The all seeing iris imperial city
The swiftest of stylus this side of the ‘sippi
The trippiest spittin’ Promethean hippy
Conspiracy theorist of eeriest verse
The despotic hypnotic black flag bearin’ Hearst
Still immersing myself in a poverty trap
As I grapple with lack of fact check cashing crap
Cryogenically frozen emotion vibes flowin’
From out my funk bunker boombox
Overthrowin’
Your global dominion opinion with ease
Shootin’ breezes with Tirailleurs Senegalese
I’m the kid wicked picket sign paintin’ Tom Sawyer
The ill eagle Taino privilege enjoyer
Still swoopin’ in mean on each **** I make clean
Pick the bones dry of serpentine oil green dreams
Then I bury what’s left of your money machines
With the pharaohs of old’s latest pyramid schemes

Am I looking for love in Alderaan places?
Most of my SerenityXEnterprise ship jokes go over her head.
I feel like a John Cusack boombox blaring out nineties-age spaces.
Like a comedy no one's heard of, I'm Better Off Dead
without the love I'm not sure that I can find because then is it
really possible to find The One like Neo? (Haha. Get it?)
Like (p+l)(a+n)=pa+pn+la+ln, (Okay, Deep Breath) the universe is trying
so hard to foil my love PLAN. (That one was ******, but the best I can present)
I know you'll be saying "I told you so" when
I realize the narrow parameters of my search are a little naive,
but don't say I'm the Average because that's just Mean!
My love is like Ash Ketchum; I need it to be the very best.
My love is like Ariel; If I leave you I wanna know I'll be mist!
I just needed to pull a Sasha Grey and get it off (on) my chest,
I've already got my music, rhymes, and make-up. Give me the Kiss.

We are young!
We are strong!
Lungs to the heavens
as our hearts sing along!
We run as thousands
but we stand as one!
Souls in the heavens
with eyes on the gun, fun!
Pound our feet in the ground,
rumblin' rhythmic footsteps
move mountains with its sound!
Our words heat the air
as the ice cracks loud!
Their shiver is shared;
Let them stare, we don't care
Melt into the crowd,
and we still stand out!
Individual
Indivisible
Indescribable
Indefensible
Yet still feasible to stay reasonable
No treason is seasonal
No wall is that pliable
Withstand hate with strength undeniable
Vicious, and still likable
Quick to bite; to heal a wound
Get hurt, get chewed
Get back up, Get out soon
And we stand up in rythum
And get back in tune
Singing a song, to sing along
Where we all belong,
Where none is wrong
Mass hysteria with a flex of a muscle
Show them all just how strong
Long in the tooth
or still young
You too can have youth
melt in the crowd, stand your ground
or get swallowed up by the swiftness of our sound

When you think of love
you think of butterflies and flowers
Prince Charming and towers
happiness in abundance.
You think of kisses and hugs
Aladdin and rugs
a sort of sixth sense.

You think of daydreaming, hearts sinking
no, not sinking, skipping.
Red crayons and smiles
Long stares into each others eyes
Carnival rides
You think of it being written in the sky
and a sweet apple pie

We see it as sea side picnics
Holding hands
Watching cheesy chick flicks all night long.
Guys riding on lawn mowers
holding up a boombox, blaring phil collins.
We see walks on the beach
shoreline just reaching our feet.

When I think of love
I think of awkward moments.
I think of my father as he left my mother
See, I want someone more than just a lover.

When I think of love
I think of a stomachache
my last heartbreak
and band-aids to hide the pain.
I think of his hands in mine
our thoughts intertwined
I see the hurt in your eyes
as I told you goodbye
Our last kiss in the summer rain.

I think of love
as a societal excuse
A word said too much, too often
Just a word
Nothing more than caution.

When I think of love
I see a dog’s loyalty to his owner
and the owner showing him affection.
A sunset, a beautiful sky
The way the ocean shows its reflection

When I think of love
I think of the heart’s sight.
Love is light.
Love is Agape-
God’s grace and mercy poured on top of me
the day Jesus died on the cross.
I think of no hope lost.

When I think of love
I think of Him
I think of how.
Love is here
Love is now.

These airwaves keep speaking, enveloping my consciousness, stripping all fears and uncertainties. These are the days I strive for. The calming rhythm of life exposing itself without a care. The castaways all run to find freedom, and I run to find truth. Each and every ticking of the clock brings me closer to realization that there really is no clock. The clock is just an object, the ticking is just a sound, and time only exists because I think about it. I give the clock this amazing power to control what I do. But the clock doesn’t know that I’m conspiring against him. He watches and ticks away his seconds expecting me to act cordially towards his numerical speeches about the future. 3:45 PM and soon to change. We face this monster everyday. We watch and watch and watch, just expecting him to slow down or speed up or even stop. He has no feeling for human integrity, he just ticks and ticks until the batteries run down. Or I take the batteries out, he no longer ticks. His hands are stuck in the grime of my human intellect. And he just watches. Keystroke after keystroke, not saying a word. Good, I smile. I’ve stopped you.













"We sit and ponder on future events, not knowing, just theorizing everything. Hoping we get it right. Universal ideas become stretched into a cup of string. And lights undo themselves backwards into eternity."

-W.M. Mills

My house will be filled with the things that I love;
Goldfish, dandelions,
Green sofas, Greek mythology,
Books of psychology.
Books. Lots of books with lots of words.
Multiple copies of the really good books too.
All stacked to the ceiling
on bookshelves adequate to
The height of the house
All equivalent to
My love of the place I’ll call home.
A sock monkey here or there,
pillows and throw blankets.
Pictures of Lake Louise, and a souvenir
If I’m ever lucky enough to go there.
I will print poetry, frame it, put it on my walls.
My walls will be yellow gray and blue,
I will have a boombox with speakers that go BOOM
(but at night it will sing me to sleep
with many sweet lullabies).
And it’s music will fade to the sound of voices
Voices of people I love and admire
Who can walk through the door,
of the place I aspire
To make my own,
To share and not waste
With the precious presence of others
And their ideas
And hopes and dreams
So if you aren't a thing I love,
You have to leave.
I’ll probably have a lot of lamps too.

I slap wax on a hand that’s had its share of crinkles and callouses
as I look in the mirror to mold myself into something out of a GQ:
Man of the Year magazine. I look at my watch and its 8:42. I look
back to the mirror and see something that is not the caliber of a
man but more of a frightened boy buckling at the knees and
shaking at the wrists. The walls behind me start to liquefy and
soon dissolve while the florescent bathroom lights flicker in and
out of existence. I rub my eyes as I manage to hear knocking at
the door over the boombox playing on my dresser drawer. But I
can’t seem to move away from this boy I see right in front of me,
a boy who’s never done anything like this before.


I turn my head to look over and it’s her. Her name is Brittney and
she is the first and only love of my life, though she may not know
it yet. The rainbow colored lights are flashing in her direction to
the sound of the booming bass. I take a look down at my sprinkler
head hand. It has begun to melt into hers, molding ten fingers into
one fiery fist protesting against all the cold voices that tell me, "I
can’t do this." It is a time of swing sets and swing dancing while
long before empty bottles and bar romancing.


She say’s, “It’s getting pretty hot in here” and I say “A wise person
once told me to ‘take off all your clothes’ when that happens”. She
smiles at me and I look away because I’m scared she’s going to look
directly in my soul and figure me all out like, “Where was the fun
in that?” My window of opportunity only opens when something
else reaches in and grabs her attention by the hair. Only then can I
be the mortal to ever look into the face of a goddess whose head is
just preoccupied. The Dj masterfully is mixing music from a bland
radio driven generation to create the perfect stage for an offbeat New
York teenager who is slowly finding out that he has just as much
rhythm as he has shame.


I get a call on my cricket phone from a best friend who couldn’t
make it that night, as if to say he was telling me to grow wings of
my own. I reject the call needless to say and catch that it’s 8:42 and
in that moment I hear someone say, “Baby you’re all that I want.”
I look to Brittney and say, “I don’t know how to slow dance.” She
pulls me to the floor and fastens my hands to her hips as we start to
glide gently from side to side and I hear that same voice resonating,
“I’m finding it hard to believe, we’re in heaven”.


Born as a natural leader though grew up as a follower, I begin to
dig up my roots so we can float to a place where no other human
can find us. A step to left and then to the right as I carry her head
over my shoulder with clouds tickling our toes with every step of the
way. Prickling chills from being up so high make their way
kneading down my spine. A white light flickers behind her head and
I seriously ask myself, “Could I be dead?” Naked bodies chest to
chest and cheek to cheek as two flames becoming one with
heartbeats in sync; a heart that has never beaten the same because
this song never truly ended.


That night marked the largest recorded meteor to ever impact the
world since the extinction of the dinosaurs. I burrowed this lady
closely in newfound wings as we fell from clouds beyond the
atmosphere smashing us back into dancing shoes, rattling the
footing of our tomorrows today and shaking the foundation of
where we now stand. The walls behind her begin to liquefy and
soon dissolve. I look to the only window in this building and catch
a reflection of myself in it, though I do not find the same boy I
once saw before. I see a man with purpose, a man without fear; I
see a man who would take on the world if the challenge arose,
and a man who had finally earned the right to say, “I’m free.” I
leave her hips to rub my eyes in clarity and as my pupils begin to
focus I make out florescent lights that keep flickering in and out
of what appears to be my bathroom mirror. I hear knocking on
my door faintly over the boombox playing on my dresser drawer
while I look down at my watch to see that it is 8:42. I take one last
look in the mirror and I remind myself that there truly is no better
time than now.

Somewhere on the moon last night, Neil Armstrong came back to life and was standing in the middle of the Sea of Tranquility in complete darkness.  His frail, decaying hands that were no doubt filled with formaldehyde, held a rather large and sure-to-be extremely heavy boombox that loomed up and over his head, blasting “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on repeat.  He said that it crossed his mind more than once to replace the six faded white American Flags with the stereo, but ultimately decided against it.


In mythology, bleeding is considered to be a feminine attribute:  
                                     “I bleed, therefore I am.” 
(But this is also the downfall of a version of feminism that is not intersecular.)  ((Your lunar cycle does not necessarily need to function in order to be considered a woman.))  (((I am not sure of which, if any, version of feminism Neil Armstrong subscribed to.)))

                                                ­              ­                            When a woman is bleeding, they say that she is at the height of her power; she is aligned with the tides and the cosmos.  She is celestial.  Blood is sacred,
eternal—the very essence of our beings—
                                                ­        ­      ­             but if the Blood Moon was
                                                ­                  really just the moon on her period,
what could she do last night she could do at no other point in her life?  
Where was her power?  She was isolated,
                                                                ­              forgotten by the sun,
                                           hidden away inside the umbra of the earth.  

(Which is the part where the masculine power of the sun rejected the most important feminine attribute of the moon.)


Michael Collins flew solo around the moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin played with dust and rocks.  For 48 minutes he was completely alone, radio silenced behind the shadow, and he thought about death and being the last man standing from Apollo 11.


Inside Neil Armstrong’s speakers, Bonnie Tyler was crooning that
                      “your love is like a shadow on me all of the time,”
and I have not yet decided if this is                      
                                                                ­       good      or      bad.  
Instead, I am wondering if Buzz Aldrin feels sore for
eternally being second best?  Or if he still thinks that the view from the
moon is still one of “magnificent desolation?”  And
does he feel this way about all three of his ex-wives?  
Do they know that the moon was his first love?


We name missions to the moon, to
Luna’s surface, to Diana’s territory, after a
Greek and Roman god of the sun, when
                                                            ­          wolves howl to the goddess
                                                         ­                              instead.

Where buses still elapse with Time
Down straight Dame Street
The Trees are satellites that allow Children to look up
and let the pavement breath.

Earthen Columns that gate the Boombox Clubhouse tint
Flanked by the Yeoman Guards of Hollister
but forget to pay the same compliment
outside of American Apparel
Where Teenagers dream out fantasies
of lamp-lit, flash-shot
worship-worthy objectification
in a converted loft in the real New York
Their headphones spring streams of bright optimism
as they cradle knitted knee-high socks.

Take the curve round Trinity College
and laugh past the rumours
that it may soon float on Dow Jones
and dodge past the charity advertisers
Strutting over campbags of sleeping homeless
to Lemon Cafe for an overpriced Mocha
Which regardless deflates the sheen-covered hollowness
of green-comfy Starbucks

and learn the subtleties of speaking lightly
to dark-jaceketed Blonde girls
Whose eyes seem to sparkle "Yes, we have sipped
on Veuve Clicquot at reserved tables on Graduation nights
at Cafe En Seine"
-"Where Oscar Wilde might have drank"
- "..Had he been alive."

Then speculate on the best Festivals and whose
Films and Books are over-hyped and under-appreciated
and the after-College Gossip on who broke-up or stayed together
or who hooked up even though they shouldn't have
or regretted it

and who's doing a paid internship and who's moving abroad

and afterwards charmingly tease their superficial attitudes
as meanwhile they secretly take photos
to upload on Instagram
and later you'll fake-admonish them
for how they did this behind your back
while you were staring into the lake
in St. Stephen's Green.

When the moon no longer glazed the water
and had receded its contrast to the farthest grass
and you decide to take the last bus home.

Throughout
Caution Glints The Vowels
and Brands them too.

I’m thinking of the faded checkered pattern that has been
smoothed away by time on the dark cloth seats of a Nissan Pathfinder
                                          driving down Ryan Road on a hot day in June.
My mother, in the front seat, singing along to a Spice Girls cassette.  

I’m thinking: red, plastic, crab-shaped sandbox and
                                      McDonald’s Happy Meal toys.  
I’m thinking: light princess pink, seafoam green, and robin’s egg blue.  
I’m thinking of a framed cheetah cross stitch, hanging on the wall of what
                                      used to be our bedroom at my grandparent’s house.
I’m thinking: Barbie doll houses and Hot Wheels and a cul-de-sac at
                                                                ­                     the end of the street.  

The sweet smell of cigar smoke.  The ice cold splash of the garden hose.  The pop of a bubble.  The sting of soap in the eye.  Dreams by The Cranberries.  As Long as You Love Me by The Backstreet Boys.  A HelloKitty boombox slowly spitting out vapor when the deck builders hit a power line while digging.  The deer in the backyard looking for corn.  The faded wood of a playset that was never really played on.

My father: sitting alone on a splintered bench by the firepit at the edge of the woods, empty beer cans at his feet, chain smoking cigarettes, and humming along to a song that is stuck—forever stuck—on the tip of my tongue.
I do not know if this happened.  I cannot ask him.  
(I’m not sure if I would want to ask him.)  
But I can make an educated inference that that line of
fiction is really nonfiction.  
A memory that feels like a phantom limb.  
                            Sounds like the sharp crinkle of static.  
                                                     Co­vered in a gossamer, dreamlike haze.  

There is a distinct otherness to this memory, to who
                                     I think I was before the trauma.  
We are two different people.  A yin and a yang.  A day and a night.  
The hermit crab is soft beneath its hard shell.
The asbestos is not apparent within the insulation.  
You cannot see the lead in the paint.
The mold inside the fruit.

The crowd shouting
and the DJ yelling
to jump or put my hands up
the boombox blaring in my ears
—at least it’s stopping my tears
but I am feeling sleepy
I hate alcohol so I’m drinking Fiji
sitting down and awkwardly lonely
with my mind wondering
how lovely it will be to curled up
inside your warm bed only listening

to the night singing your melody
and fall asleep beside your body
but what a shame
you don’t give that option to me