There is no movement here
(Except inside my head)
Besides the rhythmic heaving of my chest,
My arms readjusting around my pillow,
Legs contorted into what I can only describe as
A lying down flamingo.
There is no motion that cannot be accounted for,
Only the necessary,
The slight,
The human impulses that cannot be quelled
By bedrest.

Alone.

I laid there—two weeks—
Alone with my thoughts,
My fears,
My shortcomings,
My inability to be
Anywhere but where I was:
Facing the ceiling
With such intent
You would think I was waiting
For a ghost to appear
(Maybe I was),
Haunted by myself.

You cannot resurrect
Memories
That
Have wedged themselves between
The future and the past,
Yet are too fragile to
Exist within the present—
You cannot
Resurrect
The way you felt
(The way you felt invincible)
In remembering mannerisms that outlive
The moment.
You cannot reconcile
The heart's defiance,
Deliberately giving yourself to
A void not of your own,
Gathering gathering gathering
Sentiment and stitching it into
The fabric of your narrative,
When you should have
Gathered your senses in a pail
And lowered them down into a wishing well...
You cannot resurrect what never
Wholly, entirely, unconditionally
Existed without
Your warm breath
Encompassing it in meaning,
Feeding an emptiness not of your own making.
Yet,
You cannot escape it either;
So it lingers:
Your regrets, your self loathing, your incapacity
To accept that
There is no way to breathe life back into
Something that was dead before you
Pressed its surface with your fingers,
As if you, yourself could
Impose a pulse upon what you could not
Understand.

Understand this,
Time will not resurrect
That which you long for in the night,
It will not reconcile
The incongruent nature
Of desire:
To feel
To be numb
To hold on to
To understand
To forget
To destroy
To save

Save like a wilted flower pressed between
Two aged, yellowed pages: present only in its allusion to the past.
You do not wish the flower a different fate,
To fill its dried up veins with green, pulsating life,
To have it become what it once was.
You cannot reconcile the purpose of its carefully preserved petals.
You do not question its existence,
Question why it has been uprooted from the ground,
Why it has changed shapes while remaining a flower.
It was never meant to remain the way it was.
And so, it exists
As an indicator of what it once was,
As a reminder that it will never be again,
As memories do
When we press them down
Between the past and the future,
Until like the dried up flower,
They cease to change,
As we continue.

I do not know you the way a morning glory knows the sunlight: dependent, wilted in its absence.
Nor do I know you the way a vowel knows its predecessor: dependent, indifferent to chance.
Still, I know you. The way a palm knows
Each singular line that runs down the twin fingers of its opposite, independent yet inseparable.
Parallel creases of experience, your hands rewrite language by their subtle movements—
Alluding to a oneness that scatters once it is spoken, a secret dialect that spreads from your fingertips into mine, sending signals up my outstretched arms.
Reflexively, I trace the outline of your presence. I do not know you apart from the way I know myself.
At times, I yearn for the indifferent dependency of the morning glory, the formulaic way a vowel flirts with the past. Yet this can not be. To know you is to
Become you (the contours of your fingerprint contains my very being). To know you is to love you entirely.
Lose my singularity, to take your hands and place them decidedly over my eyes, look out into
Eternity: the world filtered through your presence—our harmony—this is how I know you.

9/25/15

When I discovered I had cancer,
I was told that I would learn a lot
About Life and Death and Time,
But I never thought that I would
Discover what it means
To be intimate
With strangers,
Or anyone, for that matter.

When my insides were cut open like a game of operation,
I told myself:
Be detached.
When visitors came,
We talked about the weather.

When I arrived home, I spent my time
Trying to forget
The experience
Of impermanence
And shared emotions
That I couldn't even grapple with
Myself.

When the person I loved
Left me
I flinched
And then sunk back into an abyss of
Emotionless functioning,
Cutting myself further and further
Off from my narrative
Of pain.

When it was time to go back to school,
I flinched
And signed up for a workload
Heavy enough
To push out the fading reality
Of my condition.

It wasn't until I was sitting on the steps
Outside of a bar that was slowly beginning
To empty out,
As intoxicated shadows gained substance and lit cigarettes against the brick wall.
I sunk down next to friend I had recently met-
My big t shirt inched up above my abdomen
And the lower jagged mark of my scar
Peeked out-

I didn't choose to tell him my story
Until he asked me about the obvious
Stale incison mark that had a presence
Of its own.
Piece by piece, it peeled itself from off my stomach
And liquified into a sequence of events
And feelings
That poured from me
Like a stream of bubbling bath water
Overflowing from the rim
Of a porcelain tub.

That's when I realized that there is something shared and intimate about scars:
Marred reminders of the flesh
That speak to our upmost human
Encounters with our own mortality.
An indecipherable label of sorts:
An unsigned invitation into the taboo.

In a moment of unintentional word *****
At 2am to a stranger,
I regained my intimacy with myself
And my journey.
I learned that while Life and Death and Time
Will always plague our existence,
They distance us from the human experience that is
To feel:

To feel everything in this God forsaken world.
To feel angry at people for leaving when they should have stayed.
To feel compassion at the same time.
To feel intimacy with others.
To feel intimacy with yourself.
To feel love.
To feel pain.
To feel the cold creases in the wooden floor as you make your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
To feel alone.
To feel surrounded.
To feel the trembling echoes of the past and be able to grab its elusive coattails and shake away the dusty remnants of time and shout that you are present.

To feel nothing.

Pain is beauty:
The thick, swollen red line
Runs jagged between my hip-bones
To right beneath my belly button:
Peeking out from under my
Drawstring pants
As my figure wavers
In the fogged bathroom mirror reflection:

Beauty masks pain.
I focus on a freckle above my midriff
While my stomach heaves in and out-
A testament that I'm still Here.

Life is concealment
Of all the run ins with death
That we are too humble to
Praise
With the same unabashed glory
That we attribute to the very
God- whose own son's hands
Were marred with the scars
Of a self righteousness
That isn't felt in hospital recovery rooms.

Sensations are transitory-
Leaving subtle marks upon our fragile
Bodies,
A reminder
That death can never be beaten;

I trace my fingers across
The rigged Scar- but I don't feel
Anything-
I don't feel the missing faulty pieces
Of my body,
Carefully extracted like a childhood
Game of Operation:
They didn't belong there, anymore.

Beauty has fallen
(Down from the right hand of god)
Into the arms of modern medicine,
Adorned with sickly sweet lilies
And medals of honor
Pinned upon the breast
Of anyone tragic enough
To experience
Life
Without the security
Of a timely exit.

I am whole because my experiences
Are hidden beneath a functioning
Exterior:
My marred flesh burns against
The heavy fabric draped over
Last summer.

Experience is merely a fallacy
For survival:
My raised skin outlines
A tragedy too human
To pray about over the dinner table.

How can one measure happiness?
Today's youth fades into tomorrow's yesterday,
As age wears its weary toll upon
The cherub faced nation that cried at it's mother's breast
And asked for the world in technicolor.

The sun slinks his ambivalent profile across the unforgiving sky,
As we pace face down against the grain of time,
Counting seconds until they spill over,
Lapping up against our freshly polished shoes and quivering ankles,
And drown out the dying magic
Of the coming hour.

Day after day, we are aware of nothing,
Moved forward by the simple urge to live,
Created by motion pictures and life insurance billboard advertisements.
Is this what it means to be alive?

Years pass, and we pursue the same ancient questions,
That have disrupted our conscience
And held us accountable
For millenniums.
Yet, we are still no closer to an answer to our empty prayers.

Afraid of the unknown, we peel the face off God,
And disguise him in languages and fables
That embody an entire civilization
And the fear that turns it's wheels.

We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

A nation with daddy issues
We call out- yes master
Success took a sudden left
And we've forgotten what we're after-
Because mommas got a curfew set
No matter if you're plastered
A nation founded on being a *******
Afraid of our youth
We drown it out with our laughter
As long as we fake it
It really doesn't matter.
We pledge allegiance to the mad hatter
Swallow down our issues
Call it morning after
The fact
That our hearts are in our stomachs
But our brains are intact
Securely in a system
That needs to be hacked,
We gamble our values
Betting what we lack.
The age of information:
Our odds are stacked
Up against
A doctrine that overrides
Common sense,
Pushing our past
Into present tense,
While we pry our fingers
Through the picket fence
Between our rights and wrongs
And the need to make sense
Of the corruption that places
Appearance overides the common sense
Of discrimination and ideals
That we can't fight against
Without binding ourselves
To a static defense
Where poverty and status
Don't need a pretense

I wish you would hear me when I say I've been thinking about you.
It's not enough, you say:
Your name glaring from my cellphone screen
As it writhes with the vibration of the bottomless void of empty phone calls.
I can't pick up the phone,
But I hope you can find solace that I've been thinking about you.
Star crossed lovers lament their first person plot lines until they intersect.
Between unanswered text messages and disregarded voicemails,
Juliet heaves her shoulders in between scenes
And Romeo checks his emails;
But still my mind remains undisturbed
And thinking about you.
It's not the same, you cry:
That I hide my presence,
Yet I wish you could feel the quivering waves my thoughts send out
As they bounce upon the heavy walls of your being,
Yes I know I've been away,
But I'm thinking about you:
A mantra echoed in my mind until it becomes second nature, heaving in and out in unison with my chest.

I wrote a poem with your name,
And left a lot of blanks along the way:
Subtle mannerisms meant to render delicate and absolute imagery
Drifted right out of my vocabulary,
Face to face with the other component of a lover's metaphor:
The churning azure of the ocean's ebb and flow stared hungrily at the limitless white abyss beneath its tidy line in my unfinished sonnet.
I meant to write a poem about you:
Clear and beautiful: the materialization of how love is taught to feel in the classroom,
Where Helen hangs her heavy head and stares into her doomed reflection:
The vacant space that flowers grow, between cobbled steps and naked feet.
Yet, something else has happened:
The space where your imploring image should have inspired stars to fall into the fiery depths of hades hangs indifferently above reality.
All the superfluous images crafted to allow your luminous soul to shine,
Fell flat against the darkness: the aftermath that occurred before I had any time to craft the person behind the syllables of your being.
I meant to paint your image with language synonymous to love,
But instead I pressed my face against the hand-smeared, dust-ridden, cracked open only just an inch, window of a relationship that never really was much of a novel.
The still damp with paint, folded down the middle construction paper butterfly of kindergarten art projects of love. Messy and effortless, yet containing some inevitable beauty that comes from the close and intimate fusion of two halves.
I wanted to eternalize our connection through language,
But in the process, I unraveled it and left myself vulnerable and empty across from what was once the magic I had sought to know,
Now blurred, your name conjures an ink blot that my eyes have grown so accustomed to, they can hardly make out the hidden beauty.
I meant to write a poem with your name,
Yet mine has appeared on every quivering line.
A distorted self portrait of the artist echoed in my vain attempts to personify an emotion not yet felt.
I lost you in the very language that sought to immortalize you, and found myself in the process.
Your name no longer stood for the way your eyes light up when you talk about something of importance,
Or your genuinely lopsided smile and crooked tooth,
But instead, for all of myself that hide behind the capital Y of you:
All my missed opportunities and failures materialized in a poem that wanted so effortlessly to be about Love:
The crime of understanding a person as a metaphor
Echoes soundly through the hollow horizontal lines of words
That, if you squint just so,
Look faintly like the bars on a cage
With your name looming above its pearly gates,
Tragically beautiful yet motionless and with a purpose that has no impact
Beyond the world that it lingers about, yet never really enters.

I've never felt more than half an hour:
Insomnia trickles down until the black-tar-ridden-sap oozes onto
My partially open eyes.
And, to say I've never been in love.
Emotions rise up and retreat-
A constant heaving of the battered
Chest- saving us from finding out
How frightening life is.

Murmuring our sordid laments to Lady Death,
Beneath the murky glow of hotel room bed sheets
And fluorescent dollar store night lights,
Too vacant to summon anything more than a whimper
From our submissive minds.

Nothing ends, here.
One upon another, words flow effortlessly
Out of our cavernous mouths,
Clogging our chests with empty syllables until
We forget why we ever tried to do something more
Than care.

Depression can be felt anywhere-
The air slowly seeps from the hissing
Caracas of a worn out tire,
Or the lungs of anyone
Still enough to remember.
Mindlessly chanting Hail Mary's,
We taunt time with our penchant for immortality
And hospital lobby greeting cards,
Until Aphrodite descends to sell her soul
To the highest bidder.

Mother, I have killed the world
With a time bomb that will never detonate:
Ceaselessly ticking on and on-
A reliant backdrop for something
Too harsh to exist in silence.

Our hearts have fallen from our sleeves
And into films, romance novels,
And 3am cooking infomercials.
Land of the living:
The walking dead,
The too-afraid-to-tell-you-how-I-really-feel,
The product of a broken people
Who traded silence
For a language full of mixed intention.

Children of the night,
Blindly parade around before noon,
Trying to buy redemption
At a corner store market
For half the price
Of the pulpit.

Afraid of hearing the latent echo of
Our own pulsing hearts,
We fill our lives with white noise
And intimacy, too stagnant
To exist without our 3am spirituals.
Anxiously arranging our feeble lives
Around minutes and hours-
Slaves to false agendas,
We battle the dark, secretly,
until soon
We lose sight of the purpose
And get caught up in the motion
Of a world too drugged out on
Redemption
That we forget our own names.

There isn't much to be said
About the day time-
Hour after hour, we beat on
Against the ticking clock
Of complacency,
Until before we know it-
We're ****** into the realm of
The halfway living.
Awake past midnight,
Processing the happenings
Of 9-5,
As if draging them out into
Language
Will increase their potency.

There's nothing more moving
Than yesterday,
After a night of fermenting in
Our desperate minds.
Often too late to be felt
Before 10pm.

Reality is too much with us.
Pushing up against
Our trembling palms,
As we reach out
To ******
The manufactured idea of
Happiness. Prepackaged
And with an expiration date
Beyond the next year.

We try to find our fate in tarot cards,
Palm readings, grocery market bargains, expensive haircuts where they only take an inch off but you still cry, second rate ballets and strip clubs, the words of others, and Sunday services past 12 where the hangover isn't as dreadful.
Experience junkies,
****** fiends,
Attention addicts,
Compassion parasites,
We **** the marrow from the earth
And prescribe her with Ritalin
And 3 months of sick leave-
The placebo effect has never seemed
So enticing.

Is this what it's like to talk to God?
Newspapers from last week
Find their way into the warm,
Sticky floors of the subway:
They have no purpose here
In this cool, indifferent future.
Bold headlines prophesying drought,
And lamenting those already dead,
Alongside ads for half off
A large pizza, and 25% off your biggest
Problems. Classified ads
And the sports section
Reek of ***, failure
And vulnerability-
No one cares, now.
The past is only real within the proceeding hour,
And middle school history class lessons,
Too optimistic to hold
Any reality beyond repetition.

Lifeless, we seep through time until
The pages are soaked and soggy with
Our failed ambition and twice baked
Love stories that grossed a billion dollars
For the movie theaters, gas stations and diamond companies-
Condensed into romance novels
And nonfat ice cream:
A testament to a nation
Afraid to feel anything that isn't synthesized
And discussed in tabloid magazines.

Sideline poets and actors,
We rap our knuckles raw against the railing,
Nervously counting down the seconds
Until we will be called to dutifully recite
All we know.
Waiting, we count our blessings.
The cumulation of good deads and sacrifice
That have paid the dues for a one way ticket
To the promised land.
Little children, again,
We twist the frays of our sweaters
And buckle our knees with anticipation
Of judgement day
And Memorial Day weekend.

I've never felt so cold as when you taught me how to feel-
As each stagnant second pushes
The great pulsating vibrato of life
Further and further into
Yesterday,
Until nothing is left but memories
And stale tap water in a ceramic coffee cup:
The trembling scale by which we measure happiness
That is only felt after it becomes a memory.
Who determines the expiration date
Of emotion?
Your warm pulsating skin
And the hottest month in August
Can only be felt in photo albums
And subtle murmurs only heard
Past 3am.
I never meant to get this caught up
In life-
Breathing in the bitter reality
Of fragmented testimonies
Warning me of what's to come
And fragility of time.
Selfishly I **** the marrow out of
Every fleeting moment,
Scattering the bones across the graveyard of my unrequited mind-
A self proclaimed martyr of suffering
And good intentions.
The confinement of my sordid thoughts,
Condenses reality,
Into the tangible.
Freedom is only felt
In the aftermath of an earthquake-
Crumbled barriers now bear remnants of security.
Is this how it is to feel?
The nerves in my finger tips
Are hot and trembling, as I trace the
Faded outline of something too real
To ever be strained out into the world
Of the living.
Time and time again, I remind myself
Of the ineptitude of anything
That isn't born
Within the sacred hours of
Insomnia.
A distorted image scatters across my empty mind,
Casting shadows on the times where
Nothing mattered beyond the moment.
Life breathes in and out
To the rhythm of the broken record
That we relentlessly cram
Into our vacant hearts,
As if trying to drown out the hollow drone
Of the love
Manufactured in Sunday night sitcoms and materialized on Broadway.
Simple actors, we betray our inner wishes,
And sell them in the form of words
To a greedy audience, yearning to be reassured
That they aren't the only ones who mistake pain for something
Pure.
Time and time again,
I repeat my cynical mantra
Through the motion of my feet upon the ground;
Because, history repeats himself
Until emotion can no longer tread
The freezing waters of existence,
Leaving nothing but a trace of
Something that we foolishly lament with the names of a lover,
And drape with the revealing veil of time-
Mistaken for the truth,
And worshiped at the alter of God.

Empty asphalt parking meter,
Suburban drop out,
Accidental, half baked,
She-really-didn't-mean-to-
Love story of the empty
Alleyways and crowded
Cross streets, full of sober promises
And five day old
Chewing gum
Wadded up and discarded
On the faded, cement floor.
Blood pulsating
Through fifteen dollar
Cheap leather combat boots.
The almost cold, October air
Wheezes through halfway parted
Lips and abstract fleece jackets,
Stained by yesterday
And the subtle scent of pizza sauce
Evaporated grease and
Paper thin
Apologies.
Nothing grows here,
As worn out tires skid to a stop
In front of fluorescent bank signs,
Illuminating the way
To a safe ride home
Along with a three dollar waiting fee.
Heavy upon our translucent veins,
The world pushes down onto
Our vulnerable skin:
Hold your breath,
And one-two-three,
You won't even know what hit you.
Pulsating rhythms of life
Of something like Vicodin,
But with a stronger kick-
Bloodshot,
Our eyes dart back and
Forth, until eventually they lose track
Of everything alive enough to feel it.
Vibrant shades of yellow and red,
Lose their faces within
The fogged glass of the department store
Refrigerator. Who is there
To see the transparency of
The off-brand seven up
And diet doctor pepper?
Momma, I have shied away  
From life:
A coward too preoccupied with
Monday.
Death and damsels
Pull at my indifferent coat strings,
Until all I hear is the muffled sigh
Of yesterday
And that of the tomorrow
I will never see.
Oh, twisted fate,
Don't fail me now:
Palms up, I mindlessly surrender:
Who I was
For who I will never be,
Amen to amen,
Crammed up against the scratched,
Metal lining of a transit bus
Between the middle and end
Of a crowded route-
Nothing breathes here:
Hold your seconds until
Reality pushes up and
You can heave in the polluted
Scent of half past five
And missed doctor appointments.
Neck arched back,
Life flows down my esophagus
In the vessel
Of a Benadryl
And vitamin C. It's all the same
When you've bottled up your
Emotions, and sold them for
A pretty price
To anyone poor enough to buy
Them. Leaving you with a penchant
For emptiness, and a stomach full
Of vacant ambition
Sealed to the brim by an
Extended hand, not quite close enough
To feel it.
Bang, bang,
The sound of closure haunts my every move,
Driving me closer to my final hour
And away from the one before it.
I'm no longer with you:
Practiced, proposed, rehearsed and perfected.
Life after death is an encore-
A standing ovation,
So loud
That it drowns out reality.

God is watching from beneath a department store window display:
Six floors lined head to toe with glass sheets and metal dividers,
Holding up the paper town- a city hall
Of half off summer sales.
The translucent sheets encompass the cold air conditioned empty space
That seeps in between the wheels of rolling racks, and pushes up
Against the impenetrable windows
That reflect the ash tray gray office buildings,
Looming in the backdrop
Square cubicles full of 9-5 daydreams
And lukewarm non-fat lates,
The iridescent shimmer of the dark exterior
Casts a shadow over the entire block,
Dancing in the reflection
Of a little Asian girl three floors up
Running in between the clothing racks-
Pitter pattering above the ceiling of a five star
Macy's restaurant
Packed with narrow tables and people
Alone and comfortable:
A spectacle to anyone across the street
Brave enough to look up.
Is this what the world has become?
Row after row of sorry complacency:
30% off signs and colorful adds
Drop into a diner waiting room;
The black-clad waiter paces back
And forth, oblivious that his every movement
Is being observed by someone perched on a ***** step of union square.
Safety comes in numbers,
And we forget ourselves
To the dull drone of elevator music
And neon ceiling lights projecting onto
Our downcast eyes.
Slouched against a fashionably bare
White metal chair, at a white table with white walls,
Echo the same vibrato of an asylum.
Arms bent over your head,
Brown rumpled shirt and blue jeans,
Who is watching who?
You look out of the window, just the way
The elderly man in the green vest does,
Two stories up,
The same ***** square glares back at you,
As a few teenage boys take a picture
Of the very architecture you are having
Your overpriced conversation and lunch of some sort of past.
The observer is also the observed,
And nothing goes unnoticed
Except the spectacle, itself.
Hand in hand, we carry our insecurities to the mall
And let them wander off on their own
As long as they're back by 3pm
And haven't done anything drastic
That would betray us.
Comfortability and conformity dance across the sleek walls of the Cheesecake Factory
As a homeless man drags his feet across the littered floor below,
Angrily sighing as stops and darts his eyes
Quickly scanning the moving forms within the indifferent architecture,
Before he abruptly picks up pace
And carries on.
The best view in the city:
A roof top full of anxious visitors
Who only look out over the top,
Afraid to look down and see themselves
In the reflection of the face
Of a blurred and changing crowd,
Hurrying away from now
Avoiding eye contact and fiddling with their jackets.

A burning star went out last night,
While I paced across the floor-
For, nothing casts as bright a light
As that which is no more.

I saw it flicker distantly,
Across the tortured skies,
Lamenting it's torment, patiently
Because passion yearns demise.

And now, as its reflection wanes
With the subtle, indifferent moon,
Rays pour through my windowpane
To announce its emerging doom.

Oh, fragile beams, you're not alone:
The world is too at bay,
As you beat against the night- unknown,
For, your splendor casts decay.

Yes, I've seen the sun set many nights,
And held my head to sea,
But never felt a greater fright
Than the light quivering in me.

Orange capsules of condensed vitamin C
Tumble out onto my cracked,
Outstretched palm,
As I arch my spine towards the bathroom sink,
Scooping lukewarm water from the faucet
Into my half closed mouth-
The tiny pills clog my upturned throat:
Just two of the numerous solutions
To a world too numb
To contest.
I've never felt more alive,
Than when I'm drowning my body
With handfuls of tap water
And magic remedies bottled up and
Marketed to a world
Afraid of growing old.
Lining the wall of local drug stores,
One isle over from office supplies
And scented laundry detergent.
Multicolored, multipurpose-
Labels proclaim the fountain of youth
To anyone alive enough to fear it.
There's never enough of reality
To reach our depleted veins
Through the ever present forms
Of the world. Enough isn't
Enough, until we've convoluted it into a tiny
Plastic oval, and forced it down the throats
Of those well enough to swallow it.
Pharmaceutical companies proclaim their
Daily gospel in the linoleum streets
Of hospital waiting rooms
And local grocery stores,
As I cross my heart and count the
Hours until my next prescribed dose
Of complacency. Who knew happiness
Could have the bitter after taste of
Vitamin B or
The credibility of Zoloft.
The sandman has been replaced by Benadryl,
While creativity lies stagnant
Beneath adderall's indifferent thumb.
Obsession is a 26 letter alphabet,
Strung together by a bunch of deficiencies,
Incoherently droning on
To the burden of Man,
And flickering neon light
Of a drive-thru pharmacy.

Effortlessly, I lose myself within You:
Forgotten, yet never quite out of reach,
Your name penetrates the thin arch of my spine,
As I curl my legs up towards my arduous chest,
Burrowing deep into the cavity that
Should hold my red, pulsing heart.

I can feel You all around me;
Memories dance like poetry,
Tumbling out of my lips into the empty air,
And, for a moment, Your warm breath
Caresses my face, as I shift toward
The unimposing wall, letting the cool plaster
Press up against my outstretched palms.

You're never more tangible,
Than when I lie in silence
And listen to the rhythmic hypocrisy
Of my own, insidious breath.
Even spoken sentences, are full of white
Spaces, in between pauses and punctuation.
Empty, and cavernous- blank canvases
Awaiting Your subtle presence.
Hungrily, words rush from me
As if to pave the way for Your fleeting occupancy.

Is this how it feels to be alive?
Father Time wraps his long, gnarled fingers
Around Your soft, golden neck,
Until all the vitality is lost beneath his sorry,
Decrepit hands, which yearn for Your being,
So much that they crush it into yesterday.
While, I sit helplessly observing, a defiled bystander,
Preparing Your eulogy while You laboriously heave for air.

Now, alone in the cool dark of my bedroom,
I repeat my penance a thousand times,
Silently, whispering a lovers remorse,
While twisting and squeezing the last drop
Of feeling onto an indifferent page,
Diluted by almost there prose
And ambiguous metaphors:

My wilted rose, I feel You now
Your once silk petals pressed upon my lips,
Hardened by all that has passed,
A frail remnant of what You once contained.
Pinks and reds of the sunset fall stagnant against
Your rosy cheeks and evanescent silhouette.  
Oh, flower of all flowers, why must You wilt
Upon my plucking of Your fleshy stem?
Is not the beauty of Your ardent life
Strong enough to flood out
The doubts which devoured Your fragrant
Body like malignant parasites?
For while time must tread along,
Can you not stay the way You once were then?

You showed me life, yet took it away
When You exhaled the world with a final leap,
Leaving me here to gather the fragments of a story,
And a vocabulary of feelings
That I can no longer sense.
So, instead, I hover motionless
Above my vacant corpse,
Filling the spaces that You left
With the skeletons of words.

My Sorry Muse, my Own Remorse
Embodied in a Soul,
You took Your  life and gave me words,
But my voice: the afflicted toll.

I know how you feel
At 4am when everything should be
Quiet; eyes closed,
Breath steady at an even pace,
Keeping pace with the subtle rhythm
Of your pulsing heart.
Nothing stirs, here,
Besides your afflicted mind,
A testament to all the
Late night infomercials
And dimly lit gas station windows:
Dutifully droning on
Amidst the sleepy silhouette
Of normalcy and a good eight hour rest.
There's no use fooling yourself,
Closing your eyes and heavily counting off
Sheep, in a vain attempt to assimilate
Something like sleep-
There's no point trying, here,
When a sliver of sky outside your window
Starts to turn a subtle shade lighter
Than 2am darkness.
Being alone is never as poignant
As when you're woken up in the middle
Of the night,
Surrounded by dark space
And stagnant memories, impartial
To the emptiness of a moment.
I know how you feel,
Restlessly turning your body
To face the wall,
Adjusting your lumpy feather pillow,
Peeling off your socks:
Routine can cure the coldest hearts,
But sleep will always elude it.
Stuck within your impetuous rituals,
Solitude seeps in
Through your open eyelids;
4am drips into 5am,
And before you know it,
Everything is gone.

Is this what it means to be alive?
The heavy thud of strong ***** and cheap beer
Sounds slowly throughout my empty body.
5am sinks into 6 am
And I remember that I never made a wish
When I was blowing out my candles.
Warm suds mix with the remnants of my birthday cake,
As my trembling hands focus on the glass container
Beyond the slightly dull kitchen knife
That rests alone on the marble countertops,
Facing it's long sleek body towards my upright torso:
A modern take on spin the bottle.
No one cares, here.
Houses flood in and out with lonely crowds of
"Nice to meet you" and "I've missed you so much",
Until all you can hear is a constant drone of yesterday and tomorrow muddled together in a ***** sink.
Is this how it feels to grow older?
Each year seeps into the next, and sometimes I forget my name,
Lost in the American dream of party hats and pinatas.
There's nothing real here, anymore.
It was all left behind: all the cherry stained finger tips, macaroni noodle jewelry, piles of presents by the living room door:
There's no room for any of it, now.
The train rolls by like tiny knights clinking around in their brass armor,
Off to slay emerald dragons that only appear
Right before sunrise,
And evaporate before their presence can be uttered from the lips
Of anyone ****** up enough to see them.
Another year has snuck it's way into the room,
Gradually slinking over to the small leather couch,
Where I dutifully await its arrival.
Outside, the world grows restless;
Sleep walking, the city streets begin to dance and pulsate with empty ambition,
Jerking back and forth to the rhythm of the rusted train tracks
And nameless sounds of empty avenues and sidewalks.
Knees curled to my chest, I'm five years old again,
Listening to the tired clamor of white and grey birds and the smell of salt water.
Everything's easier when you only know enough to paint your world with the same colors
You found in library books and pamphlets from the aquarium.
Now, the acid in my stomach churns with yesterday's Taco Bell
And the distant squalor of seagulls falls flat against the ***** windows
Of my second story apartment:
Nothing grows here.
What's left of yesterday's light
That hung around until the morning,
Slowly spreads across the kitchen floor
Until it reaches the thick, shiny skin
Of our resident house plant,
Basking in its sorry habitat,
It's spindly arms reach out towards the window,
Only to be smushed back towards its fleshy body
By the paper thin mesh netting:
A testimony to the world around it.
I'm fourteen, again,
Fighting back tears in algebra class and planning my Friday night,
Because life turns the color of Nebraska mud
As soon as you dilute your reality with that of everyone else's.
Bang bang,
Sounds are only as poignant as our imagination;
Afraid of what we would hear,
We force the fairy tales that once flew freely throughout our worlds,
Into a tiny ten minute daydream,
Too brief to ever be accepted as anything more
Than a distant memory of a half there story
That served no purpose
Outside of entertainment.
We've replaced never land with shopping malls
And Main Street.
Throwing our arms up as we pivot down onto the paved floor-
Fairy dust can only hold so much before failing,
Leaving us to our own devices
And a slew of infomercials and prime time television series.
Being nineteen isn't that different from any other age.
The past continues to build up like caked mud
And dog **** on the bottom of peeling, white tennis shoes.
One, two, three,
Maybe growing up isn't so painful after all,
Until you look back and realize you accidentally
Left your entire life behind in the process,
Tucked away in a musty banana box
Between a broken pink dresser and old magazines
Somewhere in your mom's garage,
And the more you think about it,
Try to remember it in every subtle detail,
The more you gently try to force it out of the crevices of the past,
The more faded and distant it all becomes.
Age makes us clumsy, time makes indifferent,
And nostalgia will drive you mad.
The light in our eyes that was once illuminated by childhood ambition
Now shines from the reflection of a glossy
Photo album that lies face down
Amidst the remains of an instant milk childhood
And birthday wishes that gave us something to believe in.
Now our gods rest indifferent on the chapel floor,
Reaching out from under cedar pews
To grab the ankles of desperate sinners,
As they drift up the isle
To drown out their passion in holy water.
Nothing changes, here.
All around us, the same old song falls effortlessly from the end of every syllable we
Mindlessly spit out like watermelon seeds.
Generation to generation,
We preserve our day old revelations about what it means to feel,
In the hopes that we may fight off death
By forgetting that we were ever alive.

Life is a tiny black x on the calendar,
Wedged between play dates and rescheduled doctors appointments.
2:00 floods into 4:00, until the entire day lies crumpled at the foot of the bed,
Lifeless except for the coffee stain memories of yesterday.
Nothing happens here.
Self questions self, and we all sit criss cross apple sauce on the linoleum floor;
Is this what it means to be alive?
Red and blue parachute above our tiny shoulders,
Mixing with green, yellow, and orange wedges
The same as pizza or convenience store cheesecake.
Outside, noisy blurs of grey and black whir by
Full of passengers too preoccupied with routine to venture
Into the far off world of innocence
That softly plagues everything detached enough to feel it.
Covered in paintings of a reality that's missing all of it's fingers.
Nothing lives here- beyond the faint ripple
Of three o'clock snack time:
Rosy cheeks and small, stubby fingers concealed by apple sauce,
The preservative of youth, it slowly takes on the texture
Of dad's lung cancer-
Dying pigeons rest nostalgically upon city rooftops,
As strangers stop to admire their stagnant beauty,
Crying out acclaim for the regal presence of those
Who can bear to sit still amidst the chaos of an hour:
Cigarette and polyester feathered Madonnas of the modern world-
Installation art at its finest.
Face paint and spaghetti hair
Are only tangible until replaced with something a little closer to
Reality. The American dream sinks to the bottom of a hollow mason jar, as preservatives soak the bones
Of every tiny heart, alive enough to give out at the faintest malfunction.
Dilapidated, our heavy feet tread over spare Lego pieces,
The tiny rectangles push up against our translucent flesh-
Leaving abstract indentations of a city that never was.
Images of the earth projected upon tiny marble surfaces,
Fallen from a cardboard box that was once on isle five,
Impress upon the weary feet
Of strangers, running to throw up beneath the red, green, and yellow windows
Of a Target grocery store.
Nothing grows here, yet we eagerly pluck our wilted produce
From the clammy hands of a metal machine
Programmed one, two, three
To dilute our logic with an even mist of something
Almost like water, but with more promise.
Until, we can easily swallow the bitter pill that
Holds the secrets of the world.

She took the train for the first time
To go spend a few weeks with her daddy
In the summer before she started second grade.
Her suitcase had pink light up wheels on it
And was full of her best summer dresses and pictures
She drew with his name scrawled on the back.
She cried at the station because she didn't want to go,
And slept the whole way there.

She took the train again, in high school
Accompanied by a group of friends
Going to the city for the weekend to see a baseball game.
She didn't bring any luggage,
But came back with arms full of plastic shopping bags.
She cried because her mother didn't understand
That 16 is too old for a curfew,
And smoked cigarettes the whole way there.

She took the train, once more,
Her freshman year of college.
She went to visit her best friend at school.
Her duffle bag was full of flimsy bikinis and Sartre.
She didn't cry this time, until on her way back
When she realized that something had been lost somewhere along the way,
And that she was too old now to ever know what it was.

She took the train, again, for the last time.
The summer before her second year of college;
She said she wasn't going anywhere in particular.
She bought a ticket for Sacramento, and left it in the car.
This time, her suitcase was full of heavy rocks,
And made her tilt a little to the left as she dragged it down the ramp.
She began to cry at the station, for the death of someone she used to know.
And, seconds before the train left,
She flung herself onto the rusted tracks,
Leaving behind nothing
Except a couple of ticket stubs and a poem titled "Somewhere".

Life is the flat side of a butter knife-
Relentlessly turned upwards, upon a
Battered cedar coffee table. His muffled
Silver skin glistens amidst the two week
Old newspaper and hardened crumbs of
Sourdough toast, catching the reflection
Of his  weary hosts, as loud voices and silence
Rapidly bounce off the walls and onto his
Credit card-thin body:
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
Purposeless, he waits for someone to rescue him-
Pick him up from his five foot grave
Covered in peeling wood and sentimental scratches,
And slowly slide his cold, frame across the counter-
Anything to remind him of his relevance.
As the rusty butter knife lays, abandoned,
So life carries on- oblivious to his melancholy
Wails that fall dormant to the loud, blaring stereo,
And shifting feet that tread so softly
As to keep the monster from waking from her slumber.
Thus, the routine drones on and on,
To the soundtrack of 2am infomercials
Claiming indestructible silverware sets:
Oh, but they have yet to enter the finite world of Father Time.
As he sets his place at the table, wearily awaiting what's to come,
The butter knife exhales hope, and suffocates in an air of subtle indifference,
Claiming his stake as a hollow prop, within an afflicted stage.

Growing up never comes when you expect it:
It's when you realize that the suicide note under your mattress
Probably has a few too many commas where semicolons should be,
And a little too much emphasis on the last four years of your life-
Missed due dates, flunked exams, and friendships that were supposed to be forever.
It's when you figure out that the boy you spent your freshman year of college worrying about
Never even knew the name of your favorite book,
Or anything else that really mattered.
It isn't something you can predict, or prepare for-
It isn't a sudden shift of priorities that all of a sudden appear
Somewhere in your subconscious, making it a lot easier to get up at 9am for a statistics class
That you're inevitably going to fail.
It isn't anything you do that will change, but rather
A shift inside of you that slowly shakes your entire being.
Youth is only beautiful until it's corrupted,
By the sultry hands of time, beckoning you forward when all you ever wanted to do was hide.
It slowly seeps down into the darkest corners of your mind,
Swallowing up all that innocent ambition
Flung upon you in the fifth grade by a board of indifferent teachers
Who decided to deem you gifted, introducing you to a world of knowledge
Too fascinating to mingle with the uncertainty of responsibility.
There's something frightening about growing old,
Maybe it's because you spent one too many hours of your childhood
Pretending to be someone else- caught up in a storybook world
Full of daydreams and simplicity, too one dimensional for reality.
It's not that it goes away all of a sudden: all the premature doubt
And impulsive wishes of death, or something like it.
But rather, it takes a different form-
That which was once a big red ball full of passionate emotions,
Has deflated, leaving you with only a faint residue of what you used to feel.
Maybe, you got your wish after all- something had to die, you know,
In order for you to carry on without losing your mind.
It's a sad paradox, this sequence of living,
As intuition slowly deteriorates, and common sense
Slinks in, in its premeditated, yet lackluster manner,
And before you know it, you're not a kid anymore.
Peter Pan flew the coop years ago, but Neverland still remains,
A testimony to all the lost childhoods of the ones
Too eager to lay their stake in the land of milk and honey.

Daddy wasn't  there to **** the spiders,
So mommy gave them the gift of life-
Gently lifting them from the crevices of my tiny room,
And carrying them off to freedom
Atop a tattered kitchen broom,
Softly whispering sweet condolences in their secret language.
And that is how I learned what poetry is..

Beauty is an empty cage that shakes the world anew-
Yet, falters at the slightest rage, or faintest sickly hue.
A sweet yet poisonous embrace, it slowly clogs the pores,
Of lonely men of a pious race, slumped against heavens doors.
A heavy weight upon the back of those cursed enough to bear it,
Turned to salt for looking back, now eternally doomed to share it.
The elegance of poise and grace send shackles up the palms
Of the amorous eyes of a lover's face- the most perverted kind of alms.
Oh, Aphrodite had her laugh, her poor afflicted soul,
And now she revels in the past, as penance casts its toll
Upon her sweet reflection, the sole source of her empty joy-
As her heart cries out dejection in the name of Helen of Troy.
Ah, fragile bird have you no cause- to hide your face with shame?
Does happiness subdue your flaws- or is humility to blame?
A lepers skin can hardly hold the burden of an empty nation,
Yet, still the world has bought and sold innocence for infatuation.
There's a subtle pain beneath the ring of a mother's sordid song,
Still she bites her lip as she's forced to sing,  while the audience treads on.
The ****** Mary cast her lot among those new and pure,
Then temptation came from Camelot, and knocked her to the floor.
It's faith that holds her safe and whole, a figurine atop a shelf
Alas, her eyes so bright were smeared with coal, for love has lost itself.
Yes, virtue finds her strength in those too weak to carry further,
Doomed to bear a thorny rose, eternally sworn to serve her.
She's rattling her bones again, in hope for something hidden,
Beneath the glistening shards of glass, twisting and churning within.
How sweet it is to stomp the ground of all that hides the eye
From righteousness and morals sound- is beauty but a lie?
Rituals and good intent lay stagnant at the feet
Of Cleopatra's testament, too indifferent for defeat.
Heaven thrives as the world recoils, collapsing crumpled to the floor-
A rotten corpse of ancient toils, too tired to implore.
I've heard the sirens sing their alms, with intentions pure as snow-
As sailors mindlessly follow along, cursing the maidens as they go.
There's something to be said about a grace so bent on fate
Of that which crafts a sultry face: vanity in its purest state.

I paint a picture of my face
And hide it every day,
For darkness holds a subtle grace,
Where only the fallen lay.

My mind retreats beneath the veil
Of etiquette and blush
Too far away to sound their wail,
My thoughts fall dead and hushed.

I almost lost my grasp, today,
Amidst the daily act,
For to forget the mask would give away
Something too hidden to retract.

The eyes I wear were  crafted
By eager, destructive hands,
Determined to mold a plastic
To withstand my soul's demands.

You know me not, my sorry friend,
And hidden I shall stay,
For to open up would bring an end
To the most beautiful facade.

My audience calls out the plot,
As I readily obey,
As my feet drag blood across the stage,
They lament their accolades.

I'm hidden here, despite the light
That bears upon my face
Only to find solace in the night
Obscured by a perverted grace.

The rotting corpse of a dilapidated morning glory
Waxes poetic in the dry summer air-
Its wilted petals droop heavy
With the subtle presence of something
Close to the end, but of a different hue.
A sweet yet sickly scent
Engulfs the neglected shrubbery,
That so gracefully collapses onto
A rusted, barbed wire fence,
Caving in beneath the heavy traces of morning dew
Atop intricate spider webs and fallen leaves.
Its bitter laments of despair
Sound out to the iridescent moon,
Cursing god in all his putrid grace.
Somewhere in the night, the sad wail echoes
Tumbling off canyon walls and over priced gas stations,
Until all that's left is a hollow boom
And the faint whisper of the Holy Ghost.
The pagan wind  slowly creeps by,
Pushing the flowers further down,
Until their stems take on the silhouette
Of the stooped backs of apologetic sinners,
Face down at the altar, accepting their worthy penance.
Dawn waits beyond the bend,
Her seductive fingers trace the fragile outline
Of the sleeping buds, blushing a faint pink
The color of a newborn child-
Beauty is only real within the tender moments
Leading up to it's intricate destruction.
Is this how it feels to exist?
Beating up against forgiveness
With bloodied palms, imprinted with the
Wilted outline of an indifferent morning glory-
Too alive to ever experience eternity,
For, in accepting life,
All else perishes.

Mother dearest jumped the gun,
Thought she found the chosen one
In the reflection of an eager bride
Who looked too deep and died inside.
Bang bang,
Mary shot her down
And plucked the thorns from off her crown,
Aphrodite got too close
And lost her face beneath the smoke.
Time has never looked so sultry
As when she falls from noon with a nosebleed.
Mother Nature lost her mind
Trying to pacify humankind.
Ashes ashes, there's nothing real
When all that is, lives to be concealed.
So bury me beneath the ground,
Next to those who also drowned
In something of a sordid tune,
The funeral can never come too soon.
Helen brought her face of gold
Plastered in cement, frozen cold-
For, who we are isn't what it seems
And nightmares are but twisted dreams.
Wake me up so I can feel
The bitter pang of all that's real.
Momma has gone and leaped again
Deep into the lions den,
Down and down her figure drops
Until all at once, everything stops,
Torment has yet to look as docile
As when it rests upon her heavy smile.
So prepare my casket and let it sink
While I loosely cascade off the brink.

Transculent threads run up and down
Old planks of wood-
Upright and close together,
Like distant cousins leaning towards each other
And whispering sweet condolences
At a funeral.
The spider weaves her heavy web
Out of weightless air,
Intricately trapping
Suicidal fruit flies
And drops of dew,
Reflecting off the shriveled corpses of
Unfortunate insects,
Casting a subtle shadow
Upon the indifferent shrubbery:
Infected with parasites that fail to even
Acknowledge his heavy existence.
"I'm here", he desperately wails,
"Beneath your spindly legs
And despair ridden hearts,
Full of something like ambition, but of a different tone,
Beating on and on below your silent wings."
Deaf to his compassion,
They lay tangled in their fate,
Accepting death
From the moment the spider drew close
And caressed their sorry souls with her
Delicate finger tips.
His emerald tendons wear her web-
For, the past won't let him shake it.
An old man
Who keeps the shawl of his late wife,
Wrapped a little too tightly
Around his frail, veiny throat,
Just to know she was once there,
And to keep her from ever really dying.
So the bush cloaks his body
With the cobwebs of the savage spider,
Adorned with corpses
Of insects too passive
To question that which required their lives.
Alone in silent ceremony,
He gravely continues on,
Beneath the dance of life and death,
Yet never fully numb to it all,
His nerves twitch and shake with the presence
Of something gradually taking it's course.
Life flows in and out of his branches,
Like a tumultuous waterfall
Giving life to all around it,
While drowning those too weak to follow
In it's unalterable current.
And so, another day goes by,
But to the forest, it's all the same,
For none can hear the old bush cry,
Mourning each fragile bug by name.

Fear not, my friend, I've rescued you
And set you atop a stone,
Where you can sit and watch the world-
Ah, isn't it lovely all alone?

Don't weep, my child, for you are here
Against your wordly wishes,
But, sometimes what we think is best
Lands us broken and in ditches.

It's better here, above it all,
Look down upon the world-
Clench the day between your fist,
Watch it ooze out of your fingers, curled.

It's easier when you don't think,
For thought has dipped his feet
Into the muddied wishing well
That overflows with deceit.

Oh, fallen angel, does it hurt?
To wash off your bloodied palms,
And stretch your hands out to the sky,
A most perverted kind of alms.

You're safer here, on ground so high
That to look down is enough,
For if you were to take a leap,
Your faith would turn to dust.

I fell asleep beneath a cape
Of thick, porcelain mist-
And let my soul sink into the ground,
As darkness did persist.
I heard a demon cry to god,
Begging his precious grace
To wash away the rotten ash
Crucified upon his face.
The air was cloaked with righteousness,
It seeped into the pores
Of pagan trees and shrubbery:
Cast out of heaven's doors.
I curled my knees up to my chest,
And wrapped my arms round close,
As cold, damp air embraced my skin,
Invoking the Holy Ghost.
                                                                                   MB.

Smile, darling-
No one can hear your hollow wails
when lips are closed
and turned up to the unforgiving sun.
Blackness is only a shade of light
beneath your downy mouth,
a shadow of your solitude, and nothing more.
The faint, wet glisten in your eyes
reflects the bronze and porcelain faces
looming down over your tear stained cheeks.
Frustration comes a shade too light
to be seen over the rosy red hues of laughter
sprinkled across your one dimensional grin.
Your laugh lines stretch out
until they gently brush up against the
soft white hair that frames your ears,
leaving no room for sorrow
pushed somewhere off the grid
of your proportionate composure.
*Life's clock can only tick as fast
as minutes do condense,
and happiness will never last
beyond the present tense.

I plucked a splinter from my heart
As the past began to leak-
Before clumping up against the sore
And trickling down my feet.

I exhaled the bitter, salty air,
And coughed and heaved my loss
For my lungs could only hold their share
As long as I paid the cost.

I cornered you with words, tonight,
And wailed out against the moon-
While anger poured from every noun
Falling dormant upon my tomb.

You thought I mixed it up, somehow,
Between the trembling blame,
As you coiled up upon the sound
That harshly sang your name.

I burried up my bitter soul
Beneath some shards of glass,
And planted a new world right there,
Atop a hidden past.

I crossed my t's, and said my alms
To your sweet and sickly lord.
I held my voice from trembling,
So my distress would not be heard.

I washed my wounds with holiness
Drained from the city streets,
Cleansing myself of all that feels,
For acceptance comes as defeat.

I sat there in the dark, that night,
As I painted out my life
Upon the shores of an indifferent sea,
Unscarred by wisdom's knife.

Oh, do you see the butterfly
That's shriveled against the pane
Of a dusty, concealed windowsill-
Never to see light again.

I killed myself the other day
And lay my head to rest
Upon a towering heap of hay
Because mother does know best.

We're all slowly dying
The same
Elusive
Death.
Bang bang,
Gunshots sound out-
The anthem for an
Adolescent world
Full of ancient morals
And tear-soaked pillows

Should I but drift cross the street
Like a tattered pamphlet that
Could only be used for the first week:
For a fraction of the cost.

Should I but lay upon the floor
As if I was a simple throw
Destined to lay at the feet of those
Who thrive on what they know.

Should I but fall onto the side
Of a dense and forested path
Then I would know how it is to live
Without fear of turning back.

Should I but wake before I die
And renounce my elusive doom
Only then would my mind lie
Peacefully beneath my tomb.

There's a ceremony taking place
Within my sorid mind-
I scratch my nails against my face
For fear of making sound

With each step I take, my feet grow cold
As if frozen by the the night
And something more that is only told
By the ever present sky.

A bell will toll now, so they say.
I lay my ears to the floor
Yet all I hear is yesterday
Beat up against my mind.

The thudding of a distant fate
Is nothing more than the past
Too old to unlock the pearly gate
That encompasses my soul.

I heard a band come matching in
With merry dying tunes
For instead of joy that does begin
My heart did stop- and boom.

I saw a dying light go out
And vanish with the wind
As my mind flooded with empty doubt
For fear of ne'er seeing it again.

I felt a gentle hand reach forward
Wrapping around my throat
While my arms still flailed and pushed out toward
The shore- as my body rose to float.

The bell did toll a solemn boom
That silent, shrouded night-
I laid my head upon my tomb,
Relinquishing my sight.

How sweet the silhouette of death
Upon the vacant sky
Encompassing my heavy breath
As I heave a final sigh.

Every moment, we are wasting away-
Our poor, dejected ambitions
Float empty
Atop a sea of partially sane intentions
Kept by a god
With a pension for deceit.
Tick tock,
Crazy never comes on time-
And three sneezes mean an unsuspected
Guest. Dilapidated hours
Wear thin
As they desperately reach to cover
The long, convoluted skeleton
Of youth.
Remnants of the past prevail,
Buried deep beneath
Cedar floors and $50 graveyard slots,
In all it's half attainable glory,
Strewn out across
A marble coffin,
Like heavy dice
Waiting to tumble down
Into reality.
The old bell tower,
Cracks and screeches
Her unrequited laments
To the indifferent sky-
Every evening at 5:01.
With each hollow ring,
Age seeps through our pores,
Mixing in and diluting our dreams,
Sinking down into the deepest crevice of our
Contorted being. Tick
Tock, time can only dance if there's a rhythm:
The beating of our hearts
Sounds on, vibrating off
The hollow cavity
Which should hold something
Living. Nothing's real here,
As our insignificant lives
Race each other down the dim and slippery
Hallway that is life.
Until sooner or later,
One by one,
We all lose our footing
And fall down the rabbits hole
To meet something like
Death- the only evidence that we were ever
Alive.
Hour hands reach out from their miniature sphere:
A cyclical world full of half past ten
And white empty spaces between
Vacant numbers,
Grasping our warm
Pulsing bodies,
And pulling us closer
Towards something almost like The End-

Tick tock,
Russian Roulette is only lucky
Until it's over.

Sleep
Tugs seductively
On my
Racing
m
i
  n
   d.
Nothing
Grows
Here.
Smiles twist and
Seizure
Until they collapse
Into
A
C/o/n/t/o/r/t/e/d pile
Of something like
A grimace-
(But not quite).
My heavy
b r e a t h i n g
Reminds me that      my heart
Has yet to surrender to
The toxic fumes
Rampant in my thoughts.
Eagerly I inhale them,
Something like     knowledge
But, with a pain
ful kick. It's
Never easy to fil
ter thoughts that are thick
Like molasses,
(And just as Sweet).
Bang,
B ang,
You're dead,
Just like the rest
Of them-
Body still w
arm. Pulses
Still audible,
Yet
s l o w l y
Fading. Who
Will save you
(Now)?
I'm far too gone
In a land of
Make believe
To press down upon
You
r (gaping) wounds
And dated dreams.
Oh,
Doesn't it feel
Something like
Lo ve?
when you're lying
On your death bed
Waiting
For the pastor
To come in and slowly murmur one last prayer
To save you from some
thing too difficult
To understand
With
Out
Faith and a poor
Conscience-
B/a/n/G
,bang
You're off
Onto another journey
That can only ex
ist when
You
   Blow
     Your
        Brains
out, and replace them
With ideals pre
made by the same
Precise hands
That cut
The deli
Lunch meat-

Intelligence has evadade you
As you allow what you think you want to slowly degrade your views,
Nothing that fades away can ever be true,
For even the old used to be new.

What do you look for in love: nice assets and a face you can trust,
Becuse anything sparkles when it's covered in rust.
Sentiment and intellect were devoured by lust,
And the only way to the top is made up of dust.

Social scenes and social queens
Require more costume than Halloween.
Who wants to be stuck at seventeen?
If you're not surrounded by faces, who will hear you scream?

You engrave your expectations on the palm of your hands,
Open them up to God, and plead for romance.
For prayers only function as a form of demands
That look no further than tomorrow nights plans.

Who you know and how you're perceived,
Cascades and tumbles down over your beliefs.
Temptation wasn't as easy for Adam and Eve;
Their apple held more than your money trees.

Now there's nothing left but a rotten core,
And casual small talk spilled out upon the floor,
Seeping in and out of the wooden pores,
Across scattered feet, too numb to implore.

Afraid of the concept of being alone,
You only accept what is already known,
Living for the weekend so your efforts are atoned,
Like David and Goliath, you have to stone or get ******.

Bloodshot eyes and vacant stares, too deliberate not to go anywhere,
Because sentiment means nothing to a generation who doesn't care
About anything that holds less weight than the air,
Unless it's about what you should wear.

So bottle up your empty dreams and aspirations,
Throw them to sea: an intellectual evacuation,
You'll see more like them under medication,
Because fitting in requires social sedation.

My eyelids fall heavy upon my vacant eyes,
The dull pulsing of the harsh, artificial light
Throbs and shrugs up against my temples,
Running down onto the creases beneath my brow.
Last nights dreams lay stagnant beneath
My troubled mind- like lukewarm coffee,
The cream beginning to lump and curdle together.
I'm destined for this kind of solitude, I think.
My mind races and whirls off course,
Speeding straight past the acute turn,
Destructively hurdling into a thick pool of
Yesterday. Is this how it feels to be alive?
A stale taste of tap water and broccoli slowly
Rises up into my lungs, creating a subtle
Discomfort, too faint to be washed away by water.
I can feel the uneven rise and fall of my hollow chest,
As if it is set off balance by the absence of my red,
Pulsing heart. Something is off here.
Gradually, my body surrenders to the ruthless
Shadows of my conflicted soul.
Sinking in to the starch white sheets, all that is
Collapses into misplaced yeast and water daydreams
That only come out at night.

April is a month of forgotten dreams,
That began to fade away in February,
And drew their last breath in March.
Missed opportunities wax poetic
As the tumultuous spring wind pushes empty
Ideals into a realm of something not quite there,
But present enough to be felt over the roar of
Cryptic resolutions and half baked goals.

April is a month of resurrected love
That has already grown rotten and putrid,
Decaying under the warm, dirt ground
Built up over the heavy hopes of December.
Memories full of partial truths and "I love you"
Twist and pull at untuned heart strings,
Until a sad, sordid melody sounds out,
Almost completely evaporating before it reaches
Anyone brave enough to write it into reality.

April is a month that sometimes isn't really there
Until the middle of May, when a distinct pang
In the chest gives weight to its existence.

This is what seperates us:
Words that twist and turn,
Tiny hurricanes swelling up
Raising inside my throat-
Coughing and wheezing,
I spew them out onto
The eagerly awaiting paper,
Waiting to see what sticks,
While you just sit there
Vacantly waiting for something-
Anything, to sweep you off
Your perfectly positioned feet.

The ocean taught me how to pray

But did it cure your lust? For souls and statues full of things that bring even the pure to rust.

Her heavy waves caressed my feet, and brought my mind to bay

Ah, but there is something to be said about the sandy ground, that seeps and pulls beneath your toes, dragging the world round.

I thought I felt more for a moment, than ever the poor can plead

Did you turn your back to the gravel roads that paved your heart so true?

Only until my palms did freeze- stuck open in their greed

*Then let me ask you this, my dear, is heaven for the blue?
Did Posideon's cleaver hand articulate all that's known as true?
Or was it choice and choice alone that unearthed the pearly gate?
For ocean waves drown out the fate that so encompasses you.

Time spurts and sputters
Out of my mind
Like an oozing laceration.
Warm blood dripping
From a skinned knee.
9:00 fades into
10:00 and before
You know it,
Everything's gone.

can you hear me
underneath all the
mud caked up
against your
ears? strings hang
limply from your
mask as it
pushes out
casting a shadow
over your hollow
eyes. something
died here
i think. i can
smell it in your silence
does it hurt
to sit there and feel
nothing? decadence
decays faster
than modesty
when all your sentiment
is pasted and glued
between postcards
and pastures
on the heavy pages
of photo albums
empty
other than pictures.
how long has it
been now?
how many minutes
hours
forced responses
and isle seats
has it taken
for you to
realize that nothing
grows here?

Reality has spun its web,
Beneath the indifferent moon,
And as the ocean tides sigh and ebb,
It catches life- too soon.

Time has cast her heavy net
Upon the vacant skies
Begging dawn to ne'er forget
The sunsets slow demise.

Oh, fallen stars, don't fail me now
Your glow outlives your light.
Bear no sweat upon your brow,
For your death  is lost at night.

The sweetest eulogy does sound
Against the hollow space
That pushes the moon round and round,
Casting shadows 'cross my face.

Nobody is in love.

Shoulder to shoulder, flesh spilling over
Flesh: our warm bodies heave
And contort together, leaving no room
For sentiment that goes deeper than
Your off white down comforter.

Nobody is in love.

The harsh sunlight seeps in
Through down turned blinds,
And thin, translucent eyelids,
Both half open, but oblivious to the
Indifferent world. Life is too much with us-
Never leaving us alone to really feel:

The cold, smooth wooden floor pushing up
Against the delicate archs of our sinewy feet,
As they drop down to meet the brisk  morning air,
That seems to coat everything revealed and left vulnerable
By the crumpled up sheets limply collapsed over the headrest,
Or the soft, steady breathing
Of someone left unstirred by the dizzying
Relay of thoughts that dance across my

Foolish mind. No one is in love, here.
The last fragment of hope
Was forgotten underneath mismatched blankets
That bear the faint scent of lavender fabric softener sheets
And something that lingers nameless beneath your presence.
The indented pillow, where you lay your head
Holds fast your hollow shape,
As if to remind us that reality is only as real
As those who are brave enough to feel it.

Time treads on and on,
Leaving us scrambling over coffee tables
And yesterdays newspaper strewn across the bedroom floor,
Blindly groping the abysmal space to find something
That isn't really there. Instead it's nestled between
The tiny slivers of our hearts,
Scattered across neon billboards and thee star hotels,
Pleading with us to acknowledge it's elusive presence
Before the world runs out of excuses,
And we're met with a big boom,

That probably will never even be felt.