Inside a forest of my own making
where the vines are merciless and though dreams may die the evergreen awakens

I must be patient,
and follow the voice at my core

through these arches, roots, through the self-made distrust
that manifests as branches sharp enough to divide me
so I’m on guard like a sentinel

You think you’ve been starved of serenity
well I have a Chimera’s hunger and a sage’s mind

a lethal combination
and I'm killing more than time
I’m after my former self
since I need a rebirth and some revenge
because that man wasted centuries caught in vicious cycles

when the key to escape was right there between two temples.

In that moment I was in my chair yet out of my body
somewhere in the sky’s gentle hair
in strands thick and stretching out past Neptune
I was gone
I was made of flesh yet not at all
my pores had pride pouring out
I sneezed out envy, coughed up anxiety
sadness left with a tear
anger was brushed off my beard
happiness followed the next breath away
and I was left with a soul in the shape of a poem
so it looked like…?
Nothing I could explain but I remained in a place of spiritual terrain
had telescopes where eyes should have been
I made my heart rise and the sun beat
I took a step into a step-less reason
stayed afloat for the next eight seasons
and came back slowly
descending into a cadaver that took its veins for granted
and resurrected a black body that was made as a result of gods needing a hobby

I was meditating.
And the world above awaits you too
if you seek it.

He sits on the roof
Legs numb
Eyelids shut
Mind open.
The sun drops and rises within the time it takes for a single smile to bend his adolescent cheekbones
The wind comes and goes, as affectionate as the lover he once had
in a dream.
Planets rotate and so do perspectives
His misery is truly ephemeral
Even though he may not know it yet.

Your roots run thousands of years deep
whether you’re proud or not, I haven’t heard it through the grapevine
but I see you sitting still on this rotating axis mid-bloom, rising to my height
rising with the Fahrenheit

Look across, I’m with the cacao trees
growing yet again, dying off yet again
resurrecting yet again, growing, again

on the same soil, we know the flavors of dust after biting worse
we are neighboring streets but parallel worlds
we are all closer than magnets can fathom with tempers of exploding atoms if ever pushed that far

What would it take for you to see through my eyes?

Well, could you race a maze the shape of brain creases and make it from start to finish in the time a fading wick will diminish

but I’ll show you the routes
put your heart in my compass and unlearn the pillars of your thoughts for a moment
I’ll lay a darker foundation for you to build on,
only for a moment, a sec, a yoctosecond
and you can return to yourself

Look me in the soul
spit your lies on the asphalt
exhale the truth and nothing but
even if it burns on the way out of you
it hurts me too

But it’s just the air I breathe. We adjust.

Like mother Earth, we adjust and keep growing, keep growing, keep growing, keep growing.

I find myself in your arms again and even though it’s silent, all I hear are rhapsodies
Beautiful compositions as you take my gentle disposition and wave it away with your finger
That touch is lethal
It turns the hardships into memory foam
caresses my spine like the kiss of anesthesia
So I beg for you to stay a while
Trying to connect our gaze, to remove your eyes from the door hinges
I can’t resist feeling that we belong
Just like guitar strums and callouses
Like injustice and protests
Like rose pedals and fantasies
I fantasize about a time where humans synthesize
Happiness into pills
So that pharmaceutical bills
Are the only thing between me and endless thrill
Yes, I know it’s late
Your heart can’t fit on your sleeve
So you wear it on those lips
With a shape that quickly deceives
You bring me to my knees
Please.
No word in the English language carried more weight than this request,
Whether it’s the Hulk lifting continents
Or Sisyphus fighting his consequence
So please
Keep me warm in the bliss of your flame

_ _ , _ _ , 2 0 1 9 is a day gone to the ashes of kismet’s pages

the midday zephyrs and wino meditations that ran through streets like rainfall now live in the hippocampus

the bright side’s gone with the dark
the whole day, for what it was, is no longer
and it bugs me out

that through any endless combo of permutations and planetary rotations, the same circumstances that built the ground of yesterday
will never repeat
or will they?

I’ll never know like the licks that reduce a Tootsie Pop to crumbs
I’m not intelligent, I’m dumb
because it took me 27 years to learn the value of 24 hours
to learn that a lotus bloom is something to treasure ten times more than scraps of pure gold

we are the children of nature
what does that make our creations?

Humans birthed a cosmos
of currencies and chambers of computer generated concoctions. . .

are they not descendants of the Mother?
In some abstract way?

Idk, dude, I’m out of it,
if you know me, you know exactly what that means - -
but I digress - -

It’s just that I never got the chance to tell the day how grateful I was to have it
and I now know that wasting time is a luxury modern civilization can enjoy after epochs and eras

this day and age is as far from perfect
as the brain is from perfection,
tech grew faster than the collective consciousness
and we still limit worth and love
to skin and heteronormativity

but at least
for a small sliver of time
things were, in a single moment
.
.
.
pretty good.

You are my ginseng

another ingredient in my antidote:
this conjuring of awakenings and borrowed wisdom that I brew at night

In the cauldron I keep under the bed
next to the mug with your name

No one knows about it
except for you, me and whatever spirits may inhabit the room,

you loom
over me when … naught but a shadow befriends me

You see these sorrows of mine have me speaking in past tongues
back to times so historic, I need to be at the present with you at a time so euphoric

If only you could feel in a moment
what you make me feel daily
could your body even contain the glee?

You’d need 2 or 3 clones


AS I’ve said, you are my ginseng

a treatment prescribed to me by Karma herself
because the beatings and betrayals I’ve endured
ensured that my reward would be a love that made every nanosecond worth it

And I will make sure to take a dose

every

day

you

let

me.

I’m here to taste your essence
let’s exchange souls for a while
it’s a fair trade
I can give you all or anything you need
I’m for sale, you get a discount
and if you aren’t satisfied
return me to my vessel within 30 days
because any longer will tether me to your tendons
and I don't want to feel your grins or your hurt
unless you intend to keep me,
broken pieces and all.

Am I in the right headspace?
Do I travel the galaxies conjured by my thoughts just to end up in black holes?
I’m seeking epiphanies
You know, those elusive supernovas that defy even the eyes of gods
I claim to be rich in spirit, yes
Trying to measure my wealth with the hours I spend in the stratosphere
above every worry that injects my bones with the weight of 2 Earths-
the weight of a place that doesn’t want to ever wait
Yet it must
You can’t break a chrysalis and expect patterns on the wings
You’ll get misshapen kaleidoscopes
and fragmented isotopes
beings who’ve never climbed but will die trying to ascend ropes
Am I in the right headspace?
Is my consciousness a constellation waiting to take form?
What will be the shape?
I’ll never be strong enough to resemble the buckle on Orion’s belt
I’ll never be the mouth at the big dipper,
drunk on the secrets of the cosmos
I’d want to be the hands gripping Polaris
sharing light for the planets who only see a moon rise
Am I in the right headspace?
Because I’ve fallen into nebulas,
realms where humans stand on the heads of giants yet look no higher
I’ve seen flawed ideologies that challenge monuments with their size
I wonder what it’d take for us to realize that we could be immortals
free from the finite mentalities that stunt our growth from the very roots.

You howl across the smartphone speakers
“unstable”
I roar back,
“healing.”
Ah, semantics.

You cling to definitions tighter than static
Your arguments are magnets to my geyser:
stuck, yet I flow on

You build a face for the day,
reinforce it, ready for the wrecking ***** in our vernacular
nothing will shake your perspective
your eyes are glasses to our periscope

The things you’ve been told are just that
and my illness doesn’t make me any less blood and bone
any less ups and downs
any less success and collapse
than you
despite what you’ve heard about depression from some friends or a Facebook post
it’s more than a daily beast
it’s a mountain to climb with only one arm
and I’m on my way to stable footing

You want to attach words like “lazy” and “uncaring” to my identity
go ahead, I pick them off like fleas
they can only drain me for as long as I let them.

I will say “suffering”
you might say “a lil’ sad”
we both sit there, hoping truth blessed us with its language

Only one thing is for certain.
Whatever “it” may be
It.
Won’t.
Stop.
Me.

Smoke roars out of your mouth

but you’re no mythological creature

You’re muscle fibers and pure rage

as simple as the digits our leaders made you,

but only sometimes.

Other times your callous sigh calls to the poet in me

asking to decorate your voice with more ornaments than the first weddings

to celebrate your existence the way countries celebrate war victories

screams and pride, drinks and cries, stories beneath lies,

o why?

Because inspiration.

Because ***** needing a reason.

Because the moment is justification enough.

Energy radiates and traces my body with celestial tones
I am more alive than I’ve ever been
when surrendering to awe and wonder
the same way my younger self fearlessly did

something about that glimmer hasn’t left yet, may never leave
memories still have flavors to me
mornings with a lake of flakes in my bowl
or years and years later when a fried hangover cure restores me
each month and its esculent flashbacks are a part of me
a cell in the skin
a beaten feather in the wing

something about the glimmer hasn’t left yet
the Earth is still new
and discoveries never expire:
new scenery
new explorations
new chronicles in the cinema
new kindred spirits
new waves of audio
new therapeutic solitudes
all balancing out the
new captivities
new mistakes
new mediocrity
new unhealthy solitudes
and more

until the body is a home base of homeostasis
commensalism at its finest

but something about the glimmer hasn’t left yet, may never leave
I outgrew shadows who doubted their expiration dates
I don’t rubricate the sky in a rage
anymore
don’t let the heartbreak pause a pulse
anymore
don’t let misanthropy obscure who I see
anymore
don’t let uncertainty’s web catch me in a paralysis
anymore

or at least I try

something tells me I’ll never “age out”
of my hunger to live fully
I know deep down you're similar
your craving will not fade into cinders

oh what a feelin!
To be trippin on nostalgia.

I soar with the zephyrs on a daily basis
Will I ever reach the stars?
Maybe.
At the very least I can spend a day with the clouds I envy so much
and be thankful to see my kin rising to the ozone
We are a generation of generating art rather than splitting the world apart
We can find a plant called hope in a desert with no seeds
We need to add ourselves to one another and witness what higher numbers can achieve.
I mean this world isn’t just in our hands.
Its secrets are deeper, written in our palms
So I pray that when you hold one another
the truths of this world speak
whispering "Us, not I"
among other things
that make you welcome love as if it were a long, lost friend.

One day while on my front steps
under a Mars red sky
a child’s ball rolled into my foot
he retrieved it
thanked me
and scurried back to his family in the distance

all in one swift breath

In that moment I said “no worries.”

But when I reminisce
about the times when I was in your Velcro kicks
what I really wanted to say
is that I hope they raise you to become a Phoenix.

I hope they teach you to rise from any ash beneath you
I hope they teach you to respect and feel blessed,
to never be the prey of jackals in men’s clothing
to know when life is the boxer or the ring
to know when life is the boat or the typhoon tide you must find a way to swim through

I hope they teach you never to treat a woman like something that can be bought
I hope they teach you what LGBT means
I hope they teach you what BLM means
I hope they teach you what USA means and is
because at times those clash

I hope you never let the words of another mouth
enter your psyche and leave with your pride

I hope you never get dumped on your birthday
I hope you never learn what desperation feels like

and I sincerely hope that they teach you to care about what others face
and that growing older is the farthest thing from a race.

Time slows down as per my humble request
Pure water drips from a foreign planet's geyser
Onto thirsty lips

Three moons rise
At that rare moment when a sun sits paralell
Peaceful dawn
Feet on greener lawns
My broken mind breaks the silence
When I tell you I love you more than a mountain loves to peak
More than flames love to destroy
More than a body loves an R E M state
We sit and mourn the darker days for a second or two
For their bright shards meant something too
Went to just as many funerals as weddings
I've seen families reunite on the same days a genocide makes headlines
For every breakdown, the next day was a resolution
For every ellipsis you read on my face
Another day I won't shut up
. . .
I'll stay here a while
I'll stay for another century
Not coming back to Earth
When the only thing waiting is a nuclear cavalry
And touch screens leaking dopamine
I know perfection is a myth
But when you tell its story
I believe
And sleep in a hammock hanging between the letters of your
"World'__'peace, one day."
Quote turned to decibels turned to hope
I taste it when we kiss

You reach out a hand when I drift
But I'm coming back
Even when coming apart
I'm always coming back.

Alice Coltrane, your music brings something out of me,
Something nameless
something I keep buried.
As I lay on this bare mattress, humming along to “Turiya And Ramakrishna”
I ponder if you knew your legacy.
If during those last days in 2007, you ever thought your work could inspire poets of the next generation
or was that even a question lingering between your tempels?
Perhaps not.

Well as this pen dances to the melodies you wrote,
I think, and think
and blink
and sink
I wonder if my last hours will happen a year from now or a decade
or a month
or a week
And what will remain of my creations
Have I touched enough lives
Have I loved enough souls
Have I danced enough
Gave enough
Laughed enough?

I envy the sand devoured by oceans
because it’s simply moving on to its next life
I envy photographs because their moments last forever
I envy the tortoise’s shell
I envy the hourglass because its fate is no mystery
I envy those who do not envy
I envy the days before sundials
when days simply couldn’t fit onto paper squares

I...don’t want you to worry.
I am a spark
Finite but furious
bright, unstable, contagious
and capable of lighting your way before I fade

At least I hope.

You ask me if I’ve tasted defeat
no
I’ve swallowed it whole and the digestion resulted in apprehension to any path I can’t crawl my way through

It’s ironic
the brain travels three thousand miles per minute
even as the body sits as still as Ice Age mountains
so my solution is to taste victory on golden platters in a dream sequence
the pattern is seamless
I’ve learned about suffering but would never teach it
A man like me could never lead, despite the absence of light that follows

but enough about aorta chambers left hollow, tell me of your timeline
what have you tasted
what has life left in your wallet
in your bed side
in your lungs
in your goodbyes
in your smiles
tell me what you know of reality and the singularity, our humble beginnings
tell me anything to distract me from the hours, the minutes, the seconds and every inch of my taste buds.

Please.

High rises burst from soft Earth’s flesh

Was it even ready for us?

From an extraterrestrial’s perspective we’re a disease upon this gentle cerulean Elysium

I’m living in the mouth of duality

I hear it speak as I leave my block and give a peace sign to the abandoned residences in progress

On the block I currently live, the sidewalk is cracked into drunken mazes and yet

                            Directly across, the neighbors stand upon freshly minted asphalt and into a metropolitan construct made for the modern brain: built in amenities, contemporary textiles and garage parking

Are we next?

To be bought and sold, if so, can we at least have a plan for the residents?

Will tenants be invited to the newborn paradise? We have the budget to feed cement trucks faster than hungry mouths. It’s become a bad habit

yet I sit by the man-made imperfections

hoping someone cares enough to drip their Eden into the palms of my neighbors

If time will tell I’ve been getting quite the silent treatment

Travel a little deeper and….

Cosmopolitan crossroads coexist with beggars and lost folk….

Since when was the speech divided between affluent and broke?

"IDK?" The duality replies

I thought you’d say that.

Agitation, despair and its winged variations, you name it
all repressed but still rise to test me

What is my recourse?
I tread lightly on this Escheresque concourse
It’s repeated often, I know
but the pen and keys are my most cathartic release
they’re magma to emerging flames
they’re sedatives for demons and angels alike
that reside on corners of this clavicle

How many steps could you take through my lens, my concave mirror?
Have you felt what I felt?
The brimming, cerebral cauldron bursting, putting volcanic geysers to shame
the questions outnumbering seconds spent since Earth’s nativity
the emotions ripping a rift through which rationality deep dives
it becomes Phelps in unknown depths
your body becomes both a Vatican and a Colosseum,
place of worship and place of war
and you walk the tightropes your vocal chords have morphed into
careful to seem like another replica, don’t wanna upset the blades they all balance on
don’t wanna scare the rest hollow, no,
best to follow and best to follow the regimen:

coffee beans and spice of delusion in the hazelnut syrup,
sip slow
follow the same cycle because change is a cocoon and cocoons ache like the past
keep on pretending to love the workplace
love the norms held over you
puppet strings bring warmth after all
in this solitary world cold as winter missile silos
and just as destructive

So I ask again, have you felt what I felt?

Do the few days in utopia offset the majority on rodent wheels?
Have you risen so high, to satellite peaks, to the best you’ve ever been
only to have the worst waiting on the coin’s parallel?

We flip like saltwater fins and backstroke till a back is left broke
I’m learning to discard hope but breathe in the alternative
I believe in better days, I will carve them from local stone
and build a home upon their surfaces
I now know paradise is a set of blueprints
happiness is no state of mind, it’s a direction to me
you may not notice when you arrive
but you keep going

and that’s the beauty of it
you let it be the wind
It’ll find you on your journey

Tell me again,
have you felt what I felt?

The government’s up early in the morning
hours before my dreams said their last words
~~I wiped off the cosmos from my consciousness~~
our leaders are up, digging for mechanical gold
that sweet fuel for the machines and their automated wealth
today, their shovels disrupt Alaskan wildlife refuges
tomorrow, your backyard
but I’m waking up way later, following the sunrise as an unemployed, unashamed, unresolved and un-unified whole, unpredictable, unfitting man with a wallet
full of poems
packed tighter than an Earth with twice our population
yet still writing
without hesitation
still drifting in and out of your perception
in and out of adjacent trains
stumbling over career paths
until I land on my face and look up
wiping the gravel off hazy eyelids to see the road
and then footsteps become moments
which become monuments upon which I build a future unseen
one day,
we will all be free.

I need you in my life, baby

The only productive addiction in my future is to your proximity

A decade of scattered sorrows is but an aching blink when I’m with you

You manifest what I could never say or feel without the fear of exile

Rom-Coms hold no candle or wick to our story

Proposals would only seem like trivial when it comes to you and I

We’re closer than nostalgia and episodic memory
closer than gods and their devotees
closer than the dawn and dusk
when nine to fives carry you through a day

Yet despite our bond
only I can hear you, see you, feel you, think you

So with baited breath I speak your name, or at least what you are known as:

Imagination.

The icicles dance in my glass
the sun’s as low as the eyelash in your gaze
- almost set -
and I feel that stare in my bones
from my temple to my tibia
You’d like to take a peak behind this aura
and see if the body it houses is one you’d hold dear
Open these walls,
what appears?

Because I’m hoping you find a kindred spirit
I’m hoping you see I'm down to earth,
reach beneath my surface,
pick up a lodestone and find yourself magnetized
pick up a grin, borrow it on days that you need one.

But most of all I’m hoping you pick me up like a habit
And I promise I can take you places envied by your dreams.