeeded
We’d sing that old song coughing, hissing, and wheezing.

-Kevin Theal

Fred’s a peddler of dreams
Between caked on make- up grins
And a dime sack of ****
He puts holes in logic
Like gaping buckshot wounds
While he sells his wares
To a corrupt, pretentious, college indie scene

The kids who sat in the back of high school dances
“Jesus I wish they’d play some Rooney!”
Are now ******* on the tongues of frat guy’s
Who’s favorite songs are narrowed down to a lists of hits
Played by Journey!

The same girls who dressed for cold New York days
In a California heat storm.
Who listened to Bob Dylan and The Doors
But now they’re covered in the sweat of a ******* without the hope
Of *******
Listening to Jay-z
Not because they like it, oh no!
They need to dance
And at least he sings
On key
While kids who made
Wordless promises
Sit in the back
Dropping LSD.

Fred’s a peddler of broken dream
Reach your hand in his satchel
For a fist full of glass shards, and rusted cutlery

He speaks in Biblical urban
Like “Thy shalt not give in, give up, sell out, buy in, peace out!”
And fred is a prophet on E
He’s the only holy man who’s ever meant anything to me
Or spoken a word more then the lessons I learned on Sunday’s PBS specials
I need Fred like a savior needs second chance
And I can find them at the bottles of these sugar coated alcoholic
Drinks.

And I’ll fade to a dim reminder like the scars
On the wrists of the girls and boys who wore the
Nightmare before Christmas hoodies, and understood so well
When they were younger that the only way
To achieve anything
Was to slice themselves under dull razor blades
In bathtubs payed for by parents
Who’s love was occupied by a 200 $ pay cut.
But now the bloods dried and the scars are gone
So 200 miles away and they haven’t learned
A thing
Or done
A thing
And when anything was possible
They need a multiple choice, with an E
For all the above

Fred these are my sacrifices, no love
These are old and weary so now I can sit
And watch the girl drown herself in alcohol
Fred to you I give her.
Put her in your bag of broken dreams
And sell her back to me as a blood alcohol
.40

Fred these are my payment in things I don’t own
The guys in meaningless vintage clothes
Dropping acid
And convulsing in chairs
Until their nothing but blink stares
And steady green lines
With the white noise swan song, and the time
4:40 am
Put him in medicine bottle
Marked “Lysergic acid diethylamide- For mild post college depression”
And Me and you Fred can share a nice chuckle.

Fred’s a con artists
He’s got an empty bag of *******
He’s got all the money he needs
He’s the **** all poster child
He’s the God I always imagined
He’s the best part of the week
He ‘s a lie caught between
Some tongue and cheek
And if I only knew what he said
Was a cautionary tale
And not some well thought out pitch or sale.

Well then Fred’s a messiah
Handing out second chance
In his knapsack.
But his advice
Is deafened by the constant hum and irritating beat
Of a floor drums that’s moving the youth into an early graves.
-Kevin T.

It’s too comfortable to write
In light so bright my sarcasm wont bite

So I’d rather wax intellectual in the freezing cold
Let my icy lungs ****
In some tar and I’ll
Hold everything I say
As
True

If only we could compile clues
We’d see
All the bodies we buried to be moderately happy
But still I’ve done worse things
While eye’s rolled in the back of their heads

Averting your vision
Can be the only tactic in your book
Of smarmy one liners
That all seem to be blunt remarks about my size
Which is fine
Worse things have been said
During diner conversations
We counted off the ways in music how we’d be a bonnie and Clyde

And if the220 razor wires grins sewed of mouths off cheating friends
88 sharp teeth gleaming, of devilish plots we were scheming
52 white knuckles clenched over getaway cars, or benches in parks watching false stars
36 black stares something about face mauling and bears, but I didn’t care that we only had
7 seconds to make it out with the money
5 eye’s wide open to ceiling fans or a lack their of
1 reason to wake up

And in such a way we could be writing pings on sound recorders put it just goes silent with the senseless bashing of fists on porcelain/.

but in the end we can only hope it means nothing
or as empty as air
or as simple as breathing

-Kevin T

The sound of the radio
Tears through my room
And the drip of the faucet
The gold in my tomb
And the song is just
A hymn
Or a swan
It’s hummed over
Veils
And blank stones
With pretty eulogies
Made up of blank white paper
Because we couldn’t say
Anything better than perfect geometry
Blue lines
And red ones
3 holes
5 stars: *
Good god
A+
You’re a the fulfillment of a prophecy
Self induced
Trauma
It’s just a like cooking a dish
So follow the directions
Hold yourself true
Here’s some things I made up:
Like flying kites, and kissing electric, post fall shakes, pined arms, letting go, making makeshift pasta desserts, the cranberry’s, popular mtv songs, your memories.

So cheap so I buried them
And if this is guilt
It’s not heavy
If it’s the clouds I’m the anchor around your ankle.
Breathe deep or bubble up
Maybe sink to the bottom
But this is *******
And I’m let down
By a kids decisions with
All the let downs of a major league game
But the let down of *** wee **** fest
A ten year old in fancy threads
This cat’s talking so smooth
“IT’S THAT ******* HOOKED ON PHONICS”

So cool…
So look out because here comes a schitzophrenic with nuclear capabilities.
We gave it to him, with no intention and a foggy head
4am finds 2million and counting charred and burned
Jaws opened wide black melted skin on the linoleum floor

But it’s at the bottom of the sea
And I’m buried with gold
And this is swan song
In head bashing
Numbness
Loud noise
And over the speaker it says something like
pseudo indie artsy

Printed on torn up coffee cup paper

When God speaks he does so without commas
Because he doesn’t need a pause, dramatic or not

So if I’m crawling in the dirt and the ****
Sniffing up trash and dancing in the mud
Call me
Rattus norvegicus

At least I got my instincts
And as a person
I’m not a fad
Falling in an out of ]heads
When the futures meek
I won’t end up on hipster retro gear
When our 20’s fade
it’s not me looking at the ***** mirrors

-Kevin T.

If I smoke *** on Tuesdays
Or drink cheap beer with expensive people
It will all look like an average day
For someone like me
Not for the crowd
That smokes *** on Wednesdays
And drink cheap beer with equally cheap people
It’s a job for them
They’re mindset isn’t indulgence
It’s how to stay ahead of the curve
Because when you’re this close
It’s easy to get your face smashed in on the curb of the curve (****** up ladder climbers are all a bunch of thieves, liars, and murderers)
So I’m a couch cushion and here’s the big time! Ready to be incendiary?
I bet you are.
You’re the guy who put raisins
In the bran
So tell me, how it feels?
The money shoulder
Reaction
If you’re quick
You’ll shrink you vocabulary to verbal shrugs
And then?
Then you’re the quick ******* kid
But still
Envy is a cheap word
When buying cardboard
But my life’s a cut out
And I’ve been around some melodramatic histories.
Still,
Hits me like a ton of bricks
When I break a promise to myself
But still I got twisted
And the rest was a kaleidoscope (color ******* and not so formal hand grenade hand gestures. I’m most the same act with different band t-shirts)
Adventures should be shared
I’d be far more interesting in an Indiana Jones excursion
I just hope it doesn’t involve rush records
Not a personal fan
**** it…
It wouldn’t matter that much
It shouldn’t matter at all
All pipe dreams lead to the same sewage.
And out to sea,
With pretty things
Where more expensive beers are served to
Increasingly less expensive people
Although cheap newspapers would have you believe differently
If I lost the charm I never had it in the first place
I’ve got 20 years of ******* to back up my ego
So young intellectuals challenge me to a battle of wit
They choke on shattered teeth
And I do my best when I’m ruthlessly violent
At the core that’s what it is
First sight is like a ****** scoped me
And I’m bleeding out the throat
And gasping for second impressions

-Kevin T.

I couldn’t beat the ceiling fan,
or that wonderful breeze.
Closing my eyes at 4 in the morning
is a plea for something better. An electric chair
wake up call.

Then I think I can get famous
for writing my sweet nothings on a bathroom stall.
But falling asleep on drugs , I’m wondering , “Where the **** am I”

Then it’s a Denys and it’s 3 hours earlier
And we’re all shooting **** while Fried potato
sticks twist around in our mouths.

You were talking life
and all these pretty words you’d never seen,
I was too high to care.

But the come down left my stomach
like an old gravel road.
I wanted to throw up hot asphalt.

But you smiled like “Let’s light up again”.
I ran to take a ****,
Hid in the bathroom and picked up a pen.
Then wrote out.

“4:00am and you’re too ****** to know I can’t stand
you now. Here’s a note, and a ten. Get a cab
and good luck with the rest of your life.”


That’s what best friends are all about.
Rotting together in each other’s *******.

But God that ceiling fan is good.
Clicking away like a countdown clock
on a stick of dynamite.
Looking forward to that sweet mid 20’s self destruction,
I assure you.

-Kevin T 6/16/10

Am I constantly making the wrong decision?
or
is it all just happenstance?

I guess everyone was right about me.
So maybe all my words are just pre-pubescent *******.
And i'm no Bukowski but you're no ******* Neruda

The come down comes in slow like the last dance.
So we grasp our hands and pray like were being let down into unknown liquids.
But mines perfect weather, in an overcast globe.
So I come down and look around, to recognize nothing.
The idea s that I tried to portray fell on deaf ears and eager hands.
So now I’m a sham and the rest of the worlds sitting on a pretty brass with a hollow carcass.
I can’t do anything but watch my words roll around like red carpets into newer venues.
And me
I’ll just take what was yours and call it mine
the me that is the thief
in the night.
10,000
Is the summarization
And the number is more important  than the words
Because we’re all thinking to a minimum, life’s an assignment
And as every hinge comes undone
Down and down
Further down we must go.
Until  I’m the truth
Until you’re right
Until I see what it is.

Becoming my exclamation points, overused.
Re-hashed, copy, print, stamp, autograph.
Till it’s passed around like a cheap drug
And my come down is a wakeup call .
To make me wise that I hadn’t created something for myself.
But a pamphlet to measure yourself. A standardized test.
I must have ****** up.
Until I crash into the ground.
Or I could deploy a parachute, but I need to see these ants. So I’m falling straight into the farm on my dresser.
And it’s not like an assassination.
I just fell on 100 bullets. Let the janitor clean me up.
I tried to do something great with clay.
And I did
And for that I can’t ever take myself seriously again.

The come down left shivers in my bones and every synapse sunk so deep into a dim pulse that I forgot how to breathe.

In case of Armageddon
Break the glass
And fasten your safety belts.
Actually **** the drill
Lets go wild in the streets with shot guns.
The gun toting evangelists
Pumping 38. And 12 gauge rounds into anything that’s not glowing or on fire
If the ground splits in half at least we know we’re going somewhere.

The bars near then end don’t serve anything strong enough.
You’d think the end of day’s could usher in some new era of alcoholism.
Maybe they’d break out the absinthe and write poetry with knives on the wooden bar stands.
Maybe men would walk in and request “something apocalyptic”

Right now I’m looking at these kids with this idea that lacks any emotional responsibility
It’s like gun’s without safety’s in the hands of kids
Some ones going to die (not get hurt. ******* DIE)
Because kids these days are impeccable shots.
The can blow the face of a man at 200 yards but they can’t get past the 4th  level of simon says
No these kids are doomed because I saw something great in a child
And now I’ll reap the whirl wind.
It’s like not stopping a blind person from walking across the highway.
It’s not a crime, but it sure as **** should be.

Put petty murders aside, when the bodies are piled to the sky
Break the glass,
It’s an emergency

-Kevin T

I want you to eat me alive,
So sharpen your teeth
Till they gleam like knives.

Macabre vision of intestinal track
On soft red lips, biting down
And tearing apart my weak body.

Because I’m pretty sure
You’re a stray and I can only feed you
Till you’re gone. So stay home.

Stay under the tree’s and live from one
Meal to another.  Insatiable. Your violence is
Unreliable.

Like the weather changing on a whim.
It’s whims that brought you and me
To the table to the floor.
Splayed out and crying “more…more”

They always say
strays will get to attached
never leave.
“So don’t feed something that wanders in”

But it wouldn’t make sense
For the stray to be the lonely one
It wouldn’t be the stray getting attached.
Casting things aside could never come so easy.
Second nature and serendipity .

It so rehearsed you’d call the
Familiarity love.
But it’s just fragile convenience.

And We shattered it
Like broken plates on a clean floor.
But stays don’t need that
You ate me alive,
Till I was a carcass.
Attached.

My brain doesn’t fire
Synapses the way I want it to
Anymore.

It just shorts out
Causes a commotion
Leaving me on the floor.

I got a few to no tricks up my sleeve.
But these idiots keep putting faith in me
Like filling a plastic bag with more plastic bags.
I can’t see any reason to the way I’ve been living.
I’m fighting myself by instinct.
If you build a multitude of clever one liners
On being “Angsty and smarmy”.
Then when you run out angst and smarm
Your basically ******.

So I’ve been trying to reinvent myself
For the kids.
The little *******  with the confidence to keep stars from falling.
But I haven’t seen a gleam in ages.
All I see is an empty sky reflecting in my hollow head.
I try to sleep it off
But I just wake up feeling dead.
I could go find a firing squad,
But that’s not what I want to say at all.
My brain isn’t working the way I want it to.
If this is growing up, we’re ******.

Frozen above the sweaty masses a fleshy ocean, he’s the dive bomber.
His out reached hands marked with the black x’s, The D.C. kids clawing at the human Stuka.
He has unhinged himself from the crowd. untethered
from the pale white fingers of the misunderstood youth that would pull him back in.
The hungry human piranhas trying to ****** a piece of his flesh.

Now, where only music can reach him.
The off tempo cymbal crash and the four power chords furiously strummed
on a broken five string guitar,
the mad crowd shouts in tongues. Spit and sweat sprinkle his face like an ocean mist.
A vivid reminder of the human meat grind below.

His arms outstretched like a bird of prey ready for the ****,
the wings of Icarus over the blacked out
eyes of the faces below.

However in this instance he is at the apex,
he is captured in a quick second snapshot,
Suspend in the void behind him like a black flag
Waving and violently vibrating with the music behind it.

He is the stage diver,
Voyager before the malfunction,
Icarus before the sun.

When I arrived at Brian’s house, the whole room smoked out.
I prayed to God I was walking into a witch burning.
But he was lying on the couch melting
into the cushions, being swallowed and chewed.
Like cud in a cows mouth, slowly sloshing around.

He’s rolling joints on top of college rejection letters.
He doesn’t want help in the most obvious ways:
he wants it in the way couples make suicide pacts.
Glass eyed, he looks at me and grabs
a beer:  no cheers,
no salute, or words
exchanged.

We drink the beer quickly
Aluminum tips to pink lips,
that moose **** taste of natty ice.
As our ******* banter bounces of the walls.
The light bends off Brian’s glasses and flashes in my eyes,
Like the scope of a ****** rifle.

He is fixed on the flashing blue TV screen.
If I’m here or not makes no difference

He puts the joint in his mouth, lights it up.
The flame ignites against his sugar glazed eyes,
his skin stretched tight across his pale face.
Bright blue veins all along his skin,
like highways on a map.
A corpse in a cheap Halloween
costume.

I catch a ghostly outline
of him with all his drop out friends.
Lined up, ****** on the couch.
Jack-o'-lanterns.
Carved with frozen grins,
so weary
and hollowed out.

-Kevin Theal

High and dry it’s all deserts and tumbleweeds with you.
But I’m a cat that likes to travel and move.
So I go the opposite way. Because stagnant dreams at high altitudes don’t suit me.
I’m a flat line realist with big aspirations, but I need to understand the game board.
So I hope there’s gas in the tank. Not for terrorist motives
Although I wouldn’t mind wide scale destruction
And my friends and I
We try to live like pirates.
We wish we could steal
But my mazda’s not a ship
And I’m not boarding port side.
Although to be perfectly honest
I feel that introspective ramblings
Aren’t going to save me.
When I ‘m fine with my self
It’s the flannel wearing 30 somethings
Raised trucks
Medium beer
Hats
Bro’s with community college degrees
The death of California
So My friends and I
Should drown in tar
Like dinosaurs .
Hypothesize our end
Our demise was overdue .
A few years ago I was cutting edge tongue flapping
Now I’m electrodes to spit older quips for lack luster
Gents.
I know the kinds h & m uniform, scarves in California heat, military grade boots.
This one’s name is Jeff and he slings dehydrated lines about charity like it will save his life of mediocrity and empty,empty,empty pockets
For the things he needs to do
To make people like him
Some where
Maybe india
Yes india
We’re friends that are just a 7 dollar donation away.

So leave me high and dry with your corner out eyes
Save yourself from the breakdown’s the x, y, z’s
Of predictable lines and same old stories
It’s the same thing with *’ of varying size
So if I quench my thirst from leaky pipe dreams
Or water plants with the excess, it’s all the same.
Because a silver tongue and debatable morals is the selling point but we’re not vinyls
Value is measure in age.
And wisdom wasn’t the call your made.

I’m sick of cut throats in Sunday dresses
And thief’s in cheap yellow sunglasses
Life’s not a ***** of a flat line or a mountain to be ascended or descended
-Kevin T.

I want you to be like cracks in the wall
Splitting, terrifying, acknowledgments of age.
But full of character.
The kind of wrecked up building
Hipsters want to take photos of.

I want you to be a condemned factory
In some rundown New Jersey Industrial district.

I need you like the worn lines on some film reel.
Getting in the way of the best parts.

You could be a dress completely destroyed by cigarette burns
Or the stains on an important document.

You could be my anti-Christ to perfection.
And I’d crucify you with the best intention.

You’re like a car with old bullet holes,
Or that rug everybody is afraid to touch.

In the end you’re like some decrepit ruin of a vast civilization.
Old and broken.
But eternally majestic in my perception.

I felt heavy, in a way
i'd never felt before. Then suddenly knew
everything was going to be terribly
okay.