each sip, succulent, powerful,
until the finishing drops,
lingering, taunting, provocative,
all make their way to my mind.

each hit off this cigarette,
burning deeply, cancer-ridden,
deliciously curves my appetite
to the skew i've taken against myself:

    inhumane in the disdain for myself, my existential ideals push themselves through me.

every blink, second
brings about refreshening,
uplifting, unrelenting, and deathly
eye-opening thought processes.

the last time i tried,
passively, obsessively, partially
only half-heartedly, i was found
stuck with half of my heart gone.

    *i'd hate anything hateful you'd ever have to throw at me, but i'm willing to listen.

another restless night
laying there; trapped.
her head on my arm
my head in the ceiling,
accepting this; dreading this,
she catches herself dreaming.
i crawl out of bed,
make the night longer
and think of what to think
as i think harder and harder.
then, out of silence,
her voice still ringing in my ear,
"i'm cold."
i stop thinking,
and warm her again.

was he what you'd dreamed?
were you dreaming?
what'd you find when you awoke?
are you still in that lucid state?
how did you not wake up during the thunderstorm?

it rained all night and crashed in all around us, and you just slept right through the whole thing, without the slightest clue about what was true, what i knew, and what you still had to choose.

poison coursing through my veins,
parting ways in my brain,
separating me from my own mind,
i flock to what’s left and she waits.

i can’t remember where she slipped in,
more so when she slid out,
and how it got to the point now
where my drink is flooding me
with anticipation.

some knowing, unknown in its right,
the idea wasn’t here just a night ago,
but now it won’t leave,
it waits, just as she does.

and once this moves into motion,
the ground will tremble.
with such force, such intensity,
and i will show her the way,
what i mean, how i pursue it myself,
as she does, as we had,
and now cannot.

i’ll show her the dead tissue,
hanging from my shoulders,
how i have to lug it around
and one day, will unload.

out here, on the roads, we're redemption awaiting our realization.
in here, i'm dead, lost out on the highway, bleeding immensely.
there's a life to be had driving these days and nights,
but i'm here, sitting, watching them all pass by and dreaming.
hardly sleeping, hardly breathing, carcinogenic life,
before a carcinogenic death; nobody wants my organs, they're cancerous.
i'm dreaming, again; in here, i create reality, and after all, isn't it a creation of our minds?
out there, there's people passing, clashing, and making their ways.
in here, i'm working, dreading the deadline i've set for myself;
working from home, working alone, all on a dream we're dying to dream again.
wearing down the weary mind i've got to make your dreams another reality.
like i've said, it's a creation we're all working on
so why am i the only one doing the work for the reality you're dreaming of?
*i'm dying, again; out there, i'm nothing but a dot on a map, drawn out to be a lead in some play.

observed in
our empty lots,
italicthere's still the timeitalic
to plot
our demises in the eyes
of our own ****** lovers
italicas they slowly beginitalic
in catching
our drifting lies
that we've so carefully hidden
italicthroughoutitalic
our over-planned
and our over-justified
senseless lives.
italicyet, we give themitalic
a purpose
for the time that we fill
with self-dulling
italicideasitalic
and our own
revelations
of this
italicidealistic fantasy.italic
we've fantasized for fun.

as you sit drooling
and see you're pulling
any strings you can
to make your stand
as you sit staring
at the tv, glaring
back at you
in the dull blue
light it's reflecting
the sublime it's protecting
as your brain melts
and the radio star belts
another song to your ear
but you still can't hear
the true calling in your name
and no need to feel ashamed;
you're not to blame.  
you're broken; nothing to claim;
gone to the wrong side of lame.

as you whined
for the climb
got only harder
so you'd barter
your soul
with the devil
to try and make it
when you'd fake it
in the silence of it all
and the wavering call
to the shores far away
as they'd always say
you'd belonged in another land.  far from this one.  you were lost out here, wandering aimlessly toward whatever you thought there was a purpose in.

you've cut up your past
into tiny fragments
for the detailing of a future
that's now your assignment.
something you're figuring out
that isn't so predictable,
when your entire life
all your guesses were ridiculed.
as they fit together
to form something new
you're seeing there's still some bits
that feel like they're missing you.
to amend this situation,
you pick up the phone
and make a few calls
and see how things have been at home.
but nobody's answering
and nobody's calling back
i've figured it's better to live life
than to ever want to lack
love.
it's a feeling
and soon it's healing
but the scars exist
and you can't resist
the facts of life you've realized, you're realizing, and have yet to have this grand realization that nothing's perfect.
*perfection was a theory they never perfected.

you completely lost sight of what was sighted in for you
i know you're thinking of the target; your aim's just still not true
your rifle's steady, ready, but your hands are still too shaky
you let the hammer fall after you squeeze the trigger and i just let it be
but you weren't aiming for what i told you it was seasoned for
and you're still a little loose on gaining any floor
out here in this wild conundrum of life; living
out here dealing what's dealt; giving
out here completely oblivious; obviously
out here naked; grievously

godspeed my friend,

you'll need it as we're nearing this end.

another slip
of the tongue
and it's a world of hell.
tasted purification
elongated salutations
to the people; dead
and walking shells.
burnt out
turnt about
for display purposes only.
and you're not allowed to look.

as you grow,
remember what i'd told you
so many nights ago,
how i said to "always be true."
when facing any adversity,
to keep both ears peeled.
to let yourself truly love,
and to never let wounds heal.
they'll make you stronger,
with plenty of infection.
and, also, to never aid anyone
in another's dissection.
keep your hands on the wheel,
and your eyes to the sky.
there's no way to stop growing up,
even after you die.

fingered in the jailhouse
for something indescribable
something impractical
and you're filling in the holes
that you'd bored out of yourself.

you've never told me how you felt
in any form of honesty
when i asked was for you to honestly
explain yourself after it all happened
but you'd just left me in ignorance.
so, i sat down and worked it all out
and i came up with a few things
that i'm beginning i actually know
about what it is you really want
and how to get it all for you.
there's some things i have to ask of you
before i can start fulfilling your wishes
before they've filled you with hope
of the empty desires we've discussed
that you've been complaining about
in your own sublime ways;
and, subliminally, have changed my thought pattern.

the colors have faded
so it's time for a new coat
to cover the disgust,
the angst, how i'd gloat
about the ideas i'd had
when they weren't mine
and how i made them
into something out of time
out of mind
and into this sectionalized analysis on what was, is, and has yet to be.

hours of isolation in quiet company,
                                                       ­    though, they never seem to appear
                                       as much to your eyes
                                                            ­                 as they have to mine.
                                        *the humming of the television,
                                                    ­                                   dully lulling the visions in the mind
                                       into the shapes
                                                                ­         they're made for;
                                                          ­    searching synapses and relapses
                                                         for just another answer to the mystery
                                                         ­                                                                 ­    to what's going on,
                       here in my dreams.
                                                         ­     the company stays after i've left,
                                                           ­   as they find it comfortable there,
                                                          ­            stuck; subconsciously
                                                ­                     segregating themselves.

when asked what i ever mean,
i can never answer honestly;
honestly, i have no idea myself,
but then again, who does?

to mean anything seems redundant;
purpose is given without hesitation
to everything we create, we are.
we're creating our own meanings,

*driven mad by our own motives.

written out on napkins, scrap pieces of paper, and the occasional wall i find barren
the love letters that i've been writing to no one; i'm still trying to forget her
and it's getting harder to lose the words in myself as i lose myself in the words
that i've put down on whatever, where ever i find the time in a love letter
to no one.

so, as i pour myself out into my typewriter and write the types of feelings
you should know i've been trying to forget you as each line passes
as i pour myself another shot in the dark of the days i've been seeing through light
you're long gone, dead, and still unable to see without the frames of your glasses
through no one.

you've taught yourself not to let the letters find you out there in the wild
as i wildly write these letters from the bottom of my heart
sending them off to be edited by the endless critics and satyrs of our time
that have no clue where i'm coming from or even where i had to start;
for no one.

on the brink of a river, there's plenty to see
on the brink of insanity, there's only me
and as i fall forward, i don't put my hands out
and as i hit the ground, i know what and why this came about.

flown to some far off land
dropped and forgotten
silenced by seclusion
and now announcing:
               "i'm not going to be stuck here forever, you all just wait and see!"
ironic and symbolic,
you're stuck, son
but you'll find out
how to get out of here
               "i swear that's not my conscience, nor my sub conscience working right now."
you're boiling over
and you need to just simmer
here, in the summer
where you make your last stand
               "this has to be madness, some form of incompetence of the gravity of my situation."
*no, you're fine,
you're just getting lost again
inside of me, yourself
and that mess you carry around
as the mind that once was mine.

who am i anyway?
a man behind a name that isn't mine,
an idea behind a movement;
pushing time.
a heartless devil
cutting crime
that he sees every man doing to his neighbor.

what am i?
anyway there's an answer
in here, out there,
somewhere in adequate form.
waiting for its clairvoyance
and its shelter
to be shattered and broken like the man i see behind all that i am.

a poem to lou reed*
feeding the animals
everything they want
and never getting
that perfect day,
you left me hangin' on.

while the girls sang,
we found that vivacious
slightness you'd felt
as we began feeling that light,
they blinded us in your mirror.

now we're twisted
waiting for the shine
those boots of leather
to the transformation,
we can't say we're not forsaken.

there's never been enough time
for me to ever really think
about the ways they see me
when i tell them about my shrink.
when i tell them about my fears.
when i tell them about my occupation,
my situation,
my predication,
my annihilation,
and my contemplation
of the simplest things left around me.

wandering through my head
you'd slid the idea in again.
i'd let you fill in that space
and taken time figuring out
where it was you made it through.

there's nothing i pointed out
as you poignantly accepted
the deception and lingering
that would come afterwards
when you did what you'd done.

now that it was called
what we'd called it that night
there's nothing more for me to say
i've never written what was right,
and you have no say in this.

the devil told me his story
he told it quite well
the devil told me his story
and what it's like in hell
the devil told me his story
and how it's always swell
the devil told me his story
and i found we're all just shells,
waiting to be emptied.

it's pretty faces like yours
that keep me from dying
by my own devices
as i devise a way out of this place.

it's pretty faces like yours
that save me from myself
by your smile
as i smelled the burning sulfur.

it's pretty faces like yours
that help me want this
by fire, i cleanse
as i clean up the mess you'd left me in.

his arms
his legs
his oblong torso
made me think again about the way he'd been slenderizing me all over
his face
not his face
not any face
nothing there, just an empty canvas for you to fill in how you'd like
just like me
slenderized
tenderized
and coming after you; whether you'd like it or not, i'm a lender-man.

i feed her my words
like you'd feed someone sick
the pills as their ailment

i feed her my love
like you'd feed a baby bird
its life frail and in lament

the mother's dead
the baby's chirping
the birds all say
that this is working

i feed her my ideas
like you'd feed a toddler
with spoon in hand; shakingly

i feed her my death
like you'd feed the poor
standing on corners, begging; incessantly

this is working
i believe it now
i see it working
but can't see how

i feed her life,
as you'd feed me.
i feed her knowledge,
and set her free.

left here to fiddle with ideas
as they're passed around
like some bottle; emptied now
we sit and wonder what's left
to pass through our heads
as we pass time thinking.

thinking in lines and in reason
out of time and just right for the season,
we're lying through our teeth
as the man comes down from his seat
where he sat, watching our lives unravel
and resembles the great mystery
that we're all looking to answer.

there's not much left of good time
or of good placing for this all
so we sit and wait, watching,
crawling with some strange desire
to set everything ablaze; start this pyre
and send the whole idea to its god.
somewhere, it's watching.

alas, ideas begin springing forward
like a well dug deep in arid earth
to feed the dry landscapes and minds
and to figure out what anything's worth
in this twenty-first century run-down
idea of what an idea should sound like.

and we keep 'em coming back for more.

it's not only the disease in my mind
that's been left so far behind
by the mass time you've spent
in your self regret
and mutilation of the facts
and aimless, allegorical attacks
based off of your life's lies;
how they've been goodbyes
and never hellos.
or good mornings.
or any salutation, noticeably
cold and distraught collectively
for the sickness that you've left behind.

i made you live,
i'd killed you;
i'd been there.
i'd done that,
but you showed no remorse for your own accordance with my accolades.
and yet you've taken my own words against your own for disservice,
distance has been created from the anguished laugh you'd let out for a trembling break of the silence.
and as it broke down, realistically, you'd thought of what you'd learned from me,
and at last, i was used in reference, as in silence i brooded at your demeanor;
it was transparent and openly so; undistinguishable from the rest in its cleft.
this phenomena's gone on far longer than expected, and you've outlived your expectancy.
so, again, i'd killed you.
then i made you live.
and i'd been there;
you'd never done that.

she couldn't **** him when he asked her to
so she asked her daddy if he would.
she couldn't tell him, ever, the truth,
but she knew her daddy could.
she'd seen the way he'd looked at her,
and knew her daddy saw his love.
she knew he would be dead soon,
cuz her daddy took off the gloves.
she watched him bleeding in the street,
as her daddy beat his head in.
and she knew there would be a good reason
why her daddy had to **** him.

caught in the burning of somethings you'd owned
in your masochistic daze you're loved by none
and you're loved by the only thing that's ever mattered
the incessant beatings you'd taken by yourself;
for yourself, you let them go on, like you couldn't stop
and now you're just lighting your whole life on fire
and lighting the way to an early grave, enslaved
by the nicotine staining your fingers, draining your lungs
of sweet, succulent oxygen, openly displaced by carbon monoxide
and yet there's only blackening and death on the inside.

this has to be cut-out or you're just going to end up on another page; immortalized for your love of something choking you to death; deadened from the disease you couldn't ****.

My dreams are getting better
so I must be as well.
My streets getting cleaner
so the world must be too.
My ‘self’ is getting stronger
so my mind has to.
My ideas still aren’t coherent
so I don’t think I should be.