An empty playground
A multicolored hijab
Rainbow on asphalt
Rain drops wetting the sparse trees
Their leaves sounding like drum heads

**** you Halloween
It's Gobstoppers and Sweet Tarts
For breakfast, I guess

Well,
You never thought you'd be here
Not at this age
Not knowing what you know
In fact,
Why isn't the whole world
Lining up to kiss your feet?

You know it all
You've been there
And if you haven't been
Someone
A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend
Has been

All your bad experiences
Those are the world's bad experiences
Disregard the child soldier
The **** victim
The mutated and deformed
These?
These are real problems
If they aren't on the surface
They fester below
Rotting away at whatever you could hide away
We all feel so bad for no one

Daddy is too rich
He loves his guns and his motorcycles
And mommy got remarried to some maniac
Who has a drawer specifically for tissues and a sports car

How is an upstanding young man
Expected to compete with that?

The sound of a plane
And a robin's egg blue sky
Peppered with pink clouds

I like sleeping in
Even if sleep may just be
Death’s lazy cousin

I guess my poems are a little too
Long Winded
Your interest gets blown away
In a monsoon strength gust of
Boredom

Be that as it may
I'll still scratch those bumps that
Show up on my knuckles from time to time

And I'll still keep that empty bottle of shampoo in my shower
And that translucent bar of used soap stuck to the floor
I'll step on it and pretend
That I don't notice

The clouds will gallop by
Polyps will form in my colon
My hair will gray
And so will yours
And one day
Hopefully
We'll both sit in a home
With a plastic mask strapped to our face
Long Winded
Trying to breath the air of
A changing time.

Life makes you feel like
Another dandelion
Stripped clean by the wind

It's a new guy this time
He has the same jacket and gloves
But it's definitely a new guy
I pull the collar of my coat with
The tips of my fingers
And approach the roped off entrance
Of the building

He stops me with a
Sudden hand on my chest
"I'm sorry sir,
but you're not allowed
in today."

"What? Not allowed? I was
Just here yesterday. The guy
At the door let me right in."

"No matter sir. You're not
Allowed in today."

"Well, ****."

I take a seat on the
Rain painted curb
And stare at my reflection
In a ***** puddle

Some cookie cutter schlub
Comes down to the same partition
I was turned away from
The rope is lifted without a word
From either of them

I un-crane my neck from
The door's direction
Meeting my own stare in
The puddle of ***** water
Again

I push off the curb with
Renewed energy and
Approach the doorman again

"Alright, I think I can go in now."

He pulls his white gloves
By the wrist to eliminate any
Excess space in his fingertips
And meets my eyes
With a smug look on his face
And shakes his head

How the hell are his gloves so white
When all the puddles around here
Are so filthy

"Just because you were in here
Yesterday sir,  does not mean
That you will be allowed entry
Today. I'm sorry, but that's the
Way that things work."

I bend my mouth into an
Upside down horseshoe
Studying the gaudy marquee above
The padded door

The doorman sees me staring at the blinking
Chipped letters
Sensing my resentment
He tightens his gloves again
And stares at the brick wall
Across the alley

I wander off in the rain
To go find something
Else to do

There is a point in your life
Where you should focus on the immediate

Job Searches
401 Ks
Retirement plans
Everything that makes you ******* miserable
To think about in the least

But you will always have the id
The uncooperative
You will do the things you want to do
And you will hate yourself for it

You will play Rocket League
And you will watch **** and ******* insistently
Because your girlfriend is two states away
And everyone likes you
But they like the cardboard cutout
The mutant
The heretic

There is the real you
In all its whiskey soaked glory
Behaving
As Elliot said
As the wind behaves

There is no rhyme
Or reason
To happiness
It is a spent cigarette ****
A used ******
An empty beer bottle

It is whatever makes you forget
Let it detach you
Let it separate you
Breathe disgusting, choking clouds

Understand that
No matter how many people
Or how many organizations
Or how many missed strokes you have on the keys >/0-
Or how many publishing companies
Or corporate
******* bloodsuckers
Tell you how useless you are

You are a beautiful mixed bag
Something so complicated and implicit
That you can not be defined by a single term
Take pride in that
And **** everybody else

Leave all the bloated corpses by the wayside
Take vacations
Drink good *****
Play video games until the politicians
Consider you a threat

Stop considering everyone else
And consider
Just once
Yourself

Reading during lunch
On the screened in back porch
When I notice
Apart from the other moths
That are fluttering and
Kissing the bent, thick
Stems of the spider plants
That grow against the dirt
Stained panels of the porch

A little white moth
Smashing itself against
The inside of the wire mesh
Windows

My book open on my lap
I watched him beat his
Powdered body fruitlessly
Looking for a way to rejoin
His other moths amongst
The spider plant blossoms
Wilted white and
Putrefying purple

Still open
I rested the books sturdy
Spine on the smudged glass
Of the coffee table

It took me a few times
To cup him in my palms
Giving him a wide berth
In his fleshy cell his wings
Still beat furiously against
The worn lines in my hands

I didn't open the storm door
I poked my hands through
A hole the hounds had made
And cracked open the restraints
Of the little white moth

He sat unmoving on the edge
Of my fingers
Wings still
Antennae still
Before fluttering off
Into the syrupy hues
Of the August afternoon

I sat back down
Looked to the open face
Of my book and wiped
The residue of the
Little white moth onto
My dress pants

Like the feverish beating
Of its wings on my hands
The bleached brushstrokes
On my dress pants
From the little white moth
Have since disappeared

I knew there was
Trouble to be had
When they called me
Up to the executive
Floor and sat me down
At a mahogany table
Long enough to seat 12
Across from the
Stoic HR lady

We sat alone
Save the head of
My division
Who wore a thin
Line of a mouth and
A loud red vest and
Matching bowtie
He rested his bony elbows
On the table and said

"Too many mistakes
Have been made
We've decided to
Terminate your
Employment"

This came as somewhat
Of a shock to me
I didn't like my job
Few people do
They wouldn't pay
You if it was fun
But still
I showed up
On time
Greeted the customers
Counted the money
Locked the vault
Did what was expected of me
And did my best to
Exceed that

I guess those were all
Mistakes

"Ok"

I said
And the HR lady
Jammed a hammy
Opened hand into my
Face and I shook it
Numbly

I followed the flaming
Red vest down to the
Lobby where my
Staff watched me
Clean out my desk
Everyone had a
Strange sourness to
Their faces like they
Had smelled a **** that
Hinted at some deeper
Health issue

I turned my keys
And combos over
Told my staff to have
A nice weekend and
Walked out the front door

When I got home I
Stood in the hallway
Not sure of what to do
Next

My dad asked from
His office

"What are you doing
Home? "

"They fired me"

"Huh. Well, no worries
Everyone gets fired at
Some point"

I walked up to
My room and put
The box of
Coffee mugs
Hot Sauce
A Death Valley
Postcard from
My mom that I
Had taped on
My desk
Down on my
Bed

After two miserable
Years of my life
The only thing I had
Gotten from that place
Were a few coffee mugs
And a constant weight on
My chest

I sat down on the end of
My bed and felt that weight
Melt like warm butter
Off my chest
Down my legs
And disappear through
The cracks of my
Hardwood floor

I was on a freezing
Train platform when
A cursing man approached
Me
His smile already queued up
"Hey man,
I tried to ride the
Train with an old
Ticket"
He turned the ticket
Over and over
In his hand
To accentuate this
Point and continued
"And i have 9 bucks
Could you spot me
For the rest?"

"I have no cash"
I lied
As most do
When confronted for
Money by a stranger

"You don't need cash
You can use cards on
The machines"
He said pointing
Towards the bank
Of awkwardly standing
Ticket kiosks
Our only companions
In the chilly night air

"Nah man, i'm good"
I said

His expression changed
Not to anger but
Disappointment
"Well, thanks anyway"

He walked off cursing
A broken trail of white
Breath twisting dizzyingly
Away from his head

Standing there I felt bad
That I hadn't helped him
He only needed 7 more dollars
And I had six crisp twenties
Folded neatly in my wallet
And two credit cards
Nowhere near maxed out

For some reason
I started to interpret myself
As part of the problem of mass
Apathy amongst men
In turn feeling slimy
Unnatural  

I made a point to lap the
Station multiple times
To find this man and give
Him more than he needed
Not to help him
But to prove to
Myself that I wasn't
A phlegmatic  
******

I caught him inside
With another young man
About my age
With a softer face
Giving him a sandwich
And a few crumpled bills

They traded a few words
And laughed
I returned to my
Perch on the platform
Alone in the
Freezing night air

Later the man came out
Smoking a black and mild
And waited next to me for the
Train

When we got in he only sat
A few seats from me
I saw him take the
Ticket he told me was old
And hand it to the
Attendant
Who punched it and moved
On

Later we made
Accidental eye
Contact down the
Aisle
He queued the same
Smile and turned away
From me

Life is
Time sitting
Stale on the back of the tongue

A lot of it is not worth tasting
Like when a girl says she doesn’t
Love you like you love her
Or that she has your baby
And its only been a few months

It’s stale on the tongue

Why taste bitterness
When you can taste nothing
At all?
What’s the point
Of flailing in the void
Paroxysm on the floor
Of the pit
As opposed to passing
Through the afternoon air
Like a shadow in summer:

Stale on the tongue
Easy in the mind
Numb like a
Curled autumn leaf in
The swirling winds of autumn

"****** Death, alright!"
Sunburned smile reclining
On plastic pool chairs

She is hunched
Over across the aisle
From me
A balding man
Sits against the
Window next to
Her speaking
To the girl
In between them
In spitting whispers

"I'm going to throw up"
The hunched over one
Says staring at her phone
The balding guy and
The in between girl
Laugh

I can taste the
Beer on my own
Breath and my
Coat is too hot
For the train
I fidget around
Waiting for her to
*****

The balding man is
Mad at the in between
Girl now cursing her
Out under his breath
And she laughs in
Gasping chortles
And the slumped
Over one is pale and
Crumpled like a
Saltine in chili

They all start to sing
A song I don't know
And get off at some
Stop I've never been
To

They bother me
I don't know why
But I could tell
You a million
Reasons why
I ******* hate
Them

It is a superior
Trait of mine
To be able to
Hate what I
Don't care to know
While most
Pretend to know
And hate anyway

Please
*****

Waiting at the train station
For my girl from new york
With my windows down
Sunroof open
My a/c has been on
The fritz for two years
Now, but you get
Used to it
Especially in a
Syrupy pennsylvania
August

A cherry colored pickup
Swings into the space in
Front of me and a middle aged
Guy hops out
And meets two others

They are speaking german
And cackling
The one is telling a joke
And dangles his hand
Off of his waste like it's
His ****
And they all laugh

For a moment
Every other sound
In the station is drowned
Out by their hard
Language and
Harder laughter

Hammocked on two beanbags
With a glass of cold beer
And a magazine
Splayed across my lap
The silence in the apartment
Making my ears ring
Too many local metal shows
And shooting guns without
Ears on
So now a phantom
Traces a musical triangle in my ear
Always

Just as well
Silence
True silence
Is supposed to drive people
Crazy
And I don't need
Anymore of that

My girlfriend and her roommates
Will be heading back from
Work soon on the subway cars that
Constantly hold the stale smell of
People

"This is nice"
I say outloud
To no one  
And by acknowledging
The moment so I have
Adulterated it

Existential crisis aside  
This is nice

In the brown dead brush
We lock eyes and his tails up
Locked in the cold trees

Standing in a line
Elmo waves behind a cop
Searching bags for bombs

Put another record on
While I pour another glass
And fill that clouded
Empty expanse
With a nice amber
Hue and we can talk
About god and music
Until the sun comes up
But no song or god
Will match the tangerine sun's
Corona as we fall asleep in the
Night's dew
Put more metal on
Put more Bowie on
Put more classical on
Put more punk
More hip hop
More Wu Tang
More Big L
More pop
More hair metal
More classic rock

More who gives a ****

My teeth are numb against my lips
And everything sounds good
A proposition
A song
A liquid taking up empty space

Just keep me here
Next to you
The rest of the world looking
Up or down

It didn't matter then
And it doesn't matter now

Shhhhh
Let the carpet slip from under my feet
Let the wall pat my back like an appreciative friend
Let the stairs seem long and winding
Shhhhh
Let it all be caught up in the back of your throat
Sore and raw
Keep it away from those you can
And those you can't

Wake up with the regret of the morning
Spilled across your face in
Buttery swaths
Drink deep the pain of happiness
Tasting ethanol on your breath
Like a can of unmixed paint

Many drunken nights
I’ve blacked out with my shoes on
Good night gentleman

My friend works at
An old folks home
Makes his living off the
Constant enterprise of  
Death and disease

"It's a dark place"
He says
A parliament light
Between his fingers

He tells me about
A twenty five year
Old who has
Muscular dystrophy
Named anthony

"You should see him clam
Up around this aid, Caitlin.
All he wants to do is talk
To her."

A man
A boy really
Two years younger
Than me whose body
Decided to eat itself
One day
Who still gets nervous
Around pretty nurses

"He'll be dead in five years."

He tells me about Joyce

"She collapsed in the
Airport on her way back
To England. Shes been in the
Home for seven years. Her
Family doesn't have enough
Money to bring her home.
She told me it's all about the dash."

The dash? I say
Tipping the green
Bottle up and draining
The last warm slug of
Beer into my mouth

"Yeah, the dash.
On your tombstone.
It doesn't matter what date
You were born or the date
You die. What matters is the
Dash in between them."

I leave later than I should
When music comes on
The car radio I turn it off
And drive with the windows
Down.

"Notice that
I am not laughing"
He said this from
Another room
While my stepmom
Laughed

"Where are the jokes
now? Why are you
So **** quiet?"
She asked him this
While looking at me

Silence from the
Other room was
The only answer

She held the paper
In front of her and
Read through it again
Aloud
"Enlargement of ventricles
In the brain
Inconsistent with a
Forty five year old female"
She laughed again
And stared at the paper
Through the paper, really

"Well,
I don't feel bad for myself
I feel bad for you guys"
She poured another
Glass of Chardonnay
And walked out
Onto the porch
The foggy panes
In the double doors
Rattling as she closed it

I stood there
In the kitchen
My only company
The clicking of his
Keyboard from
The other room
And a plastic container
Of week old scones

I thought about
How nice she was
How pretty her
New haircut looked
How well she could
Decorate a room
How she still
Emptied my trash
Cleaned my toilet
Made mincemeat pies

How when I said
"Thank you"
She always just
Nodded silently
Or said "O.K."

I felt the space
I was already putting
Between myself
And her

The sour swelling
In my chest
That seemed to sit
In the back of my
Throat and eyes
Perched itself on
The back of my tongue

As I thought about all this
I heard him stop typing

He was tasting the same
Sourness and
Thinking about
How empty a bed
Can be at 1 A.M.
When someone
Else used to consider it
Their bed as well

I was walking on a
Leaf covered path
The oranges
Yellows
And browns
Of fall carpeting
The fractured asphalt

My dad walked beside
Me with the hounds

"It smells so good
Everything is just
Starting to decay"

The oddly sweet
Perfume of a
Dying forest is
Lovely

He told me
That his wife's
Ex husband's
Wife had
Shot herself
During her
Lunch break

He came home
And found her
There by herself
Much like she had
Been for a long
Time

"Jesus"
I said
"That's awful
No one deserves
To find that"

My dad looked
Out at the massive
Flock of floating geese
On the reservoir
Honking loudly
At one another
As the setting sun
Painted a golden
Streak through the
Water

"Dying is bad
Enough"
He said
"To self inflict
It is doubly
Worse"

I agreed with
The doubly
Worse part

Maybe dying
Isn't that bad
The leaves don't
Sob or scream
As they rot and
Fall to blanket
The ground

I'd like to think
She didn't either

I know that
The trees don't
Mourn their
Lost leaves
And I know
They won't cry
For me

You know, it's strange
How you can be aware of your
Own mortality
And it is a weightless thing
A breeze through an open window
That slams a door unexpectedly
And we all laugh

But how sometimes it can settle
Solidly in your lap like a kitten with black fur
Or a wounded bird with ****** breast and bent wing
Making itself known
Corporealizing into a barnacle on the brain
Or in the valves of your heart
Giving itself gravity

It hovers over you the day you're born
A raincloud filled with paint thinner
Stripping your layers away
As all the minutes that won't come back
Seep between the cracks and down drains

It's also strange
That this feral frailty chooses to expose itself
Either in your happiest moments
When joy swells in your guts like an inflating balloon
Or in the quietest
At 2:03 am
When the fan is running and the clock
Slaves away methodically on the far wall

Regardless
It's there
It will always be there
Whether you want it to or not
So let the kitten lie
Ring the wounded birds neck
And
Hold out your arms when the cloud belches
Its preemptive warning

The rain will fall
So will we.

There are few people I enjoy beating
Quite like myself

A missed period at the end of a sentence
A different data point on a graph
The wrong email to send
The incorrect setting on whatever it may be

It all hits you suddenly like
A putrid wind and lodges
Deep in your chest
Where it forms a solid mass that
Breaks into jagged pieces that
Permeate through every
Pore of your being

But don't worry
The wind will pass and
Jagged pieces will meld into
Skin

You will learn from your mistakes

The path to change
And in effect learning
Is hard and rigorous
And the victories at the end of each path
Will be brief

But they are necessary

And then
When you finally get it all
It will all be over

But

Hopefully you will
Have spent some of your time
Leaving trail markers for others
Bright paint on a trunk
A stack of rocks
A brightly colored piece of fabric
As they traverse the same paths.

Red tail circling
Your cry echoes through the trees
Who do you call for?

Waking up
Worrying about money
Collecting funeral home cards with a saint on the front
Picking up the phone
*******
Thinking too ******* much
Pouring valuable time into invaluable pursuits
Fleeting glimpses of fulfillment
Things that make you feel more empty than before

Complications
All types of complications
Disease
Hunger
Lack of motivation
Mostly, it's a lack of content
That is the real side effect
The thorn with canines in your side
Telling you that it's never done

Be the best
Or the worst
Or anything
Please, be anything
It's better than being nothing
A lack of a person
An oxygen bandit
Another festering fat bag
A talking recycled opinion

Having a few too many drinks
And acting like a sage
The very act renders the desired result useless
Acknowledgment of enlightenment
Can only confirm
That there is so much more to learn.

Ah **** man, my bad
I wanted to write something
And now I'm too drunk

Black cat perched on wall
Watching a dead, **** choked tree
In a ruined yard

There is no comfort
Like a Corona with lime  
Shucking corn outside

On the scorched Queen's sidewalk
I pass seemingly aimless people like myself
I am wearing shorts and leather sandals
They wear backpacks and pants
Flannel shirts and earrings
Sneakers and baseball caps

They all seem to have a destination
But I'd like to think that they don't
That none of us do
We are all Wednesday's mid-morning nomads
Looking for
A dollar for our empty hands
A bench in the shade
A place to rest our bags and shoulders
A place to remove our caps and wipe our foreheads
Complaining of wandering in the heat

Yeah, it can get rough sometimes
But one day
You'll learn to **** on
Your own stings
And you'll swim uninterrupted

I fall like rain drops for you
And collect like puddles under your feet
Fetid liquid hoping just to feel
The sole of your shoe
Or to kick up onto the
Fresh shaved softness of your calf

Even after the rain stops
I will always be present
Like silent buttery flashes
Of lightning in thick clouds
Painting the interior of your car
And the lines of your face

My best friend
He tells me that
I shouldn't be upset
About that abortion
That I made that girl
In college get
"There is no accurate way
to count ghosts"
He says
His eyes straight ahead
His hands on the wheel

Even as my eyes grow
Heavy with tears
I know that he is right
Counting ghosts
Is a fool's holiday

Later in life
I will ask him
Questions with obvious
But nonetheless
Hard answers
Which he will usually
Answer looking
Straight ahead
With his hands on
The wheel

We speak in movie quotes
And obscure jokes
A true friends
Respite among
Normal conversation
We isolate third parties
On principle

We went to a
Concert in Baldwinsville
New York
And screamed at the
Healdiner to play
Songs from another
Band he was in
That was better than
His solo stuff
Security threatened to
Throw us out
We were high
On pills and liquor

No matter what
I trust his judgement
He has never lied
To me a day in his
Life, let alone mine
When something *****
He tells me
Which is why I trust him
But it's also why
I didn't show him this poem

I didn't want him
To disapprove
I didn't want him to
Point out all the
Obvious flaws
That are part of
My nature
And subsequently
My writing

When I am dead
Maybe I'll carve this
On a scroll of stone
So that he'll be driven
To lay in the same
Ground as myself
And there
In the wet soil
We can share
Inside jokes
And muffled laughter
Away from the dead
And the infinite

A slow day at work
If only these walls could talk
Sighs like falling snow

I find you everywhere
In a bird's song echoing down a brick laden alley way
In the pitter of rain on a slate roof
In the cold sting of an abandoned bobby pin stabbing the sole of my foot
Left from your last visit
But I feel you most of all in the cold spaces
The empty indent in my bed
Makes me realize how empty my life is
Without you

Procrastination
So obviously hollow
Nothing, with false weight

I'm hunched on our bed
Like a stone unintentionally collecting moss
You are away and your
Side of the bed grows cold and raised
The imprint that you left in my mattress
Is similar to the one that you scarred
On my heart

It is a skewed imprint of you
Like the frond of some beautiful lost flower
Pressed between granite palms
In a museum behind smudged glass

The dips and curves of all
Your perfect and imperfect features
Wrinkled and pressed
Into a *****
Used surface

Even though the ceiling fan was on
I was covered in sweat and so were you
Like full bottles of beer in the sun

I pressed into you and you
Conformed into my body
Without ever waking up

I got lost in the damp folds of
Your tee shirt
The ****** wrapper on
The night stand and
The bundle of sheets on the floor
By the foot of the bed

It's so hard to like the man
And it's so hard to
Dislike the man

He traps me
With his cooking

While I'm eating
He talks to me
About kids he grew up with
In Virginia

About a loner with a short fuse
Who caught a stray
Shot of jello
Meant for someone else
From someone else's spoon
And he walked over
And slammed the spoon holder's face
Into the table repeatedly
Until he drew blood
And then sat back down
Without saying a word

About a kid who was
16 in the 7th grade
Quiet, never fought
Someone asked him
To whip his **** out
My dad
Holds his hands up at this point
"I **** you not Ben,
It was about a foot long!"

We laugh about this
For longer than we should

He also tries to impart his wisdom
Telling me that
Race, Religion, Politics
It's all useless
People are people
And you should take everyone
As they are

Yet,
His blame is missle guided
For such a humanist
It's always
"The ******* Christians"  
"The ******* Republicans"
"The ******* Chinese"

He is hypocritical of
His own self proclaimed
Enlightenment

I can't tell if
It's a weak attempt at relation
Or
If he honestly thinks
That his hatred is implied

I have always been
A bit removed from my parents
After the divorce
And the new spouses

If he wants to relate
He should just
Be himself
And I'll be myself
And we'll both
Still die alone
Him hopefully sooner
Than myself
Not out of hate
But he's older

Still
Oftentimes
Fathers bury sons
If not in the ground
In their ideals

Sometimes I can’t write
You get lackluster haikus
A lot like this one

I wish that I could take the hollowness inside of me
And hold it in the palm of my hand.
I wish that I could hand it to someone
And say to them
"See, this is why I feel the way I do sometimes"
And they would nod
And everyone would feel bad
But then everyone would feel good because
They may finally understand

But what do I have to be upset about?
I've never had a real experience in my life
I waste most of my money
On video games and vinyl
And taking my girlfriend out to restaurants in the city
But I'm never strapped for cash
My bank account rarely suffers

I've never felt alive in my entire life
I spend my friday nights alone
Drinking expensive IPAs
And surfing the web

A perfectly meaningless existence

I work a full time job
And get by by telling people that there is more to me
That I'm working on something
A fantasy piece
Some poetry
"That book will be coming along any time"
When I have never written a single page

The more time you spend talking about it
The less time you actually spend doing it

I have delusions where I am rich and famous
The public grabbing for my alligator boots
My words engraved on great marble slabs in the town square

Delusions are delusions because there is no process
Instead,
The desired effect is already achieved
There are never details
Just the desired ending
Like a fairy tale

The movie isn't even half over
And you're asleep

Your teeth aren't brushed
Your contacts are plastered to
Your eyeballs like paper mache
And you're asleep

You had two beers
And no dessert
And you're asleep

There is a rapping at my
Chamber door and a raven
Over the mantel
And you're asleep

You told me how
You only sleep well around me
How hot it was under the covers
You hate when I snore
And you're asleep

Someone broke through the
Backdoor and I drew on him
I ventilated him on our leather
Couch
The shots ringing through the
Silent house
And you're asleep

But mostly
I love you
And I'm just happy that
You're asleep

We met our friends
At a local restaurant
They lived in Pittsburg
And we barely saw
Them anymore

Regardless
The embrace was very
Warm as it usually is
Between good friends

She was some kind of writer
He had just become a detective
After working in a drug
Related crime unit for years
Now he worked with gangs

"You see the same ****
Heads all the time,
And they just don't *******
Die."

"They get shot
9, 10, 11, 12 times
And spit on the
Nurses while they stitch
Them up."

"I don't know how
You feel about it,
But those people
Are animals,
******* animals."

I found myself nodding in
Agreement even though
I had no idea what his
Job or the animals
Lives encompassed

I felt bad agreeing with him
But in a way,
I knew he was right

We are all animals
In one way or another

I find that the animals
Born to the smallest cages
Tend to be the fiercest

While the animals born in
Large cages or
If they're lucky
Open fields
Tend to have no idea
How confining a small cage
Can really be.

Geese gather in pools
Fissures cut out by the sun
In the frozen lake

The front of the place
Smells like buttered
Noodles if you served them
In a shoe
The carpet is brown
To hide stains
Half deflated balloons
Dance sadly under the
Air vent

"So sorry, food will be out
In just a minute!"
She runs back from
Behind the counter
Into the kitchen
The cooks and her
Arguing in mandarin

That's fine I say
I'm not in a rush

I sit on the leather couch
Across from a cloudy tank
Full of fat bright orange carp
They swim lazily in circles
Bumping into each other
And the glass, not understanding

Breathing their own ****
That tumbles in the air filter
Bubbles at the bottom of
The tank

I think about going to
Sit back at my desk
While locking eyes with
The fattest one of the bunch

There are worse ways to exist
At least my ****
Gets pumped into someone
Else's tank

Humidity thick
A fallen leaf with curled sides
On the puddles edge

I'm tired of
Waiting for
The rest of
The world to
Catch up
With you
& I

I know it's
No way to
Think but
One day
We will both
Die and all
This wasted
Time being
Apart is
Making that
Day draw
Closer &
Closer

I don't
Want to be
Away from
You and you
Don't want to
Be away from
Me and neither
Of us want to be
Away from us

We will happen
Whether they
Want us to
Or not

What does one write when the feeling flows through them
But the words keep getting sifted out?

A blank canvas
Is a blank canvas
Is a blank canvas

It's hard to write something that
Really means anything
It sounds cliche
Because it is

"Buy into my creative work
Because I lack the creativity
To make it genuine"

But really
Sometimes I feel the current of
Violence
Creativity
Passion
Rip through me
Just under the skin and
I can't find the words that can make it
Mean something to anyone else

So here is to all the unwritten words
Hidden grins and
Bitten tongues
For those that feel the wave
But can't figure out
How to ride it.

Hello World
Thank you for the white birds and blue sky
The green grass and brown bottles
The gnarled roots and the flower petals
The packed sidewalks and empty fields
The sounds of dress shoes on pavement and
The smell of gasoline and leftover Chinese

Hello Void
Thank you for the sanguine embrace
The swarm of ants on the fallen bird
The weeds peeking through the cracks
The calloused conditions and the jaded outlooks
The fields of blood and people impaled on metal skewers
The smiling skeletons and cackling hyenas

Goodbye All
For all the white birds and swarms of ants
There is little solace to find on either side
So I'll rest here
In the middle of it
Where we thrash in barren hills
And gather under the stinking blooms
To try and find the sense
In any of it