When the incendiaries lit the sky
A face smiled its divine calligraphy:
It was Helen crowned with Troy's debris.

Her unmatchable mouth in the roof
Of blood moved in speech like the home of love,
Hanging its moon of reproof:

'My kiss blots history out.
My landslide legend has forgotten
A thousand thousand bones rotting;

'Under the guilty sea
The ships lie; but accuracy
Has been seduced by me.'

Her smile sailed indiscriminately
Among the squadrons of death majestically
And was reflected on the sea.

'The armless Venus carried Pompei's tears
Better than the raided years
Or the cold dances of chameleon stars.'

Then faded. But the rain
Like lovers' seeds that fall in vain,
Warned me of my sin.

I cover my eyes
So You can't see me
Hiding here
Hoping
You'll stumble
And knock
My arms
From my face
So I can
Catch you.

I hold my breath
So you can't hear me
Breathing in
Your air
Your exhale
I hide
From you
In plain sight
So you can
Find me.

"I miss you like the sun misses the flower
in the dead of winter."* -- A Knight's Tale

If you should weep
in the absence of flowers,
I would craft you one
from whatever material winter has left
and lift it high, toward the heat on your face.

While your smile melts away the snow
I’ll lie the flower down, and plant it
in the warming ground
to grow into fields
of bright reminders.

If you should hide
from me during night,
I would wait for Earth
to make her way around the wobble
on the tips of my toes—arms stretched east.

When you splash my face with light overflowing
the horizon, smiling I’ll turn to you and say,
“I’m really glad you
got me up early, I am
not a morning person”

I don’t want to go crazy,
I don’t want to be sad
Or depressed
Or enraged
Or hysterical, manic, overjoyed, and delusional

I want to be normal
With a wife and three kids
Live in a big house
Eat steak and eggs for breakfast
And work for my money and be proud of what I do

I want to have a yard,
A dog
Smoke cigars when it’s nice out
I want to listen to dull music
With dull ears in the evening hours

I don’t want to see a doctor
I don’t want to gnash my teeth
I’d like to grow up like my neighbor’s kids
Say only things
That don’t stand out for anybody

At night,
Under my blanket
I would like to feel covered
Warm, but not too warm
Cool, but not too cool
Just, covered

My DNA aside,
Why shouldn’t I be just like everyone?
I can be
Boring
In a good way, can’t I
Be just everyday?

I don’t want to go crazy
But I think
I might
I think I will
But when I do, will you still listen to me,
And tell me how boring the things I say are?

Oh, look at the mess I’ve made
And it’s only the beginning.
On the job for less than a day
And in waist deep, I'm nearly swimming.

My hand moves on its own,
No need for my mind to guide it,
And in the darkest days when I'm alone
You’ll tell me I am lost, but Ill deny it.

I'm picking up the pieces
But they’re sharp and it hurts my back to bend.
Why do I even try? I count the reasons,
Absent minded…. I begin again.

I laugh at my reflection ‘til it fades out
And when I'm by myself I **** the lights.
Companionship is hyped – there is no doubt!
What use could I have for it here tonight?

No one need endure the mess I've crafted
For no one else on earth could ever see,
Each scattered piece is lied down with a purpose;
With intentions… Ill though they may be…

And from my work I've harvested satisfaction
For nothing on this earth could near replace it.
And what started as a meaningless distraction
Has grown into this mess that I created.

All I really need to find
Is someone wonderful and kind
Someone who won't lie or run
Someone to kiss till our lips are numb

Someone to sit and hold my hand
Someone to always understand
Someone to love me as I am
Silly and playful and grungy-glam

But life is a party I feel I've crashed
And my life just recently's been trashed
And this dance is one I've danced before
So I think I'll sit it out once more.

What is the versatile autobiography
of this bountiful of rice
boiling in my American kitchen?

This crop of microscopic slabs of grain
that was the one edible source
of preventing my ancestors' emaciation

One of such few things
connecting me
to my roots,
those things I can't help but bleach
in whitewashed and rebellious peroxide.

I will valiantly hang my head down low in shame
at the examples of my flesh and earth,
"those National Geographic cavemen,"
all the time being the zoo animal,
being blindfolded and caged by
these "secular, American liberals."

I love this food
that I consume like a vacuum,
this merengue and bachata
that I so happily shake my *** to;
but nowhere did I sign up
for these commandments
that I was appointed
based on the location
that I popped out onto.

We die everyday,
Slowly but surely we sink into oblivion
We are so many things at once
Yet all die eventually,
All die, and they are replaced by different things,
So that we become different,
To the point where we don't even remember
Where it all started,
Or where it will end.
We go toward what is unknown
The cold darkness that
Is a lack of consciousness
The inabililty to understand
The world around us any longer.

I am walking on a path,
The surface of it rubs against my feet like sand paper,
Water is all around me cavering the path and lapping at my feet,
Making it so cold that I almost can't feel them
Yet there is always some kind of awareness that says
I must have feet because I am walking.
I grasp onto a skinny smooth railing that floats above the path,
It is my only source of sanity,
And, in itself, could be considered a reality.
There's nothing to see
But the railing;
The angry white tips of tiny waves that crash
Over my feet and the edge of the path
They line the path,
I can see them until they disappear into the dark.

Fear is my only companion.
Another constant to join the white tipped waves and railing.
I have nothing here.
And yet it is all I know,
For what is a human's progression through life
But the following of a path that seems to have no end
And holding tight to the aspects of our lives that never seem to change?

There is no beginning or end in 'life'
And we have little understanding of how we pass through it,
We wish and hope and dream
But do we really know why?
Do we really understand our desicions?
Yet does it even matter to understand anything at all?

We all die
But we don't know why
We don't understand
Why the path never ends
We always yearn for more
But we don't understand what it is we yearn for
We walk on in isolation
Waiting for the end with infinite patience.

We all die
And there is no reason
No answer
To the why.