cliche, boring, bland and weak
based upon a foundation of chic
pseudo-intellectual

you distract from your lack
with your apathetic crap
entomology and intonation
i call it character *******

you do it too often, many of you
just be who you are so we can shine through

i just have to get this off my chest...
your subject matter concerns love
who would've guessed

it rhymes and chimes and deliverance isn't best
and if one skims just beginning and end
there is no need for the rest

lacking originality
either resolve or contradiction
not cryptic nor a riddle in sight
not an original thought nor display of risk

you can learn here from this one write
what you could never tell east from west
and even though, you'll be better so
it will never be
as clever as thee
so just hide behind your traditional text

its not that i seek to pick on the weak
its quite the contrary-

start over with command
so you understand
it is the fraudulent that i detest

it is lack of interest and tact
and i won't take it back
your technique is as the rest.

you slack in approach
you couldn't hold my attention
from the first line
to the next

no captivation
no eccentricity
no enigma
flooding, you are, a pest

parasitic in your relentlessness
attention seeking for all the wrong reasons
leading poetry to its death

you bore me truly
insincerely yours,
unafraid to best.

Sometimes, I feel like
letting go of knees,
arms, neck and spine.
Like red satin splayed
across the floor,
the light embracing its folds.

She opened my eyes to love

with her morning kisses

Let the place of the solitaires
Be a place of perpetual undulation.

Whether it be in mid-sea
On the dark, green water-wheel,
Or on the beaches,
There must be no cessation
Of motion, or of the noise of motion,
The renewal of noise
And manifold continuation;

And, most, of the motion of thought
And its restless iteration,

In the place of the solitaires,
Which is to be a place of perpetual undulation.

He walks
Right foot followed by the left
His head a wilted flower
Facing the floor
Hiding the tears
Hiding the fears
And hiding his flowering mind that he finds
Hideous
The day is half over
And he finds himself again
At the nurses office
Facing the ceiling
Always up or down
Never forward

He sits
Knees under his chin
Arms wrapped around them
Suddenly face buried
Rocking back and forth
Repeating the one desire
"I just want to be two years old again"
Tears streaking down his face
Reflecting the television he uses
To drown out his sobs
His wishes going unanswered
His anxiety going out of control
And his mind
Just going
Forced and failed attempts at sleep
Produce nothing but tear stained pillows
And blood shot eyes

He sleeps
The rare nights
Where his fears invade his dreams
Everything intermingling
Mixing and morphing into something
Even he doesn't recognize
All of it terrifying
And all of it
A part of him
A part of his unconscious
All shoved inside the chest of his subconscious
Buried deep inside his mind
Locked with a key it will take forever to find
It never calms
He
Never calms

He wakes
Another paralyzed morning
Chest pounding
Blood rushing
Skin tingling
Stomach pain beginning
He wants to move
To not be wrapped in his straight jacket sheets
Despite their comfort
The day passes through his mind
His life passes through his mind
"What if..."
Every wrong decision possible
Collapsing his determination

He stands
He stumbles
Another false start
Another day off to the wrong start
Gaze returning to his mattress
Hearing the siren song
Promising to soothe his deteriorating soul
But he knows the black hole
Disguised by that black comforter
He can't fall back in

He walks
He sits
He sleeps
He wakes
He stands
He ages
Anxiety his only constant
Anxiety his only promise

I remember the jelly bean jar
perched next to the owlish librarian
in my school when I was younger.  
One lucky soul would win a prize
for pulling the right number of jelly beans
out of an air still filled with fancy.
I can’t remember who won the prize,
and I can’t remember what the prize was.

But I guess as selfish minds are wont to do,
I remember the act of guessing.  
It was a childhood of guessing,
and I wonder if any of those guesses were truly wrong?  
When the engine of innocence toils away,
any solution, however fanciful,
can’t be false in a world that finds falsity
in far more veritable places.

I digress back to that jelly bean jar,
packed full of sugar,
and to a young mind,
full of promise.  
To a mind such as mine,
a mind akin to my classmates
who shared my sugary desire for that jar,
any guess was as good as the other,
as long as any guess was your own.  

We clutched ordinary pencils
scribbled on ordinary paper
with our own extraordinary numbers.  
In the basket went these figures most accurate.  

Days during the week passed
with those store brand jelly beans
mashed against each other,
childhood memories turned ordinary pages
wrote with ordinary pencils
until that singular, self-sure number
mashed against pages turned against it.  

However strong that memory of numerology
in a room full of words is etched in my mind; no trace
of the end of the jellybean contest remains in my ledger.
No trace of the disappointment of losing out
on such a treasure trove of tooth decay.  

But I guess this is the way of the mind,
it tends to trace out the positives
while it remains filled with youthful levity,
no weight is imbued in innocent minds,
and so tragedy, loss, and disappointment
float away past untroubled eyes.  

But time rolls on and much like the crushed growth
under an ever-rolling stone,
our lives start to fall harder on softened memories.  
Our lives harden with our heads,
and those days of living out short-lived fantasies
fade with jelly bean guesses.  
So as we mature and feign to seek the truth,
a small part of me keeps a singular page earmarked
for a time when the truth no longer weighs
                                                                              down the air with half-true deceit, and a mind long
abandoned
will return to grasp fanciful ideas
out of an air that’s still light enough
to evade our youthful fingertips.