I’d like to hold my head beneath the water of youth
Drown myself as the chloranic waves washed over
Burning my throat
Tingling
Happiness, and the effervescent smell of sunscreen
Luscious, half forgotten years
Water of innocence
Water of peace
Cleansing me with its toxic malnourishment
Of hope, forgiveness
Love
Trifling and deliberate
Half forgotten, half begotten
Aimless
Timeless
Harlequin sunshine

Malicious compliance
Resting your head
To the tune of children’s songs
You waiver on the precipice
Of eternity and present
But we each know you’re secure
With the daftness of scavengers
And grace of a statesman
You fool me again
Aim for my heart, smile
Fire
And fall off

Du warst meine kleine Aufklaerung
Obwohl ich noch lange nicht erwacht bleibe
Ohne dich fuehle ich die Waende
Und dreh mich den Kopf im Kreis
Bevor dich war der Horizont leer
Jetzt *******er unfassbar, so wie die Erinnerung an dir
Und alles ist ok so, weil man sehnt immer nach
Unmoegliches
Unmoegliches bist du
Ich werde immer besessen davon
Besessen von dir


[You were my small Enlightenment
Although I long since remain unawakened
Without you I feel the walls
And turn my head in a circle
Before you was the horizon empty
Now it appears intangible, like the memory of you
And everything is ok this way, because one always longs for the impossible
You are the impossible
With which I will always be obsessed
Obsessed with you]

These words aren’t anything
But blood, sweat, tears
Are closer to the facts
Each passing face and fading day
Bear down upon my soul
Sneering, reaffirming my mistakes
I laugh along, unwittingly
As laughter seeps from pores
And tear glands, and veins
Each fleeting moment
And memory
Bearing down upon my soul
As I smile
Because words don’t mean anything
And our bodies aren’t silent
With craters and harmony
We are celestial

There is a certain art in relinquishing your spirit to emotions quelling from the breast
Stumbling haphazardly through the hallways of an academy surreptitiously pristine
Encountering locked doors, painted walls, lowered eyes and agony
The menial labor of a janitor picking up after the crowd has released every last yelp
And the pain
Of a boy stooped in an empty corner
Old enough to be a man
Helpless as an infant
Too poor to enter, too meek to escape
Trapped in the corridor between sunny landscapes and dimmed memories
Struggling to hoist his frame up from its stupor
Afraid it may just as well falter once restored
And hoping someone may notice
There is a certain art in relinquishing your spirit to emotions quelling from the breast
Sincerity and compassion need not be amongst them
But, just as breath escapes, so do tears
Splashing from the drowning pool in which the soul thrashes
Bending, grabbing and tossing
Discard,
Discard
Stoop
Obtain
Discard
Each day a variation of the past
Unique in subtle differences imperceivable to visitors
You’ve seen the man, the child, the infant
Tear down the fourth wall
Walk in his corridor
I implore you to bend, grab and discard
Your thoughts of superiority
Take your mud stains and apathetic steps
Carry your able body to a place more receptive
More deserving
Less reflective
And gleaming
Remember the path I made for you in my corridor
It mirrors your face, ambivalent

I’m throwing my voice throughout a corridor
With no one on the other end
A space empty and dark filled with my radiance and purpose
I’m here to entertain, my friends
I’m here to guide the tour
Each doorway leads to a lecture hall, a subject to purvey
Each window out is bricked and barred
With damaged curtains, worn by air
Dusty books and creaking floors
No sign you were here
Hourglass and broken microscopes
Scattered all around
Competition from the past
Tests the finest pupil’s skill
Unclear who will succeed

If I was forced by the great hand of God
To hold up my face to the heat of the sun
I’d melt away and leave the pain behind
From that day on I’d bump into everything
I’d see the world for what it was beneath the light
I’d feel the warmth of a stranger’s voice
I’d touch a world that can’t be measured
By lines, and colors, and rays from space
Aren’t I there now?
Things we don’t recognize control us
Things we knock down are empowering
If we’d hold our eyes shut for a minute and listened
If we’d try to feel our way around
We’d see, all of existence is vibrating wildly

The shadows of youth drape my body
As the sun encompasses a tree
Beneath the leaves and scratchy bark
Water flows through veins
Each drip of sunlight
Passing through
To reach the ground below
Falls from my skin
And each inch of earth’s rotation
Goes unnoticed

Being beloved must be pleasant
Depended upon yet carefree
What it must be like to deliver
Subtle nods, vague affirmations
Lacking regard of another’s interest
Seeing into you, from a skewed angle
Hoping to get recognition
While ostensibly unaware
Of the microbial ambivalence
Pervading the room from your eyes
Each morsel shared ‘twixt each
Whether intimate or scrupulous
Swept away with a shrug and a call
From a waiter and an ex
Like an invitation to despair

Finding peace in this life
Takes effort and strain
Feelings of hopelessness
Lead to the place
That it is kept
In a clearing, beneath the sky
Far away from the city
The gravestones
The gravel’s edge
Left behind
And the sun warms your skin
As the rain clouds gather
Dust swirling in anticipation
Plugging your nose
Despite the lovely smell
Your lungs deflate
Reconciled
That is peace

The dialectic is wisdom
Thesis
Synthesis
Nothing
And Believe
Every idea you’ve written
Until the pages are burnt
Because then you’ll know
It was false
It was isolated
Incomplete
The fire licking each morsel
Of knowledge
Makes up wisdom
As our bodies
Do
And time
Does
Hold this word on your tongue
And hear
Om

That which would not follow you into the night
Will not be there in the morning
That which will not be there in the morning
Will be hard to find in the afternoon
And when you’re searching before the sun goes down
You’ll stumble on a log
You’ll trip and fall into a marshy wetland
And you’ll be wet
You’ll be consumed by nature
Taken into her heart
Ripped into shreds
You’ll miss her, but she won’t even think of you
You’re a part of her in the same way that her breath is
Each time she expels you
You return to her
So why should she worry?
You’re in her hands now
And she can squeeze you if she wants to
When you hold your breath
Where does it lead?
Where are your feet taking you?

And we see when we were younger lying in the grass below
The hills were high and we were under the heavens which glowed
I saw the clouds white and silver passing above our heads
I looked you in the eyes and you stuttered where do we go next
We took a step holding hands
You released mine, I looked away
You embarrassed me in front of my friends, I still remember it today
You chased me crying through the ally
I laughed at you aloud, I’m sorry that it ever came to that
I wasn’t ever proud of how I treated you that night
But I asked you for forgiveness, we made up and we kissed
You gave me birthday presents
I think it’s funny how it goes, how life fades away
Those times were o so long ago, but I think of them today
And I see that you’ve made friends, you’ve moved on
I shouldn’t even think of you
It’s pathetic really that I’m talking to the ghost inside my head
Those days were sunny, my car was warm
We rolled down the windows, still we sweat
I lifted hair off of your cheek, I kissed you
It was tender it was sweet, my fingers were inside of you
I grabbed your bosoms I held them, I licked each ******
And I pressed myself against you
Can you forget these days the way I do?
Can you forget these days and yet have them inside of you?

They say once you crawl you’ll walk
You won’t stop moving forward
But if you sprain your wrists enough
You’ll soon learn to hold back
And doubt yourself and bite your nails
And sweat when others stare
You soon forget the ground you’re on
Because it wasn’t ever there
You shave your head you pluck your brow
You dance with eyes toward floor
Searching for the place you stood
A mere five years before
Swimming toward the light, this
Fishbowl’s water’s stale
Growing anxious in the night
As your skin slowly grows pale
But the moon hides the sun in the night
So you’re exactly wrong you see
Each moment in time passes us by
If only we would watch
And listen

Dying to come here from the opposite direction
Moving away from this place
They pushed their possessions in covered small wagons
With hands chafed and dry
No one ever thought they’d make it
When they started dying here
No one ever though they’d make it
But look they’re there
They have built their sanctuary
They have completed their mission
They’ve gone to the top of the mountain
And realized their vision
So many of them died
So many of them lived
So many born each day
So many

Running down the slopes of life’s valley
Toward demise, weary Autumn
From upon the slopes of Spring
Visible are tulips
Bright, cruel wistful sky
Baking stony gravel pathways
Leading between the fields
In my father’s acres
Becomes Summer
As Winter fades to memory, each blinding moment
Escapes my eyes in fugue
Relinquished
Replaced
By pastel eggs and rebirth
Torrid are the seconds
The minutes that bind us
But as one we struggle for release

Not only he breathes
Millions do, and want to stop
Wishing co2 would fill each lung
Swallowing poison, inhaling fumes
Bringing cords into water
****** relics in piles
Belts cling to ceiling beams
Feelings etched into wrists, blown away and thrown
Before traffic from overpasses
Right now
He chose pills, antibiotics
They tried to pump it out of him
Pressing down his chest
They want to make him one of them
Beep… Beep…
Every limb restrained
September fourth, 9:42
Pronounced alive

Staggering through streets lined by maples
Filled hours prior with revelers
Now mostly barren, save for one man
A sidewalk, and me
Weathered and wearing his shelter
Shoes unmistakably fastened and striding
As his meek voice timidly prattled
I slurred "what the hell are you doing?"
Patting him down before he got in my car
We drove to his church's mission
50 years old
He's from St. Louie, saw his sister a ways back
Dead mother, spectrous father
Six foot 140
Likes it here

Minutes, seconds and hours
Fleeting and innocent
Conveniently avoiding our grasp
They beckon to us
Separate us from our holdings
Declare war on our values
Alluring, provocative
Raising our pleasure
By supplying a deadline
A moment of finality
A time of reckoning
Reasoning
True love
Divided by passion

Tell me of a day without struggle, a day without pain
If there be such a day, let it remain a secret to no man
Let it fill our ears and tremble in our own throats
For such a day is a gift from the universe
Bequeathed upon the masses
An approximated apology, focused on redeeming malice
The brightly shining sun would focus its strength on its object
Taking aim at his soul, meaning to warm it, looking to extract it
Taking from him all that was harmful from tarrying seconds
Replacing cruelty and hatred with thoughts that resemble forgiveness
But in themselves they are not forgiveness
Forgiveness, being but a specter, usurped by memories grown grainy
Forgiveness is so sallow and downtrodden, unconvincing
No, the thoughts projected by the early year’s sun are not so
They are empty of reminisces, void of meaning
Shining and new, redemptive and rejuvenating
Yet we approach them with a quiver of arrows fastened from our past
Expending ourselves in fighting its gaze and retreating to our caves
Where our memories are sheltered
To ponder what it means that this intruder has returned
Stroking the identities it tried to quell and weeping until overtaken by slumber
If ever there has been a day without pain and without struggle
Verily, the night which followed has it cast asunder

Spectrous aberrations of youth
Surround him, embrace him
Leaving him disoriented, dismayed
Amidst sultry belongings
He’s tethered to that pole of vicissitude
Draped by disfavor
Postmarked Valhalla
Addressed to Folkvangr
Teased by irreverent lovers
In pursuit of contentment
His chronicles restart
In an unpublished testament
Bound by leather, cows unfettered
One lifeless body stationary
Crimson streams part chalk-dry lips
As love’s guillotined victim drips
His future’s fortune forsaken
Willingness to triumph in battle
Leaks from this dimension
With each fluxing discharge
Of her stream’s outgoing apathy
And his fluid permeates alluvium
In streambeds near life’s summit

******* crazy man, I hear you
It’s sad to think about it
What opportunities were available back then!
Insanity to forego the pleasures of flesh
Such reason is often demanded by choices
But to say what is better is not to question
Our existence
And why we’re here
Can’t be determined
As everything surrounding us quickly decays
And leaves in its stead a flaccid, moist eminence
Straight from the plane beyond
More despicable than death
And intolerable under pleasant conditions
Which never exist
For the world’s forsaken
And we’ve killed our king
Before he could ward off our enemies

Beyond the distance of
Your scent
Too meek to glimpse your eyes
I watched your wrists tremble
As you wrestled Gaia
As you laughed
And danced
Animating me by mere proximity
My legs thrashing in the water
My mind gasping for air
I was submerged
As the sheath of beauty, the essence of ambivalence
Embraced me with cunning

Scenery contains emotions
Mostly anxiety
Surroundings enclose me
As I speed through them
Sitting sideways, on a train
My bag’s somewhere near me
And you don’t care what’s in there
Which is ok, there’s nothing for you
But I grin, thinking of how strange that is
And everything’s better now
I’m not coming to visit

I’m stumbling slowly through this life
Each step is overwhelming
Every time I put one foot on the ground
The other is pulling away from it
Isn’t this walking?
In a way, I suppose
But it’s not at all relaxing, as walking should be
I rarely manage to notice the breeze on my cheek
Constantly I plunge into the depths of evening
Only to emerge dry and unscathed in the morning sun
Every sorrow and worry that encompasses me
Vanishes, when I turn my attention away
And I fail to notice
That I’ve only failed to notice
As they all devour my flesh
Each anxiety writhing and coursing through my veins
It’s terrible, but my memory is gone so soon
Then again it happens
And I’m vexed
But it passes
Again and again
Every day, tormenting
Every night, strife
And I fear the morning, for it brings the cycle’s renewal
Each birth, a sentence
Each breath, an exhalation of animosity
Although I can’t calculate the fear
It rages un-quantified
And I can’t measure the distrust
But my hands shake
I tear the sheets off my bed in terror from my sleep
And the sweat I bathe in is pitiful

Every winter since I was just a boy the noon sun shone upon my bedroom window
As I turned my head away from the wall I noticed that light shone upon the entryway to my bedroom
The red hue cast across the carpet by my curtains fell into the crevices beside my bed
Radiation of day’s star was refracted by my frame
And night time had been vanquished
When each spring’s blossom erupted from beneath the hardened surface
Every breath welled from my lungs into the external world of the elements
Then it was replaced by the invitation to partake
In smells of sweet bread, flowing tears
Girls in dresses dancing, boys aloof
Schemed beyond the pasture fences
Catastrophes were addressed if need be
By silence
By calm
By flowing breezes and gentle consolation
By the wonder and force of spring
Triumphing over winter

Words can be unsaid with contradictions
Actions dismantled by apathy
Torture is a weapon of the timid
****** is a thought that breathes

I held a man’s life in my hand
I looked him in the eyes
I spat on his face and I said
“Stop your god ****** lies”

Pity can’t describe the tone
And black is too bright
A colorless voice filled the room
Smoke circles the dry air

“Thing’s have been done for a reason, commandant,”
Orders and protocol of course,
“People have died by your words, commandant,”
His voice was tired and terse

“Battlefields are full of life, General.
Trees and shrubs and grass.
Once we drive into the city
Asphalt fills the path.
It’s concrete and it’s steel.
It’s muddy bricks and dirt.
Beneath the street lie fault lines
Of lust and greed and hurt.
We can’t abandon principle.
We can’t behave as sheep.
We must **** out all the wolves
And help protect the herd.
We must feed their minds with despair
And wet their mouths with vengeance.”

I received the order.
Pulled the string taut.
No more breathing.
No sound came out.

We left the bag on his head
And dug a shallow grave
We threw his body in the hole
Dropping dirt on top
“Here lies a victim of design,
A person with a name.
He had no reason for which to die.
We killed him just the same.”

They wiped sweat off of their brows
And turned to walk away
The sun shone down upon them all
But I turned the other way

I looked down at the grave below
Then above as if to pray
I cupped my face with my hands
It was a shade darker than grey

No, we shall never live on
Thus, we are not crazy
Posthumously stated
Although, not so lately

Words quoted by those
Who ignore the past
Lines from prose
Which ignore final acts

“It’s bombardment
Contamination
Shallow, impromptu
Callous and sad”
So dismayed
Are the critics
At what they can’t have

Without a spotlight on them
Without a solemn reprisal
They tediously sip coffee
And watch in denial

“It will never work, it just mustn’t”
“It can’t be done, for it wasn’t”
Oh, I’m tired of these children
Their fathers and moms
I’m sick of this museum
Now then, let’s all carry on

Tireless hours fleeting away with more vigor now than before
Tedium, wallowing helplessly, while I use my pick and keep digging
I’m digging to find the hidden agenda, the reason for me to survive
I’m digging to bury my past incarnation, I’m digging to conceal my life
My actions don’t follow me, they’ve blocked off the exit from the mine
And the shafts that hold the lumbering earth at bay seem indifferent
My self is the true menace
It despises my flesh and recants my existence
It lunges at me in the darkness, striking at me with its claws
My eyes glow ice blue in the reflection when I see him
And I tepidly back into the wall
As clods first break off and larger chunks follow
The grey skin of my self shimmers and the beast broadens its shoulders
He pounces as the ground crashes in all around us
My death is his beginning

Battered, abused, some say
Forgotten, if e’er discovered
Alone, a knot of fleshy skin
Together, lips of lovers

Days slowly become years as we wander further
Down the path toward the water
The banks engulf us and carry us into
The shallow depths
We cannot know what is below the surface until
We plunge our fingers into the sand and watch the sand
Drift slowly downstream
Life in this way carries on to the next place of settlement
To the next area of contentment
Where the soul will linger inside the banks and
Carry one more body into the water
Where it will discover the sand and it will
Plunge its fingers into the deep

The moments are passing me by now
In the same fashion a hummingbird passes each flower
Until it reaches the one with the sweetest nectar
I am the flower, the days are the hummingbirds
I cannot stop time anymore
Than the clouds can cease to collect above our heads
Then downpour upon us
It is in this way that life is beyond our reach
Because just as the clouds appear solid
So too do our lives appear solid
So too does it seem that we can grasp something
That is innately us although
It is always beyond our reach

It’s reassuring when the birds chirp
Until I realize I’m still awake
And I mourn my unrealized dreams
As I rub the stubble on my neck
Tremendous, green valleys
Flash in my mind
Puffy clouds circle and cast shadows
Raining
On my head
As I shake it
It reminds me of you
Where have the birds gone?