I don't care much in knowing how this monster was born, I have detailed case files on its existence and I know its patterns very well. I just want information on how it can be found and killed.

To **** any normal monster, all you must do is set it on fire, stab it with a stake, and shoot it with a silver bullet. However, it is nearly impossible to **** a true monster. They are much too practiced with their lifelong art of darkness - its mechanization through deception. Naturally living in shadowy places, they have strategies that work intrinsically against your police background. This monster you speak of – it will drag you from crime scene to crime scene, blood splatter to blood splatter, hoping you turn towards the light of the wrong evidence. Too many days, months, years have passed, it will know the planned escape route perfectly. Every true monster's greatest enemy is the light, however, its very survival depends on the shadow the light creates. You could shine your brightest and try to catch it in the act, but those walls will be marked by your monster, already running in the graffiti of a victim's blood. You might even catch a couple look-a-likes, the ones that are too young to know of your patrol patterns, too naive of their rights not to break under your torturous questioning, giving you useless answers. But that one twisted, maniacal ******* you're wanting, Detective? You'll have to find it while it's resting.

So if I cannot **** it in action and must find the monster while it rests, then it must have a home. What distant cabin of the marsh will it dwell in when I am there to capture it, to take it in chained for execution, to become this town's most needed hero?

For a monster to be born-

I told you, I do not much care in knowing how this monster-

But you see, the cabin of its resting place is the very cabin of its birth. If you wish to capture this true monster, the one that has lead to your own path as this department's chief detective, then you must trust me. You must listen, for your monster's cabin is owned by another.

Go on, then.

A monster cannot be physically born, it is merely a by product of the dark parasite found in a shadow. Anything that shines light has a shadow. One can never fall into their own, thus you must be forced into a different shadow for the darkness to find a carrier. Once inside, the parasite will aim to become its master's keeper. It will dig in search for the creature's light source, causing excruciating pain until it kills the host or disconnects the light. Once it takes over, the monster is born, taking it back to thrive in the very shadow it fell into. The cabin you seek is the exit from the shadow of another.

So to destroy this monster I seek, I must find who's shadow it once fell into? I must find the child this monster once was and pull him through the exit when he's resting. But where will I know to start?*

Continue painting. The sun is almost up.

It's been cold this summer,
I'm inside this delicate house
more than I'd like to be,
Watching through
the glass window - nature is a moving
picture,
in my backyard
the lake shimmers -folding with the wind,
The gray clouds are often brighter
than I expect of them,
The water rises to my lawn
at times,
A swan swims through it,
Her nose always looks so
congested
- eating the grass or the worms
and possibly
the small bits of wood
from my fireplace,
She's heavy and light-footed
and those eyes are
pitch black - wings absolutely white,

I remember the day
you went into the middle
of my lake,
The kayak ripped through
as your paddle
skimmed the surface,
The prized fight
with that swan
you were so beset on,
no doubt you were better
for the job,
My canoe right beside yours,
Maybe I saw her
fly through the middle - Her wings
wider than anything
you could have possibly expected,
Or maybe she broke your neck
with her crest,
Then again,
Could you have flown away together?

They say, “Take the ****** out of your mouth.”

But all the success ahead of us is merely comfort; comfort that our father's could never give us. It's OK though, everyone needs control. Time is strong and constantly moving, everyone needs a direction to avoid their minds being ripped in half. After all, Individuality is just a controlled habit of protection walking.

Walking fast. Walking slow. Walking in step with someone else.
Walking right in. Walking right through. Walking right on out.
Walking backwards. Walking forwards. Walking in a big circle.
We're walking on our conveyor belts and one day they'll tell us to watch our step, we're getting off.

Sometimes you sneer at the lower paths and ******* to the higher ones.
You could fall off your own road at any moment so
you shouldn't strain your neck like that.

Sometimes you stop to kneel down on one knee.
You're pretending to tie your shoes but
they're always knotted.

Sometimes you jump a thousand lanes,
hoping someone is watching your majestic leaps.
Will they follow you wherever you go?

And where exactly
are you going anyways?

What they'll tell you:
What's Right.
What's Wrong.
What's Real.
What's Love.

What they didn't tell you:
How to Believe.
How to Embrace.
How to have Faith.
How to Love.

“Take the ****** out of your mouth.”

I've studied the chess table and its consequent game. I know every inch of every square and what each can provide without doubt. I have seen the creatures of this world conflicting in their natural habitat, like an audience to a drama, watching them devour each other until the math proves the premise on a single side. I've moved according to their stride, like a dancer's partner, gliding across this checkered ballroom floor until the truth sets in stone. It's simple dialectics, a move is made and then, from the other, another follows. White conflicts with Black and Black counteracts, a perfect unity of opposites. Never jumping ahead of themselves, one piece at a time, it's a rising exposition from White's first movement forward, a heat creeping in increments on the desert surface. They're each a step ahead at every moment, each a worthy opponent for the other. The cold, morning mirage becomes blistering afternoon and only once does the volcano erupt from boiling sand, truly agape in a fiery victory. Do you hear that power in the distance?

A horn bellows and I move in the wake of the Divine Voice. I am but a cleric for his queen, yet the king requests my service in these grave times. This foreboding feeling leaves me truly afraid for my life, however, like a snowy dove's feather, I am called to the wind with my brethren towards the direction of the evil swamps. God has blessed our devout; the witchcraft of the Black Kingdom will surely fall to His mystic weaponry.

A farmer's strong-hand makes no strongman in the abysmal depths of this marsh. Tilling the land for fallen comrades, the breath of the Black Eye leaves me entrenched in a dripping terror, coating my lungs in a bitter molasses. I contain my sultry pearl of abandonment in the Clam of Defeat, knowing the king's life to be the insurmountable jewel I must truly protect. The following torture would be an endless excruciation heard from every corner of the world.

From afar this looking tower I notice an encounter of mild defeat. A white knight on horseback casts his sword into the chest of a young peon boy standing guard for the King as he leaves the gates of the Black majesty. The boy cries out and the embers from the magical weapon envelope him in ash. The king needn't make haste, after all, the armored fool is frozen in awe, staring at the remains of his powerful encounter with the child. The half daemon looks to and fro as he skims across the moated bridge. He grabs for the golden kryss at his waste and slowly stabs between the break in white armor, freezing it solid. The blood runs quick on the fallen honor.

She's traveled far from her black caging, ripping down from the sky like a dragon. The wind blows a bastion out of the sand in my protection, but she ignites it with her icy breath, stagnating all those inside, moving ever closer to my advantage. My last warring cleric triangulates a teleportation to the town square, fighting a harrowing defeat that lends her to me. His bravery leaves her chained in physical combat with a half deity, however, she smirks as if the war is already won. I tighten my gauntlets for battle as the flying arrow passes my helmet. Oh my great men of war, your weight is on the wrong side of the world. Now it spins out of control. Eclipsed in madness, I send the eruption beneath her, encircling her in rising doom. She cannot escape her molten grave, neither does the arrow shaft merely graze my heart. Everything is hazy. Everything is dark. It is late in the hour, hearing the Devil's whisper say:

“Checkmate.”

Her eyes jaunted through my
Oppositional ghostliness,
Her hair screams “soft” in my
deaf but imaginative hands,

Her wineglass-visage stripped
My hollow strings of anomie,
Her uncorked skin spraying
On my lust-parched and sobered soul,

Her moonstruck glow poisoned
The rivers of my reveries,
Her poise dialectic
With wonders of the infinite,

Her breathe is shattering
The nihilistic love below,
Listless ears loosen by her
Magnetic harmony, “Hello”

I am the heart surgeon's hand,
working on his audience
in cardiac arrest,

But this *****,
it's beating,
slowly,

I need to
speed it
up,

Actors
surround me
in latex gloves,

***** and cut
with utensils
I pick to ****.

The Epi,
The Myo,
The Endo,

Three layers
my gloves
must fold under,

We must
prevent
sudden cardiac death,

To notice
drama
through superior atria,

To hear
oxygenated emotion
through the body,

As long as they're breathing,
hearts pumping,
the performance is at play.

I turn around with all the trepidation a single turning motion can manifest in a human body. I'm looking at the blackest daemon I've ever seen, a billion of his white eyes staring right back at me. I'm distraught for a moment. This is the edge of the universe.

Me?

Well, I've traveled a tangled path since my conception, a born wanderer of these dark, frost-tipped mountains my whole life. I've always had something to hold on to during my deep treks into the abyss. My mother's protection stayed with me wherever I went, remembering to go the speed limit past planets filled with life and death, stars of eruptive strength, moon's of ghostly luminance. I've fought against a myriad of space-pirate ****, befriended alien species you could only dream of having and torn through the stringiest of worm holes, leaving only bad time behind me, all in her name. My father taught me how to run my ship well; I've been sailing these black tides in his trademark downward ***** fashion ever since I got a handle of the control systems. He personalized the grid himself, starting with that big red button for "ignition." That's easier to remember than reprogramming it myself, right? You could say I've sailed my ship into a few wrong turns here and there, a couple of undone screws from the engine pressure. I've never meant to go outside the boundaries of what my ship can handle, a stable ideology my parents had taught me in my youthful years in the spaceflight academy; Those were the very days my destiny had been written through the sky.

This beat up piece of machinery I call a transportation device had puttered out at the very edge of all existence, my woven destiny utterly behind me. I only threw one thing at a wall and I really can't remember what it was; you could say I had a mild emotional breakdown. Here were all these tiny, beady stars I'd been connecting like dots since the very beginning of my life's journey and none of my past plotting made sense anymore; the yarn I left behind must have been strung with invisible fabric.

The mirror of a windshield I once peered through (mostly caused by the terminal blackness of space) was just a ******* portrait placed their to tease me. All that time and energy, all my wandering and fallen bolts I could never ***** back into my ship again...

Now staring through my very own wide-screen ink blot, parts of which I had traveled, others of which I still had time to visit and still others of which a therapist would later find disturbing: right then, something happened to my ******* eyes.

“Woh.
Is that seriously
a cloud-shaped star system
I'm seeing out there?
That is!
I don't believe
what my visors
are seeing right now.”

And a fist shaped system too. No, no that's a heart shaped one. And a person dancing to music and a table of friends and a girl's beautiful smile. They were right in front of me, all this time, and yet I had been running circles around them until I finally hit a ledge. For a moment I wondered what my invisible yarn would've shown me in the stars had it not been invisible yarn; it must have always been a malicious sentient creature that knew he'd get his *** kicked if I ever found him after this episode.

Looking down at the control pads of my ship, I begin reprogramming (a process that takes time) not just my plotted course into new territory, but also the grid's controlling functions themselves. I like the color green so I'll make that the "ignition".

Honestly
I've been honest
with you
since the beginning,
I think,
but there is this
lingering
note on your face
that keeps me
in dis array
about what was
true and what was
fake,

Can you give
me a hand
and stand
in a way
that displays
a truth about
the inner ways
beneath that gaze?!

PLEASE
try something
like this
or that,
like,
Because I'd
hate to see
what you mean
to really
say
is that you might
be waiting
for someone
who was displaced,
Or is that just me?

Long gone and late
in a phase
that's out of place
and perhaps,
well,
my love,
with your torn soul in
two
and into my lap
like a warning tap
on the top
of my arm,
It told me,

It told me not
to trap you
because,
well,
what's
Harmful to you
is often too
strong on me,
four weeks times
three,
or maybe four?
Oh god and
with these mistakes
(as you know),
I seemingly need
it to bleed,
stream down
my eyes
like tears
and in fear,
Because time
is often
too long here,
(As you know),

Honey,
can you hear me?
Deep inside please
give me a sign
because it was coming
to be about that time
in the road!
And that fork
told me
that it's going to
need more
from you
to recuperate
because
so much time
and effort
makes repair
so much longer,

Because sweetest,
the love I have
is the trash on its way,
the ash still burning in the tray,
The blast
still shaking
with waves
but,
the mast is
facing the wrong
way.

No one to lay with while I dream,
The road to take us alone,
Paved from our memories,
They become me,
Light runs off,
Eyes shut,
Gone,

Under the floor I jump into,
Their faces wonder above,
Their shouting is quiet,
My words finish here,
Nothing can join,
None will leave,
Fires shut,
Spring,

Their graffiti mars the bone bridge,
This dark passage holds me here,
The rain rusts my being,
Your luggage in mine,
Clutching my soul,
My anger,
Our aim,
Clean,

That** was unbridled.
There was no reserve between the two of us.
It was all there, every bit of it.

It was so straightforward.
What we shot went right through the both of us, so to the point.
Right through, breaking the lodged arrow shafts we were wearing.
We stopped hugging each other for dear life.
We took a brief back step and everything spilled out toward our shoes.

Shoes to walk in a direction opposite that of which our eyes once pierced deeply.
The both of us, with our feet soon to be wet through the socks, walked away.
That's when the rain brewed above.
The drops of wetness to make our shoes heavier, bleeding it out and filling them of something else entirely.
I would head toward the crop circles.

The rain could never change now.
The rumbling of the thunder in the distance could never cease.
I could look into the clouds and know this.
The cracking light touches the ground next to me and I notice you standing some distance away, tangled in the long grass with your head down.
Turning towards a mud puddle I notice a face staring back at me.
I step through it.

The downpour stops dead for a moment.
A light breaks the black cloud range and I shout past the deep humidity.

“AND NOW THE WEATHER WILL CHANGE!”

Trees turn their leaves back to face me in utter jubilee, only to watch as I walk back into another crop circle.
The fleeting lights from above run under their dark bed covers.
The forest watches a man walk in circles and they wonder where his mind went.
The rays of light come and go as the storm moves with my path.
That redundant episode could never change.

And then, one day, it did.
The Weather conjured a mist of many places for me to continue through.
“Something new, something old,” The Weather mocked.
I entered with an embrace.
I walked inside the closed garage where the two dogs stare at me through their cages.
Inside the bedroom where the man sits on the woman, both shouting.
On the pavement that held a boy who tries to recover as he leaves the woman's car.
Through the school's playground where those children are playing on the right side and the other children play somewhere else.
Between the middle of two young boys laughing in broken unison.
Amongst the classroom of students wearing paper bags over their heads, the few hiding their faces in the cup of their hands.
Toward the clearing by the river that the girl runs through as a boy staggers behind her.
Past the grass where some of the men stare into the distance outwards and other men stare into the distance inwards.
I walked out onto the other side of the mist.

The clouds were crumbling on the other side.
Lightning crashed and I saw you illuminated in the tall grass, staring up into a pair of eyes I recognized.

The lightning continued to strike.
It repeatedly blasted from above like a machine gun.
I looked down at the foot prints in the crop circles.
I looked up at the trees with no leaves frowning in the distance.
I looked forward to a pair of new shoes on your feet, already slightly worn.
I looked back at my creased face in the reflection.
I looked into a puddle in my eyes.
I then found my feet.

My bare, sun dried feet.

I jump past the puddle that the man and woman stand by.
it is unbridled again.

The summer sun at certain hours of the day
angles its shine into
the ample windows of this house,

The blackout is unavoidable
during these heavy heated months
in which we find ourselves,

The power outage often keeps
all the lamps on at night
while none of them can show light,

The brightness in the room
is a byproduct of guided mirrors
trailing from my next door neighbor's house,

The built-in generator they own
often satisfies the home's residents
no matter the time, weather, or otherwise,

The reflections from across the way
align throughout the living room
and up the stairs of my house I hold out in,

The recreation of light here
can be far more than recreational
for my other neighbor's mirror systems.

My stomach's wallet breaks the pocket's seam.
I eat what I see,
I can't help with tasting everything.
The grapes and the burgers,
the peanuts and bananas.

I'm consuming as the wild beast does;
the vine grows empty and I will growl,
moving on to the next new field.
But the cheeses here are magnificent,
I'll keep coming back for just another slice of it.

These warm chocolate drippings
on mountains of cold cream
melt into gooey cookie crust;
Me and my flag stand ready for the adventure
right up and back down the mudslide.

But my buds are changing in a strange wind
and I am the wild dancer in this hurricane.
The strawberries are dipping into whipped cream
until the bowl grows empty,
refilling it with oats and milk.

My tongue lives forever in this moment,
leaping this way and that,
the day's cheetah is fast for its slab of chewy beef jerky
and afterward,
the night's panther is face forward in the wild fruits.

I pray for the day this dessert morsel is the last,
but alas,
my hunger ravages like a princess for her pony.
The king will no longer resist her screams for another stable
and I will ride this black mare forever.

“Where am I?”

I awake in realization,
all that energy
went into the marrow
and not the muscles,
after all,
climbing close
to the top
just to plummet
right down,
bones breaking,
It was a fall
towards
the bottom
and I
am
on
the
wrong
side,
back where I'd begun,

“Get up, you've a long way to go...”

The mud and bone floor
I once forged through,
like before - it's not pretty,

"A waste of time and breath having fallen on this side..."
"But how?”

Remembering how
I bent myself from
the edge
where I fell,
the frost on my nose,
it's still there,
cold down my face
when I look
back up,
frozen to the bone
when its face
fills my eyes
without escape,
marring the sky
as I lie
in the valley,
so low
and
alone,

“No creature should roam here long...”
“I should start crunching around the border.”

“It's my time.”

But,
flying above,
there is that dove,
the one from
the frozen tundra
of the crest,
the one that
led me up
and almost over,
it circles closely,
the close friend
who never spoke
to me,

“Hah! Your wings tell
truths in the wind...”

I listened to its spell
without a grin,
it was then
I climbed a cliff
to reach
where it perched,
instead finding
a **** crow
huddled in
the snow,

“How ugly.”

In that moment
I jumped,
falling too far,

“And now?”

Here it is again,
the failure of evolution,
a stupid creature,
an idiot savant
who created
my great mistake
and misfortune,
a hallucination,


“You're here too now?”
“Go away, useless bird!”
"What help are you?"
“Let me walk around this mountain alone...”
“I regret following you.”
“How could such a beautiful bird not know how to sing?”

**"It's still my time."

This city, man...
This city one BIG icepick, ya here?
Been walkin' round these streets,
trippin' these glass sheets of ice
the past SIX blocks,
*******, man?
not a single cab picks a fool up round here...
Where those bustlin' business men go, huh?
Where that friction now?
What bout those tan-legged,
princess barbies?
their DOGS in their purses,
their cellular phones chatterin' n' ****?
Where those ****** run off at?
They hot at the ***** bars now or somethin'?
HUH?
You know wha man?
**** that.
I walk this way every SINLGE morning,
twenty blocks UP,
twenty blocks the other way...
I'm walkin',
******,
and those buses and cars WAILIN' they horns,
WAILIN',
SHOUTIN' each other
the SECOND the sun starts shinin',
SHOOTIN' heat each other till' darkest of **** night...
That's what I wanna know...
Where those *******
RIGHT NOW.

...I felt your kiss,
The cut-out tongue between those perfect teeth,
They clank against mine.

...I felt your smiling laughter,
stunning as it is ~relent-less~,
losing a regard for honor
as it creeps in a blood lust.

...I felt the rumble
of the warm pressure cooker
on your ~pen-sieve~ face,
The rubber guard
keeping my hand's blood circulation problem,
a problem.

...I felt your scrunched brows as your eyes shifted,
wandering your past
and
silencing our ~pre-sent~
and
surviving your future.

I felt your eyes crumble,
Tears splashing into ~fire-works~ on the floor,
God help me.

God.
Help me.

I feel.

God.
Help me.

I feel.

Begging he falls to her gun,
He ran so long but now he's rung,
She creeps up their bone flower,
But he died in this burning tower,

Her eyes break through dam cement,
Metal gowns the skeletal present,
This kiss will drop the brazier,
Third degree suits together they peel,

He felt reaction to pins,
She cried during the operation,
He'll spin her to the ground,
She screams when she's straight anyhow.

The boy who ran to the subway,
He left his girl at their wake that day,
Take care till the day she leaves,
The last Fall leaf is gone in the Spring.

I'm taking a vacation from you
at the start of June,
you who creates projections
and reacts
from emotions
I'll disprove,
I'm leaving for awhile because
I could never let go
when you wouldn't move,
I'm already on the plane
from your irrationality, get a grip,
This is a a “see you later” to
the trick I make for myself
as you burn them through,
it's ******* true that it hurts me too
and don't forget,
Reminiscing back to
when I ran away spiraling
or threw away cycling,
That's circling, old friend,
Hating deeply
and I still do,
quietly hating them
when
I actually hate you,
We've been here awhile
and it's a cruel place,
The sound of May closing
up her eyes
like a lonely fool
making everyone's rules,
nothing but
intolerance to use
so we'll soon pay the price,
We're lost until the first
so I'll see you in July.

He says he wants to be a city planner. Wants to build things. Things that don't go together. Things that don't make sense. Pyramids upside down, floating buildings, a strip joint next to a church. And I know he'll find himself a place to live. That place to build. In a truth of man, never a truth of mankind.

So he blew up of his rock on a rocket ship, left Anomie, now heading towards Anarchy. That's where he's meant to be. Where they should have raised him. Anarchy's no building rules. Even more so – no truths. He's of that same structure. Blowin' up from his family and friends. Blowin' up from his girl, his entire world. Seeking out his true passion. The one deep set inside him. The one that never left.

That one was born after his birth. As a child, visiting New York City, there were no rules. None to their gravity or structure. He was raised to sell insurance, but understood their architecture too well. Always had. Traveled the city often.

And they'll say he's a genius. Limitless ability for building things. Things in the present, so he doesn't build for the future he moves. He's followin' no guidelines, there's none that he should. None of their rules could lead him like his own.

He says it's about the strategy, less about the tactic. Not about how tall or long of what he wants. All about the resources and where they're placed. The way he needs them used and when. How well he will when he's penniless. A mental checklist.

So now he's flying to Space City.

The pressure of the blade
so harshly cleaves
me in two,
the black jagged edges
it imprints on
each surface
of expression,

The Love
in my peace,
The Hate
in my weakness,

Fright will
rip through this face
with his fist,

tear off the blemishes
and misconfiguration,

leave it a
“justice-beautiful,”

Staring into the mirror
with admiration
and an
uncontrollable
lack in forgiveness,

“You're lookin' good these days.”
“I hate you, you ugly *******.”

She takes notice, she takes focus,
She takes more than me back home,
We're flipping up and upside down,
Twisting out loud our frowns are turned around
and I'm falling,
I'm Face to face with her after
such a long stalling,

But I hear you wonder till there's thunder
with our knot-be-noose in said tangled lies,
Let me notify you that your hot and cold lenses
are making this fight,
That far away I'm noticing your ear's are just
cotton shut tight,

See,
you push the prone as I need her by my side,
Resenting to let go of possessive love
Though you know that I'm right,
Know this,
That I'll pull tight what you've towed until you detach,
You'll fall back into night without a single flash,

But like child you cut till you craft blood,
A big red stain that will wash out in rain and separate mud,
I still hear your pathetic voice
in it's low and screeching highs,
I tell you,
don't take it to my home, it's horrid,
Alone you should sing or cry
or just get over it,

But here again you're needing a loan
Though you never owed or owned,
Nevertheless I'll leave a last help
And pray it should lay like a stone,

Hear that what you needed was a backbone
Every time you hunched and never tried,
Every time you plunged blind
With no stable step in your life,

So I say good riddance and bare well,
A last goodbye and farewell,
You've poisoned your own time and mine,
Now finally let it be good,
I'll finally let it be right.

Call me Summer,
call me lovely
whispers under
your sheet covers,
Whoever you are - You're burning
intoxicated and lost
above those Fall colors,
outside the background
with your bright on blue,
Our bare foreheads
dripping soaked in sweat,
Lady, never warn me again
what's up ahead,

because
in my veins
you're ablaze
all day,

all day
til the night ash
wash me away,

day till
specs of white
reflect
in your eyes,

away till you
rise
this time
to stay,

And when
that moon
shine bright
like day,

we smile
in the night
as the
sun fire
fades

I'm young and poor,
Sitting here all alone
not knowing where you went,
The free water cup in front
of your chair is empty
and mine is
barely half full,
Being spent in sips
as the cigarette smoke
whirls in the room,
creating a haze
and leaving a daze
in my eyes,
the old lonely man
to my left
is writing a novel,
I stop him to look,
groveling,
“and what about you?”
he laughs,
“it's a story about
the time I crashed
my ship in the pacific ocean,
I didn't have any
sunscreen lotion so
the vision I had
shortly after
was a hallucination
of a beautiful
mermaid woman,
She helped me swim halfway
to a beach before my energy
was lost and I was put to sleep,
After that,
She spoke without speech,
She swam without
a breech in waves,
she stayed by my side for days,
I laid on her fin until I
found myself sunken,
rib like projections
coming from my throat
which filled my lungs
in the dark water
I was so afraid of,”
What happened
next surprised me,
I didn't think,
I took my cup
and with the last
of my money
I filled the drink
with coffee,
I glanced at
the thirsty old man
as I walked
out the door,

His laugh still
echoes in my
memory.

The road I
step through
has yearned
me forever,

Stumbling upon
my book
as this life became
the story
I wanted to tell,

Reading this rock
during
my deepest darkness
after
countless chapters
of walking,

Now you hear a
smile
within this place
I've meant
to live in.

A broken leg floats
After its bones sink,
yellow turns red
turns white turns pink,

sweet turns black
turns sour turns rotten,
It turns in its grave
it bangs in its coffin,

Coffee beans are chopped
and bought from them,
turned hot and then forgotten,
Turned cups flow their drink
toward the waste,

It waits in the **** and under the bandage,
based in the wound and under the scabbing,
It's soon to fall off and show us a scar,
It's color is pink, It's over the raw.

~What A Smile Can Do~

These days any smile could make me happy.

You could call it opening up or closing it all off. Closing up shop, come one come all. Sometimes it feels as if I'm not even there, but you are. I can't help but think as I feel this way at the bottom of my body, like some mechanical gear is flaking off its rust.

I'm watching my dad smile while he speaks to me and there's this similarity between he and I. I think there's a Mona Lisa Effect in effect. He loses track and so do I. I was thinking of you and your hair and how it used to smell and then I saw a picture of you and it was short and lighter and I thought of someone else, even though you are still beautiful.

That other person smiles like a friend I never knew.

I hold for a moment and something changes again. I ain't feelin' it.

But I could feel anything, if I remember right. My eyes roll back further and they trip over themselves.
I could totally feel you and me in the bathroom, specifically you nearly dipping into the sink and me with my eyes half open staring at a pair of beautiful bucket lids over your own.

And her smile is goofy. Goofy *****. Happy for you. It makes me smile too.

I've been getting into this specific branch of chemistry recently. Really getting into how the science works in the vials of chemicals in my brain that are constantly mixing. He tells me oxygen isn't good for the chemicals and that I'm ruining things. "Stitch it back up and leave it alone." He's my lab assistant but we get separate grades, so I don't give a **** what he says and I let him know. I give him a handshake now and after the forty five minutes are up and the bell rings. We'll get a good grade together, I know.

And your teeth are really straight and I remember telling you that once. I've got ****** up teeth even though they make a great grin. I've got some cavities, but they don't hurt anymore, in fact, the dentists say they're looking fine, go home, take a toy with you on your walk out the door and play with it in the car all the way back home. It's a forty five minute drive so I give him a handshake as I leave. It's a nice smile you've got, like a Mona Lisa effect - so I avoid your eyes.

And there was this smile the other day when God was whispering little miracles in the weather clouds and in the timing of things, even though it was the briefest grin I'd ever seen. Her eyes are like deep dug out trenches, ready for World War III. I might not see her again like I did that day, but that's just how God works sometimes.

My eyes wander a lot these days. They remind me of my dad wandering back home from the bar in his car. He wanders into the house and tells me a story about cutting another man's wedding ring off after he got a divorce with a pair of pliers, but he brought the sledgehammer for an effect, what do you want for dinner? His eyes still wander at the fish on the counter at five am, to television at six, to a king size bed. His face deconstructs and the wandering halts over the sound of infomercials blaring from his room.

But that's not true. My eyes are becoming more like yours. I'm letting them open up, close them all off, come one come all, with diligence. Your smile and eyes are like waves in constructive interference. Everything returns to the sea once the water comes over and all the spearheads, spoiled meat and negligent treaties sink to the bottom. It's a cool little party down there. Everyone gets along and they smile just like you do.

I'd like to think my smile can do that too.

I could grow old with you
Baby girl,
But I’m not looking for love,
My sweet doll,
‘Cause nowadays
I’ve a six shooter on my hip that I keep loaded
With three bullets
And three lies
And the pocket on my side
Has a lighter
And a key for a night,
They accept the fire
Because all six hit
Even though they went through the other side,
Always equipped with a smile
In case the tide rolls out
Or rolls in
Or whether she sink her feet into
The wet sand next to mine,
Standing on my two
All the time
And that too is all I’ve got left
For now,
But then
I’ll just breathe
when she catwalks up
With those grown dry eyes
And her own gun
To my stomach,
Red dripping from the jacket
As she whispers.

“Bleed slow, honey”

I am sick,

like a cold, relentless belief,
A complete picture cut by its frame,
Covering another,
Stuck together with glue
that only tearing mistakes
will remove,

We scurry through the room,
We relate with a clank
when
we tuck under the shield,
we bump into each other
like battery
don't feel,
You and you
and you and you
and me,
no - just me,

Asking "please" but
help is hollow,
help is a hollow hole
you find yourself in,
hands reaching from muddy walls,
grabbing and tearing at your clothes,
naked falling crawling stalling,
fighting all the way down,
head-toes head-toes
its all the same anyways,

The race with a sinless self,
rocks from the periphery
like a hot haze
it trips me up,
eyes wide open but
white-light-blink
you fool me once,
not a lie you fool me once
and don't fool me again,
I won't feel you again.

Monday
with no arms
reminds himself
of the seemingly endless
sleepless night
forming from and into
a nightmare day
and daydreaming's
of nothing
from everything.

Tuesday
finds himself
in no form and with no focal point
for walking which way in a drunken haze
and equipped with no corrective lenses
to correct the blur
between the images
bent by the past
Of the present.

Wednesday
are the collective
active corpses
listening to the
ins and outs
about a street corner
filled to bursting
whose tired stares
through hired sires
steep in grim life
all want to sail towards
the tale of man's hail-fire
that's just around
the right angle.

Thursday
was the child
whose malignant aggression
against his mother
****** the earth
with fire
until the reflection
got the best of him
as he turned to see
something
that started
to make his
eyes bleed

Friday
is the three legged dog
trotting about the lawn
in circles
looking for a sign
from God
that when this mutt dies,
though it won't be long,
all the lies
he barked
might not try
and follow him

Saturday's
the monster
who starts
to take care of himself
the moment the wealth
of this world was found
beneath his worn clothing
in the beating *****
of his very own soul

I say,

"Who am I?"

Don't make me form
for more than awhile, boy,
It makes me DEAD tired,

You say,
"But, you're alive!"

What is the clicking of your chattering
teeth about?

You say,
"But, honest expression, my love"

Oh you're honest, boy,
but it blows me away,

I will say,
“Are you sure about that, my love? Do you have proof, my love? Is someone lying to you, my love?”

My mind speaks so many unheard words,
I don't really believe you,
Though,
I'll flatter it
for awhile,

I'll say,
“You look a little sleepy!”

It's like a jigsaw that will
NEVER
fall into place,

I'll say,
“That's a secret I've never heard of!”

So many choices
to embrace,
Yet,
Too many clouds
fill this place,

We'll say,
“You're so hard to embrace...”

Can you hear me yet?
Do you know what I say?
I'm shapeless, boy,

We said,
“Let's be friends”

Your very own play-dough,
with a smile,
Friends in a worn out playhouse,
for awhile,

I'll say,
"Did you hear my secret?"

Those curious beads,
they can't possibly see,
And I'm so sorry
but,
This time I'll have to
SCREAM,

"Just don't put me in the icebox, my love!"

I’m running,
Running backwards,
Moving inwards
All the time,
Always caught up in knowing
where I'm going
But,
I’m coming back,
Back to the place I never knew,
streets with street signs covered
by the wool around my eyes,
A kiss,
Your love,
The broken bulb
Beneath a night's sky
was lying
as the light cried
Finding,
her last breath was a sigh
as she was dying,
Nevertheless
I was loving,
loving these moments,
closer than far in these moments,
movements forward
are leaving foot prints full of color,
Your beauty is an antithesis of my own
And I see how you and me
are making a great gray
But,
The Gray makes rain,
It painfully casts a shadow on the flowers
That bloomed
When I first saw you,
Truly saw you,
I thought you’d be like that Forever,
However,
The Grey is a stain,
It relentlessly takes away the color
Of when we laid together,
Severed by the
Regretful pull of a halo around your neck,
I Flew,
I flew towards a hole in the ground,
Clipped by the gravel and soot
As I fell right through to somewhere new
Thinking,
Though gravity will eventually
Pull me back,
Back to where I was before,
Thrusting me threw this planet's core,
The duty of a downward pull
Creates dreams of my history,
I'm falling into this atmosphere,
It's unmistakeably my sky again,
Unmistakeably I'm lost again,
Perhaps for a time again,
Perhaps after I’ll fly back through the center
To leave here forever,
But,
Perhaps I’ll grow to know
The difference between you and me,
While in this hazy dream - You'll see,
Here where my forward footsteps stop their track,
Here where my white should find
your shade of black,
Here,
I'll turn back,
I’ll be free at last

a white apple core
with skin so loose
it splits
every seem
open,
The juice
flows down
the lips
like words
the liquid
drips
on your shirt,

wait,

I can hear it
behind the wax,
I can smell it
below the burning
plastic,
I can feel it
against our skin
as you
touch liberation,

You smooth the nexus
against your brow
and the eyes
too close
with ideals
they close
to a dream
of a not too distant
reality,
You're awake.

A smile is the most revealing human ****** expression I've ever witnessed. Its a habit of nature, so it always tells a good story.

The widest smiles often tell a different story with the eyes. Their smiles are long, and sometimes you can watch their eyes slowly creep with them, as if between the two a connecting valve is slowly opening. The side of their mouths grow high like an ******* with a euphoria dripping down the dimples. Eventually I can't tell if those happy-looking eyes are seeing anything anymore; that smile is preparing to close the eye lids, preparing for a flight to somewhere else. Soon enough they'll shut off completely. Are you dreaming now?

That smile's to be written often and never for yourself. You could write 'confirmation', 'dinner party', 'family photo', a myriad of others on that blank piece of paper. When used, the mouth flexes its guns as long as it can while the eyes freeze in place like a dear in headlights. It's a puppet manikin dancing The Ritual of Memories, to be seen again but never remembered in quite the same way. The iron curtain to be raised once the light enters our lenses. Was it a good one?

Sometimes her smile speaks more than a single story, dependent on which one she hopes to wear that day. Yesterday a faint smile tried to dam all the fluid behind her eyes, a couple of holes channeling salt along her face. I thought she had gone crazy. Today her Cheshire smile bars the prison room of her mouth. Any moment longer and her tongue's time will be up and it'll be the heat on the block again. I can see it in her eyes when she imagines herself moving people and objects like a comedic psychic, her lips creeping to one side. Is he wearing a bulletproof vest?

I've seen him smile with his mouth half open, teeth parted. A blind Beholder awakens in between, squinting lightly behind the shadows of those teeth. It's a faint expression, resembling an opposite of what floods the man's vision. Discovery is spearing a beast in the deepest trench of his heart, spraying its blood out from the man's eyes in a triumph. I'm just as stunned as he is; where will he go with all that victory?

A smile is so near to the essence of the human spirit. To create a smile in ourselves is to be happy, which we seek deeply. But to what end? When our smiles are masted forever, where do we as humans go? What is our next plan of action?

Wondering this to myself, I looked over the side of my coffee table and saw you smiling lightly, a glimmer in your eyes as you read a book I didn't recognize. It made me smile.

Take your strong arm
And blow your horns,
Every man is a bunker
And each battle - a war

The choice is yours,
You can’t hide,
The choice is yours,
You will die,
The choice is yours,
They will lose,
The choice is yours,
Your life is used

You and me,
It’s a matter of utility,
Your burning flesh
Lights the straw
Leading to our barn,
This choice isn’t hard

Carry us away,
Our torn bodies
Manipulate,
Our collective grave
Retaliates,
Let your mask
Be your face

---------------Still eyes are still ripe
---------------under the deep
---------------shells sown shut,
---------------------------deep like
---------------------------echoing hatches
---------------------------with cold metal
---------------------------ladders,
----------------rooms of blowing
----------------violence underneath
----------------a new finish,
--------------------------------light gray
--------------------------------over walls
--------------------------------red as velvet,
------------------------------------------------over blue like mist
------------------------------------------------from quiet Spring rain,
-------------------------------here he wakes
-------------------------------out of smoldering
-------------------------------ash worn,
------------------------------------------A thumb out waiting,
------------------no one can see him.

I don't need your sympathy,
just someone to see the haze I see,
I don't need my memories,
just a reality that believes I'm not crazy,

I don't need your golden caging,
just an education that's costing money,
I don't need your loyalty,
just some stability to keep us happy,

I don't need “factually”,
just a true, honest identity,
I don't need anxiety,
just some butterflies to keep it exciting,

I don't need a friend,
just a person wanting to smile with me,
I don't need your love,
just the dog lying by me as I'm dying.

A man of this life
knows his story
too well,
he walks the streets
leg one leg two
at just the right speed:
moving at a glide
because it's gray outside,
the frozen tide
of the open cut concrete
is hard underneath
the soles of his worn shoes,
they hold a pair of dart like feet
that walk through
the jagged edges and
changing pathways,
talking in tongues
about lurid destinies
of lacking destination,
a babbling that never reaches an ending,
the two are crooked and bleeding
but they always keep
through this crowded street
that the man
in the palm of his right hand
has learned to hold
a “hello” for,
stretching far from his arm
it is quiet and scared,
so often invisible
but hoping,
not hopeful,
that someone will see
beneath its creased,
mistrusting,
bare naked and often mistaken
surface,
but with it
is a perfect fist
strapped like a puppet
to this tacit brother
in the man's
left pocket,
fingerless and mastered
to smash into bits
what may be caught
by the other cupped misfit,
whether friend or enemy
they are always mistaken,
so the beating
makes them scream
in victory,
horrendously and
harmoniously sprayed
in the liquids leaving
Whatever's seam,
“whatever”
they seem,
thoughtless of the backlash
only meant for the brain,
it solely knows and
takes the blame
for the horrid red stain,
trying to love
when the brother
habitually
frames the other
into maiming
another
who is all alone
DON'T!
it wants to re-aim
the darts
that leave
on pavement
straight for misleading paths
WAIT!
It planned to create
a noose for the unstable
connections between
those lost A's and
the angry B
and that fretful C but
ANY!
Thing can happen, and
ANY!
thing will,
ANY!
One
would really help,
and now there's not much
LONGER!
Till you truly understand,
The very end is very close
for that man - he is ******.

I'm sitting still
not trying to catch butterflies,
My shoulder's for the moth
flying around at night
by the light,
ghost white wings and dusty - flying and floating in circles,
they're amplified amongst the insects
swarming,
I spot her flirting
with the candle fire
that just one burn
will ash of her body – I know,
she lands on walls and crawls
the steepest of angles
near the tides of brightness
on the bay,
she wades in ambiguous patterns
creating dynamic shadows
of mistaken misdirection - fluttering up and down
throughout the present towards me,
She'll land with all intentions
of devouring the clothes on my back
and I'll let her,
The summer sun is a hot one

-----I hear her. The quiet spatter of Spring rain tapping against my apartment window. The gentle clouds walk in a cold blue light, shadowing the kitchen and dining area towards the back. I'm standing alone, in between and behind her breath, doing as I've always done: painting with her in the light that guides my hand throughout every movement of my wrist on the canvas. Those scentless, dollar-priced candles I buy for the night – they're just cheap imitations compared to what she sheds about this room right now. The candle's fire melted through my coffee table, damaged the expensive wood from which it was crafted. I can't possibly pay to repair it just yet.

-----But right now, it's her sound. She couldn't be much more or less without losing that utter perfection of pitch. Water against glass, it leaves my cracked body feeling wet sometimes. She whispers softly, moving my arm like a puppeteer does. I breath into what she breathes out, stroking to her heartbeat, coloring to her attack. She's relentless, leaving a rhythm that's never been properly diagnosed. I ask away, “Who are you, my lovely dancer?”

-----And it's true where she walks, too. Shadows hide behind every book, album, and film case that lay about my living space. They wait, all of them, on a single call of mine to turn and show their real selves to her ever-efficient gaze. She pierces them through, turns them to stone. The colors I see are subjective and factual, her perspective. She touches my hand to the brush, brush to the paper. I, letting her do this, then make my move.

-----I stack skin onto bone and ****** structure, streaming hot blood through it. I whistle in the air a wind which beats violently on her torn sundress and on the red flag she holds high in her bare knuckled fists. The wind and shattering earth ravages the landscape in natural disaster. She's poised, slanted in the wind and on breaking rock, eyes closed and focused. My eyes fade with hers for a time, noticing the words appear on her scarlet fabric:

"I am"

Here he is,
deep beneath me,
A small piece of paper
folded over eight times,
sipping on this wine – I see him now,
running away from you – he's right here,
Always wanting more
until I lose it all,
Everything forever
but the crest on my arm.

And here you are,
right outside,
lost between
the shortening chapters
of my life,
As far as I could remember
You've been
just a small step behind,
Balancing on a wire
not knowing
which way you go,
Finding what you wish for
just a moment too slow,

And here I've been
more than once before,
standing alone
above the broken
hardware
on the floor,
A robot with a
soul of soft gold,
Tell me “hope”
and I'll hold,
Tell me “believe”
and I'll be free,
Don't say anything
and you won't
know how far I'll throw
for you to see.

Was it a bad day,
or did you have to go?
Was it the wrong week,
or could you have stayed
just a bit longer?

But time doesn't
make promises,
maybe being alone
was a need
I got lost in,

Knowing who we were
with our mistakes,
some of which
I find hard to take on,

I never wish
to go back there,
but sometimes
I want to take you
to the river,

It flows like time
at a steady pace,
the water has no name
And your dress is perfect

It shakes forward
leaping over itself
when I
lie next to you,
holding your hand
in the grass,

You smile and laugh,
it's just us and the river
talking together
about places
we've never seen,

I want to love
but I don't know how,
You are very good
and I could
learn from you,

The sun falls
and the blue
mist surrounds,
telling us it's time
to go back,

I'll never forget
who you are,
whoever you are,
you're gone,
but I still
haven't found you.