Our reason is soon tested
By germs of gas
As we softly seethe among the flames
The nightmares of our pasts will awake
To hunt us through our older haunts

The death of our hearts soothes
The dearth of our souls
We lie
Drunk, unable to lie

In truth is ruth, but also
Joy
Maybe suffering is first, or truth
Second

Because the poem is another
Of my seeds
Another to grow into mushrooms
Of inhaled gas.

people say
I should be
grateful,
because I don't
have to move
all the time.

but to float
place to place,
too quick
to take root,
is better than
the strength
required to
rip out years
and years of
deep roots of
love and
dependency
that have
reached through
cold earth
to draw from
the waters of
love and
companionship

they attempted to
transplant me,
but my roots
are withered and
I can't find it
inside me to bloom.

The dirt of dusty decades
Lies upon the lath
Beneath a piece of plaster
I found a photograph

They smiled from the centuries;
Those mysterious three
Sent the musty memories
A message meant for me

Sara’s grave is gone, I guess
So long since laid low,
Yet, despite her ancient death
She smiles and waves ‘hello’

I cannot tell Annie’s age,
The words do not say
The owner wrote only names
Her face has frayed away

The baby in the buggy
Lifts a lively hand
She sits between her sisters
Beside the shining sand

This will be the only piece
From the dust so brown
That preserves their memory
Once we tear this house down

It is decommissioned, off-limits, outright verboten,
Yet is traversed nonetheless,
Its patrons a mix of the pruriently curious,
The thrill-seeker, the merely woebegone.
As they have time on their side,
The hub-bub of school buses and suburban commuters
No concern as they navigate the buckled and broken asphalt
(The conflagration underneath changing the topography
Daily, sometimes even hourly)
They will stop to paint some phrase, some bon mot
On this roadway-***-canvas:
Mostly the narcissistic monologue we bray at the universe,
The assertion that we were here, are here,
And (though it is plaintive yet unspoken) that we always may be,
Augmented with light hearted double entendres
And grim, hectoring Biblical quotations,
While not far away, the re-directed two lanes of blacktop
Carry onward, indifferently proceeding on its way
Through these stolidly scruffy old anthracite towns,
Their landscapes and the ground beneath them
Quiet as the sepulcher, the vagaries of their fates above the sod,
Stalking them impassively yet implacably.

I know it's wrong
but all I want
is for you to lie to me.

I know it's wrong
but all I want
is to hear you say 'I love you'
once more.

I know it's wrong
but all I want
is for you to say it was all a joke
and that you don't want to be
'just friends'.

I know it's wrong
but all I want
is to be yours,
once again.

I know it's wrong
but all I want
is to hear you lie to my face
and say you want to be mine (again) as well.

art is the child of pain
the son of rain
the blood within the vein
of a twisted child
young and wild;
an attempt to reconcile
hatred, baseless and faceless
a screenshot of the heart....
that is art.