You flake apart
Jump around in the boiling basket
but never out of it

why won't you
just let me live my life
an eternity in a swiveling ballet

cut up sniveling fish fillet
knife tip broke inside of it from the stress
the protoplasmic cowardice, the futile breeding quit

Would you like to wake up
to every battle I have in my **** head?
emotion submits to caviar delivery

tossed foam cups with the soda in it
belly up, split apart
the lives lit, baked-in honor

as if you earned it, like a lalala legendary
a souped down chopped up piece of aquatic livery
on a sanded down wooden board

skip past the easy part
isn't that what you wanted
spend hours in the car
instead of going inside

i remember my poetry
was laser focused
unhinged
perhaps it still is

maybe amicable as it is
the split turns to indifference
break plates like a child
counseling did not fail us

it made us realize things
are owed to ourselves
i think it's funny that this
is the hardest i've worked for us

with eyes brighter than the sun
at things we thought were once childish
maybe we're too caught up
in things that don't really matter
I must have forgotten
these things happiness was the truth
we were searching for
tell me now, a spark was not enough
we have firewood, we have fuel
and yet no fire comes
life is kind of dumb right now
spending all my time online
maybe within I'm too guarded
to know the difference
between trust and vulnerability

succumb, nights into deep bars
graveyard shift in broad daylight
wake up and it's 2am again

spending nights with me, please
the fun we can have, our bid to lurch
in each other's wild hearts

then watch the ceiling crumble
while you're crying on top of me
like a goddess of water with a small shrine

hey - why are there only two days a week
we can have white-washed conversations
in this small basement we pay rent in?

kent state

jackson state

waco texas

ruby ridge

"live free or die"

if i had a second chance
i’d move more devoutly
there’s dead chickens in my
neighbor’s pen, this state wanted
more power to the trains that
own men, more fuels
to start our own hell
i chatter too much smack
no time to improve
brain’s on the loose
if i look away for a second
another recusant friend’s gone
everytime i think of that purity ring
i just crack up
why are there nothing but young women
and old men in this small church

tell me how to break an addiction
when nothing’s solid green
even though the land is flat
the water’s laced and they know i know
and i’ll do anything for more bands

and I'll mess up my life
lie as a second smattering of truth
tell me what you got
before I put you in a plot
in my mind's grave

can't walk no more with conviction
for lost souls trying to make a connection
you know years ago I wouldn't hesitate
to cut someone's breaks and smash their plates
for you I would have put their face on a sleeve

and I'll mess up my life
but I don't need your help no more
up late but I got work at four in the morning
done mourning, ain't old love
I got other things to waste my time on