In vain determination
I sweep
pockets of nighttime
from the guarded corners
of my perception

In vain determination
I blink
a dusty darkness
from impaired eyes
that serve me naught

In vain determination
I breathe
in caustic shards
with every gasp
of air that taunts
my life
with fatality.

Here I am
Again
Mumbling excuses
For my misuses
Of any likeness
to rhyme

Enemy of the afraid
Terror of the tame
The privileged have you made
Into killers by name
If dying is your game

Too suspicious, skin too dark
your foreign tongue
Has made its mark

Bomb terror, bomb terror
Empathy to maim
Get your guns, weapon bearer
If dying is your game

Weighing lives against each other
Civil fear, where is your mother

If misused power lent you fame
then dying is your game

Cry,
her eyes succumbing to their selfish demand
which they so often did
her sobs old news,
but a more definite pastime
Than numbness.
Driving invalidated by a lack of destination
Stop signs blurring
In salt water, a stew of ******  Christian music
disingenuous howls louder than thoughts, and
Radio static filling spaces like confusion
, "I feel broken", she informed the rear-view mirror
For lack of better words

Her acidic tears dissolved the soft armor
Of her twins in the back seat.
Who added their mother's grief
to the bruises on their insides.
And mourned the cigarette smoke
She swore would never be there

So the sad little Saturn was weighty
and drove ruts in the pavement
with dysfunctional hurt
and she was subject to trite metaphors
Which she spewed at an alarming rate

For she never got rid if
The ****-tinted glasses
That were taped to her face.

You were a transient, a charmer,
and you,
tread on my organs with your
traveling shoes
And mourned like a shape-shifter
Singing the blues

Your whispers were heavy with tentative permanence
Crooning a prologue of hollow absence

Your price of niceties is too high for me
For I've been choking on spoon-fed complacency
Corporate crime blinding us to atrocity.
Dropping, down go the dissidents-
Incitors of an unknown breed
They're mutilated sheep,
Killing the tamers
of a tenacious nation-
Rallying me.

Still, still, in the silent revelation
of an undiscovered thought,
violent by nature
tempestuous
undertones of gradient succes
mindless tests,
confrontational mess

still the new leaf, lovers in the light of
fright,
the night with milky shades of sight,
sound as still, still, like the silent revelation
of an undiscovered thought

wake to still
calm thy head
the cavities of
unrest,
numbness at best
mess, of mind
tangled thread
much, too much
mild mannered
maneuvers, meek,
passive and complacent
stuck in the basement of
forward moving stagnant
lowly, little steps
descending, ascent pending
for a revolution
jacket too stiff,
no peace from
pollution,
human heart pollution
grey faced institutions,
failure soup,
smooth money,
compelling sandwhich
of gold-toothed grannys
insanity,
death’s locker a
spray painted
noir
and n’er to do better
than sell, sell
the well wishers
a lock of lamentable
whiskers,
unshaven unclean
a force of mean
momentary pleasure
of possession,
empty
and quick in succession
your price,
of niceties
is too high for me
eyes red with subtlety

Every image, word
discontent with a present self
So enveloped in not being
It isn't.
Good with her hands at shadows
Evading reality on the daily
With a makeshift sanity.
Numbness over mind over matter
no matter,
Nothing but the latter
Greed.
Falling into easy pieces,
All peachy
In her cavernous
Dreaming.

Lost, misplaced adolescent sanity
Parasites of pretty dining
On a serotonin buzz
Rust
Aging peace of mind, relentlessly
analyzing minute subtleties
With pricey ink, rhyme
Turning thought into parodies
Staining photos with a milky film
Mirrors turning mind images
Into mirages
Potent, bitter with your poison.
Your syrupy sweet venom,
Pervading will-
Turning weak human reason
To damage - seeking treason

Rationalizing each patch
Of black and blue,
Patriotic to the danger of you,
You self-inflicted malady.
Because that is the nature
Of you, oh disease.
Oh dizzying force, so appealing
So easy,
Turning minds to war machines
Yet
bystanders,
simultaneously enveloped
in the same deranged form.
Denial in a package on your  
Doorstep.

Hell is my dwelling place.
What?
No.
No, I am happy here.

Disappearing like a wounded dog to die
puking up your insides while
smiling, smiling gracing ground with coping mechanisms rendered absolute
like a redneck barbeque, cultureless culture
both choking you mute

Getting high, casually mentioning suicide
like some necessity of existence,
last January she died last January
it happens.

All victims of circumstantially internal
trajectory outcomes,
statistical sadness-
yet
I cry,
With tears your experience dies
And becomes mine.

Does your incessant babble drown
The caustic whispers of your mind?
Your mouth gapes and seeps,
I see shadows
Of your trite disquise.

Nectar runs a maze
Of tributaries down my face
Fermented rain
Down a cigarette drain,
Fruits of a Floundering youth.

Cliches, such things worn out with careless use
Small razor blades now stained and dull with rust
Always old news, threads of a shrinking noose
These tasteless words the wisest fools do trust
And use to convey stale souls phantom glow
The human rage to keep our beings sure
Disturbance of still water, poets know
Compels sweet rebels with the constant lure
Of spirits free, possessing boastful life
Defying predetermined fate as nought
To seize the dawning day sans dread of strife
And win the battle, valiantly fought
We plead with wills to sprout wings, to soar
A simple contradiction, evermore

A victim,
A series of
Petty oppression,
And following each with
Speedy secession
Smile others,
smug,
beings of superiority
And smother
Your breath of free,
Breath of light

They think they know
What's best for me

swallow your non-apologies,
I'll smear death on your eyelids
like a balm--
a bomb
to soothe the rouse
of your sympathy,
of your sorry speeches.

swallow your non-apologies,
you've assailed the right to breathe--
a crude oil
sink hole
your death bed, still
cut your belly to loose
cash and coin, your **** is

a noose.

swallow your non-apologies,
eat to ****
and
bathe in greed

Darkness, I embrace
a smug look upon my face
But
Emptiness, I abhor
In the still I plead "No More!"

Yet
Another
Immense bowl poured,
Deliriously! Cheerful! Cereal!
Rains
       like
           *****,
Eyes wide,
(The bleach white of critter-milk
Startled me sometimes.)
Gut protested,
child-brain gone static
With tv soup, frantic like my
Churning      stomach

Yet
another
Guilty passage to my mouth,
Quick avoiding eyes
Of stranger aunt
And stranger uncle,
Passing on faded vinyl tiles.

Retreat! Repeat.

Stagnant        prepubescent  
  Curled          embraci­ng  
An anciently abrasive couch

One zombie hour in
TV Wonderland!
For each 100...miles...from home:
  
This is not a vacation.

Not merely a visit, mama, though you
Assured. Me.

This is not a vacation but the
product
Of a failed! Marriage!
A case in court, the big THEY.

Deposit me here,
While...I...ferment:
An investment:
Television stares
And a belly full of
Cheap
Cereal.

It's a tricky facade
we entertain with mouths and lips,
giving green lights to swaying hips --
Eating white lines with ravenous tires
that don't seem to tire.
Puffing smoke and chasing barbed wire,
a heady velocity.
Bleating hunger for the bare ****** road
still unstaunched even when
leaving boots and combs at home

Scrub the dirt from my feet
From a journey to forget
A bruised mind
And red eyes.

We're disingenuous riff-raff,
leaden eyelids at half-mast --
Leggy and skirted,
we're skirting scraped knees
and toting battle-axes.

Down my spine and up my fingers,
Wet tobacco sweats and lingers.
Small infernos in my chest,
Stoking fire with every breath.
Both fickle days and longing nights,
Butane flame my iris lights.

I'm not a woman so you can be a man
Probing, your indulgent hands

I'm not a woman so you can touch
Respect, is that too much?

I'm not a woman so you can call me pretty
Your play-thing, your little kitty?

I'm a woman to walk this earth
with dignity,
Strength,
And
Power.

In a series of gasps I'll devour your breath,
in the sea of your soul I'll wade up to the neck.
Ripping seams from your sides
I'll crawl into your mind,
and love 'till our bodies protest.

To the Death
of womankind,
I say the death of humanity.
Preserving us for mere utility;
thus the greed of the matter.
Your whim is mad as a hatter.

Sleeping where your child lies on weekend nights,
A stale cigarette and listerine nest~
We're fairly distant
but for a gentle stroke on my neck,
Hiding from our denial of breath.

My mad waiting skull
craves your orange glow
like clockwork.

Toes clenching and unclenching,
grabbing pale carpet hair and thinking
about your nose;
it's striking prominence and form.

Warm skin!
your sultry delights.
I guess I'll take a cigarette,
one thing burning
between my lips
before the other.

It seems I'm under water by design,
devoid of that happy puff of air
keeping selves rockily afloat on a dividing horizon of still living, possibly thriving
And yet still imposing on that infinite line of quiet.

The city seeps
with wails of singing, cries
of one glass upon another.
Inner ear ringing with the engine hum
Of vehicles and mother tongue.
Such is the sigh, the rush of breath
Following cobblestone swells of intake-
Olive oil fingertips and corners of mouths,
Sun- caressed, vino-soaked for our own sake-
Are we weighty of heart, weary for home?