I was the kind of grime that made you hesitate before you put your foot into the shower
You watched the water hit against me as I refused to move.
You stepped into the shower, anyway
And I know you regretted it immediately because you ignored me
It was easier to pretend I didn't exist, pretend that I wasn't a mess that needed cleaning
When you would step out of the shower and the water threatened to suffocate me
I would drink it
I let it feed me and I grew stronger
You couldn't tell
But you stand in the same place every time you shower
And with each shower I grew closer and closer to you
I wondered why you never acknowledged how well I was doing

You were gone for some time each day.
I don't know where you went, but I heard your shiny black shoes against the bathroom tile as you brushed your teeth and hummed a song by the Killers

Somebody told me you had a boyfriend who looked like a girlfriend--
I loved hearing the music you made
You made me want to be more than what I was
I couldn't reach beyond the edges of the shower, for without water, I would be terribly dry and probably die.

I would entertain myself in the hours you were away. I counted the time it took for the water to dry. I would choose a droplet from the shower door and watch it race the others, hoping it would win. But my favorite time of day was that 15 minute shower. I lived for that, you know.

I tried to relay feelings I didn't know I had
For days
But you never said a word.
So I let you scrub me away
Out of your clean, white shower.

I awake in an empty cage
My nest is a pile of aspirations
I see people in fancy suits on the street
Dropping their dreams as they go
I gather them in an old trash bag
And the ladies with their short skirts and fancy shoes look down on me (mostly because I'm short, and partly because I am not like them)
Because once I scrub those abandon aspirations, iron the wrinkles out, and take a closer look I find that their hopes weren't worth throwing away
There was so much life left in them
And I know that's why the world is empty
Why the world is growing dark
For without the light a dream can spark
The demons can come to play and take your heart.

I hear the world is full of pain,
Flooding, terror, acid rain;
Music, theatre, laughs and art,
Whiskey, coffee, beer and darts,

Rainbows, glaciers, hiking trails;
Rare Pepes and EPIC FAILs,
Overwatch and Pokemon Go;
Donald Trump and Bernie Bros;

Dreams, and Drugs, and Rock n' Roll,
Dharma, Love, and the eternal soul,
The Holy Quran and the Higgs boson
Tajwid in Geneva, QFT in Tehran.

Yet day by day I sit and type
Edit, grep, compile, pipe
All  that a system smoothly might run
Ashes to Ashes, Zero to One

'''
npm install; grunt &; restart nginx
docker run -d me/interests; pkill sleep; pkill ***
nice 14 nutrition; rm /etc/cron.daily/exercise
pkill -STOP judgment; scp foodler:'**/{burger,fries}' ~
'''

It's rather ironic that this metal you see,
Seems quite a better multitasker than me
Whereas It stops its world to switch one task for others
My open descriptors always overflow my buffers

Whereas it take new patches with a simple 'apt-get'
My resolve for upgrades I quite often forget
And when its health checks fail, we regrow the ASG
But my self won't reboot. et memento mori.

Page 8? One word?
F. Scott Fitzgerald puts fruit in his lyrics.
I could never stop at one.
I bit into "soppiness" and
it squirted in a way
to make a fatted grape jealous.
I peeled the skin of "Swinburnian"
and it juiced the air
with an argument between God and hell.
I plucked The Tree
in This Side of Paradise and pulled down
a "Celtic" apple shared by a mother
a Bishop and a Monsignor.
"Thirsty" spoke
but did not leave us hungry.
And his basket was so sweet
that Carmen Miranda could
wear his words.

The dead man dances,
Though not very often.
His limbs are always so numb,
It's very cramped in his coffin.

in the presence of an angel we would cower,
but we have felt injustice and lack of
power looking at you.
Broken and shards of you corrupt the streets,
bruises and stitches cannot contain the
energy of your spark.
You may be a monster but giants never
understand,that the world is full of misery,
and you’re just playing in the sand.
you may be “ruthless”, but those only make
up the letters of “truth”

c.a.

There is quite a view out my window.
Not the best the place I live in has to offer, but one that carries itself for miles. Crashing into a pleasant horizon of industry and nature. At the right time of day you can see the clouds casting shadows, melting into each other to craft illusions from sustained light.

The shadows make me imagine the wind.
A clan of colossal bodies, imprisoned on this planet and forced to carry the clouds on their shoulders, dragging them across the sky with no purpose. A gang of Gargantuans run ragged and mad, given no time for rest or thought.

Their minds have become fixated on their task, they feel no pain or presence. The ancient bodies they inhabit have coalesced with the Earths patterns, a deep instinct formed. Mammoth entities evolving from cloud to storm. Contorting their essence they mold themselves into the planets fervor.

They expand with it's storms. Feet trampling through the unfathomable obscurity of the oceans floor. Tremendous torsos bearing hurricanes, hulking hands moving maelstroms. And on land they lash the wind about, collapsing the foundations around us. Flicking tempestuous obliteration at the places we call home.

Though they are bound to carry the righteous vehemence of natures will, they are also bound to it's serenity. Gently gracing our fragile skin, tracing over our pores and follicles with delicate intricacy. The very essence of their being encompassing every inch of ourselves. Engrossing us in a sweet breeze as our souls ingest sunlight.

Occasionally gifting the barren fields with rain, to slake the arid harvest. Or to simply become brume and float beside us on long days. Id like to imagine that fog is as peaceful as it is because it denotes the death of a behemoth. Clouds severed from the sky, caught in the grip of a dying leviathan. Marooned in the concrete until another titan can return it to it's home in the heavens.

The view outside my window isn't the best, but sometimes I get dragged into a daydream and can't help but forget myself. Suddenly I'm watching a Goliath from my apartment, and as I blink to see them closer they are gone. But the view is still there.

Drift lovingly into the
   edge of the universe,
engulfed by the beings there.

          With Sequoia fingertips
   ripping the fabric of reality
              just to watch the
                     universe bloom.

         Under their open eyes,
caressing your fear
          with sincerity and sadness,
you are swallowed by their very presence.

            Drift lovingly into the
                           void.
                   You are no longer
                           a blip.

                   Yet you have unraveled
                         and within you is
                    peace and pain
                               growing something
                    new.

                                 Somewhere down the
line, the stars
                           fade
                                    away.

                           And your becoming
             something that makes sense,
              something that finally feels good,
               somebody.

The hollowness echoing
                  in this empty patch
                            of space
residing beyond the edge
                 of the universe.

                            It's a sound
                            you will carry
                            within you.

             Not as a definition,
       but a reminder.

       Drift lovingly into yourself.
               Let the darkness
           bleed from you and
                  diffuse into the nothing.

       Feel the darkness change
               to light and
                    burn in it.
                    Plummet into yourself.
      
               You are reborn
       from the debris that erupts
                around you.
                          
                       A phoenix from a
                         comets crater.

             Become a being that
         drinks stars on earth,
             that speaks the sun
              and feels it in them.

Become someone that
finally fits into
this life,
someone

                you can finally
                             love.
                Become you.

Sundrenched Pathfinder, scraping up pieces of the past beneath mossy stone

Trail Bird whistling to the tune of the falling bombs.

Tall proud tree peak flinches at the venomous bite of percussion

Sundrenched Pathfinder, mountains burying us beneath ashes

Poetry needs me, like I bleed it, like I gasp for it when its fist hits my gut and reminds me as I curl over.

Like I spit it into the floor, like I flatten, like my coffin is buried in it.

Poetry needs me like the dirt needs the corpse.

I remember now
how I asked for death and
years fell away from me and
now I taste poetry as I grit the dirt in my palms.

I taste the poetry trickling down from tightly clenched teeth,
I ******* reluctance.

I taste the texture of my old ways,
arms crossed to what it could teach me.

They are open now and as the remembered echo of a sweet friend comes rumbling through my ears, I know it is me. I know that I am the choir of sirens in the swamp. I know that poetry is become me and I am nothing without it, it is something without me.

There are pages of the old heralds of poetry basted to the firmament, glowing as celestial bodies tormented and bleeding down on us. These gods and devils that came before us, that sit in some perpetual agony, agony swathed in peace. Peace found in the eternal rapture of poetry. It seethes, its saliva boiling over as it reacts to the way I place myself above it...so we must be one. We must be all at once nothing and poetry.

We must trace the eternal light so we may recite the old words to the new world. Let the light embers of poetry trace gently like fingers on skin, let the skin grow charred. We must die in its embrace so that it may grow, and know that though we can no longer be one,

we will always be one in poetry.

My fingertips slip over petals and thorns like silk over gold

Soft tides of myself raging beneath skin thin walls

Beneath the part of us that lives in fury and frustration

The part washing over me erases my being again and again

Every morning I am footprints
And the shoreline
Never the horizon

Yet my pen realizes endlessness in the page.

Ballpoint bloodlines filling empty space.

I am trying to write a love letter to
the good memories,

the ones I have to beat the walls for,
Hiding in corners of my house for safekeeping

Under floorboards, buried in the yard.

Making maps in my mind of
the streets I used to
run through.

Maybe my brown skin makes me want
to ignore that this place could be
a little bit of home.

Even if I don’t feel so welcome,
it’s got so many of
my good memories
carved into the picnic tables,
into the bark of old splintered trees.

The branches and limbs all
broken from climbing,
falling,
building tree houses and
popping fireworks.

The limbs of old oaks
burned down
because two
cousins wanted to see who
had the best aim.

Flinging black cats and bottle rockets
into knotholes
into that chorus of
"oh *****"
I’ve bellowed from gut to throat,
that sing out from a past
of bad decisions that
make for great stories.

That make for scenes
out of movies I’ve never
seen, from
films that would never do
my eyes justice.

Every stupid acid trip
that left us
under a cloudy sky
with a knock
echoing out from just below
Heaven.

Every fist fight,
every single **** or
cigarette burn or
broken heart
that hit me.

I want to write
a love letter
for every different
song that played
every single time

We jumped the car
over the hill,
that hill where the
road lines the cemetery
and we rolled the windows down.

A different classic rock song
every time we
jumped,
waiting at the stop sign
for the
perfect moment to
Floor it.

Tombstones bouncing
guitar riffs into the
old summer moon.

A love letter to
every car I crashed,
every friend I lost,
and every time I thought
I might die.

I’m trying to write that letter,
I just need to forget
a few things first.