i cannot count the times i dreamed
of you and i in the streets
interlocking fingers
marching
surging sure and steady
to percussion footfalls
and songs of solidarity

but you held another hand
last night as we screamed
until our lungs cried out in atrophy
and though a revolution
without dancing
isn't one worth having
it seems i can't keep the beat

i’ve long dreamt
of black flags in the streets
tonight i marched beneath
the shadow of their wings

shoulder-to-shoulder
in hope and solidarity
an anarchist professor
with a climate change activist
an independent journalist
and one of my students

as mid-November winds tugged
at her pink-and-brunette hair
she lifted a hand-drawn sign
of a gigantic sneaker
smashing a ****
and i felt
for not the first time
an enormous sense of pride

how humbling to at once
inspire and be inspired by
an eighteen-year-old
punk and artist
who asked to borrow
The Moral Imperative of Revolt
two scant months ago
then took to the streets
to oppose and depose
a twisted fascist virtuoso

for two whole hours
we hundreds owned the streets
we marched down Rosalind
Central and Orange Avenue
as protest slogans rang angelic
we raised hell and found heaven
in liberty equality and solidarity

but then the pigs closed in
cordoned to Lake Eola
to scream acquiescent rhetoric
at the fish sleeping
blissful in their innocence
beneath the jet black surface

a half-dozen cops in riot gear
astride horses loomed
ominous before us
backlit by the headlights
of the aggravated motorists
our march had forestalled

as the people abandoned the streets
we’d won so easily
i felt my chest wilt beneath
the weight of forsaken opportunity
my eyes scanned the remaining crowd

four stood strong
rooted to the concrete
by the world's weight
anchored by conviction
an anarchist professor
an independent journalist
a climate change activist
and a freshman college student

i heard the professor whisper to his student
i heard him say she'd put herself in harm’s way
that they'd lost the day when the marchers
turned their backs and walked away
but she didn’t flinch or move an inch
she stood silent and vigilant
shoulder-to-shoulder
chin held almost as high
as her ****-smashing protest sign
and her matching *******

and in that moment
i could’ve died
smiling

depression
is an ocean.
at times, it ebbs.
at others it flows.
forever it endures.

depression
is a dead tree.
ripping apart wilted
leaves, adrift
in windswept currents.

depression
is an ant hill.
fit to burst
with activity, but
simultaneously stationary.

depression
is a sword in a stone.
wrest its hilt
to no avail, the blade
remains buried deep.

depression
is a melting glacier.
worn thin by
global warming,
wilting in enervation.

depression
is you and me.
living in the same town
now, but somehow
distant as dimensions.

over six hundred thousand seconds
have passed since i heard from you
ten-thousand-some-odd minutes
have stretched between now and the moment  
your name last illuminated a digital screen
a hundred and sixty-eight hours
since we bid each other adieu
one bleak week weak-kneed
beneath the guillotine of agony

and though i'm still far from immune
i've started ******* poison from the wounds
siphoning the anguish you left in an absence
perforated with melancholy spells
and existential hells that leave me
writing poetry at 3:00 o'clock
in the ******* morning
mourning friends who became lovers
only to turn to strangers once again

am i expecting too much of you
does the blame fall squarely on yours truly
or do we share this guilty burden equally
if it takes two to tango then certainly
it must take two to kiss but
patriarchy has me questioning
everyone and everything
most of all me
wondering if i ruined our fragile unity

but if i know one thing
it's that your lips gushed when i brushed them
with my fingertips and i still hear the faint gasp
as you begged me to dip within
inviting me with your breathless panting catching
like sugared candy on the tip of your tongue
intermingling with the sticky-sweet scent
of sweat and ***
you whispered my name as you came
on a moonlit drive home and held my hand firm
like it belonged inside your contours

i'll set my phone back down on the pillow
where i wish your head laid beside me
and pray to a god i don't believe in
to break insomnia's grip so i might slip beneath
a comforter of dreamless sleep
only to wake and find your name
displayed prominently beneath
the time and date

i still remember the way
your fingertip traced
the Deathly Hallows
tattooed on my wrist
writing the word
Love in cursive script

we built a palace of palms
while our arms laid a foundation
flying buttress knuckles
and stained glass lips

your hand
was the first church
i felt whole within
and for a fraction of a second
i almost believed in god again

maybe it's just the fact
that your eyes remind
me of nebulae but
i guess i just thought
we'd burn out like the sun

5 billion years on
before bursting
shattering supernova
undulating amidst
the Milky Way

but lately
we're nothing more than a solitary match
sputtering in the eye of a hurricane
flickering with hardly any fuel left
'cause this crisis has blackened our blood
and i couldn't seem to find
the gasoline to pour over this fading flame

so i'll scuttle this life-boat and set myself adrift
silently waiting to capsize
the old adage is true
the captain must go down with the ship
but our hands were interlocked
on that steering wheel
so i suppose it's only fitting
that i named this vessel after you
i'll sing your favorite tunes
as i keep sinking into this bottomless
trench of sleeplessness

we were both willing to
ram our Titanic into the glacier
if only to kiss the contours
of ice beneath the surface
the secret we hid from one another
pulling us with the magnetism of the planet's poles
a knowledge subliminally submerged

"i said i'd never let you go and i never did"
but Houston
we have a problem

and while all things end
i thought we'd go down
like the Challenger
erupting and scattering
bits of fiery debris across
these broken homes
sprinkled like memories
of Florida theme parks
and forbidden rooftops
and the corpse-blue cornfields of Iowa
illuminated at midnight by the halo
of all your Marlboro cigarettes

i didn't think
we'd spend
all these years
pretending
to still be friends

Katniss
chased catnip
across the carpet
of your Lamoni home

each precious pounce
sent you
into fresh
waves of giggles

left you
clutching
a paisley-patterned pillow
tightly as a life preserver

you were
transfixed
by a kitten's glee
until i met your irises

our fingertips
brushed
and we both felt
a chasm grow between us

in silent agreement
we looked our separate ways
lost in fractured
reminiscence

if i **** myself, will i wake from this dream?

a half-remembered reverie floating
at the periphery of my anxiety.
will death free me from ennui?
will my final breath
bring me liberty
or will this life be but the passing
of one ship too many on a moonless eve?

if i **** myself, will i wake from this dream?

the doctor told me to
swallow a fistful of pills.
whatever you say, doc.
i've been striving for lucidity
so i might achieve some measure of restraint
a way to constrain the hellscapes
when i drift unconsciously
listless within my psyche.
can i project my whims
into the astral plane
to attain a degree of peace?

if i **** myself, will i wake from this dream?

endless possibility rests
just beyond my fingertips.
to soar serenely
over lavender mountains
past fields of magenta glass.
magical realism birthing infinite possibility
from the labyrinth of night-terrors.

if i **** myself, will i wake from this dream?

it's been said
that if you dream of falling
and you reach the end
you won't wake up ever again.
but my deja vu is transpiring endlessly
as if i was trapped in an abyss spanning eternity.
am i caught in a vacuum of space-time?
am i adrift within a void?
am i going through the motions once again?
the doctor told me to
swallow a fistful of pills.
whatever you say, doc.
repeat. repeat. repeat. repeat.
...
is this a dream?
is this the real world?
am i already dead?

if i **** myself, will i wake from this dream?

the Florida sun and i
baked your memory
into the bricks of Winter Park
i built a home for you
amidst the concrete and stucco
off Mills and Thornton Avenue
outside a crowded little tea-house

we'd read our poetry out front
to choruses of snapping fingers
well after dark
before driving aimlessly
through Orlando streets
with a melancholy soundtrack
keeping us fixed firmly apart

i'd lay my hand like a fallen palm frond
well within your reach
praying to a god i don't believe in
that you'd tease the ink staining my wrists
with your pinprick fingertips

i remember when we
sat beneath the pine trees
i tried to look into your eyes
but the windswept clouds
drifted listlessly
and for a moment
i was blinded

i could've sworn that there
were constellations
where your
irises ought to be
a nebulous Andromeda
hurtling eternally

so send me a sign
through earthquakes
and light-waves
that i don't belong here
pining

it's true
the revolution will not be televised
but the fascist revival premiered
on all the major networks' corporate channels
in 1080p HD at prime-time hours

with perfect clarity
viewers could see
an oompa loompa
with an orange toupee
a xenophobe
spewing violence and vitriol
peddling snake oil while spitting venom
stirring a bubbling cauldron
spilling over in fear-mongering demagoguery
served like crack candy to the Republican elite
reveling in their privilege
cheering white supremacy

a tyrant
tirading behind a polished wooden podium
flanked by hues of red white blue and gilded gold
like some comic strip super-villain
but this obtuse excuse for human refuse
is not some Saturday morning cartoon
defeated by the heroes after 30 minutes
of selfless feats and epic deeds
a death dirge plays on repeat in the background

you can't always get what you want

meanwhile
we're holding silent vigils back home
carving the sigil of Orlando's skyline into our skin
while a snake slithers into a City Beautiful
bedecked in her $3k pressed pant-suit
leering wolfishly at a local club for LGBTQ+ youth
the downtown heartbeat
of outcasts and misfits
a Pulse
that bigotry and self-hatred couldn't *****

but tragedies are converted to cheap currencies
in the clawed hands of dynastic oligarchs
sporting the support of billionaires and super-PACs
she knows the Establishment has got her back
she'll shed crocodile tears
just in time for the photo-ops

violence begets violence begets violence
humanity's universal language
a tongue shared by despots and presidents
in the wake of stolen sanctuaries
she'll justify razing Syrian children
beneath a barrage of hellfire missiles
and predator drones targeting cell-phone signals
under the pretense of bringing the terrorists
to some sycophantic mirage of justice

we're manufacturing new soldiers
for the Caliphate to brainwash with promises
of dead gods and seventy-two virgins
machine-fed by automatic weapons
to the toothy jaws
that bottomless maw
of endless ******* war
which always vaunts
profit over people

the conceptual construct of gender binarism
becomes an imperceptible selling point
in the incomprehensible and reprehensible rhetoric
issuing from either side of the political aisle
but what will it matter
either way
an egoistic megalomaniac
has his or her finger poised over the trigger
a neoliberal warmonger and hypocritical fraud
or a reality TV star who lauds the KKK on Twitter

our only hope is found in the streets
unchained by compassion's transformative capacity
freed to utilize our minds
humanity's indomitable faculty
nurturing a community that seizes life
in anthems of liberty equality and solidarity
anarchic manifestoes penned in lines
of red and black ink

progressives will insist otherwise
they'll declare emphatically that our only choice
lies in selecting the lesser of two evils
to lead us to the brink of oblivion
but Orwell wrote the future of humanity
looked like a boot crushing our heads
that either way we'd all be dead
and the harsh reality is that the soot-stained sole
curb-stomping this country
fits both the left and right foot

i yearn to change
the world
but i can't seem
to change myself

i fear the gears have ground to a halt
and i've been left to gather rust
between the teeth of tired cogs
in the jaws of this dysfunctional mess

am i nothing more
than a bent tool
a broken fool trapped
in self-detesting testament

piece
me together
with anger anguish
and mistrustful lust

the aspects of a psyche
peeled back
like flayed fingernails
exposing fresh flesh

i've resolved
to be a nightly victim
of my own failing
mental health

i may be pointing fingers
and smashing mirrors
but i haven't been avoiding
the abject reality

a reflection
i know reflexively is inexorably
responsible for this current
catastrophe

i
am my own
sworn
enemy

a contagion
jealously infecting
everyone and everything
i've tried to love

though i dream of death
every evening
i continually awaken
disappointed

why is time so much harder to ****
when a collection of moments are brought to a standstill?
lie in bed and study the popcorn ceiling.
perforations of personality
erasing all semblance of meaning.

rain runs her languid fingers over my windowsill
leaving lingering fingerprints that smudge the glass.
a ******
tapping intermittently
waiting to be invited in.

"open up your window,"
every droplet whispers, "let me slip
into something more comfortable."
the rain has grown sick of the endless cycles
exasperated by precipitation and evaporation.

the fan spins in rhythm overhead.
the blades drone like a time-bomb
ticking down the moments i wasted
stumbling through vertigo horizons
fleeing endlessly without taking a single step.

i curse the rain and pull the shades.
i wish i was dead
and that's perfectly okay.
maybe tomorrow
i won't feel this way.

we are all knights errant
chipping at the gilded armor
of tyrants and overlords
with rusty swords
doing little more
than tilting at windmills
and howling at a world
with hands clamped
tight over its deafened ears
and lids clenched shut
to block out the fears
of insignificance
the years of feigned ignorance
when we knew all along
we've no one to blame
for the hand we've been dealt
we'll all get the hell that we've built

raging at the moon and stars
eternally pushing boulders
up the slopes of mountains
just to watch them roll back down

nothing we do will be remembered
our lives like the dying light
of seven billion supernovae
burning in unison

a universe without masters and slaves
awaits us all beyond the grave
when our bones disintegrate
and carry us away from this place
a globe we bathed in blood and toxins

no gods to welcome us into the fold
no shepherd searching for his lost flock
each of us a footnote to a fourteen billion
year old explosion that split the veil
of life asunder

salvation is flirting with death
knowing she still haunts
our every footstep
life is defying illusory deities
raising the bird
to an apathetic horizon

we will all be forgotten
dismantled and interned in disrepair
atoms fractured and drifting apart
distant as two motes of dust
in this ever-expanding cosmos

yet still we endure
for though none can contend
with the factions that rend our planet
we are all dying super-giants
refusing to go quietly
into the last goodnight
for if we are all made of star-stuff
what can we do but combust

well before dawn
bats her eyelashes
at a yawning horizon
i claw my way free
emerging from six feet under

burgeoning with fingernails
still caked in dirt from ceaseless digging
unable to slumber with a tombstone as a pillow

a corpse interned
amidst the earth's embrace
deadening this landscape
souring the soil
infecting every body
within proximity

i've been pushing my luck
in place of daisies
locked within the confines
of a mass grave
sunken past the rifts
into tremor-torn trenches  
adrift with all the cadavers
lost and scattered across the deep

searching for some clarity
amidst misremembered memories
so i might finally rest in peace
not pieces

i. you are at once absent and present

mourning dew on tobacco leaves
transgressive pleasure simultaneously
deluding and eluding me
i remain an equation incapable
of comprehending infinity

tantalizing fantasies splashed
like water across a stovetop
simmering on contact before evaporating
with my unconscious thoughts
trapped within half-forgotten dreams
restless in unending nightmares

a cosmic drift of psychological
rifts in a psyche sundered by
the fault-line ruptures
of cognitive dissonance earthquakes

there's no stitching up
the severed seams
or recovering the effervescence
of innocence lost in our ascent to a rooftop
to treat with bliss in the midst
of the moon's ambivalence

ii. you are at once absent and present

i thought the stars danced for only us
that you put them in the sky
so i could study nebulae
with the same five senses
i'd use to explore you

the stars looked on
voyeurs surveying
the crush of our bodies
listening to the rush of lust
leaking past flesh flushed
with explicit elixirs

we found the philosopher's stone
became ageless in those moments
drunk on alchemical toxins
poisoning our blood-streams
souring the precious draught  
of friendship we'd cherished
for half a decade

the taste of your alcohol-breath
still taints my tongue
lungs billowing like corpses
pierced by carrion
a larynx choked with regret
while you smoke your cigarettes
incapable of going back
yet returning
ad infinitum

iii. you are at once absent and present

they sentenced anarchy to death in 1887.
in the wake of the Haymarket Affair,
they tried in vain to hang a fifth figure
on a chilly November day,
attempted to fit a noose
on an idea that's bullet-proof.

solidarity.
liberty.
equality.

a refrain that remains in remembrance
of Engel, Fischer, Parsons, Spies,
and every man, woman, and child
whose life was robbed by the State
before his or her time.

a mantra celebrating the universal
qualities capable of unifying humanity
even in the face of an apparatus arraigned
to divide
and segregate.

we march in Chicago and Seattle,
in Toronto and NYC,
continuing the fight they began
for dignity and a living wage—
our burning rage growing to a conflagration
as we wave black flags and reclaim
the city streets from killer cops
and corporate oligarchs.

authority an illusion we will shed  
in the tides of black and red, united
against injustice.

one thousand and thirty-six miles
are What Separates You From Me
i've been avoiding the records
we'd spin as we drove down
I4 and A1A

you swore you hated this washed-up town
nestled in a fly-over state
but i cannot escape the way
you grit your teeth
when you first cursed my name

so i'll hide you in the back of my throat
hang you like a corpse
from an out-of-commission larynx
deadened by an absence of anthems
we used to breathe in unison

choke back my melancholy
'cause all my friends lose interest
whenever i recall your face
and i can't say i blame them
i just wish i could agree
that i am better off this way

our clothes are perfumed
in the after effects
of the cigarettes
you and he share
as we drive down
unpaved paths in Iowa

bits of ash
slip past your seatbelt
to build new nests
tangled gray birds
in my beard's brambles

the wind splutters its dying breaths
as a Jeep Cherokee kicks up
specters of dust
and i sit in the backseat
forgotten
while second-hand smoke
leaks out half-cracked windows
fleeing your presence

i envy the particles
liberated from the confines
of your cancerous lungs
slipping free and disappearing
into the mourning light
rising with a ruddy sun
behind anguished hillocks

the sun hangs itself in a noose of evening gloom
as we swear to gods we don't believe in
we'll be different  
that you and i will remain entwined
by the rhizomes rooting us
to this earth
and to each other

though the flame of romance may
one day flicker and fade
like the silver lighter in your trembling
half-frozen fingers each time you
light your cigarettes in Lamoni’s frigid winters
we promised to remain enshrined forever

but the words best friend have been redefined
how can i ignore the moment's hesitation
before you meet my eyes or the wings
of carrion fluttering in our chests
feasting on the flesh of crushed butterflies
that fled the prisons in our stomachs
choked within a chrysalis of expired affection

left with remnants
of an evanescent tryst birthed
beneath a new moon
as an intergalactic sky
sighed with bliss at our first kiss
reminding us we were born in the hearts
of dying stars and borne across the universe
to these moments that leave us
transfixed and effervescent

did those same suns foretell
that anguish would usurp the home
i built you in my mind
and love would die on a midnight
drive to Blythedale, Iowa

a reminder that always
is a little white lie
and its inflection denies
sincerity and integrity
in the heady high of affection

witches adorn the front covers
of ecofeminist zines
in an anarchist bookstore
nestled on the Left Bank
of Seattle's waterfront

rare rays of sunlight
filter through sheer curtains
photons glimmering
through fading droplets
clinging to cracked panes
refracting multicolor

i sit in the window-seat
listening to a homeless
balladeer's somber renditions
of Jonny Cash and Woodie Guthrie
serenading the locals bustling
down Pike Street Market
while the Olympic Mountains
keep their vigil
across a lonely bay

Emma Goldman whispers
for Alexander Berkman
and i balance on mismatched cushions
considering Proudhon's insistent
inquiries while Bakunin smirks  
nursing secret heresies of insurrection

colorful posters are paper-machéd
across the walls with slogans of struggle
scrawled in sisterhood and solidarity
stickers plaster the narrow halls
encouraging visitors to Smash Capitalism!
or Read A ******* Book
as jam-packed patrons chance
sly peaks at the black flag
suspended in the back room

a faint breeze flutters intermittently
drifting across the open threshold
lifting spirits as if sifting
through grains of sand
not unlike a child
digging for answers
armed with one
monosyllabic question

why?

the banner
cheerfully pirouettes  
for a revolution
without dancing
is not one worth having

lines of malice are penned
within ancient tomes
black and blue ink bruising
the human psyche beyond recognition

stunting our collective imagination
with fantasies of castles
among the clouds and intergalactic
beings who sculpted us from dust

intermittent smears
of crimson declarations
lingering in blood-soaked texts
painting portraits of putrid prejudice

the image of an illusory deity
devised to explain a cosmos
that defies codification and categorization
we mythologized and told tall tales like Arachne

spinning webs of misinformed misfortune
we're severing the strings of our imaginary enemies  
silencing lives with rusty shears
utterly convinced by the edicts of idiots

how might we disentangle ourselves from mental
cobwebs and embrace reality's promising veracity
each of us an accidental miracle
captains of our own fortune's vessels

so weigh anchor and set course for distant shores
unfurl the sails of reason and hold fast
after weathering millennia of insipid beliefs
we'll sojourn ever onward with omnipotent minds

raze these sycophantic fantasies  
and raise hell so high it becomes heaven
we will build a new city in the shell of this cold
dead society predicated on misanthropic religion

yesterday
she told me
two of her
favorite things
are coming
and poetry

i'll wrap them
up together
present them
at her altar
with a tongue
simultaneously
tasting limericks
in the air
and slick flesh
as we share

shuddering breaths
thundering in chests
choked with lewd scents
and a sense of urgency
surging back and forth
like waves flirting
with the coast
returning to embrace
no matter how many times
we drive each other
to new heights
of anxiety and ecstasy

a full moon
devising a riptide
******* me out to sea
will i seek peace
or slip beneath
and let the current
carry me

i've tried in vain to fight
the whispered suggestions
layered in alluring messages
but this lurid affection instigates
an aggression you welcome
with innuendos insinuating
intentions of transgression

heat flushes pink cheeks
with each fleeting
transgression
another sinful taste
of this forbidden fruit
hidden in a lush garden
secreting sweet juices
secretly sprinkling scarlet lips
parted in desperate obsession

fingers slick and sticky
slipping beneath greedy creases
pleadingly penning treatises
with gushing ink
like fingertips on flesh
peeling back another
layer of skin
to savor the tantalizing
treasure buried within

orchestrate a climatic finale
intermittently violent and intimate
soaked with dew
spewing new seeds
pollinating a flower burgeoning
in endlessly fertile acres

the globe is warming
it's sickly sweet beneath
these thin sheets we share
as water levels rise
with every breath spit
into the atmosphere
by planes trains
and automobiles

maybe it's an inevitability
all i know
is that we've passed
the point of no return
it is irreversible
no denying a shifting climate
elevating seas and oceans
as seasons slip haphazardly
sending blood rushing
to our heads

let's live for today
since we could very well
be dead and buried
by the week's end
we won't go meekly
into the black holes
awaiting our solar system

apathy an enemy we'll transcend
hand-in-hand as champions
vanquishing impotent ideologies
steadfast sentinels
ancient as trees
guarding sacred mysteries
of this infinite cosmos

the marks of abandoned faith
are etched into her flesh
a sheep beneath a lonely flag
a crescent moon hidden under her arm
tattooed remnants of a dead deity
neither of us believe in anymore

with each declaration
of secularization anointing
scarlet lips
i yearn to reach out
with fingertips and rhetoric
to more intimately understand
a dizzying intellect
she shares willingly

a life plagued by faith
scarred by family
trying their best
and failing
miserably

she glances at me furtively
eyes as green as the foliage
of ancient trees
standing watch
over whispering rivers
in silent summers
long forgotten

she holds my gaze

we recognize
ourselves
in one another
there is trust
and intimacy
solidarity in suffering

she smiles
when she thinks
i'm no longer looking

a needle brushes pink flesh
slips beneath fragile skin
an endorphin-rush
feeding sweet addiction

adrenaline thunders in eardrums
a gallop of wild stallions
stampeding past neurological valleys
shuddering eternally within

an itch
that must be
scratched

a thirst
that can't be
sated

a lust
always
anticipated

i'll suffice
to be sedated
with self-hatred
isolated from my muse
in snow-swathed Iowa

a heroine in her own story
and ****** in mine

i saw a dead dog on the median today
its entrails scattered
across sun-baked cement
gore crows perched on
suburban rooftops
cursing the cars
that drove past aimless
separating them
from breakfast

                                                               i've
                                                      been
                             s t r e t c h e d
                       like
            string
theory

an object
e l o n g a t e d
by the pressure
of gravity
gobbling light
black holes
f r a c t u r i n g
time and space

i am jaded
bitter
restless
weary

i snapped today
broke a picture frame
the glass shattered
shards splayed
the photograph remained
temporarily unscathed
i burnt the black and white image
with a lighter that smelled
faintly of old cigarettes

it was not an accident

i wanted to
hurt
break
maim
****
something other than
myself
for once

a fury fills every fiber of my being
infernal ire boiling internally
controlling contorting consuming
i bore my cross this far
it'd be a shame to leave it
unoccupied

i am a wilted wallflower
just across the hall
deadened petals
plucked and fallen
scattered remnants
on cold stone
each discarded petiole
inscribed with simple limericks
like butterfly kisses

                              she loves me

**** the pollen
out from me
suffocating poison
trim my leaves
and shear my thorns
no longer dangerous
mold me into something
safe and harmless

                              she loves me not

rid me of beauty
bid me return
to that same dust
from whence i came
a lust overpowers
and devours all hope
so crush me between
the pages of your
favorite book
let me rest
in peace
not pieces

how might my reality be redefined
by slipping furtively
like a hapless lover
disentangling midnight sheets
fleeing past pathways of my own psyche
to see the view from her mind’s balcony

to inhabit intergalactic eyes
sparkling and shining like supernovae
every time she parts scarlet lips
in defense of the helpless

i'd plant gardens inside her irises
water the seeds and invite the bees
to pollinate fresh thoughts and rejuvenate
an energy that could illuminate new theories
about the cosmos and its inhabitants

i want to dwell within
corridors of infinite imagination  
bridge the synaptic gaps
across rivers of lapsing memories
a lackadaisical adventurer
adrift in neurological galaxies
ingesting erudite insight

i yearn to build a home
inside the mind
of a poet
an activist
and a bona fide genius

i stare up at the same spot on the ceiling
desperate and restless beneath sweet sheets
the fan groans incessantly in my right ear
a drone that can't quite drown out the internal din
a cacophony simmering infernally within

gossamer strands shimmer in the moonlight
spider-webs interconnecting above my head
trapping my hope and retaining my dread
until naught is left but undead recollections
nascent nightmares and frightening images

a half-dozen dreamcatchers spin on twine
suspended intermittently throughout my mind
serpentine figures intertwined in the twilight
adamantine revelations of eternal return
dragons chasing their own tails ad infinitum

sleep is a tease that whispers gently like a breeze
death shares the coffin that doubles as my bed
she ***** everyone but she returns in the end
and when my time comes i'll meet her as a friend
relieved i need no longer pretend to be free

it was an inevitability
that we'd unearth the evidence
to validate Einstein's theory
of general relativity.

three cheers for the
method of science,
an appliance that
liberates and enlightens,
suffocating the miasma
of dogmatic parasitism.

pariahs can't stand beneath
the weight of empirical data.
a culture of imperialism
intoxicating inane idiots,
inundated by asinine philosophy.

ideologues instigating turmoil—
vainly believing
an intergalactic being
created the cosmos
in seven days for the
predestined elect.

to insist inanely that the legacy
of our existence could be measured
in seven millennia
is to extinguish the light
from the majority
of our neighboring galaxies.

you read the opening lines
of your holy text too literally.
open your mind to the poetry
of a reality that no deity
could ever breathe into existence.

we are not special.
our fate is tied to a
planet choking on CO2
and you deny the truth
in the same breath you
disparage any challenge
to your impotent,
imaginary friend.

**** sapiens—
mere animals
cursed with
conscience.

if you would deny
the ancestral history
of our evolutionary biology
simply on the premise
that it's “only a theory,”
then i'd invite you to put
your vain hypothesis
to the test and take a long walk
off a short bridge.
perhaps the theory of gravity
will provide with you some clarity.

Dostoevsky espoused
the eloquent adage
to live without hope
is to cease to live
and it rings true
i've been a shell
of my former self
ever since we kissed
on that frigid rooftop

leave my carcass for the vultures
i'll give up the ghost
relinquish the illusion of control
once and for all

hang me from a rope until i'm dead
the visions of a fraud lying
in your bed are  
a noose i'll loop
over my head

i am a slave
my enmity
masks a
melancholy reality

i'd part the seas
just to see you
walk on water
if i could only believe
that you'd reach out for me
but these concrete limbs
leave me sinking
interminably

the sun raises its weary head
above the distant horizon
i'll daydream of growing old with you
attending protests and fighting injustice
making love on a beach beneath a new moon

but when our star
tucks itself to sleep
each night
i can't erase the reminder
that you choose
to lie with a different lover
and deny the flame of this
never-ending romance
while i toss and turn
misery my only company

hope is a hoax

hope is a hoax
a sick joke that always ends
like a punch in the throat
cage up my guts and
crush the butterflies
departing my vacant stomach

i've grown sick of all the lust
that always crawls over us
invisible cockroaches scurrying
across emaciated flesh
give me the needle the drug
part my skin succumb to sin
addicts trying to kick our habit
desperate for the next fix

whispers and insinuations
an endless simulacrum
an earnest emulation built
on selfish impulses that
never fail to corrode and
corrupt until there's nothing left
of us but shattered shells in
self-made hells begging
for another bump

and while no god presides over
this unending infatuation
i've asked the skies to answer why
i am always second rate
gathering dust while
you **** a hollow husk
of a human being

am i the crux
of true love or
am i just a crutch

denizen of the Internet's darkest corner
surfacing momentarily to spew vitriolic
misogyny before disappearing once more
returning to whatever hell you call home

warmer hearts than mine
might muster the compassion
to show you a kindness
**** like you neither
appreciate nor deserve

but not me
i will not tear you
limb-from-limb
regardless of the
sick fantasies i
treasure in my brain

no
i'll meet you in
this abyss and cut
you to pieces with
a tongue sharper
than any sword
until you fall upon
my words like the
shameful craven and
dishonorable coward
that you are

you fancy yourself
a misanthropist but
you didn't create
the darkness you
merely inherited
it from me

you're a putrescent infant
nursing your enmity and harboring
hatred for yourself above
all else and it's not
difficult to see why

chauvinist pig
slave to a hyper-masculine ego
the rhetoric you spit is
simultaneously solipsistic
self-contradictory and self-defeating
you've backed yourself into a corner
your throat is the open grave in which
i will bury you alive

i only wish there was a devil who might
give you an eternity of the attention
you crave but i'll suffice to be the one to
pull the noose tight and watch with
mirth as you kick and spin and gasp
and shudder and splutter for breath
your flesh goes blue and your eyes
roll back into your skull searching for a
brain turned to mush
riddled with maggots

and on the day that you
lie dormant and friendless
paralyzed on your deathbed
i will be the loneliness
reminding you that you got
just what you deserve

don't **** with my best friend

we're all armed
with an appliance
of emancipation
we can nurture non-violent
defiance in a
non-compliant ethos of
antiauthoritarian self-reliance

we have the ability to eliminate the
vestiges of imperialism and
dominant dogmas that choke
and impede our creativity and shackle
our imagination to impotent ideologies

fragmented unrealities augmented
by fractures in our psyche
tendrils of theology that prey
upon our fear and exacerbate
conditioned responses that are
at once
unnatural and irrational
and lead
inexorably
to infantile expressions of
regression and fantasies of an
aggression rooted in the
suppression of dissent and
the oppression of dissidents

deities
as impotent
as our terror
of the unknown

by the promise of security and prosperity
a cabal of brutish thugs have erected an
imaginary hierarchy and demanded our
subservient obedience and reverence for
this malfeasant apparatus that leeches
our paychecks and robs all of our dignity
while somehow retaining the illusion of liberty
a delusion that festers like an open wound
a tumorous ulcer oozing foul fluid into our minds
blotting out our capacity for cultivating a
future divorced from misanthropy

so pour kerosene on this fluttering
flame of revolt before it sputters out
if we'd quit looking back and forth at
one another rotting in the gutters
checking to see if we have more to
our name than our sisters and our brothers
we might just muster the courage to overthrow
the vapid and misguided fictions that
divide and segregate us into pawns
trapped in this unending rat race
they've deemed the American Dream

harness the revolutionary tenacity
dormant in humanity's most important *****
infinite potential latent in every molecule
each neuron dancing across synaptic
gaps and fanning the embers of an engine
that gives motion to this evolutionary frame
the human brain is omnipotent

if the gods were real
they would've given her
ten thousand arms to
uplift and empower
the poor and oppressed
twenty thousand hands
to hold her lovers close
and trace the tattoos
on their wrists with
a hundred thousand
fingertips at once
as gentle and exhilarating as
a million year long trip
through the boundless cosmos
compassion as timeless
and infinite as a blissful
kiss exchanged between two
best friends entwined on a rooftop
while distant stars kept watch
any deity masquerading beneath
the pretense of benevolence could
stand to emulate Alexis

i've gone through
hell and back again
to chart the skies of a
divine entity twinkling
intermittently against
the black abyss
of outer-space

fragments of life
light years away
effervescently evanescent
reminders of a faction
still vying for
truth and hope and love
in an apathetic galaxy of
snakes and liars and frauds

a meteoric rise that shatters the
atmosphere at just the sight of
hair dyed black as the darkest
corners of our infinite cosmos

pardon me if my breath catches
on the lip i bit subconsciously
if you think these cheeks have
flushed with pink you should
hear the heart that shudders
beneath my chest at
the manifestation of
beauty exquisitely expressed
in that solitary photograph  

more than a mere
image of memory frozen
momentarily in time
this snapshot simultaneously
sets you free and captivates me
a symphony of liberty marching
1,096 miles away to
the sure and steady beat
of your own drum

you look like a thunderstorm
and i am almost afraid of how
much i want your rain to fall
on me and your electricity to
tumble down my spine until
i'm deaf and dumb and blind but
even still
i'll chase the lightning

some 4.5 billion years ago
the atoms that would coalesce
to ***** your evanescent features
detoured to a lonely chunk of
rock aimlessly adrift in the
Milky Way Galaxy

you stayed alive by pure instinct
fight or flight
you could not thrive
yet you survived nature's
attempts to crush you in
her fearsome jaws

bits of you walked with dinosaurs
bone fragments ground to dust and
reformed over eons of evolution until
you stood upright and found a
tongue to describe planet Earth

remnants of those dead languages
live on to this very day
they inhabit the ink stains i
leave upon this yellowed page
while folk tunes croon over
my shoulder and Dallas Green
breathes a city in multicolor

a map of the universe is etched
across your face and i cannot escape
the smirk that spread with mirth
nor erase the memory of eyes
like interstellar space staring
back at me
unblinking
for 4 minutes that felt
simultaneously like a lifetime
and the space between
2 fractions of a millisecond

you came from the Big Bang
when the cells that would form
our bodies were forged in the
cores of supernovas exploding
across the cosmos and we've
been on a collision course ever since
an unstoppable force and
an immovable object
for matter
can neither be created
nor destroyed

trapped inside
the same cyclical
fantasy
a veil of lace
obfuscates
the mystery i've
explored with
gentle fingers
and yearn to sample
with my tongue

tripping and spinning
endless iterations of
vertigo
elusively choking my
psyche which insistently
craves the taste of
flesh upon your neck

i long to fly with
avian flocks
charting a path
across your
collarbones
and make a home
for you curled close
inside my bed but

as of yet
you remain a
fiction
within my
head and a
friction
beneath my sheets

she says she loves to
play with fire but i'm the one
always getting burned

pour some kerosene
at my feet and strike the match
such an exquisite

inferno of sweet
agony siphoning my
entropy if we're

all destined for dirt
sooner or later then let's
go out bright tonight

they say it's better
to have loved and lost than to
never love at all

and every single
poem i pen seems to start and
end with you hidden

between lines that lack
the proper punctuation
my love tell me true

just where am i to
go when my heart screams yes but
my head whispers *no

and when the sun sets
will you lay your head
to rest content with
all the choices that
you've made

will your last breath
pass without regrets
when you lie
on your deathbed
or will you wonder if
you resolved and wrapped
up all the loose-ends
before fading away

into the dark abyss
of nothingness
that awaits  
each of us
inevitably

it's become something of a cliché but
like most trite adages
for all its faults
it is not necessarily
lacking in validity

the journey itself is the destination

a phrase that conjures images
in one's head of subconscious
sojourns across arctic tundras
and windswept plains
savannas and mountain ranges
or perhaps astral and ethereal
projections of the psyche into
some pseudo-spiritual metaphor
for overcoming corporeal suffering
and psychological anguish

but it holds true too
to the metaphysical revolt
explored by Camus in
chapter two of his opus
on the spirit of rebellion

it is not enough to merely **** god
acts of deicide are at once
reactionary and revolutionary
imposing subtle dictatorships as
we merely claim a despot's
stolen throne for our
own whims and fancies

no
to resist the urge to become the master
to destroy dominance and empower each
other is the greatest test humankind will face
a constant struggle to pursue the
better angels of our nature

the means don't
justify the ends
the means
are the end

you recite the
lord's prayer
but i don't
hear a
messiah
whispering in
my skull

you read me
lines from the
Dhammapada
but i do not
care for the
Buddha's boorish
proverbs and
tired truisms

i can only
focus on the
inflection
in your voice
when you pause
in the space
between words

i can't see you smile
but i can hear you
catching your
breath as heat
spreads across
your cheeks and
you free slick fingers
from wet pink flesh

you're burning in
the poems you
read at a secluded
café on Thornton
silhouetted by light
like a beacon of hope
a lighthouse guiding
me back home

your words are
the  rope i
knot about
my throat
kick the chair
beneath my feet
and leave me
                       d
                       a
                       n
                       g
                       l
                       i
                       n
                       g

a derelict dream
of financial prosperity
gleams in each
deceiving smile
he offers the
photographer

white teeth
dead eyes
the film cannot
capture its
soulless subject

attention
shoppers

swallow the cyanide pill
and get in line
disregard humanity
engage in
intellectual suicide

sheep
mewling for a
millionaire's autograph

a Saturday morning
cartoon villain
with a pair of
henchmen and
a Yankee's ball-cap
who'll never realize

poverty isn't an
asset one can monetize
capitalism addles
brain cells and sets
brother against brother

a snake-oil peddler
selling hope for
$26.00 bucks a book

but when the people
have nothing left
to eat they will devour
the rich instead and
we are running
out of bread

there is a glacier
partially concealed
melting from a climactic
climate shift revealing a
reality congealed by revolt

rebels burdened with
a philosophy that
elevates humanity
insisting we will not grovel
before a vain messiah
espousing erroneous
iterations of ideology

will the human race permit
the iceberg to dissolve
as vapid reformist
rhetoric inundates our
political consciousness with
pragmatic progressivism

or will we rise in resistance
with the radicals
fists clenched in protest and
hands outstretched to one
another rather than
lifted high in praise to a savior as we
witness the glacier solidify once more

as CO2 perforates our atmosphere
with heady highs and noxious toxins
will we succumb like dumbfounded
addicts intoxicated by inoculation
consuming the opiated semantics
of charismatic personas or will we

challenge the corrupt
with our wits about us
facing the sobering corporate
corporeality with the pride
of lions facing a den of thieves

abandon the chosen champion
of the vanguard party
we stand hand-in-hand
7 billion
sisters and brothers
in an anthemic chorus of

solidarity that shakes the
bastions of the enthroned
with the resounding shouts of
perseverance in our
non-compliant defiance

our manifestos are written
in the blood sweat and tears
we've shed for this
dream deferred
and we will not be the
silent majority anymore

the masque of anarchy
is ours to share
will we wear its visage
or will hell freeze over
before we choose
freedom
over happiness

pasty white ghosts haunt
the corpse blue cornfields of Iowa
whispering wisps of smoke
shimmering shadows of the past
setting the pace for the rat race
that is the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

senators billionaires doctors
frauds liars fools
campaigning for selection in an
archaic and outdated
form of governance

witness the spectacle
the orgastic worship
of solipsistic oligarchs
bloated by their own
sycophantic rhetoric

it's just another form
of all-American
entertainment

each orator's charismatic adage
froths forth from a
throat like a grave
pragmatism throttles hope
as we stoke the fires of
self-indulgence and neglect
the fact that we acquiesced
as another deceiver stole votes

we're choking on placebo pills
every ballot cast is another act of apathy
escapism pleading vainly for a
savior to rescue our sick society but
these hands didn't evolve so we could
collect a representative to lead us
blindly into one fiasco after another

these fingers penned  
humanity's symphonies and
these calloused palms have
toiled for years under an apathetic sun
we learned to make love
using our fingertips and
with these fists
we could chart a new path
but only if we raise them in
defiance

our only chance is leaderless resistance

time is a flat circle
and we are trapped
upon its cyclical surface
the collapse of string
theory and quantum
physics marks the
dissolution of the
multiverse

as the dragon eats
his tail and
tall tales of
moral absolutes
disintegrate
we return eternally
cursed to relive
our worst mistakes
ad infinitum

Søren Kierkegaard
calls it infinite recession
trapped within an
ambivalent cosmos
constantly existing
at once everywhere
and nowhere
simultaneously present
within our most
blissful memories and
sinking in the abyss

doomed to repeat
our failures and endure
our fears over and
over again and again
etcetera

pull me up
by the roots
of blue veins splayed
across pale flesh

i'm a puppet
dancing
on strings
twirled around
your finger

if i ever muster
the courage to
sever the ties
i'll pour my
life's blood
down my arms
in scarlet
rivulets and
swallow the
razor blades that
led me to
eternal rest

i'll die
smiling
alleluia
free
at last

you're wrenching teeth out of
your own skull with the mangled claw
of a rusty hammer and drinking pints of
blood until you puke

in Sunday School they teach you
your body is a temple but neglect
to inform you that the temple is also
a prime spot to place a gun before
you give the walls a crimson paint-job

at point-blank
range it's
a target you
can't miss

it'll all be over soon

you drive splints beneath your fingernails
and pry off the keratin cell by cell
savoring the agonizing reminder

you are a human
you aren't dead
yet

i think about dying every day

not suicide
per se
just
alleviation

for if existence is suffering
then sadness is unending and
my anger defines me

it takes a certain sort
of courage to endure
to persist in spite of
the inevitable abyss

i am caught in a
cycle of cynicism
that leaves me jaded
more often than
i'd care to admit

and i can't help but
feel guilty nursing
my enmity

i hate him
almost as
much as
i hate me

yet i find
strange comfort
knowing one day
everyone and everything
will meet its end

we are precious
precisely because
we are finite