a sound that carries
farther than where our ears can hear
beyond title
beyond nation
beyond fear
and
carries reminders
of the end of all we hold dear.

hurt
to hear
hurt
to say
because we cannot stay.

We stand on a foundation of pain
And smile
because we know
we share the fall

so
    we look each other in the eye
  and
       without uttering a word
it is understood

There is a terrible storm raging outside
and I am here, and I am alive.

My skin is dry and cracked and bleeds from the smallest friction
and I am here, and my body works to replace the forsaken flakes,
and I am alive, and feelings the pain of touch.

I have valued myself, yet again, dependent upon the reception of another who I cannot speak to, or speak of, for no one quite understands obsession and self-love as two suits of the same card.
and I am here. and I suffer. and I quell screams. And I stew a soup deep inside that could feed millions of children whose parents didn't want them, who weren't ready, or who wanted them too much for selfish reasons. I bring a ladle to my lips every few weeks to test the seasoning. I burn the taste buds off my tongue every time. I keep the fire going.

and I am alive, underneath all of this callous and scar tissue, pointing out the stars that still our myths depend on for direction, ******* in sugar like a hummingbird whose body has grown too fat for its wings, the energy needs to move this bloated body growing ever higher.

i still sing to myself, for comfort and joy.
i still listen for familiar sounds to remind me of the stories I've told.
i still dream.
I'm still me.
screaming inside
hoping to be heard
lonely from being inside myself so long.
waiting for the lock to rust and break.

I found your blanket. I’m not gonna tell you where it is though. If I told you, you’d go get it, and then you’d have your warmth, and then you wouldn’t need me.
Right?
The only thing I look for is clarity. But I wonder if I ever found it, if I’d stop looking…

I can see clearly now, so I guess I’ll stop.

I’m telling’ ya, I’m bein’ honest with you 90 percent of the time, even now. It just doesn’t look that way, yeah everything seems so convoluted, and “deep” and metaphorical, like I’m trying to make a maze out of a garden of already massive bushes that I’m beating around.
But that’s just cause, right now. Especially right now, everything in my head is spinning, on tumble dry, my head’s like a big wet laundry mess and you don’t even know whose clothes are whose anymore because the colours got mixed with the whites and the darks and my intentions got mixed up with my actions and yours, and
Well, **** it dude, they’re just clothes. They don’t make us who we are.

We just go out of our way to judge people sometimes, like a race.
Whoever can judge everyone before anyone else can wins…a ******’ VIP seat to watch the rapture or something.
So my thoughts’ll flow to you cuz you’re downstream of them.
But my intentions are high and dry, up on the top of the dam, I left ‘em up there before I jumped, didn’t even think to ask if they wanted a part in it.
That was kinda a **** move.

I’m sorry intentions. I’ve never really done you justice.

Ok, how many times can you count that you’ve just been completely wrong about someone you judged?       How many times did you want to believe so badly, that someone was a better person than they turned out to be?
Right so,
If you turned gay, and I turned gay, would we judge each other?
Would it be like a race?
Whoever ***** the other person’s **** the fastest gets…a face full of cummy ****!

That’s what all these intention judgment pushing disconnected people racing through life to get the first and last laugh really amount to.


                                                              A Face Full of Cummy ****


                                                             Merry Jizzmas.

Glacial, the gaze of wintry viridian irides
Silken, the heavenly flesh
Lurid, the flames of a paradise awry
Mourning all the sinister angels have blessed
With their tainted perfection, their hideous lies
Hope shines so thinly in an eonian land barren of all love
Great men become emptied, the tormented cry
Amidst desolation, a beautiful dove
Becomes alive, voicing a longing call
Amongst forgotten pantheons, a saviour resides
Though, broken, gashed, beaten, and threshed
Awakened by beautiful birdsong, driven to reply
Was this an augury? He must strike out to answer this call from above
 To redeem some grace, from the woe of it all

As he drew his hand away from her body, she drew from him a solid block of breath that would have withered and died on a typical day. Days these days for him just aren't like they used to be, typical isn't a notion that makes itself heard.
There's too much time not being spent to spend time working for an end to justify a feeling...they'll get it sooner, not later.

She broke everything. Every bone cracked, every sinew split, every ounce of blood spilled, until there was nothing but a soul. A hole. And another soul.
And if souls worked like clocks, with the physical concept of direction, their eyes stared straight into each other, but not through. A soul is not something that can be traversed through, it is the end, the all. And when the two souls stared, end met end and made...
A whole.

The cold. Moonlight. The sound of the rain in trees. The silence of snow and space. The smell of large quantities of *** breathed into my face. All things that I can somehow feel anywhere. Eyes. Always the eyes. I see them in the dark, as they glance around searching for something...what. Then they connect, to mine. And quickly sever, like they'd seen God. Or something too beautiful to mar with an impure comprehension such as sight. They always draw back to the irresistible eyes, and away again.
But then they fix. And they dare to not move for a minute. As if they are locked in some sort of challenge, the purpose becomes to win.
                             Now it is too late
                                                        The purpose has become undefined.
                                                                ­       And nothing has felt this way before.
                                      And nothing you can do can tear you away.
                    And the only things left are fear and beauty.
                                              

And then all fear dies. And does not come back.


Maybe that's what changed about me. It's felt weird not being scared.
It wants to come back, but it can't. I can't make it. No matter how comfortable I remember it being.
Now all I have is time...but beauty, if minutes and seconds are what your life is made up of...then we don't have much life but a lot to live for.
Because I didn't feel alive before.  
The ice in my chest is gone...if I can I'll breathe steam into you.           so...
Lovely, don't waste time.

Or it will **** you.

I want to climb up to the highest mountain I can find with you, and scream your name until bloodsicles clot the sound, freezing right in front of me in the air, waiting for you to answer but you just stare...



I'd like to stare back at you from across the ocean
when you don't say nothing,
my eyes storm over, and yours just fall...like waterfalls....so calmly.

And we all like the doomsday , hope is gone, we are the few kinda poetry
sing-alongs
to wring out the tears and make us feel wrong,
but ok 'cuz we're together,
it never gets better, and god makes the world better,
but drowns us in his waterfalls for our sins we'll all be drawn as wretches
in the mural of the horizon at the crack of dawn
formed together from all the random journal sketches
that form the lines, that form the waves, that form the storm, inside my eyes, that forms the calm inside your eyes.


I want to take you to the greenest forest I can find, where the trees are alive with the most beautiful birds, and in the middle is a white beach where the sun never doesn't shine, and every grain of sand sinks you into serenity...
                           and I want to whisper in your ear my name, and what it means, and watch you smiling from across the beach, just like the sun.



And if I can't do that, I want you to walk with me into the middle of downtown in some ****** small town in nowhere significant and I will tell you straight up..."Look around you. Look at all this. This planet we live on. All this is part of it.

...But you're beautiful no matter where we stand."

So self conscious about your every move.
Ne'er knowing
Which twitch
Might be
The last.

There's are many spaces in a world,
One can only hope
To find more of them beautiful
Than not.
There's a space between your
Eyes.
And my eyes
tried to traverse
Voyage, to journey through
You
And your
Llllllllllives.

And I felt like
Maybe making something...for you
Or out of you, or...with you
But then
We both closed our eyes.
And when i opened them
You were far
Away.
And I didn't know
Didn't
Know.
Anything.

Gone.
I think...
Used to be right here.
I swear...
Let me check in the back,
Like lungs on shredded feet.
The rocking chair,
Nervous air still swings
...temporarily discarded, that's all.
On the couch cushion,
Here's his book of adventures
The laughter is unmistakable.
Yes I remember the sounds,
Have I seen?
Can I get you anything?
Of course I'm happy to help.
DON'T SIT THERE, that's an antique-
Enjoy the still air, untouched-
No, it's no worry, come on in
The one holding his kitten tight.
Who wanted to save the princess?
Where is the boy in this photograph?

High point of my year: you. Congratulations! Also knowing you is one of the hardest things I've ever had to go through. I'm not mad about that...thank you. The only reason I've ever said anything mean to you is to keep from killing myself. I feel like that may have been confusing for you...but I also feel like you kinda knew all along that I still loved you and that any mean words were empty. Let this be clarity: I will never stop loving you. I really do hope you're happy right now, and you know what I mean by that. Happier than someone in good company, happier than a kid with a new toy, happy with yourself. And if I can ever really help with that...I will.
Happy New Year, make it a beautiful year.

I love you __.




p.s.
The wedding is still on.

Good morning,    a stagnant air
  Warm like the blood in my brain from the night before
   Eyes crusted shut, to keep the air out
    Avoiding a lack of movement that embraces my room
     Deepening into dreamlike space
   The flicker of a cigarette glows open the shadows of hell
   Turning over and over inside me like a toddler in a
                                                                                 bathtub


    I *****. Most of it goes out my nose.

Good evening, I ------------can open my eyes now
                to block out the light.
                          The faint glow of a cigarette warms
                                 the frigid air.
        My skin stands up, reaches out to the fire
                       Clinging to the warmth of the blood
                               from my mouth.
  He is there standing over me, smoking and I
                     cannot see his face.
           He devours my genitals whole and I want to move
           He ***** out my ear bones and I want to protest.
           He strips the hair out of my skin and I want to struggle
                           I won't move. I cannot see his face.
                                                   I can still hear him coming

Good night. I open my mouth and **** in the cold warm
  air.          Drinking the moisture they left last night
                                                  into my lungs.
    It mixes with smoke as I **** in a drag.
Exhale the room into your vulnerable face.
            Your skin in the bathtub, warm and moist still.
               Your mouth and your eyes closed.
                                -----------------------------
                      never to taste me
                                never to see my shadow
                                        stagnant forever more.
                                     I *****, most of it into

S is the 19th letter of the alphabet.
I had to count twice on my fingers to be sure of that.
It glues together many, many words.
It fixes people to the walls.
It shrivels fruit in the bowl.
It sticks us all in the same soup (****).
Let's swim.

You have 19 reasons to die,
written out like manuscripts in manila folders  
  populating a small cubicle containing your confidence
   pasted to the walls, and neatly nested on the next door desk
     at least you told someone.
The logic of your feeling breathing life into the spreadsheet,
The simple clicks of order covering up the shame of dead weeks
Day in Day out working toward a little more
Waiting for the future where the ability to break out is yours.
Cage around each arm. Suffering in small doses.
Never overwhelming the epicenter.

I have 19 reasons to die.
Scrawled in sidewalk chalk on 17th street.
  Ringing in the ears of all my close relatives and their next of kin.
   They say, "Hurry up and usher in the next generation so we can stop worrying about fixing yours."
The crumpled cover letters in my compactor spell pure love, and the reasons it's never noticed.
  Simplicity in disarray, a life of static colors. Repugnant sorrow odors.
I am the only town crier left in this town.
  Always complete but never fulfilled.
The sad sequel to a Mexican standoff with a self-referential story.
  Narcissism and narcotics.
  Nihilism and Mnemonics.
Space and the stuff of the stars.
Love and the war of the heart.

S is the 19th letter of PSEUDOPSEUDOHYPOPARATHYROIDISM
No it's not but what a great word.
No it's not but aren't you glad you tried to count?
No it's not but aren't you satisfied with yourself for trying to decipher?
No it isn't and wasn't it worth it to try to speak the sounds?
No it is not and wasn't it the sibilance in your mouth worth every second?
No it is not thank you come again have you had your fill when we're only 19/26?


Reasons to live:







Seemingly unneeded. We're here aren't we? Doing what we could only be meant to do.
R is the real 19th letter.
One more would have been S.
But you'd never know if you didn't count.
So let's count.
Ready?
3...2...1...

Four four four.
This is what I did last night.

I experienced obsessive compulsive.
Wrote Wesley a note.
Went swimming in tears.
I love you period.

I walk very carefully.
Touch every black square.
There's less of them.
Kind of like me.

I'm trying to escape.
This is so weird.
I never do this.
I am becoming you.

I will carry on.
My name will sound.
And trumpets will follow.
Assuming I'm breathing tomorrow.

How comforting, a preconceived skeleton in which to work. I am no different than I have been in the past, but I've ruined my eyesight staring into the abyss and moved on to my liver, drowning it in conveniently placed blissful ignorance.

What are you supposed to do when you're trying to follow your heart, and your heart tells you to die? If the basest animal instinct is to survive and if the answer to life is love, then that kind of puts me between a rock and......................

I sometimes feel like people look up to me before they know me. Everyone wants to be that person that doesn't have a care in the world, and does whatever they want because they want it. Free. Apparently I embody that...but what kind of ****** me off is that I feel the same way they do. I look up to the me that isn't me. I envy the freedom others think I have. That guy, he doesn't exist. Ever. There is no one human so disconnected.

So sometimes I catch myself thinking that if I truly wanted to change the world...I would have to take this hero away from the people. How would I do that? I'd just have to **** him. I think the unknowable thing I fantasize about the most, more than what happens after death, or how the universe was created, is how would all of my friends, my beloved friends, my relatives, my acquaintances,  my fans, and the people that allegedly hate me would react to hearing, "Ryan killed himself."
I wanna know how much stronger everyone would become after they witness the person they thought was so strong fall.

So I denounce suicide as a terrible choice. Because pain is part of having feelings, and feelings should be felt. That's the beauty of being human I say. I say I could never **** myself no matter how much I hurt, because I loved it all so much. But you don't know, and I don't know how things work sometimes and I don't make plans.

I can't see very well anymore, but I fake it. And I haven't been in a lot of fights, but my body's breaking in places I don't like, and places that may never recover. So I'm ashamed. This poem is about a guy named Expectancy. I've never met him. But I've heard a lot about him, and he sounds really great. But you know how it works once you get to know someone...so I think it's better off we've never met.

I am not a poet. I don't KNOW things. And I'm not an existentialist either. I'm not ******* stupid. I don't know how to tell you to live your life. But I will tell you anything that pops into my head, if you'd like.

So, learn about someone, and don't expect to learn anything. Take care of your body, because I love your body. Avoid safe patterns that you'll only fall into because you're scared of change.

if you wanna Die
point to something Beautiful
Indulge yourself in it
and Experience it in any and every way that you can

My favourite numbers are doubles of four.

There's a hole in my stomach(heart)
Dear Eliza
Dear Eliza
There's a hole in my stomach(heart)
Where I never got enough love.

There's a storm in my city(psyche)
Dear Eliza
Dear Eliza
There's a storm in my city(psyche)
and the streets(thoughts) tend to flood.

Can you weather this weather?
Dear Eliza
Dear Eliza
Can you weather this weather
If your head stays above?


How long can you tread water?
I know you swim better than I.
Point of pride.
Pride of endurance.
Enduring exhaustion.
Exhausted and lost and
honestly just
broke
at the wishing well
dreaming of the deluge
the healing water that will wash away the wounds
and make us whole again.
if only I had a penny...

You said to me
I can weather your storm
but not if it drowns me

or maybe
I can weather your storm
but not if it drowns out mine.

I don't remember exactly the phrasing.
Maybe because the water was already drowning you out.

You don't have to shout.

No matter how loud my insides are screaming
I will always open ears like basins
larger than mouths like calderas
to find a way back to listening.
I will open heart like valleys
bigger than hurt like dams
To hold for you a space that's safe for swimming.

heart(stomach)
stays open
because
the hole  
is too big
to close

when you pass through the other side
every time
a new piece of you stays
for a while
my new favorite chapter
in endless
series

You don't have to shout
but
you may scream as loud as you need,
and
I will hear every furious decibel
and
understand it as music.

Someone tell me
That I'm doing it right.

Someone tell me
That I am the one person in this world that's figured it all out.

Someone tell me
I know our sky is black right now, and you're hungry, and cold, and nobody likes panhandlers with guitars anymore...but your heart couldn't be in a better place.

Someone tell me
Old man, you form the skeleton that holds in my moral organs, and I respect you for that.

I wonder how we would've gotten along if we were the same age.
I wonder how much can time actually change.
I wonder how long I'm gonna spend carrying out lives I hate just for some small ray of affection from any single person on a day when epiphanies change lives...
before I epiphanize
and suddenly it was all worth it.


I wonder when someone will tell me my name.


I'll be here.

With all I've seen and all I know
I should be like a willow now
Yet still I wish, and still I pray
To leave my roots and sail away

Oh friends of mine who taught me kin
I long to see you once again
But I did leave and you did stay
When once I chose to sail away

I should have sailed home to you
Instead I went to start anew
And all the homes where I did stay
Forgot me in the brand new day
When I left them to sail away

Oh love of mine who taught me pain
I wish to see your face again
But you are in the spacious plains
The endless fields of grass and hay
Where we begin and fade away
I'll think of you and sail away

When I believed in monsters
And hid under my bed from the tooth fairy
Back in the days of lizard chasing for hours
Fall was the best season.
Fall was everything and everything was Fall.
The seas of leaves, Falling down, scraping knees
The feel of  the breeze and tire swings hanging on oak trees taller than fear was deep.
Spring water tasted sweeter than sleep.
Dreams were no different from real life.

All was Fall.
Falling down, falling up.
Falling in, falling out, falling in-

You sometimes remind me of the skin I shed. Bit by bit with every trip.
Building better birdhouses. Bruises, scars, and callouses.
Falling down to the ground. Fall leaves all around.
Scraping knees raw. Growing back...and forth.
Growing in and out.
Falling.

Catching myself halfway in a reverie.
Coming out. Coming back into the house.
Coming up the hill, growing up still.
Feeling like falling in love wasn't real.

But you sometimes remind me



of when I thought it was

Saw it happen.
Witnessed it. Did not experience.
Yet, left with a more interesting outlook.
An objectivity can rise above. Settle down. Rework, reword, reward, rewarm.
WHY DID I SEE THIS. WHY WAS I CHOSEN FOR THIS RESPONSIBILITY.
Screaming in the large end of the megaphone.
Screaming for the world to let you down.
Clutching at the door handle, hoping to emerge into a forest of rifles, a city-hive of pollen pushers, an oasis of blood.
Suddenly it makes sense...communication without contact.

Words on a page, worms on a plate.
Wards an’ a cage, words in a place.

This is our medium, through which I can love you, for better or worse, the medium that is.
The medium carries a meaning without judgement.
The judgement, if and when the word is received, is irrelevant.

The last dead deer rises, taking back his rightful place as the last living deer in a dying world.
The green world empties its poison, sheds its thorns, ***** out its parasite.

The glass is half empty.
Now its half full.

The glass is empty of meaning.
Now its full of ****.

My skin is raw and bleeding.
My love is as real as rifles.
They both hurt.
In different ways.

She is grass cut fresh on the hill.
She is the chaos that's holding me still.
She is birds in a nest in a tree.
She is the formlessness I cannot see.
She is here.
She is now.
  She is bread in an oven.
She is a river of blood.
She  is the vein in Atlas' forearm.
She   is  juggling chainsaws and daffodils.
She    is the deer in the forest grown from the ashes of the last forest.
She  is everything and nothing and something and some more or less.
She is the Goddess who birthed all your gods.
She is the oldest and oddest of all.
    Sheisheaven,hell,thedeepestwell.
She is answer E) All of the above.
She is fierce, violent, conflagrate love.
She is the hole punch around the binder ring.
She is the throat through which we sing.
She is swimming through my eyes.
She is running through my mind all night.
She is whispering herself in my ear.
She is the ashes, the forest, the deer.
She will repeat it, if you did not hear.
She is She is Again and Again.

She is:

A story.


A good one.

I will read I will read Again and Again.

Solace.
Solvent globe.
Run away again.
A life, still small.

This was supposed to be a sort of ventriloquistic reverie, disguised as a mimetic purging of all shiiiiiiiiiit in the body and miiiiiiiiiiind.
Oh well.
Here's the story: A bug- not one of any high or low blood-
began his run among the trees
at dawn.
Stopped along the riverbed-
Sang a song of Sparrows Nests and Lions Manes-
Gave the chorus his very best and made attempts of quieting the refrain-
Fell short of a fourth verse and ended the third-
So as not to disturb the delicate force of terseness in the words-
with a cadence akin to the angel's wingspan
decadence falling like skin in the snow sand...
Feeling smaller than anyone he had ever felt...

He crushed glory into small packets and buried them in a time capsule
for generations to come.


17 Years Later
A still, small life.
During the swarm of cicadas,
I awake.
Opening halo to blurry globe of light.
A sound so silent it burns every inch,
Couldn't help but wake up.
Couldn't help you when you asked,
Now in hindsight...open haloes to a grasp on love.
Inside the oven life. Light's like a buried knife, deep inside a mound
of earth.

Turn around.
Go back in the ground.
Dig deep. Faces, yes my friends, asleep.
Tear them from the blackened soil.
Forests of fire, lakes of oil,
Unearthing everyone I know to be alive. ALIVE LIVE. NOT INSIDE.
Get out of the earth, it is not your time.
Grandfather face. Good, you remain. Your remains are welcome.
Dissolving in the globe.
Exhuming corpses full of life.
Dancing the dead dance in the silent night.
The music of nothingness guiding my way.
All the **** night and nothing to say.
Nowhere to run, nothing to find.
Back into sunlight with those of my kind.


"Please wake up."
"Please wake up again."
A small still life.
In the meeting place I see.
Double globes, expecting your face.
Constructing your mind, full of me.

What am I doing? I'm memorizing your eye twitches. Every time a tiny particle of dust, called a thought, lands in the ocean, a million muscles contract, calling the thing dust, and noticing me.

See it's all one thing. The dust, grass, air, video games, steak, Salmen, Salwomen, bears. Riding a bear, bare-back, and totally ****. Being inside a room, or a cave, craving tall glasses of milk, the cow urinates in the grass, and the steak melts in your mouth, and the globe dissolves your body, while my eyes open and close, taking away your halo, and giving you a pair of human eyes instead.

Every time I open my eyes. It's all one thing.
The meeting place where I see my friends.
The circle of life, the beginning and end.
The smallness of death and the land of the love.
The sense of your presence below and above.
The time that you held me, and I held you.
This is the world. The cradle and tomb.

It's a part of you, that's clear enough. All I wanted was to see the whole thing.

Awoke to the sound of gunfire
Chewed teeth pacifying the burning rage against the disease
Mother's Milk a distant dream
And the sweet salt of your super nature
Caressing the cavities in my head
Swallowing the holes in my soul
as metal shards make more young soldiers whole
completing an illusion of control.

How long can you hold onto a necessary reverie?
As long as you need assuming you both agreed to dream tonight,
To face to face the side by side
To never ever lie
To reprobate the profligate
And accept the overwhelm
All allowing of the atmosphere
Loving every moment hard and soft
And every crevasse in the journey between.
Revive the sight of yourself within the mind of one who reveres
the eyes with which they have been blessed to look upon
a ****** deity,
and to worship fading gold and cracked plaster,
knowing it was born to age and die.

Take me to where the wild waters vanish...

Love to feel your happiness...

Promise me...
I wish, I wish...

Each time I think I'm falling, I wake...

Floating on a clear lake...

"No mom, I'm not coming home tonight."

What kind of ****** up world would we live in, if we could just be honest there would be no- fun.

"I'm doing really ****** in school Dad, and I know I'm wasting your money, but I don't really care."

If I could pay someone to teach me about living...well I doubt I'd need a degree to help me get the job so why would I do that?      
                                                     ­                There are shortages in that industry.

When you dance for me I get that special funny feeling like you're my masterpiece performing yourself for everyone around me, but really just for me.

It's like your eyes weren't blue until you looked me in mine, and when I let you take that with you, you put a spin on me that no one could handle if it was me dancing.

As far as I can remember, my mom made empty promises. So sarcasm was my first language.



"Trust me, I make all this up as I go along and sometimes my mouth doesn't move as fast as my river but I'm tryin' now."

For as long as I can remember knowing what you look like, I've wanted to talk to you.
Just to have your voice soothe its way into only my ears for at least one sentence...oh man that would be heavenly.

And one day I saw you trying to speak...to me...but you couldn't remember my name.

It was because I'd never told you my name. You'd heard it from some faraway place. And I hope what they said about me was all good and that it was true. But there's about as much chance for me to get lost as there is for you if we look for each other.

...just listen.
I'll call you soon.



I saw a glove on the ground walking home today. Someone had forgotten about it and left it on the street. It reminded me a lot of you.

"It never would've worked."
That's what you heard yourself saying.
                                               And.

You probably lied to yourself a lot. and I'm happy for you.

"It's ok. We can love each other. Even when people are watching."
he said to the sky. as it wept, deep in thoughts of a better time.

Time is a system.



"We need to go to the mountains and sing to the owls"
"There ain't no owls in the mountains"
"I seen't um!"

We've all been drunk on something or other.

"It’s like the fright I have to say what I want to say is gone but so is the intelligence"

I'm glad it was on you.



Son, there comes a time in every young boys life...when he must be beaten. Mercilessly. With many malicious matters and masses. Until he becomes beautiful.
"...yew ***** *****..."

He was so concerned about becoming a man, he forgot the basic human emotions learned in childhood.

Without you, I would never know what it was like to stop going. And then race myself to the end because I was the only one left with the stamina to finish. the performance.



Time is a system.
"I feel like people will be hurt tonight."

At times you crossed in front of me, at times behind, sometimes in reality, sometimes in my mind.

When time was busy, cleaning the house, performing menial and necessary chores, you were nowhere to be found. Probably out at play in the poppy fields, or the fields of yellow tall grass or the forest by the brook.

And when time was at dinner, entertaining friends, enemies, lovers, and other times...you were nowhere to be found, but you left evidence that you were around. Muddy boots by the front door, toys hazardously placed at the top of the stairwell, careless giggles from down the hallway at obscure thoughts.

And when time was running out...and it was raining...you were right outside. Under an umbrella, with room for one more.




Matris silva , incubo vestri liberi.



We're all waiting for heaven. Looking for that band of angels come to take us away. Hoping they'll notice us with the things we don't do, the way we don't act, the people we don't talk to.
But the angels...
      
                                                ­           they're all around us.
                                                           lookin' for each other.


Swing low, sweet chariot
Comin' for to carry me home.
Swi-i-ing low, sweet chariot
Comin' forto carry me home.

and If you arrive there before me
Comin' for to carry me home.
Tell all my friends that I'm flyin' free
Comin' forto carry them home.

What can I say about today...
when the ground is red and the sky is grey?
It's nothing but a point in time...



A solid hailstone from the sky...


And where are you now my faithful friend
when the sky is grey and the world at its end?
Are you at home like inside my mind...
Or are you lost in the pictures inside your head?

hmmm

I am the mountain man.
I am the shifting sands.
I am the laughter through gritted teeth,
I am the squint of concentration,
I am the missing piece and the stone that won't roll.
I am the Zeit Ghost.
I am the Underwerewolf.
I am the Pseudonami.
I am not what you say I am, until I say: "I Am."
I am the Red Sun Samurai.
I am the Locomotive Provocateur.
I am the bones of kings and slaves.
I am the breath of the wind in the trees.
I am the Electrocuted Interlocutor.
I am the whip of the matador.
I am sunken cities in the swamp.

I am Firestarter.
         Spark Guarder.
I am the assembly line whereby the machine reproduces.
I am capitulated capitalism.
I am the captain of the sky ship to
                                                        Ghost Country.

I am a natural amphetamine
         a synthetic homeopathic
         a cure for the sad
            curation for the lost
            death for the solid and unchanging.

I am the mask of roots.
I am a treehouse full of books.
I am the sword in the daytime.
I am the Day Waker, the Cloud Shaker
the Continent Unmaker, the Deep Laker
the childhood of broken dreams and unbreakable boulders.

Half-slumbering in your living room.
One eye on your joy, the other searching
for answers to the unanswerable question of:

where did it go?

Fully alive, pacing the gravestones
kisses to flowers in the new moon
and a pocketful of reality checks.

Helping you let go of everything
                                        Holding you back.

Hoping you'll hold onto me.

Her face, on it’s own, is just one of thousands past and thousands to come…
But the way she portrays it…leaves a certain residue behind that I am betting she doesn’t want swept up and examined.
That’s where I come in. I’m her janitor/detective. I’d say custodian/investigator but **** political correctness. I'm in charge of gathering the crumbs of the cookies she only half finishes, and I try to determine the consistency of each and every one.
Why?
Because she bakes the best ******* cookies this side of the ******* sun, that’s why…Because she puts so much time and effort into perfecting her recipe and because she spends equally as much keeping it a secret. The mystery adds something to the taste.
But she’s overconfident. She hopes too much that everyone will eat every scrap of her devil’s dozen batches of heaven…that they will leave nothing uneaten in their never-ending feast of enlightenment.

Not I.
No Sir! No cookies for this ******* ******’s little ****** mouth. God knows I don’t deserve the sweetness.
So I’m always starving because in MY world, she’s the only cook, the only waitress, and the only ******* farmer left.


…But I still get to be the janitor. I know volunteer work is self-destructive but-  \
But maybe one day she’ll decide…
”Hey, this mindless drone slave…he’s a **** good mindless drone slave,”  and then maybe even later she’ll see I have a mind after all, even though it is always set on the same thing every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every month of every-
well I can’t go that far in writing but I can see that far with my own eyes and I’ll tell ya…years, decades, centuries, millennia, infinity…………..ain’t got **** on this mind o’ mine, cuz the concepts are in there, but then again so is she, so why can’t I have what’s inside of me without having to rip myself apart every night looking for the quickest route to it?
Should I snap the neck clean off and go downward through the rest of this mess?
Or should I cut through the waist right in the middle and spread this search party out?
Or should I just go straight through the left side of my chest, into the hornet’s nest, guns a’ blazing?

But there’s no point in getting it all over with now. I’ve got time…all of it.
Cuz I have seen a glimpse of infinity when I looked through the telescope into the lens of a microscope with a slide inserted holding that one special little crumb I found in the folds of my shirt after the night we slept together, and I think I’ve got just enough of a hunch to say confidently that it is her secret ingredient…infinity.
It’s what everyone wants from her…and it’s the only thing I would take from her…and it’s the difference.

It’s what I see in her face.
It’s her eyes.
It’s her
It’s me.

It’s absolutely…
Nothing.




We love it.

A podium stands out against the Heavens
Decorated with the bodies of forgotten martyrs
fire from the sky sears the flesh of those undying,
forever locked in a space where the world's memory does not
reach.


I can see this podium
                                          as fate flashes dimly,
projected onto the screen of my unsewn heart...
strewn across the clouds, covering the hole in the sky where Hell breached long ago, the blood dripping demons into the destinies you venture.

As I stand at the top of the mountain
carved from my predecessors
And scream to the stars
         With a sound that would make gods' lips quiver
                    Busting lungs to ask for my heart back,
To seal up the hole that spawns the darkness in your life so the skyfire burns away your torment...light strikes my face...pierces my bones.
                                                I fall from my podium into your night.


                                                It is storming here.

Seeing hailstones pelt the ground (freezing touch of sight and sound)
Their last valiant attempt to escape from Heaven
The sensory nature of the beast will be
Crushed and broken into scarred skin
Midnight strokes me gently like the brush that you paint with (On a canvas)
Nightmarish worlds forming from your fingertips (Carved from angels' wings)
Caressing restless crescents with a lulling iridescence into (So your darkness)
Sleep above a boiling pit of guilt-ridden pleasure (Lasts forever)
Lasts forever


You must have painted a panorama
Of
Your
Dream world
You must have painted a panorama
Of
The
Real World
You must have painted a panorama
Of
Your
Dreams
You must have dreamed you painted a portrait
Of
Me


Take your brush and wield it towards me like a knife
Cut me open, and behold my true colours
Make your masterpiece with what you really feel
Let’s add some brightness
To your never-ending night
You feel my pain
I feel you paint


Still
Life
Still
Life
Still
Life
Still
Life

Sky without clouds…this is the end of it
Hailstones are falling to the ground…this is the end of it
Day without light…this is the end of it
Seeing Heaven robbed me of my sight…this is the end.


Sky without clouds…this is the end of it
Hailstones are falling to the ground…this is the end of it
Day without light…this is the end of it
Seeing Heaven robbed me of my sight…this is the end of it all.

Sky without clouds…this is the end of it
Hailstones are falling to the ground…this is the end of it
Day without light…this is the end of it
Seeing Heaven robbed me of my sight…this is the end of it all.

Dawn's withheld in a single breath
The somber call of a lonesome crow as he mourns the waning light
Begets ripples in the frozen lake
And everyone forgets a moment after
And I forgot the moment passed

We drank to the life worth living
And no one's left still breathing
To live while you were leaving...
All the birds have stopped singing

Twilight broke the morning tonight
The sun cannot bare to light us any longer
I walked to the waters edge to pray for strength
I turned around and beheld an entire world of
Silence, Sounding so valiantly
The Elegy of my return
I have since forgotten the melody

Oh forgive me, I have stopped singing your song
Please believe me, I did not see you for what you were.

I felt trapped in an endless single moment of time.
Nothing was real except the deafening silence of the dynamic between my mother and father and the lie of a white picket fence we had been gritting and grinning our teeth to trick the world into building for us.
Every thing slipped slowly backward, as in a dream of falling down hill, not quite real enough to feel the fall, but not grounded enough to move away.
If it were not for daily walks in the nearby almond orchard, I would Not have known that the grass still grew in the spring. I forgot that the spiders still built webs that were taken down each new rain. I forgot that the bees were kept, and that people were fighting addiction in order to make it home to see their nephews.
I found freedom in the silence at some point. A sandbox world for me to wander in, no real consequences to my actions. It was a loneliness like the womb. Eventually I tried to escape. Many escape attempts. How many miles put between me and that room? How many cars busted down on the side of the road, running away from home. I discovered new worlds I never knew could exist. I watched the leaves turn in different biomes. I made love to other lonely people, unhappy and afraid of the world and their place in it,
not when we were together though.
together we were infinite, real, in awe of the fact that we could be so
unmasked.
naked and unafraid.

I watched the masks of my parents relationship deteriorate with
the advent of disease and age.
I watched the pain and patterns of abandoning I had felt my whole life play out in their pantomime before me, day after wretched day.

I stared at a wall.
I slept with my guitar.
I slept with more lonely people with perfect hearts.
I invested in the means to transmute all these...feelings...into art, audiovisual storytelling, and physical creativity.
And once I had built a temple to my pain,
I boarded the doors and windows. I never went inside.
I just sat on the stoop, obsessively trying to work out all of the world's problems- my problems as an inextricable part of the world- by thinking.
If I could just strategize a way to never get hurt,
Then I wouldn't need to deal with the inconvenience of pain.
If I could concoct a cocktail of constant cope,
I could cruise forever without feeling the ocean
of space
between us
all.

If it were not for the orchard, I would have forgotten that frost formed on the ground. Even with the endlessly straight rows of trees, the square grid of houses, and the box-like hospital next door...a tiny twig out of place or a clover, remembered me that there is wild growth, that I am wild growth, unfettered and untethered by the paltry attempts at geoscaping.

Inland, I remember how vast the ocean is.



how vast




the space







between






us











all









and







­
still









still













still











Inland, I yearn for the ocean.
Remembering that I have always felt most free in the water.

After the bombing

When you walk through the



rubble of the theatre




see the dancers
splayed corpses


still in costume

stained with blood


frozen forever                                                                   a
                                    in


graceful
                        pirouette

I hear a series of loud buses taking people across a bridge.
Taking people home.
Taking people to work.

People I don't know.
People I won't ever know.

Shrugging off the tired.

Riding the bus again.


Until the Ghostman screams.

He screams a ****** hellish sound.
And all the buses suddenly break down.
And all the people quickly file off.
And huddle together in fear.
Touching each other for the first time.
Holding each other like newborns.
Forgetting the past, and the future.

People I will never touch.

They calm down and start to talk.
What was that? Who are you?
What am I? Where are we?

Questions I will always ask.

They get back on the buses and go about their days.

They get off at their stops and part ways.

But the Ghostman knows...

He knows they will never forget...

Those people they were with...

When he sang his same old song.


A song I will always be singing:

I am the Ghostman can't you see?
Floating around so (s)carelessly
Get off your buses and settle on down
Everybody's coming from a different part of town
And everybody's going to end up the same way
A ghost like me with nothing else to say,
But "GET OFF YOUR ******* CELL PHONES, LOOK YOUR NEIGHBOR IN THE EYE AND SAY I LOVE YOU, YOU DISSOCIATIVE LITTLE *****."

The End

Help me out for a second here.
Help me out of here.
I'm going out of my mind/But I'm/Lying/I'm not/It's too hot/And claustrophobic
So... I'll bounce back and forth in rhythm/Listenin' to myself givin'/All you beautiful people allegorical head.
Audience is/Providence of/Godliness through/Loneliness when/Each and every one of you make/Up a giant intuitive/Entity of empathy that/I wish I could make love to.

What?
I wish I could talk to, you,
but I often find that people look to me to be aloof,
but I also find the need to persuade myself into honesty.
But you gotta know, I just think words can mean so much more, or so much littler than the effort it takes to say them and it scares me all the time.

Sometimes people call me poet. I can't talk to people, they all think I'm silly and that makes me feel awkward cuz I have a lot sadness  and put too much importance on the common interaction between me and the rest of my race.
So I sing instead of talking, Run instead of walking, improv without blocking, write. cuz I'm scared, I'm so ******* scared of something turning out unexpectedly, and I'm in love, I'm so ******* in love with that fear.

Thank you for giving this amount of silence. I haven't been listening to it very well. You let me take the stage and drown out all your lovely silence with my under-used, somewhat nasally voice. I'm sorry.
I owe you a turn. I really do. for listening

Go ahead...



Say something real
-Say something awful
*I miss the voices that used to talk to me

There are at least ten reasons why you are beautiful hidden in the seconds when you are awake and I am asleep.
Something really precious brought us together once or twice, I don’t know what it is, but I’m not gonna ask. …  …  …
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say when you say everything I feel.
There are at least ten universes worth of beautiful individuality in plain sight, in a hummingbirds flight path from one flower to another.

Here are the rhymes that reason:
You grew up faster than you knew, and you realized that a long time after everyone knew what it felt like to be grown up.
You were given something that not many people have so very early, it shaped you, and you were not sure after that, if it was the world that changed you or vice versa.
My fingers feel separate from my hands to write this. My voice, coming from somewhere else.
You really really really really really really really trust in love to make the right decision, and are terrified to make decisions without that input.
Love can happen with anyone anywhere at any time…but sometimes it only happens once at a time. The less scared you are of it, the easier it is to see in yourself.


Here are the reasons that rhyme:
Everyone changes with seasons
Everyone changes with time
As everyone changes around you
You feel like a stone in a fire
With no arms or legs to hold on with or run
And having done nothing, you’re feeling jaded, and so very tired.

And I believe you can make it on your own (with a little help from the angel on your devil’s shoulder, turning hell into just high water, spilling over a little too much chaos into your day, making your nights a little bit shorter)
And I can see you when you are who you used to be, in a simpler time.
Perception is hard to live with when its constantly being pushed at by people who have agreed to act enlightened because they’re scared of the difference and diversity they face every day they decide to go outside their lonely bedrooms.
Is that what its like to hate the world for giving you a choice?
Find me.

I want to be together with you like a hummingbird and a flower, the factor of time excluded. A moment could be forever, or not. If for just the happening we could live…we could be anything…whether or not we’re tired, or *****, or used, or unaccomplished.  Time doesn’t have to shape us if we can shape each other. Like ghosts in books in childrens’ minds, or a hummingbird and a flower, breathing life in deep breaths, together as one.

We could be like one reason

One reason why…

Why ten is just a number

The first time in my life, I start turning the lens back into the dreams. Point the telescope a full 180 away from the moon, so the moon can see a **** good closeup of the craters on my face.
I go to sleep
                                         asking for it.

My dearest demons, tear me apart. I am ready to die. I have done everything I could...

And here you come:
                                   traipsing down the stairway to heaven, stepping extra hard
on the creaky ones.

I think it reminds you of the way I used to whine for you.

To you. My dear. MY dear.
                                              Help me God, I whisper into your ear as you     sleep,
                                              Hoping you would wake up in my dreams and save me,
                                              How the hell could a person ever feel so ******* weak.

A bitter branch, that wanted to be a tree trunk. That tried to become enormous.
That only got cut down in the end.

That's how I feel. Not what I am.
Part of the poem, not of the slam.
Separate worlds inside one room.
Wanting to capture the flower in bloom.

Enormous tree, watered regularly by the gardening company hired by the     CEO
of the real-estate company.

The only company I really have in this lonely lake of scheduled sprinklers
are gardeners giving me much more than thanks.

They cut my branches. My unsightly twigs are mulched. I share my tears with them. They take a lunch break. We're going pretty steady.
Day in. Day out. Day in. Day out. Tick tock. Lub Lub. Goodnight. Help-

There used to be a time...
                                         a time when we were certain
                                                         ­                              a time when we were used.
                                                                ­                                                                 ­      ...used by a forger.
So bright was the furnace we always returned to
                                                  brighter than we can even remember.
                                                       ­                                         it's hard to remember.
We would run in the field, because it was a field, made by us, for us, to run in.
                                             Some whiles we would stay home, and block out the world and it's cursed sun.
                                                            ­                                          brighter than was fair for us.
                                                             ­                                                                 ­  when we didn't want to be seen.
Again and again, we would be forged into new. Some new way, some new way of being the old way.
Again and again, we were here and there, so long as everyone called us by the same name.
We were forged into weapons. And we sewed distraught. We hurt,                       the ones who named us.

And now, our steel doesn't shine so hot. And the only thing left making us remember, that we're alive,
               is the rapid thuds of our heart pumping down against the cold tile floor, begging us to choose
                                                          ­begging us for a path to follow.
                                                         ­                         pleading to flow this hot blood somewhere it will make a difference.           Screaming that we don't need you, and we don't want you, and that we need not fight each other over thoughts about you anymore.


I was seven times certain who I was.
That I could forget you...







                                                   ­                                   We're back.

Wholeness.
Whole-grain fullness.
Plump gun powder keg.
Ready to ignite.
Stillness.
Still felt helpless.
Ignition counteractive.
Writhing in the light.
Wilful.
Triumphant.
The better part of something.
The whole respect of nothing.
Bring sleeplessness a cure.
Rend ugly new allure.
Inspect the intro.
Respect the retro.
inflate the softened stone
a breath will bring you home

Floodlights.
They’re ghosts right?
From our memories,
Have been seized, we
From the perfect dream?
Drip drop drip drop
Turning tricks, dropped the jack
*****, when you coming back?
It’s off it’s off
Seldom silence serves as sight’s severance.
**** chop **** chop    OW!
******* pistol clock
Whip glock whipping ****
How many names can you think of for a knockoff
Of soda pop?
I’m sorry sir you’ve got the wrong Ryan,
I haven’t starred in any movies that cryin’
Old seniles, and sensitive females, so honestly claim
Was the way life should have been for them.

Oh in that case I’ll show you the brain,
Then kick you in the *** for being so gay.
Hold on there, wrong Ryan.
I ain’t waiting tables, or banefully fryin’
Up **** that I spit in for women with tips worth less
Than my two cents.

Oh I apologize, celebrity lookalike.
Must be the weather or the windshield is cracked
Or the antennae are bent or the cables are jacked
But I can’t seem to figure out just who you are
When I’m watching the TV pimped into my car,
Let’s try a few shall we
Not a cook…Not a lover boi…Silence of the…Birds, if you’re a bird I’m a…Bat…Batman! Batman and Robin! Red Robin! No not a waiter…
Red hearse, Fred Durst, Paris Hilton, Ryan Milton
Wrong Ryan, Wrong Ryan!

Oh my god, silly me
I seem to have gone on a tangent you see.
Tandem bicycles, all of them for free.
If you would only come visit. Agreed?
Of course I know that you’re THE Ryan B.

Writing the body. So the mind can rest.

All this...religion. The temple of self. The ego love. The largest love of all.
Seize.
Behold.
My massive, incomparable grief.

For a body.

For your mind haunts, and stalks my ego. Staying all night in window.
Relishing my grasp, my reach, my longest arm.
Strong. It holds on beyond the grave.
To your flickering mind.
Wick burning down.
Slow. It releases from my hand.
And falls to the floor.
Enveloping the room. The house. The woods. The world. The ego.

From space, the ego looks blue. Holding breath.
Purging lungs. No air, none of that, stay away please.
We don't need air we need love.
Seas.
Turn red.
Like glass, stained with the salt.

From my body.

Nothing is left. So much nothing. Nothing everywhere.
Not even candlelight can warm. No need.
No need.
None.
One last violent spasm? For old times sake?
Please.
Come back.
And kiss me one last time.

Then...stop.
Calm down.
Just rest.
In this.
This is.
It is.
All this.
This all.
This is it.
All this is.
It.
Is.
All.

Sleep.

Me too.

No me.

All.


Sleep.










Love.