Time as a concept
becomes especially troubling
once it makes itself known.
Now you’re against the clock.
All progress a single
stuttered step
from falling apart.
Brutalist landscapes
masquerading as a bioluminescent,
science-fiction sentient beings.

Unfortunately the clock,
is ticking.
Hours go by the past
increases the future
recedes. Possibilities
decreasing regrets
mounting.
Do you understand?

When it all burns,
as I assure you it will,
every empty office lobby
and husk of window looking down
from tender jagged tenement towers
will pour rivulets of ash across
broken bricked sidewalks
like crawling fingers of lace.

Only the mosquitos will remain unchanged.
Spilling deftly from the same canals as each
and every brood
to have ever come before.
Nipping the skin of those left behind,
to sing the names of the dead
into the corn seeds scattered hopefully
in cold air.

When isolated,
the imagination expands to fill space
until contact with reality
has been removed entirely.
It’s about faith in a way.
A man lost in the imprisonment
of false moments to the point
even in fevered visions
no supporting characters are particularly
scared or surprised.

In his mind he’s not lying,
for in his head it happened.
A dog chasing it’s own tail.
going faster and faster in an obsessive
and personal way
too primal to be defined.
In this way all things are ordained.
A superhero whose only
power is being able to see 40 seconds into the future,
unable to change a thing.

Notwithstanding,
he can still feel passion.
Genuine
and fierce as
any normal person would feel.
Toxic.
Delusional.
Choosing love
over people
rather than seeing love
in people.

An innate understanding
of what people want and
how to divert attention
from the possibility anything
could ever be wrong with his worldview,
simply because he’s fettered so tightly to
love as heavy work,
he truly believes a theoretical tomorrow
outweighs the trauma of today.

When he speaks
half his face
cracks away in a strange smile
like cinders
peeling from a fuselage
while flying over nighttime water.

People are beautifully statuesque
parodies and tragedies
of one another.
A great democracy of limbic creatures blinking
out of awareness and back,
pretending to sleep
while the world totters ever onward.

Creased post cards,
miniature elephant figurines
thrift store rings
and dried grocery store flowers.
A beautiful whirling loop
of meaningless
meaningless keepsakes
to soften the imposing sorrow
like warm breath
on a sleeping face.

Each night without fail
their city centers hum a concrete anthem
for a future which will never come.
A constant distant song
louder on the coast somehow
where the cold billows
amongst the barbwire
and bootprints.

Somewhere
a kitchen light still glows
on an immense orange cat
waiting to scour both dog bowls
for leftovers
that have yet to appear
after even a single meal.
Twilight throwing
lavender shadows
across the cramped
polaroid drenched kitchen
where you slow danced
to something acoustic
before saying your first goodbye
on a bare concrete balcony
studded with cigarette ash
and stars.

I wish I wrote nature poems
or ****** haikus
ballads of ex-love
ex-tenderness
and foolishly resurfacing loss.
A novel of breath and wind,
endlessly interrogating readers
as to how many times
they can meet a new person
in the same floorplan as
so many others.

Instead I go hunting for mysteries
to prove the impossible really exists.
Listen intently to flowers calling out
from across a landscape of endless barren daylight
both primordial
and futurist.

Always in a hurry to toss aside sensuality in favor
of more volatile forces
bubbling over from the intrinsic cosmic voyeurism
that only comes from staring too long
into one’s deepest self.

Take an entire Sunday afternoon
touch every object in my home
one by one
realizing they’re all I possess,
as they’ve always been,
but are no longer familiar enough to considered
anything approaching owned.

Pontificate on raw human impulsiveness
and inconsequentialism growing
more difficult to control with each repetition.
Dropping the same ring down
the same storm drain to be washed
over in the same downpour.

The Marlboro Man In The Mirror
and his oxycontin sweetheart
reflected in the bloodshot stars
bouncing off your wilting smile.

But mostly,
I do a whole lot of talking
without saying a thing at all.
Soon enough
a moment
is the best I’ll do,
but right now
I’m going to tear off pieces of my face
and dance for you
between the full moon slivers
of this humid August night.

Old things have strange hungers.
An ache that smells like apricots,
but comforts like laughter ricocheting
off falling snow.
Everything once familiar
appearing strange and unseen.
A half forgotten childhood afternoon
finally occurring right now,
stinging vibrant and tender
in the light of a wild pale yonder

The limbed machine of pain is taking form again,
waking from a sleep more glass than velvet.
It wants to walk in the desert. To hurt.
To long.
Dance light and low
to fading Disco music.

Something is on its way.
A wink shaped sound from the northwest,
laceworked with cold spring air and poplar blossoms
colliding to and fro
haphazarding the visage of a man.

When your life is forever defined
by a single action
it changes time.
Everything has something
to do with everything.
Even a sigh shakes like the hand of a normal man,
an idiot
but a brave one,
sending a long-way-home postcard from 3 am
to a first name he’s unsure
ever lived there to begin with.

They are someone's memories.
What difference does it make
if they’re mine
or not?
They're beautiful
true,
and will sing deftly
on the cold-eyed breeze.
That is all that matters.

Beside a dying fire
it’s easy to love the place
you’ve always been leaving.
Utopia built in the isolation
of dense high elevation slumber.

Cry proudly
among embers accenting a darkness
newly invited.
You’ll know it’s working
when everything feels wrong.