Down the pathway-- I can’t believe I’m telling this to
I jump frantically-- I can’t believe I’m saying this
On one foot-- Disguised as if a face,
And I leap into the ground-- Bled and grasped for advil
An ending near the pathway-- Of nuclear bombs and shrapnel
I start moving slowly-- It was inside her also
I let out a yelp-- It was inside the autumn leaves
And in between the footsteps-- It was beside the mountain
I learn to walk I learn to talk-- It was when all the water
I can’t remember anything-- It was beneath the river
I can’t see where I’m going-- To hold each other in our hands
I’m constantly invading-- Time after
I can’t hold back my screaming-- I can’t remember time
Time before this-- The territory’s mine
Time while we began-- I can’t see where I’m at
And take our final stand-- Except before the path
It was beside the sea-- I learn not who I am
Slowly came and covered me-- I hop and hop again
It was beneath the valley-- Toward what is to be my death
It was inside the words of every song I heard-- And take in a deep breath
It was within the residue-- Where I am to begin
It was within the seething hands which-- As I come to an end
No one except me-- As the other is impaired
It was in every waking dream and every smiling sorrow-- I jump without care
It means nothing, even tomorrow-- Toward the river
I don’t know what it means-- Every burning footstep

Why aren’t your eyes--- there?
In two places--- where water should be?
Moldy residue--- absence of vision, tears
From those bullet holes--- you ought to see--- your own ambivalence
Fall down my cheek
Terrifying--- Me, with nothing for both us
Automaton, my weakness
Intellect, disease
You’re my body
Cage
You're my spirit
Doubt
Justice and horror--- within, without

Anhänger of bands
Parades in here
Your voice
Feverously
Dancing
In my skull
Coming from our mouths
Each ****** idea we think
Careening through my body
Embedded in my DNA
Spelling out and adding up to somebody
Who somehow
Is,
Just …
Holding on

Those of like mind
Stepping down corridors
Toward blurring red signs
Each extrusion an exit
Hapless movement
Containers transported
Memories and anguish
Containers transported
Into meadows of ease
Between trees minus leaves
Nothing but a reflection
Degenerated façade
Ashes vaporized with
Consciousness, my boiling
Water

Blindly swinging at the wall
In front of my face
Although it is behind me, too
One continuous layer of separation
From the world beyond, the world we cannot see
I swing again I swing again
I swing some more
And connect only with absence
From this earth
Absence from reality
Sheltering my worried shaking head
I tear you from me,
I tear me from you
I’m confused
I don’t know where the ceiling is
I don’t know why there’s a sky inside my room
I don’t know why my basement is flooded
With air
Please just take every last breath of
Cyanide
Please just take every last gift
To the poor
Please just take every last effort
To undo your wrongdoing
“Bad times ahead”
And take them with you
When you stop being me

If you think it will stop
Don’t
Hold on to the railing
Jump
Over the edge
Onto the sidewalk
Separated from streets
Marauding, rubber tires pummel
Surveying alleyways neglected and
Trash cans brimming with disregard
It’s lonely here, as if each pebble were a
Reveler
Ambivalent toward you
Unkempt and stiff
As if petrified and disavowed at once
Ignored, timid
Apathetic discharge
Free,
Fallen
From a short, raised canopy
Of steel
And wood and
Bones and
Dust
Chalk; dried on a lesson
Conveyed
Battalions, battalions
Marching
Avid miscreants
Scurrying
The masters couldn’t paint as fast
And each trifling matter
Marches past with
Battalions
Battalions
Battalions
And Stones

Forget the apprehension,
Let your clouded breath hang
On the rearview you see from
Your memories
Move in that direction
As tears
Dangle, restless, longing for solid earth
Dewy, un-coiffed grass
Emblazons today, still
Underneath can be beyond…
Above can be behind…
Shrouded horizon spins unnoticed
And all-encompassing endeavors
Bending light ‘twixt fate’s fingers
Like moments through a color-arch
Acrid rumors, sweat
Spew from our stolid, misshapen bodies
Soaring, metal box with wheels
Over holt, into the harbor
Hence comes the tide;
Hence comes the tide!
Underneath becomes beyond
Above becomes behind!
Anxious melody of air-springing
Pervades the cacophony of living
Can you forget asphyxiation,
So long
As saturated lungs keep breathing?

Each twilight goes unwitnessed
I haven’t had a meaningful conversation in years
And as the hours pass between waking and dying
I scarcely feel emotion, I scarcely know life
I can’t remember what I did a week ago
But likely it was unremarkable
And the week before that I might have tossed a ball
Although that seems too recent
Things are harder now, despite the congruence
I could be doing those same things
Without knowing it
And each fetch is like an unanswered question
Soothing, in its clumsy forthrightness
The ***** of my yard, dramatically subtle
I assume the sky’s above me as I bend
Here is the ball, I’m picking it up

The world created for us is sick.
It’s decaying.
Wounds, with no scab forming
And we’re expected, without questioning
To live on in such a world
To allow such a world to exist
But it’s infuriating
And it torments the hearts of men
Tearing mother from child
Raising us on malevolence
Scurrying through the fields
Until the hunters carry us away
And every last vestige of shelter
Is plucked from the ground
Incinerated, burned in factories
To make cardboard boxes
That will be filled with promises
Of low cholesterol
For the masses
That gleam over the details
Unaware that hope is lost
And that our species is dying
Hurriedly moving from one space
To another
Without realizing their fright
Without looking at the box
That they helped produce
By failing to protect
Their shelter
A world, ending

You have become like the specter of my youth
A knothole seeping deadly fumes
Surrounding me, embracing me
Leaving me intoxicated and defeated
In a pile of filthy belongings
Tethered to this pole of existence
Wrapped in disregard
Postmarked for the gates of Valhalla
Addressed to sirens of the flat rivers
And dropped at the feet of irreverent lovers
You are my memory and the end of all complacency
The beginning of a new chapter
In a volume to be published
Bound in leather
Taken from cows raised in pastures
Decapitated and sawed open
Removing vital organs from lifeless bodies
Supported by a hook
From which brain chemicals drip
And neurons fire
Through a convict with his blindfold on
Moist cigarette, dangling off his lips
Air breathed by love’s guillotined victim
Rattlesnake’s discarded skin
You take from me coconut’s milk
Fuel for foddering the future
And willingness to triumph in battle
I leave your kingdom
Hopeful for patronage
Seeking refuge, perchance amongst palms
Floating on what seems a sliver
In your filthy sea’s apathy
I bide my time, until delivered
Until my tawny encasings unravel

Every last breath
Noted on a bemusing script of flesh
Like a disease
Like an infectious—
Tell me.
If I could do it over
And kiss you whilst your lips quaked
Then grin alongside shy tears
That life you were pulling up,
With my eyes as your sheave to a dim-lit tapestry,
Would it be there yet?
Behind the curtain of magnanimity
Pit orchestra abashed
Forlorn and begotten
Words of heraldry ring through this kingdom
Existing only in my mind
A land beneath the stage
Worlds inside headspace
Turn the critic’s shadowy eye
Backward from this date on newsprint
Soaked in angry, puddled water soot

A cropped haircut, remembrances of time
The best way to reduce cuticles to bone
And forget what dances behind eyelids
Loosed teardrops and wavering dependability
Useless porch light, shameful gas tank
With shadows which count seconds
Stretching over regrowth
A cropped haircut, remembrances of time

Meandering footsteps throughout the Autumn darkness
Toward each sallow recluse of a moment
A simple ending ceaselessly beginning
With each sniff of smoldering residue from the grass
Beyond the harsh horizon of what may as well be eyelashes
And inside- yes, inside
Within the blank fortress
Is a scoundrel of a man, who
Knows not for what he’s come?
To die, dear dalliance; fickle, frolicking foal of the Frühling!
And out the pasture’s gateway
In the Autumn, in the Autumn
Unaware
Above the marshes and the moon-orb’s
Sweet icing on the water
In an eerie sort of night
Forgives the foal a mare’s ear
Silently reprising in delight
Yes, Yes it is the Autumn
And the riders are far from sight

The mornings spent running?
I hardly remember them
The afternoons, asphyxiated?
No
What I see are the absence of clouds
Between the clouds
When all earth is shattered
And the moments of happiness
Consumed
It is momentous
It is stupendous
It is callous, and hardened and reproachable
I hate thee, and thy silver charms
Mrs. So I told you so
Mrs. Goodbye forever
I hate you
And I hate this evening
Whither, whither to whom?
Goodbye

Tell me why it has to be this way. I don’t want to hold on to one side of this conversation and have the other person falling off a ladder. Yeah, down there on the ground. Get up and look at me!
      I wasn’t sleeping, I swear—he said hastily.
Yeah, whatever, buddy. Tell me what you’re doing in my head?
      Repainting. Repainting over the old spots, the worn out spots.
But those are the best spots, the only ones with character. Can you tell me who sent you?
      No sir, I cannot.
Then it is ok. I suppose I’ll have to watch as you put varnish on top of every dream and aspiration I have ever had. Do you know who the girl was that I first loved in the springtime of youth’s blossom?
    It was Ashley, sir.
I believe I did not love her, guest worker. What are you wearing there?
    A pair of overalls, a cape. What’s the difference?
I’m the one who speaks to you first, and don’t be short with me. I don’t like you standing there in an open room with no windows. How is that possible?
    I’m sorry, boss. It’s just, I finished painting over that memory but the paint’s still wet. You loved her very much, I’m afraid.
    Ashley? I never gave her a second thought. Perhaps you are right. I only remember kissing her shyly and asking permission to see her *******. They were the biggest of all.
      Yes sir, I thought so too. She was a sweet girl though.
Sweet? I’ll tell you Mr. Painter; Ashley was the first girl I kissed. I kissed her in my first love’s house, a different girl. I loved Ashley more than that first love and I’m serious. No one can ever make me forget the day we lay on her mother’s sofa in the basement.
      --I’m sorry, sir.
No, say it is impossible. Say you have some form of soap that can make up for your treachery!
     No, I’m only wearing orange overalls and marching on the word from above.
But who sent you!!!? I have to know. I’m crying.
    Justin, it’s ok. It’s Ashley. She said you need to stop crying. She has a family now.
Well, alright. That house. That basement. That unconscious.
    We are worms, sir. Worms, slithering and boundless. Please accept my apologies.
No, it’s quite alright. If you must take every memory of my second love, take my third. And take my fourth and every other woman who crosses my path. It’s not my choice to keep them captive in the imagination of what could have been. You know, it’s been years since I truly cared about someone—
    Since Ashley?
Who’s that?
    Ashley.
Goodbye forever, harlot.
    Sir, you’re being brash.
No, I don’t remember that name and I hold you at an arm’s length in my mind. Please, finish what you’re doing and allow me to rest. What color are you painting the room?
    Green, I’m afraid.
Then so it is. Goodbye, good friend. Goodbye sweet love. Forever, in the spring. Temporal boundaries and endless playlists. Be the verve, be the melody. I love you!
     So it is. Sleep well, sir.

I want to end my life
In search of where to go
The subtle reverberations
Of faint murmurs from fantilion futile flagella
As if to escape their murky repose
Flap, furiously
At once distant, then endlessly so
From the warmth of what it must be
To be free; aye, lifeless
As if their yearning made it so
And our flagellum steered us true
But we're embedded now
There's only two things we can do

Jim has 1 rose
Carl has 2
Sam likes yellow
Carl has 2
Sam buys 1 rose
Carl has 2

Initially, a glistening syringe
Punctured our sullied vestigial
Denoting words withered and wispy
Also being barren, tapped as well as empty
That canister of pithy remembrances
Now outright, unique and unencumbered
Still
The torridly measly, meek and
Reflective dripping silver needle
Forgoes my waking-dream and other alibis
For fluids fleeting from us to
Be lapped up by the sun then bottled in the clouds
“Forever?”
…Yes, because time means nothing…
“So that’s where we are, when all they see is weather”
Goodbye to consciousness

Youth’s bitter, tormented and forsaken moments
Linger on past their welcome
Freezing leaves with their wintrous foibles
Leaving nothing to the imagination
All is as it was back then
And pity is procrastination

Zarathustra told me "be calm"
And gently folded closed my eyes
“There’s no depth to escape from
There’s no eternal prize.
Your wire was our bridge, dear son
Above the raging current of man”
No, wise one, say it isn't so
Will I balance again
Above the glistening, crystal waters?
Please tell me that it doesn’t end!
“Be calm, dear son, you’ve neither
Lost nor won
Your trials will soon be over”
Why do you carry me into the night?
Why am I in the trees?
It’s cold here, friend!
Don’t leave me here afraid, dark and lonely
“Relax, and breathe,” he said to me
“It’s begun to end" and raised me upward slowly
I’m propped atop an arbor burial
Like a dead-egg’s nest ready to die
Before I realize to my horror
As the bi-ped's shadow awkwardly trots off
He was a stranger and my friend,
Regardless, Zarathustra's just another guy!

A feeling of guilt from my past
An inkling that this just won’t last
A look from the mirror
Yesterday’s smell on my clothes
Your smile is mixed in with all those
That I never was
That I’ve always hated
Just ideas

Two ninety-nine in hand can purchase
Straight razor, cream and means
To hide the relics of the human race
Within trimmed hedges and metal gates

Although nature’s Peter Principle
Took man to somewhere new
Various climes and unsteady minds
Allowed life to break through

Then contrary to our instincts
In one morning’s moistened grass
We see reflected what we could be
As foreboding clouds float past

The haggard beast within seeps virtue
From holy soles and weary eyes
With will to vanquish and to end you
In order to avoid this banal strife

His trash-sifting gastronomy
Beyond your view and mine
Contrasts with this frightful luxury
In which we for adventure pine

Though he’s the savage, king of Uruk
Never you, much less me
What he’s seen and what he’s been through
Are what we strive to be

Secretly I wish to be eaten by a dinosaur
But I lock my door, counter-intuitively
If it’s the right dinosaur, she’ll rip my roof off
While I’m listening to Sezen Aksu
Coo Coo Cachoo
Self-referencing echo-chamber of doubts
Dinosaurs, mammoths
I **** science

Weeding out the critics and choosing only yes men

Using up the meantime, awaiting expiration

A coffee table, with no legs

Rotting fruit and cigarettes

Large window, yellow Curtain

Filling in a blue lounge chair with subtle desperation

It won’t work, it’s over

I’ve uttered it before

This final time it’s sincere

I will have no more

A vase, a plant, a canvas

A wall, a couch an attic

A suit made out of plaid

Brown shoes, mustache

White shirt, grey hat

Suitcase

Alone I sit, downtrodden

Oh **** this stupid sight

You were waving goodbye

I walked into the night



I came to a bench

The cold resonated

I gasped through my lips

Asphyxiated



What a calm fright

The moon, by clouds overtaken

An enchanting darkness

Don’t dare to stir me



A million nights I sit here now

Puzzled by  the blank distance

But really, all I’m searching for

Is sitting on this creaky bench

Throw away the ashes

Pull the sutures out

Wipe away the dust from pictures

Start to scream and shout



One last look for this lifetime

One more final glance

Tomorrow’s coming and I’m leaving

I’m not coming back



I took the garbage out today

Nothing to report

Just faded dreams and rotting meat

Not difficult to sort



My heart was in that bag too

My brain falls from my hand

I think it will remain with you

Kick it if you can



It’s like a dream that’s gone away

A picture I can’t sketch

An idea lost in my head

Unsteady hand, lit match



Dry earth seeping noxious gas

Melancholy rays

Shining down from up above

Dispirit me today



The burning wood

Falls to the floor

As trimmers split the cracks

It all blows me away

The way we treat each other is unparalleled

In the animal kingdom

We beat our chests and praise the relics

Our gods

Tell us what has become of the past

That we don’t see how we act

Things are mistaken in thoughtfulness

The moment

Passes us by and we wither to dust

The time is a useless excuse for action

And we wash it

Like a cloth

Plebians
Gentry
Plebians
Slaves
And gentry?
Kapital.
A story
For the ages
Of enlightenment
At bedtime
It can’t be heard in darkness
It can’t be seen in peace
Enclosure farmers
Your ancestors, my fair, European scavengers
We’re victim to this system
Hundreds and hundreds of years
You all drink lattes
I smell the fat burn

We turn our eyes, grasping with our vision
For the horizon
For the edge
Of a sphere
And we’re lying now
Beside the twilight and the motion
Beside the sea
Beside our fear
We couldn’t fathom
What we should believe in
Reciprocal force, reciprocal affection
Just bodies, Just planets
Just planes
Of existence… in our closets
Under boxes
Beneath yearbooks
On your bed
Weathered autumn
Leaves approaching
In this, our youth’s Winter
Exposing brittle branches
Containing remnants of those lives
Easily extracted from the core
Of my eyes
Then swallowed in the high-tide
Of horizon
Bringing us the future
Of life’s Summer
Enlightened in the morning
Past our fears
As we stand here in mutual Spring time
Grasping vision, with our eyes, of the sphere

My high school ethics class taught me so much
For example, the fact it is completely fictional
Reminds me that I shouldn’t care
About the world we inhabit or our gaseous air
Why worry that we’re ****** every single resource?
Why worry about dying breeds of animals or melting polar caps?
Should we bother helping honey bees, or consider our affect on bats?
Would it be ok to take a person’s land then tell them what to grow?
When we took the land from natives, was it generous to tell them where to go?
Have you wondered why people living even now think it is ok to **** like Pol?
Or why some think we’re better off to be completely baffled by the genome?
When do embryos become humans, and what does that mean?
Is it ok to grind up cows in machines, or change their names to “Beef”?
Should we ignore terrorists sincere qualms?
Or refute their “strife” with nuclear bombs?
Are we making the planet a more peaceful place?
What a success my education has been!
Apparently school district officials were just challenging me
Because I would have found a purpose
If I knew there were so many chances for improvement
And I guess I should be thankful
That my dawdled years were not interrupted by concern
That one philosophy teacher might create
Because the way of life they placate
May just be in jeopardy
The day we learn that ignorance is greed

Benedictine Warlords
Hold ceremonies in ballrooms
Tie knots in dying children’s hair
Demarking havoc to succumb
Red X-es on trees
Placating these
Monsters
These scumbags
These treasons
Against a muck they scoured
A much maligned superfluity
Of words, of thoughts
Of feelings
Of devotion
Sympathy
What of it?
You’ve heard my ideas on living
You’ve killed my attempts
Superavero
Veni
Superavero
Now go, before you learn what life is

Words hissing through links of spine
Shake his skull’s base
Plunge into a pool of melancholy
So vacuous and contemptible
That’s been
Flooded by nihilism and avarice
Her dead notion gestating
Open case indefinitely
You chose this,
Sinking
In my shallow waters
Displacing fondness
Evaporating on the banks
In serotonin’s stolid drought
Crinkled blueprints for what might have been
Were trembling lips adverse to apathy
And chances had been taken

The world created for us is sick.
It’s decaying.
Wounds, with no scab forming
And we’re expected, without questioning
To live on in such a world
To allow such a world to exist
But it’s infuriating
And it torments the hearts of men
Tearing mother from child
Raising us on malevolence
Scurrying through the fields
Until the hunters carry us away
And every last vestige of shelter
Is plucked from the ground
Incinerated, burned in factories
To make cardboard boxes
That will be filled with promises
Of low cholesterol
For the masses
That glean over the details
Unaware that hope is lost
And that our species is dying
Hurriedly moving from one space
To another
Without realizing their fright
Without looking at the box
That they helped produce
By failing to protect
Their shelter
A world, ending

Run with this cauldron, ladle out soup
To the soldiers of our land
In the field of battle, lay out a cloth
And let them stretch their bloodied limbs as they eat
Their minds are weary, untrusting
Each spoonful less viscous than its predecessor
A succession of leaders repeated in their heads
Every dead soldier, a reason for abdication
The people hate the war they’ve started
The fools!
No matter how much soup I take to them
No matter how watery the broth
Each day they watch me leave the front
Each day I walk alone back to base
And munitions are airlifted daily

Holding my arms around my knees I gaze out the window toward a horizon interrupted by buildings
I look out at them, as they face me in an un-assuming posture, ambivalent to my existence
On either side are people, scurrying in the glimmering afternoon sunlight. They gather possessions to hide in their closets. And every parcel is an amount of pollution. What if there were fewer of us? Unnecessary ones, incompetent ones.
I suppose there’d be fewer yard sales

You won’t believe it
We were together
If only in my mind
And it led me to try things
I never thought of
It’s exciting, at the start
But then I turned and you were gone
I fell on the floor!
Afraid to go on
And I backtracked, to a non-existent circumstance
When we were together
I jogged in the summer heat
Gravel crackled under my shoes
But I felt it through the soles
And the sun shone on us both
It won’t do that again
Can you believe it?

It was the best I’ve seen
They said about me
And my parents were happy
I don’t know why that matters
I wasn’t, but I was proud
And there’s a difference
Pride’s something you can wrap up in
Happiness is a window display
Success was mine, and nothing could change that
We won, because of me
And I’m a winner
Today it’s in the papers
But that’s the last time it was
Because I stopped trying
Maybe if I wanted to
I could lay one down again
Then I’d jump
And ****** my arms
I look to left field and my smile crosses space and time

My birth’s eve is enigmatic
A day I shan’t relive
Tugging on my piety
As the light flooded my eyes
Both have witnessed heave and **
Finesse and outright folly
As I stumbled throughout life’s corridors
Prodding walls with eager palms
I screamed out at perceived darkness
Then fell once more unabashed
This time further than before
Through the stony grasp of destiny
Into an incubation tub
Turning anxiously to and fro
My pupils dilate once more
As I part my lids, take light in
I reach to touch, to understand
And feel a plastic wall
But I dare not wonder where I sit
For my heart is renewed innocent
I wish to stay wrapped in this cloth
Until my body is dispossessed
Deteriorating in time and space
But my soul would be perplexed

Pick them out
Like you’re picking a lock
And throw away the key
Once you’re inside
My brain, throbbing, uncertain
Panicked a bit
Tossing and turning
Before I walk to the fridge
Open it up, touch my eyes
Pick them out
Out of that zip-lock
They’re fresh, but not able
To see the light in your smile
Or the venom dripping off your canines
Why, dear, do you fail to announce yourself?
It’s not polite to lurk about so
In my mind, like a waterbed
You float beside me, liquid gushing
Places between us
You can’t have me forever
I’m meant for just now
Be happy with that or
Or, Or, Or,
You can just take my trash out with you
To the DMV or wherever you’re driving
You’re legal and willing
So pull to the curb when I scream blue and red
Show me credentials and I’ll let you flee
Go on then

Holding up a mirror to tomorrow
I see me just standing there
I’m not afraid of catching your eye
You’re clearly well aware

Life’s always changing, mutating
The years exhale and die
Waiting below falling bodies
Why stay here? Why?

Sophisticated and calculating
The risk to reward’s too great
If you feel differently
It sadly is too late

We hardly touched tenderly
Warding off shame
You never took me seriously
But stole my spring rain

Grass, clouds and sun-baked sky
Pervade tenements of my mind
Doused with gasoline
My children’s children striking rocks


And it’s suddenly Winter again
Grass hidden, clouds dreary, sky gray
I’d starve before I let you dig me out
I’d let you freeze in your sleep

All bundled in a corner
Away from light and love and time
Forgotten in our stories
Surrounded by my mind

Terrible illness
Anxious, irrational fear
Putrid malignance
Lack of warmth, sterile air
Earth nourishes her daughters

Periodically I hide myself from the world
Chastising them
Punishing them with my absence
My opinions are like bricks before the throwing
With little compromise, I roll my eyes
Hating them
The ones oblivious
Diesel burners, peaceniks, consumers
Sitting contradictions
Simmering catastrophes, an embodiment of what they’re making me
Powerless, with no resort
My impression on this society will be forever minimal
And I bite my tongue with every syllable
I type
Holding judgment, holding on
To the world I was promised
The world I was conditioned for
A world with angels, untouched by violence, corruption or greed
A world we defiled, without animals
A world achieved
Where grass is preserved in museums
In compartments behind glass
I see my part in the reflection, I hate myself more
My impression of this society will be forever minimal