God, you've got those eyes
I ******* hate those eyes
The way they hold mine
The way they know me
Trace me

You've got those eyes
That see more than I want them to
You've got eyes that know me
You've got eyes that scare me
Light up when they see me
I ******* hate those eyes

Think of everything you know: you don't
Think of everything we knew: we didn't
Think of everything you think: do you?

The earth used to be flat, we knew it
Cigarettes were the cure, we blew it
Double entendres, we'll lose it
Translation, time, linguistic disintegration

This god, that god, miracles or chemicals?
Brain make-up, societal shake-up
Left wing, right wing, cha-ching, quiet king
Extremists all around, different by nature
A set of monkeys trained to hunt grandeur
The science of the day, the philosophy of the age
Every other thing is the best thing since sliced bread

Think of everything you think: do you?

I'll admit, you're my weakness
Oh, but not in the way that you want to be
I don't yearn for you the way you want me to
The same reason I try to leave is the reason I stay
You offer me no sustenance, no mental nutrition

So, when I'm feeling the world crashing down around me
And when I'm hearing a million voices telling me "no"
I call you back from the darkness and you say "yes"
You're a walk in the park, you don't further my questions
You don't leave me to play tennis with my own demons

But when they subside, and the light comes back to me
I realize I don't want you there, you offer no challenges
And I push you into the dark until I need you again
And you will wait and smoke another cigarette
Until I call you again, and you will say "yes"

You will always say "yes"
Just once, won't you fight me?

I had a dream
A nightmare
A premonition of another dimension

I was in front of a one-way mirror
With my life's mistakes lined up against the wall
Dressed up like personified Envy or Sloth in a preaching play
And I had to chose which one I thought had been my killer
I had to chose which one I thought had placed me in the morgue

And the warden, the sheriff, the detective
The shadow in my dream said:
     "It doesn't matter much. It all ends the same way."

I had a premonition of another dimension
I had always feared it would end this way

I wonder
do they not think
about these things
these things which
haunt my nights
broil my days

Conformity
Excess
Consumption
Purpose
Death
The whys
and the why nots

I wonder
do they not think
about what else
this world holds

About how what
we knew yesterday
we scoff at today

I wonder
what don't we know

I wonder
what does tomorrow hold

It haunts my nights
It broils my days

Some nights I drown in poetry
Its watery depths fill me whole
It sloshes around inside of me
Cleaning me up for tomorrow

Some nights I'm not ready for poetry
I am a helpless child sobbing alone
Gasping for the air I crave to make me whole
Drawing breaths to fill me for a cleaner dawn

Go ahead
Chastise those who ask questions
Hang those who find answers
In time the chastised will tie the noose themselves

Go ahead
Leave us ignorant
**** us slowly, but surely

Human beings are a peculiar tragedy
We are only truly beautiful for our souls
But we hide them away
For fear that ours is a little too
Something
A little too
Anything

Rip me up
Break me down

Slit my skin open
Punch my eyes closed

Spit in my face
Bite at my heels

Leave my soul
It lies dead on the floor

For My Sister*

Doll face, what does it matter
if you're ugly as hell?
If you’re short or you’re fat
Or your face is full of pimples?
Why the hell should it matter?

Sweetness, who gives a ****
If you tie your laces upside down?
And your left hand smudges the words on the page?
If you break down crying at the sight of rotting road ****?
Who is anyone to laugh at you?
Who is anyone to tell you who you are?

I am sick and tired of seeing your red-rimmed eyes
I am sick and tired of seeing what they do to you
I hate to see you hurt and I crave the very best for you
I want you to be happy in all the ways you can
Let go of it all and crawl on the ceiling, weightless

Darling, people are messed right up
And we've all got cuts and stitches and oozing wounds
But don't let the bruised and beaten up punks
the privileged warriors, the wait-listed mental patients,
the scummy lost wanderers, the vengeful aching souls,
Tell you it matters if you're ugly as hell
Please please please
Understand you are so much more than a shell
than an exoskeleton of a soul
You are a glorious, bruised and beaten up,
Ugly, pimpled masterpiece,
And it's a shame that they don't see it

I remember when you were mine
Ha.

And I used to call you "sunshine"
Need I even explain why?
In clichés and metaphors?
Darling, you lit up my whole life

And now I take every chance
To call anyone I see
"sunshine, my only sunshine"
To cheapen out what it was you meant to me

Now I filter my own low light through anyone else
To disguise my ever present darkness
While you shine over anyone but me

And maybe I'll don dark glasses
To hide you from me and me from you
Baby, I'll dilute your natural shine
Or maybe I'll make you look into my eyes
And see just what it was your lightness did to me

I posted another ****** poem in haste
Because when everyone
                                           f
                                           a
                                           l
                                           l
                                           s
                                             asleep
I am left alone thinking of
                      THE GREAT SLEEP
And I needed someone to tell
And I needed someone to feel the hurt
Like I did

But it was a ****** poem
So it sat, unread as me
and I read Bukowski's work
Because I needed someone to feel the hurt
As the sheets itched and my eyes stung
So I leeched off his rotted heartache

Four years ago I started dying,
not of terminal illness nor poetic expression
about how we were all born to slowly die,
I died the first day of his last six months
and I died every single day for the next ten

This is four years later and Dad comes home
at 11:50 saying “She’s going to go tonight”
and I don’t cry
but I calmly allow myself to die a little more
and I glance at his own oxygen tank

At 11:55 we pull up to the home
and it is exactly what I expected:
oxygen masks and morphine
clinical and impersonal
next to her pale, familiar frame

And I kiss her softly and tell her I’m here
and she tries to open her eyes

This makes everyone exceedingly happy

The nurse shuffles in with explanations, condolences,
Make her comfortable's, There's nothing you can do's,
expecting heartbroken surprise
but the words are less than foreign
to this family they are home enough
familiar as an old dog’s bark
       all we can do is to hold her hand



Eventually we say our goodbyes
and I walk away waiting to feel eighteen
waiting to feel alive

It's not the painless choice
that I've coached myself to believe it is

But why not, you idiot cynic?

Because I only find happiness
in moments of ignorance

And?

And in those moments of ignorance
I find minutes of shame

And?

And in those minutes of shame
I find hours of sadness

And?!

And in those hours of sadness
I find  endless  defeat




...that's why I sleep life away

Why, you fool?

Because in a lifetime of slumber
one finds nothing at all

Baby, aren't I pretty, in that tortured kind of way?
Don't these dark circles under my eyes add something?
A little sense of mystery? A taste of poetic desperation?
Baby, don’t you love to play with this mane of dirt blonde hair?
It’s a marvel of half-wit curls, don’t you think?
And don’t I have the bluest ocean eyes?
Not quite Liz Taylor, more the polluted Toronto lakeshore
But doesn't this wide face have so much character?
Like a 1950's housewife, you sometimes said

Tell me baby, aren’t I pretty, a real sight for sore eyes?
A little bit pretty, a little bit ugly
Don’t I match with my insides?

You want me in your lustful way
You want me in my playful debate

But I wanted you to not just want me
     I wanted you to need me

You need me in the sense that I put up with the *******
You need me in the way that I can offer you retreat
You need me to calm your soul when it hurts to breathe

But you don't crave my soul so much

I wanted you to need me
But then I realized

     I never needed you

To Death and You, the terrible two:

Can you feel your grip loosening around my neck?
Can you feel me getting lighter, smarter, farther all the time?
Can you feel my heartbeat finding its own pace,
Not matching yours, as it did before?

Can you feel me slipping into
Happiness    for a change?

We were once a Sisyphean process
Low ups and lower downs
We once were endless
Or so we thought

Can you feel my lightness overcoming your dark?
No longer in the shadows of the consuming unlit?
Do you think it’s true, what they say?
Do we not know what we have    until it’s gone?
I think so, not so much for you as for me
I didn’t know how much you held me down
Until I sailed the skies of the blissful unknown

This is one last hoorah for the lowest of lows
One last note to those I leave behind in the dark
One last toast to Death and You, my all-consuming terrible two

I adore the phrase,
       "You're going places"

Yes, I am

Later I'm going to the supermarket
Because I'm running low on avocados

And after that
I might stop by Addy's house
To pick up my blue button down

Maybe I'll go to Turkey, Bali, Istanbul
Hit every gritty, run-down pub I find
You know, I'd love to go to Ireland someday

There are a few places, however,
I would like to avoid, as would anyone
Jail, divorce court, Wal-Mart on Boxing Day
Just to name a few

But I'm going places, yes I am
Who knows where, who knows when
One thing I'm certain is
Some day I'll go some place
And I'm never coming back

So between now and then
I'm going places
Anytime I can

I'm a young kind of broken
I don't break easily, but I break consistently

I haven't devoted half my life to a love
Only to watch it flicker and dissolve

I haven't drowned in bills I can't pay
Handing my dinner off to my better bits of DNA

I'm a young kind of broken

I break at the sight of documentaries
Hosting hate, disease and inhumanities

I break at hurting Grandmothers
Euthanized dogs and dead Grandfathers

I break consistently, a young kind of broken
Holding in my arms love, hope and humanity
But I can't handle it all, so I may let a piece drop out
Every once in a while
And when I bend to pick it up
They all come crashing down

I'm a young kind of broken
Broken all the same

All my broken elders:
Would you let me break with you?
Will you be there to help collect what remains?

"Fight depression with chain smoking!" he says, half-joking
Fiddling with the lighter in his pocket
(He knows about her grandfather's lungs boxed up underground)

They will exchange the usual
Books, philosophical ambiguities and terrified uncertainties
Ideas of the unknown, which makes up more than the known

They will talk about how they would both rather die alone
Than surrounded by false pretense of love

Every night is an existential crisis, every other night one will feel strong
On the graveyard shift of saving the same life for the millionth time

We are a play
A constant spectacle

We are wrinkled foreheads
Ink coated arms
And frilly dresses

Cottons and silks define us
Bad haircuts destroy us

We are ears stretched wide with plastic tubes
Hearing sounds of scoffs and silent condemnation

We are male parts and female prints
Drawing judging eyes and ignorant fists

We are the wrong brand of jeans just once
Seeding carved patterns tucked away
Under the right brand of sweater sleeves

We are snap judgements
We are controlled independence
We are the humans trapped beneath

Poetry terrifies me
Oh god it scares me to death
Because when I read my own
I see how I never knew I saw myself

Hold me close, I'm a walking cliché
Flitting around in Converse sneakers
And that stupid old army jacket
Bet me $5 I could go for an hour
Without my lips uttering
"Consumerism, capitalism,
Elitist *****" -the usual *******
And I'll lose

Hold me close, I'm a stupid teenaged kid
Stomping around my room saying
"Can't they just listen for a change?"
And slamming doors to prove a point
And when I go to house parties
I'll sport my trusty skull shirt
Just so they know without a doubt
I'm different from them

Hold me close, I'm running around
Like a chicken with its head cut off
Running my mouth like a politician
And spewing my thoughts like a hippie
I'm a ****** hypocrite and it kills me
But I'll just lay awake at night and think
"How are they content with living this way?
Like hamsters in a wheel? Dogs in a cage?"
Then tomorrow I'll sit down
And reread the same old poems
To make me feel okay

Hold me close, I'm an idiot kid
and I just want to be someone

I've found,
poetry is more beautiful
when your soul is shaken up
when you're on the verge of tears
when you're reading it slowly
with an aching heart,
holding out your hand
saying,

        "Let's be broken together"

I made a friend today
He isn't real, you see
But he's a very good friend
The best friend you could need

My new friend is quite sweet
You see, we went for a walk
And we had a fine afternoon
He was easy to talk to

Though I feel I must admit
And I'm really quite embarrassed
That on our first day of meeting
I wept to my friend, on the path in the forest

I bore my soul to him, my new daydream friend,
(Now the salts of my tears are on his make-believe sleeves)
And I asked him, if it wasn't too much trouble,
"Keep my soul? Would you, please?"

He has it now,
Safe in his invisible hand
He doesn't seem to mind
He's a very good friend

I write ****** poems
& I think ****** things
I float around half-dead
& sometimes I wish I was
(full-throttle ashes, that is)
But if you're looking
For someone so sad
So so sad, sad as you
I think it's me
If you're looking
For a reason
To stay a while longer
Let it be me

This is it,
Don't you see?
Someone who thinks
You're so so sad
Sad as me
But I want to hold your heart
Feel it beat and race
I want to let you know
Dearest stranger, dearest strangers,
Hoping to see you smile
Is my reason
To stay a while longer

She was sitting there in her grey cardigan and self-satisfaction
And she said, "They're going to be putting a cap and gown on a chair for him."
And I said, "That makes me so sad. It makes me think of our 8th grade graduation.
Oh god. That makes me so sad." picturing a freshly ironed gown for a dead graduate

It was a few minutes later and the kettle began to whistle
And someone made some smart remark about some stupid topic
And I sighed and I said, "I just can't do it"
And she said, "Jeez, you’re just lacking emotional maturity today”
I excused myself and avoided her for the remainder of the day

I found myself a few people I might consider my friends (if anyone)
I sat down for a minute and said, "I just can't do it"
And the one turned his cigarette-yellowed teeth to me and said,
"They just aren't as cynical as you, huh?"
And I looked him in the eye and he smiled, meant nothing by it
Maybe just, "Shut up, will you? Just breathe for a minute"
And the other, with his slicked back hair and Tom Waits voice
Said, "Not everybody can be a female Louis C.K."
And I smiled and said, "***** you"
Then I excused myself

And I found myself a quiet corner where I could collect the pieces enough
To hold myself together for two hours of calculated performance
Until I could go home
And quietly fall apart again

Sing me pretty words
I know you can

Sing me pretty words that close my eyes
Sing me pretty words that shut me up
Pretty words which stitch my cuts

I want to hear your easy voice
I want to feel the world fall asleep

Sing me pretty words

Sing of Saturdays slept away
Sing of patient ocean tides
Sing of... baby blue and lavender

Please, please, please

Sing about the little things
Sing me simple songs

Please, please, please

Just sing me pretty words

Hold your assumptions
Do not surmise or deduct
That because you are not
The keeper of her affection
That she is heartless
She has a heart that beats
In the hand of another
And she holds his
Shaking but without hesitation
And they have stood like this
For the span of one year
Waiting to see which one of them
Would rip the other's out first

That night, my eyes paraded along beige pages
Dripping with satire, self-loathing and daddy issues
And I felt the cynic in me dance like a madman
Who had just snapped the neck of a baby bird
Cruel and unsympathetic, but dancing all the same

And then my eyes met a string of printed black shapes
Which halted me, though lukewarm in comparison
To its sibling pushes of ink, jeering and suicidal

The shapes read,
“People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.”

It was something I'd touched several times before
But denied myself to hold on to
I would catch it like a leaf in the wind
Then my eyes would cross its black spots
And I would let it go, brushing my hands of it

But that night, in my madman craze and my sneering laughter,
I felt the familiar bother of a leaf orbiting my skull
And my eyeball parade froze and my madman feet could dance no more
So I lay there until I felt the sun blush and heard the birds begin to sing
For it was not one of their own laying still, plagued by demise

Darling, the way I see it,
what makes you worth my while
is what makes me worth yours:
at one point in time,
we will have both have had a pulse

My dear, I know you don't want to hear it,
but we're all merely specks of something
in the only everything that ever was
And eventually,
                  Nothing

Then, love, I must inquire:
Why do we fear time lost,
when time is only given?

Why do we cling to moments far behind us,
like sweat-dripping polyester,
enveloping ourselves entirely
in the absence of what once was?

Won't you tell me,
my darling, my dear, my love:
What's the difference, in dust and us?
Isn't it all just oh-so-inconsequential?

But what's so bad about eventual nothings?

We can’t hold a moment in our hands
a tangible something
But we can simply hold hands
a beautiful nothing

I’m a perfect portrait of teenage angst
Black pants and an army jacket
Tired eyes atop a solemn expression
High school backdrop
Roaming the halls alone

I’m a perfect portrait of beat down,
Broken up and disappointed

I’m the mess after The Scream
What’s left after The Kiss
I am dreaming of A Sunday Afternoon
On the Island of La Grande Jette
While tracing my mind over the swirls
Of the Starry Night constellations
Over what it could mean

Inside
I am Salvador Dali

Outside
I’m a perfect portrait of all the things I never wanted to be

I am Mona Lisa’s misery

"Inside she writes a side of herself
She won't let me see
Such a hateful little girl
Her little book is her whole world
It's all there in her little book
And I can't help but wonder"
-The Descendents

*I was finally going to show you a poem today

When will you learn
to stop giving pieces of your heart away

To girls who want the whole thing

When will you learn
there have been two girls
who should have, could have
would have saved you from yourself

Had you not hated them for seeing through you
you and the *******

When will you learn
that you’re angry because you don’t know what else to be
and you’re alone because you hold the hands of the wrong girls
while you’re thinking of the right ones

Immerse me in your misery,
let your scars become mine,
and make my soul decay

Of the world's most handsome poetry
Of the champagne of the tongue
The rapt lovers of cursive stroke
And the sweetest, most decadent paper caress

I like the cheap beer remarks and the box wine conjunctions
The whorish, scribbled word on the back of café napkins
The bitter inky graze and the rancid graphite touch

Some days
I have drowned in a sea of elaborately dressed words
With less intent than proud showmanship

And most days
I’d rather float on a Dead Sea of salty wit

Sour thoughts, broken glass and
A thin veil of cigarette smoke

"I have no regrets" she whispered
"Pardon?" his eyes met hers
"Nothing" she said, intertwining her fingers

Upon the pages of my poetry books,
you might circle your favourite phrase
or leave your bookmark in the page

Drawing one last puff of your final cigarette,
you might say "I swear this is my last"
and then you might do what you're hoping to,
and set off for another pack

And when you say "babe" or "baby",
I might reply with a smart retort
and then I'll walk away

And some days you'll make a dumb remark
we might fight and I'll curse your name
and other days, you'll smile and wink
and it'll be okay

I hate it when I hear,
"Depression means you hate yourself"

I think,
"You shut your ******* mouth"

Let me tell you why:

I'm apathetic towards myself,
I think I'm alright, I'm quite okay
I'm not perfect

But the questions which haunt me
taunt me, tear at my insides,
bring me down

It's a daily dose of helplessness
A jolt of shakes, half an hour long
Can't concentrate to save my life,
and even then I couldn't give a ****

I'm not clueless to the things around me
I'm wrapped up in them
they consume me

I think about the deaths,
the murders, the rapes,
the wars, the addictions,
the illnesses, the schemes,
the scams, the
lack of compassion

And death

I think about death a lot

I'm not scared to die
or be insignificant

I'm scared to think of
my family's skin and bones
in a hole in the ground
Of my best friends' cries
and smiles
forgotten
and their dreams let down

I don't hate myself

I'm scared to be alive
because it means I know what will be lost
by the hand of inhumanity
and the Grim Reaper's bony grip

I don't have a tragedy
merely a mind that's gone to hell
far before its time

And then I think,
"maybe that's why Bukowski drank"
because he had a quick tongue
but all poets need a story

Tall, with chestnut hair and a native face
Tiny, with white blonde strands and Polish features

From the same womb,
down different paths

Their voices hoarse with cries of anger,
Yells, screams and miscommunications

"Go home!" she shrieks
"And you wonder why I'd rather be alone!" she yells

Everyone screams,
"Don't you know about compassion?!"

When the night breaks you down,
and the demons screech and scratch,
hungry for the darkest parts of you

When you can't help but imagine
a world without your broken mind,
blistered soul and shaking hands

Just remember,
a million miles away,
so am I

Imagining an infinite blackness,
while shaking in the deepest darkness

Together and alone,
we will lay awake tonight
and sleep the day away

To the people in my life:

I’m sorry for the inconvenience of getting to know me,
I’m sorry that I’m not exactly who you thought I’d be

I’m sorry if we get in fights,
Or I say something you don’t like

I’m sorry I can’t stand anything,
And I’d always rather just stay in

I’m sorry,
I didn’t mean for you to get to know me

And I’m sorry I’m such a miserable ****.

I am not so much scared of the dark
even the light
tis the shadows

Stretched
and contorted
and never true

The sun decides how big
or how small
the shadow will be

The sun decides
what I see

I was born with blood stained hands,
They named me Roman, strong like an empire.

My mother loved me dearly,
Tucked in my shirt and held my hand.

My lover loved me gently,
With a light laugh and a heavy passion.

My child loved me naturally,
He would be my pride and joy.

My mother showered in gas and slept,
My love had dinner and a show,
My child is a mama’s boy, it’s all he’ll ever be

Death is the only life I have ever known,
My love will slit your throat.

They named me Roman, I was an empire born to fall.
When Death does finally come to take me,
I will gladly follow.

If it pleases you, lock me up
Connect my hands with chains
But you don’t know
Chains are within
Prison is in your mind

I’m more free than you’ll ever be
I’m more alive than you can even dream
I’ll be just fine
Chains and all
Prison is in your mind

Just because I don’t belong,
I do things backwards, upside down,
I smoke, I drink, I do what I please,
And you say I’m to blame,
Because I paint my prison walls

Since I was a boy I have planted seeds, unknowingly
They fell from holes in my pockets,
Grew from the rich soil, into the most beautiful of trees,
Which I diligently cared for and wholly adored
But to this day, every tree I plant, dies
For the seeds I plant, are that of madness and despair
I am the man who plants seeds

They fall from holes in my pockets

One day at dawn, Charlie packed his bag
Found a big city man with a big fancy car
And sang his song, a beautiful piece

It was song for the world to hear

Each strum so strong it left a callous
Bearing him down and pushing him on
A hardened piece of him, like the lyrics had been

But the big city man said,

"You're not quite what I'm looking for"

So Charlie shook his hand firmly,
And the big city man drove away in his big fancy car

When he was just around the corner,
Charlie screamed and he cried and drank ‘til he was numb
That was the last song he would write for the world to hear

He learned early on that no one would listen,
And so his most prized piece,
was the song he wrote for no one
he sang it and he wept

I took a sleeping pill with a glass of wine.
I shut my eyes; it's a quarter past nine.
And in these four walls I hear the whispers of a ghostly queen.
She wants me dead, she wants my head, she'd even take my spleen.

Nobody wants me around. I'm a drag, I'm a bore, I'm just empty.
But even then, the Ghostly Queen can't have me.

And the devil's sneaking up on me, as the sun slides away.
I just want to close my eyes, and rest for a little while.
It seems the devil don't care, he can play this game all night.
Even when I do sleep, he runs through my dreams.
And all night, I toss and turn,
Yes, all night, I swear the devil's in my dreams.

Between Lucifer and the Queen, I lay silent; it's 10:15.

I guess I was mistaken, I'll admit, I was shaken
Quipping, quoting, "Is this all you know of me?
Living in a see-through box, you call these building blocks?"

Laughing stock, we're all the same.

"That's it? All we've learned? Trying to live the life?
We say we've learned all we can. How ignorant of us.
Stuck in a lame routine, living day to day, all boxed up,
We're playing a losing game."


I called for a help card,
To take me away

You stood,
Waiting for me to grab your hand.


Seems to me I was daft, I was drawn,
I called you out, called you wrong.
Never once thought of what you used to be,
My everything, my solid base

In searching, I got lost.
A ruckus, a mess.


Smash the clear box that held me apart
Was it all in my mind? A crumpled design?
I thought, "maybe just a saran-wrap reality"
Yet here I am
Treading on broken glass
All I've got is you

In this ruckus of a life