Hanging out in the trees
A wreckage as far as the eye can see
The leaves at the bottom look lonely
If only you were there

Strings and boxes make up for the losses
That I feel for you
And I fear if I told you
You'd only grow colder
And move hundreds of miles from here

You play in the smoke in silence till I spoke
And you poked your way through
To something beating hard
I've only got eyes for you


But the wreckage is beginning to fail
Falling through the branches
The engine, still ignited
Began to spark a light
And you could see my ***** face
Through the old, scratchy pine
And I looked into your coal black eyes
And prayed that you were mine

From 9 to 5 you visited me
My limbs still twisted and bruised
Hanging up in the tree
A personal scarecrow for you
And one day I tried to climb up
To wipe the dirt away
But you slipped and fell
I screamed like hell
And forced myself free

Out of the wreckage I rose
The ground came closer and closer
I went to touch your lifeless face
But my shaking hands just froze
I wish I could have caught you
And now you are the wreckage too

So I climbed back into the tree
And burrowed there for three hundred years
Staring down at you wither away
And as soon as my mouth could no longer speak
I did what I've dreamt of most
I fell like you, through the branches too

Graceful, Beautiful, True

When the darkness can have a name
when it can make shapes that look like the people you've forgotten
when it wraps a sense of warm isolation
and burns the feeling of loneliness in your skull
leaving raw, fleshy guilt
you can't hide from it
you must let it blacken your bones and sink into your pores
and rip through you from the inside
bleeding you out until your are a pile of consciousness
and only then can you forgive yourself
and the faces become a smudge in your memory once again
sitting on the shelves of your mind, hidden behind velvet curtains
waiting for the darkness to come again

I am drunk again
My best impression of a middle-aged man cemented to his sofa
His eyes hazy, glassy
staring at the static television
The clink of the glass
A relished sound that makes my stomach churn
The acid dances with anticipation
Adding fuel to the fire
I drink down the amber liquid
Almost too beautiful to waste on thoughts that rebel against the dam I've built inside my head

It's collapsing now
flooding the brain with insane things
Inhumane things
Fears of fingertips losing their grips around my wrists
Of lips losing their reach to mine
Hands having explored every inch of these flaccid limbs
Nothing left to conquer
The conquest long forgotten
To be alone.

The fog of a lover's face lost forever in memories
That will haunt me one chilly evening
A reflection of my worst nightmare
Inebriated and alone

He watched her grow out her fingernails
Burn herself with cigarettes
Her scabs would heal and morph into gray dots on her dark flesh
She looked like a winter afternoon with a chance of showers

She was beautiful in her own way
The way books are beautiful stacked on shelves
The way trees can only be appreciated in forests
Her beauty was of many and of one.

You've got me
going to the river to pray
gotta wash these sins away
but ain't no water gonna wash your hands off me

Yeah, you've got me
down on my knees
begging, begging, begging please
for mercy
take your hands off me

And they can call me a sinner
I've only got one heart
and you ate my soul for dinner
devoured me from the start

Yes, I'm going down
down to the river to pray
but no water gonna take this hold off me

Oh you've got me down on my knees
begging, begging, begging please
someone help me
get your devil out of me

I hear the willows whispering
telling lies all in the wind
and I'm drifting with the current
just let the water take me in

Because this desire
ain't no fire
on my funeral pyre
ain't no water gonna take your hands off me

How do you pretend to say I love you?
How do you pretend to care at all?
To muster that much emotion must surely take its toll
On the body you inhabit
So cold and so precisely
Nicely
Packaged into a mirage of caring

Daring me to challenge each syllable of the words you mimic
Parroting Hallmark cards with heady persistence
I've built up resistance to the lies that sit and rise
Like smoke from the fires you light
On your way out the door

Warning all those who come after
The story is always the same
She loves you so much
"So, so much"
So much that she just can't stay.

I pulled the flowers from their roots
letting the thorns dig into my flesh
that had grown rough
a hard shell
the thick blood was a blatant reminder of my mortality
something I could often forget these days
as I make my home in a house of shambles and rotting wood
numb and empty and forgotten
lost to those I once loved
my pleas for warmth fall on deaf ears
they couldn't carry the pain with me
they could smile in the midst of death
but I embraced the fact that this would all end
a curse for knowing the truth, I suppose
I plucked the petals of yellow roses
and mixed my blood with the soil full of decomposition
burying myself under the blanket of the earth
letting it swallow me
digest me
this blob of rock among stars will carry the pain of knowing the truth
that life does not last forever
that the heat of blackness was our home before our birth
a comfortable universe
so when we die we will return into the darkness
unaware of ourselves

I saw you lying prostrate in your bed of bones and crumbs
the white sheets were stretched to reveal your garbage heap,
your nest a collage of street trash
you hoard yarn and plastic dolls with missing eyes
combing your hair with toothpicks and cleaning your teeth with vinegar

You blew the layers of dust that settled on your window sill
And your prickly legs laid tangled against your cool walls that had been painted over too many times
The paint would chip off into peachy piles
The original wall, an ancient artifact, poking through for air

You smash the little bodies of spiders under your thumb
smearing their entrails against the glass
studying the life you’d just taken against the rays of the sun
And I watch as you tear off your fingernails, their jagged edges scratching down my back

I try to fall asleep to your hums and shallow breathing
drowning in your little commune for the lost and forgotten
the relics of the city
Your little kingdom of pots and pans, of skeletons and guts
and red-rimmed eyes

I wrap my arms around your sticky skin, it’s greenish hue playing tricks under the light of the moon
I’m merely swimming off your coast, marooned on your island
watching you from afar, among your treasures

I lay dejected amongst the rubble of the wreckage
******* with ribbons
my body draped like wet sheets off the branches of a sturdy old pine
It appeared I was going mad as I sat alone
My blood curdled and turned into sludge and my breath began to quiet

I am the wreckage of this world
perhaps too dedicated to being alive
that I am hung up like an ornament
a tribute to the ****** and the lonely

I hope to meet the cold face of my shadow shortly
imagining my welcome home into the earth
melting into the molten lava
laying sweetly with the dinosaurs
a new fossil for the ages

The Lights fell into the valley
Damp with shadows, that were tucked behind moonlight

The yellow Lights from houses on the mountain
looked like yellow beady eyes blended into the black, flat expanse of the mountain itself

Stripes of dark blue clouds lay wispy atop the black figure
and a light traces the insides of my room

Filling and passing,
my window pane etched against my wall that has been pricked, scurries away from the light

The room has transformed into a cave
I can feel the wet drip and echo
crawling up the puckered walls until the Light passes again

And it is a womb, untouched,
made for darkness and sleeping.

I am nothing if not a puddle of flesh
a vat of fresh blood
a knot of veins
what a gift, carefully packaged and assembled
meaningless
nonetheless, I am not my skeleton
I intend to shed this skin someday
until then I am merely here
a simple existence in a world of greed and guilt
on a hopeless search for purpose,
self-importance
that is most certainly lurking in a dusky, damp cave
at the end of the world