Across bodies
carrying dormant elegance,
forgetting givens held,
instead jabbing,
kicking, longing masks never on.
Pretend quasi reality situated
today, upon varying ways
X's yield zero.

Account, now, for assumptions and accruing
beleagurment barring budding
caring..
Demonstrations defining discussion
early on, easing ever
further from facades falsely
guiding. Gentle gestures,
heartbeats with hands held
intertwined in-between
in-jokes,
inklings,
inlets, long-lasting days left laying
making master plans maybe
noone notices,
others openly oblivious of our
presence, preferring perhaps
quiet quizzical
regard. Respite raises rushed
sentences sentencing solace
to two twenty-somethings turning to
unification, under covers used as
veils vexing visages, visions
well-wishing, with wills of wildlings and we,
extracting expositionist excuses, exiting
yesterday yet yearning for youth's
zeal. Our zenith, Zion.

Pressure surfacing
re(lapse)lease breaking the skin,
early memories flooding into
tonight's supposedly simple situations,
eyes reaching for the black.
new mornings spent questioning new
temptations,
islands of comfort spread
over the table.
Under false bottoms we hit rocks,
sip a little solace, just to glance in the mirror again.

Balance,  falling
off center yet
under control,
no longer concerned with,
tomorrow, today, tonight,
yesterday's simply fall away.

Within these sparks
i give my self to nothing,
longing another
touching nothing, painless,
sliding into this numb embrace

She lays
propped upon the headboard
while her mind is elsewhere,
gaze far from present.
Curling waves of crumpled sheets
crash against her forever in this instant,
their horizon the pale whites and soft pinks
of humble beauty.
The outline of her breast draws us to a turned back,
allowing us the descent of the ridges and valleys
of supple curves.
As we turn away, we are grounded
by a small earthen plot,
and feel the sinking blues play on our worries
we will never see this scene again.

And still she lays,
body surrounded by simple comforts,
mind engulfed in a world out of sight.

We spend our days with passions smoldering,
inside the haze we're seen, shouldering
a renewed faith in truer selves, hold high,
lest we view wraiths, impure, sell bold lies.

I hate you.
Every day I think of you,
and can not escape my pain.
I long for the days before you left,
before my life was irrevocably shattered,
before my life ended.
I still can't enjoy my birthday,
I still lay awake waiting for the calls to repeat,
waiting for the cops to come and for you to leave.
You were never part of my life anyways,
you were nothing but a stand in,
never a father.

prestigious
drugs critical
public awareness effects lifestyle
tied to our ability
to be
you.
disease programs,
meet loved ones,
heart-wrenching I visit.
:
across
he rounds his patients
twenty-five years ago.

Life.
4 Letters.
Numeric assignments,
I stall to answer
"what's the question?"
with
can you repeat,
my answer's too foreign,
conceptualization, it makes
sense.
Is, question or answer
deep thinking,
because the answer ran on
and on
until it was deemed compound
and split into finer artist pieces.
The question I just don't
get.
I'm stalling
to question statements
when I respond.
Numeric assignments,
4 Letters.
Life.

There's smoke on the horizon
beneath an open sea
closing on grainy visions.
In an obscured sky
twin moons merge briefly,
illuminating barren features beneath silver linings
losing brilliance. Imagine
darkness
skirting collisions, spinning
into its quickened cycle, spiraling
radiating some misunderstood energies
thought of as kindness, or kinship.

Veils obscure absent eyes milky white
delicately placed off center to attract attention
      awa  y
to the edges of presen(ts)ce.
Fractures eke out mollified dreams
better left for a different when,
still spied through corner glances
and brief glimpses of a time forgotten.
Stare out through rolling hills,
drifting between currents and canyons
hiding prospects and perspectives
shrinking, shifting topics to
silence,
hours
spent on roads throughout country
we'll never truly see. Hundreds
of miles, with nothing in between.

Let's lay
beneath blankets of estranged forethought
fathers speaking in lost refrains
brothers and sisters spinning in circles
for atten(ua)tion?
attunement?
spinning, bare feet striking
new grounds
leaving paths for those to follow,
what we would have called ours
if not for lost vocabulary.

Between pillars of salt and smoke
we continue along a path founded by ancestors,
tasting our sacred fruits
soured by the lives which watered them,
stains now set to patters,
repeated until they become tradition,
crossing into teachings to which
we kneel
masked by some layer of proper posturing
predictively programmed to provoke
passe (prisms) precautions,
an effect of visual innocence
tarnished, no longer
do we know who hides behind the pierced cowl,
stilled face, lifeless and radiant,
forgotten in sight.

mute, we tell tall tales
of monster's sacrifices,
humanity a frail barrier.
Vapid thoughts dissipate
as leather lungs propagate vacuous words,
bruised rose petals whisper an attempt
at appeasement
lost in the shivers of the wind, briefly
caught only by chance and it's simple
to pretend they never came.

There's smoke on the horizon,
signals rise to prominence
once communication's faltered.
Hollow, revert to body language,
broken and distorted, the veil falls
as we look upon ourselfs from breaths away.
In our eyes a slotted face falls close,
unrecognizable, yet our own
clearly cloaked in cold sun and decorative scars,
an odious inverse to delicacy.
Animals trapped in the same cage
finding comfort in the fury of escape attempts,
pitted against on another
we find solace in our embrace,
teeth bared from true recognition
it was never passion,
only instinct.

Everyday I am born to gods relaying
lineage through winged messengers.
****** radiance enkindles immaculate retinas
in solar flares
and picturesque mornings' idolatry.
Tones entrancing, blue jays
or northwest mockingbirds,
their range of majestic differences
eluding attentive innocence,
elation ebbs to pain's perpetual flow,
streaming hypno-suggestive claims
finding me inexorable
to beliefs I've not died.
Impassioned voices usher me through,
by mid-day I've learned
to speak their tongues,
strange hisses
and twisting trebles
an attempted appeasement for
conforming to continued cyclical living,
instinct selection seeking final detention,
rebirth a trapped evolutionary trait.
Dreading each twilight,
coping through whichever maiden
may allow my musings
to conform to her form
for the night,
overlapping until I
am but a shadow
dominated by her presence,
her brilliance illuminating every scar
of the side perpetually left
to the dark,
enlightenment held
in the warmth of her touch
until she too
falls beneath the horizon.
Sun setting upon this silhouette
and whispering tomorrow
in stagnant sleep speak,
settling to sacrifice's sufficience.
I fear this rest.
Gleaning premise from barbaric genealogy
qualitated as residual spatial pandemic,
leaving this life cycle
reduced to just one more death.

Let me learn the crests and valleys,
this mapwork work of your skin,
find beauty in every vitiated inch
most see as flawed, but I know
naturally formative of experience.
Allow me next to you
on Mars' sacred arid landscape,
finding hidden rivers
and reflecting pools
to hold our memories.
Permit me that smile
creeping across your lips
as you walk through night skies,
picking bouquets of flowering stars,
freshly in bloom
and neatly wrapped
in comets' tails.
Holding your image carefully,
I've tucked you away
between brainwaves,
safe from the deep sleep of time,
figuring your figure
too precious for decay.
And though you've privileged passage,
I am plagued with hands unable
to run their familiar tracks,
watching cascades of violet twilight
run through my fingers,
down that nook behind ears
I'd whisper sweet everythings into,
taking off at your neck
just as we let the music
open our shells.
Setting out as astral projections
our dances innately elemental,
yet intricate,
all spirits and gods we'd cross
rapt in our movements.
And in an instant
we'd finished,
pirouettes had you engulfed
in a dress-skin fusion,
drifting into a ravishing
black hole finish
as I'd burnt out,
causing time to split this mind,
both sides struggling to grasp
which course I'd been carried to.
Left back wishing for some insight
on your skin's stunning topography,
searching for those pools
in which I can wonder
what you ever did
with those bouquets you'd made,
and wishing that
I didn't have to wait
to see if this time
will lead me down a different path.

Excuse me, if you must,
as the spinning causes seasickness.
Open the clouds as you continue on
in an aeronautical sarcophagus,
thirty-thousand feet
above broken land.
Grab your lover’s hair,
last resort to prepare for
the emergency crash landing
into mother earth’s disease,
or are they simply parting the seas,
causing darkness to spread
from the unfilled hole in their chest?
Stomachs turn as the
broken wings and sails
fall upon the shores.
An ocean of rage delivers
waves of hatred embraced.
The surf clears, exposing pain
and the premonition
of a cleansing blood red rain.
Shrieks of the banshee
and the howls of the hurt rise
to meet the clouds seeking
to brighten the days afar.
As thousands flee in terror
we make a toast in the French Quarter.
The chariots gain speed
and the wake gains mirth,
laughingly applauding
the approaching dark comedy.
The newly arrived antagonist
has forced the hero’s hand
and now she births forth
a wave of healing epidemics.
The wake’s in the wind
and the funeral’s imminent.
Its population’s been soothed
into a sedated slumber,
but our character has issued
too many warning,
and strikes deep at the heart
of this sinful city,
breaking apart the basin’s barrier,
and lulls its children back to sleep
with bloodstained lullabyes.

Let's start with two eggs,
bacon sizzling, cooling, ate,
three pieces left for another,
why not a third egg before
my moment of solitude.

The beginning, boredom
always creeping ivy slow,
taking hold between the strength
of my resolve.

Let's start with two shots,
eyes blurring, focus, blur,
three-fourths left to drown out another,
why not one more
to soothe my solitude.

Disconnected linguistics leave a broken fragility
turning tongues tumbling to trite truths,
tales spun seeking refuge in imagined worlds,
realities left shattered in their wake
while the crumbling crust reveals
heart held, beating in its embrace.
Thoughts turned towards musing,
secondary perception detecting that creeping chill
sliding as ivy from toes
to engrossed mind constricted,
comprehension continuously catching
the cold of ancient rites,
a reoccurence of yesterdays',
it echoes on in such melodic disorder.

With sweet venom she sang my way,
understanding aural shortcomings
allots no egress of racing choruses
coordinated to keep pace on her tongue,
lacing time so delicately, a feat
of only passionate disdain
tastefully recounted in every syllable
crashing in with a vicious viscosity,
leaving life to buckling knees,
forcing haggard steps
while the mind abstains from physical obfuscation,
knowing contact lends focus
to the surrounding mists, draining away

these rains you called, in echoes
of cries once denied
harmonies gaining pitch in perfect paces
found once allowed to resound
in the dark halls of your eyes,
until tomorrow fell to
yesterday's reign of essence,
breaking escaping waters to essentials
encircling columns we've yet
to deem pedestals.

It is in your service
that's found purpose,
an audition of caution
refined to presence,
I step into those commons
you still hold.

In nightshade and baby's breath
your song still emanates,
guiding through corridors
while the ceiling fills with
observant eyes of those predating sorrow,
unwilling to be its end,
or allow a Freudian slip
in which to reveal
a true identity,
they hold our hope
just within reach
though grasping fingers do naught
but brush aside that shadow
cast overhead, if only for the moment.

In this maze I am flanked
by hedges of stone,
mortar,
a mixture of
one part water
to every action
allowed to cement itself
in habit.
Reformative shifts scaling
to emerge a new horizon,
walls become signposts
as you echo inwards,
or up,
directive differences
falling to disorientation
either is understood
your path.

Catching firefly notes,
we've lined our world
in an unaccustomed passion,
all requiem and maladroit,
It was ours.
In the center,

our masks sufficed,
not having the time
to trade selves after
skirting two terrains of lucidity,
this reflective core the only stage
for our melting embrace,
idyll frivolity now perceived reality
in which falling apart proves
a simple concepts,

it's marked, our time now conceding
to the allure of situational  gravity,
spiraling downwards is the start of
constant uphill struggles,
crawling when called upon,
yet refusing to take knees
to provisional tears,
and finding conceding timeline tears
commonality.

For now though
we'll sit beneath this eldar tree,
sinking to material dissociation,
as the wish of a lover's kiss
washes upon us,
left surfacing somewhere past
these leaves of fall
in time to release
the seas of change.

And as waves pervade
she wraps her palm 'round mine,
whispers collecting in tense tendons,
sketch a note between innocence's evidence
and dust's barefoot impressions.
Signed in years marking its begin,
we addressed it
to any that may return.

Among the desolate crowd we felt that welling of times long held back. The cloud had come. Release, pouring down. Over. Washing away what all had been left discarded. Disinterested. Pouring down the cliffs of a world we can't fully come to terms with while the rest was nothing more than grease stains sliding streetwise to cracks, corners, stagnant pools that left them short of those drains put in place to siphon them off to somewhere.
    Somewhere.
    New?
    Lost?
    Forgotten?
    Why. Why would they work so hard to take all of it away just to let it sit. Lie (lay, I mean, but **** it) in the streets causing those perfect souls passing by to deal with the failed drainage systems put in place. They promised, again, to fix the streets, why did they do all that work to have people feel their failings in the posting rain as their boots soaked through.
    What was the thought?
    Money? Gold? Ambivalence or hatred could be candidates if there weren't such a stranglehold on the decision makers. The streets, department or otherwise, knew how to address it, why don't they?
     And the drains clear. With them, concern. The puddles, disappeared. All that is left is the penumbra of promise, silhouettes of stagnant process producing not but the petrichor reminisced for. But it's always a memory left, maybe tomorrow problem. Matters not when the gatherers gather once 'gain. The sun still shines it's oppressive rays and once again these cloudy eyes start to well.

Once we were lost.
We were gone to music
we couldn't hear,
dancing in tribal tones
dust encircling us,
draping us in secrecy
these whispers keep
feet grounded in time,
hoping to hear tomorrow
on a dying breath.
When was nothing before
and after an illusion
but the secret's been sold.
Found out,
we must run, sweet baby,
run in the darkness
for it's the everyday trap
we're about to fall into,
wearing away this world
the surface too weak
for us to both continue on.
I can't lose you to sin
our earthly expression deemed demonic,
concept without credence
our revival's television gold
for commercial advertising,
but I can't lose you to a baptism.
Being birthed from tainted water
will strip that clay keeping
you connected to me,
water down these bonds
until the weight
turns them to shackles.
I can't lose you to the pyre,
firing will strip you
of your raw truth
and transform us
to tangibility,
transform us from being to thing,
a point where smiling shows
naught but cracks in your face
and breezes blowing through,
stealing away that cloak of us.
In their eyes, dust clinging to sweat,
our yelps primal and joining primitive,
we are filthy.
In ours,
emblazoned.

...turn away, five seconds
the cooling period, you're off
before I'm able to grasp
the situation.
Now I'm on top of
the accelerator on top of
the metal on top of
the asphalt rolling along
like the golden age examples
I tried to emulate.
The most sincere form,
I've failed to impress...

Sunrise nearing its death,
the end of today
complementing the beauty of a pen stroke,
harsh scratching alleviating indelible ideas
showing selves in hues painting our last moments
allowing me to trace timelines
in the contoured caresses
of this silent instrument played
to blend melody with beginnings,
each progression scaling further along
the passing hours left settling
to minutes from now,
purpose elaborated in contrasting
blues and oranges and purples
composing the elegance of utility,
colors not enough to excise the excesses
of depicting days in dimensions,
of simplifying it to degrees of time.
Laying alongside this current
to shape clouds
and animate constellations,
my faux-corpse stares again into
the memory held in galaxies
only glimpsed at twilight.
Sharp cuts of consonants
and vowels' smoothed corners
try to rid me of
stream of conscious thinking loosed,
the inner struggle hoping for reprieve
from that constant combative nature
of inward disagreement
and dialectic digression
deflecting the question of
what if we'd only spoke
instead of being lost
to foreign type-faces designed by
some soul never to see
the dying day my way.
If only we'd spoke,
I would have had the chance
to stumble on a goodbye.
Rather we are left
to flourishes of unfamiliar weapons
sitting askew on these pages,
the balance shifted due to
us degrading to another's personality,
and writing out those lines
we couldn't come to say.

Goodbye.
Yesterday, tomorrow
the life before was.
I’ve met you before

                                                                                        as we sat down
                                                           i watched worlds align
                                                               in your movements
                                                                                  and stars become
                                                     black                                           holes
                                                                                      in jealousy
                                                              you are beautiful
                                                                                        you are beauty

we drank the night
to day;
dizzy, star-struck,
watching time stop
in our swaying movements

                                                                                                  too bad
                                                          she couldn’t hold her liquor
                                                              our drunken timelines
                                                                   intersected
                                                                       in stumbled
                                                                           introspect
                                                                                      skipping steps
                                                           i enjoyed
                                                                         our spinning thoughts
                                                                  and tongues sharing
                                                           aged language
                                                   alongside new bottles
                                                                                  until i was forced
                                                           to watch her phase
                                                                            in and out
                                                                                           of herself

that moon *****
must’ve had more
than she could handle,
because the next day
there was a new face
on her course,
wasting happy hours
shouting sad times
to morose microphones,

                                                                                         if you fail
                                                                                           to sing
                                                               your anger will
                                                                   leave you to scream
                                                                       and shout
                                                       similarities
                                                            stunningly simple

masking taxation of
tie-ins’ infusion inbreeding,
demonization of sharing similarities
left time socially awkward
and unacceptably indulgent
of the mindless self

                                                                                 tonight i will
                                                                       join myself in song
                                                it will be a hymn
                                                     rhythm saved by him
                                                          we’ll circle ‘til its begin

we’ve refin

Standing beneath black skies' hush,
cold rains' fall a stimulating touch
bringing rise to forbearance
forcing stormcells to pressured positions
above our expanse.
These words escape to nothing.

Thick air mixed in
with each vowel of smoke,
straining to glimpse beyond
those choked fragments.
I caught your shadow
skirting the edge of visions
and slipping past my bounds.
You were cloaked in millennia,
time soaked from downpours
seemingly lost of origins,
be they long past
or still forecast,
you were,
falling drops rolling
from silken hair
still bruised in memory,
forgoing present presentation
to reacquaint opportunity
with overlooked encounters.

Soaked to soul,
the ripples spread quick
stepping to the plane of...

...wait,
where are you...

when are we...

...will you be?..

...or have we been
lost in relativity
and escaping in
each word I breathe.
Comprehension critical,
compassionate clouds constantly
reminding of drowning you out,
professing this changing view
in hallowed hurricane whispers.

An angel you became,
living upon these grounds
your plague, living on,
earthly existence anathema,
each second foreword
another progression of
decreeing beating heart
a final concerto, Ava Maria
your soliloquy, serenading
dreams in a missing tongue,
with dying tone
and a pulse set out for loan.
Loneliness my investment,
appreciating until the light was blinding,
pain breaking anthems,
scaling back to feed off
what was left.

I missed our true nature until it was reflex,
illumination only brief glimpses of a passed future,
grief developing to timelines sutures,
bleeding blending was
and has,
with will be still the memory
I'm forced to foresee.

Broken in neutrality,
droplets still caressing the shadow
skirting the corner of my eye.
Your life was short,
I let us die far too young.
Consider it your sacrifice,
the reason for the crying clouds
whose pain soothes these brainstorms
vented through cigarette breaks
wasted pouring words
to howling winds.

If my canvas was removable
I'd have snakeskin sheddings
piled at my feet
tattooed by a pen in
languages I'm still learning.
Lessons may have missed,
but concepts still birth
third-eye conception,
without static
the reception looked perceptive
but lacked the proper method of thought,
though those with lacked grasp
are gasping to breathe,
are constantly seething
in serial reading,
your glasses reflect crystal *****.
Distortion skewed what you said,
proportionately blowing away my thoughts
with what wrath you wrought,
temper tempering timid temerity
to take tricks to the thoughtless actions
making affairs public
and tricks tickets to freed selves.
I'm tired of feeling like an addict,
your trips to town
leaving me shaking,
the absence
a strong shot of absinthe
followed by detoxification
of my blood
and thoughts.
Atrophy caused apathy
and heart-rot.
This shaking has to stop
or these words will forever
go unread.
Lines becoming waves
I'm seasick off thinking,
sea, I'm sick of thinking,
sick, I'm sea, cool blue
holding vast universe
and creation claimed creatures
in crevices buried
under self.
Thunderheads strike me
with glimpses of brilliance
as they reiterate what already was,
composing a self-made being
prophesised by ancients
who became whole,
a collected conference of ne'er-do-wells
and great lakes of depression
mistaken as puddles when the clouds
reanimate their deadened self
with soul of we,
with ***** and spirits,
both happy and deadly
lost only in the way
they lost self
to selfish thoughts
of a growing (m/w)e.
And when essence is discarded,
replaced by common cents
or otherwise deemed useless
we are left to wonder,
who's this?
Eyes
look, nearly censored
by silver backings and
dulled centers
seem lacking in humanity,
left more to primal urges,
hunting for those thoughts
left behind and gathering
pieces of rotheart
to rekindle that passion we've forgotten
after complacency compromised
our composure,
leaving heads slung in hopes of finding
a small piece of fragmented earth
in which to glimpse
a reflection of our core.
It lies dormant, though not dead,
we fear eruption of emotional enticement,
instead sleeping giants be we,
volatile and awe some,
do not catch eyes
lest we be the last things seen,
two peaceful for something not known
in the unknown languages
that cover us,
nor seen in the depths
of collective conscious,
though treating us apart,
hair by hair,
limb by limb,
being by be ing we are separating,
nay, unraveling,
untangling me from the complications
of we
only to see we
are incomplete and
alone.
Broken to pieces it's easier
to accept
the whole of who we are.

December finally comes.
unexpected and awaited we huddle in our own social circles
blocking the cold with exchanged hot air and shared *******,
complaints a quick fix to so many of our daily issues.
Snow piles beneath our feet and we continue forward
dour moods no excuse for falling production, we must be
productive.
We must give quamtifiable results so we may look back on our endeavours
and claim them a success.
Imagine if they tracked us like they do our hours,
followed us as closely as these stories we are forced to tell to noone,
do you think they'd enjoy the insight?
Or would we resume our spot in their eyes as those children,
adolescents lost and cpnfused willing to sacrafice their time for nothing
more than community and experience.

D ec ember en d s
a long week
punctuated by quickened pace
and short days spent under the hum of everything weighing down on you.
i lost it once,
hyena laughter braying through dark skies
at nothing..
or am i just forgetting something again.
Let's turn around,
I'll check the cabinet
if you help me disappear.

I long
to be nothing to somebody.
Discarded as the filter,
that peace
keeping this toxicity
at abated levels,
after you've used me
and have left nothing but ash.
Toss me aside
so dust and I may meet
rebuilding my being.

Fear not this poison,
over-exposure occurs within moments
and hence,
this making you, wretch,
will leave you immune.
Wanting to look into your eyes
fluttering as shades drawn
to allow us our privacy,
shutting off you from
me recomposing,
we are perfect together.
Disgust, your first impression
does well for my mirror,
destruction willing, my reprisal.

Shatter this looking back,
use shards of what's left to pluck heartstrings,
slide your glass-edged bow across these vocal chords,
allow all to hear the cacophony of a failing being.

Lose yourself, my torment
your release, emotion
but false memory.
Allow me your feet,
a subservient posture
dipping to welling eyes,
glistening to the light
of our true deaths, notes
and screams punctuated by
inkwell swelled wrists while
we fall six feet beneath
these sheets
and roll in our seductive graves.
Once there's been enough
shoveled on top
that we may be laid
to rest,
find comfort knowing
you've stolen my breath.

I long
to be nothing to somebody,
discarded, tossed aside
so the next to come needn't pick me up,
filtering my words through the masks we wear.
So I may be free to fall by this way,
not caring when I am lost.

Faith in the fall
Breathes into a warm blanket
And cold floor
Begging
More

Time in bed

To plan,
Break from what's here
See tomorrow in the new
Light streaming through
Cracks in the dark

A coffee, a car, a road
A turn in the dark,
An overhang slung low
Like that weight
We escape

Break in the forest,
Bald peak peeking through
Light shining brighter
The beacon we head to

Ice, slick, slow, quiet
Spin, twist, skid.
Skid.

The sky growing cloudy,
Lines break from the trail
Through the trees,
Which carry
All that held us down

Today we just lay fresh tracks
In the new snow

Pacing strides left a man
etching a phrase into the linoleum,
dull yellow, the world gleamed
from a single bare bulb,
resembling either an idea
or afterthought,
strung up to illuminate
this small world.
Each step accidental
he strung together a verse
he would never read,
letters laid down
as eyes were always fixed
above the cabinet door
sitting slightly askew,
paint chipped away at the corners
and the inevitable banshee screech
of tortured hinges choked by rust,
or the faucet with its loose handle
and stains of hard water
dripping to the rhythm
to which he walked,
unbeknownst to him.
Pacing turned to past time
when the energy died down,
steps forward holding neared stilled
in comparison to the mind
set at a running pace.
In each step,
meaning was lost to him,
setting down his soul with thinning rubber,
the plastic giving way
after years of playing that solemn bass,
a nightly monotonous melody.
Circles would have been better,
a truer glimpse of a cramped mind,
though the message of his walking
in waking
would have been lost to the pattern.
His line suited him better,
unfortunately he has yet to read it,
always keeping his head high,
forgetting to tuck his chin
to defend himself from those thoughts.
Breaking down around him,
his home holds but essentials
yet is still somehow cluttered.
There’s always a rustle
when the draft slips through the walls,
a constantly changing mosaic of light,
his shadow helps to paint the opposite wall,
where the only figure is the outline
of some long forgotten photograph,
an image he refuses to hold any longer.
The aire is refreshed
by a new batch of memories
floating in on the wind.
He misses the messages he’s laid out,
and his pacing fails to falter
when he’s stripped of all remembering.
If only he could sink low enough
to look down,
but experience has taught him
to hold high with every stride a must.
If he let down his guard
his defenses would be up,
the time would slow in dusty gears
and it would bring his hand
around to face the thoughts of
the circling becoming linear.
A second’s skip would detract,
all rot and decaying
what precious little was left,
though he’d soon be back to a missed step,
each foot accidentally placed
in a purposeful stride.
Unbeknownst to him,
his rhythm’s left behind a message,
flickering fluorescent reflects
the dull yellow verse
carved into the linoleum.
His pacing has stopped,
feet now carrying away
the jumbled thoughts,
walking out the door
the distraction his head held in place
allowing the buzzing bulb to continue.
Realizing,
returning,
he happens a quick glance
in the last light of the fading night,
flipping the switch he misses
his words worn to wood,
“We are all alone,
but rarely are we forgotten.”

Introducing her life
to my collapsing passages,
her breath helped drag out
a muddled flow of words,
all lethargy and nonsense
questioning love and life
with time the matter
of the minor degrees.
Saving me a piece at a time,
I was a patchwork
of stitches and scars,
this new clot
far from my last ailment,
it was held tight chested,
airways left strictly one-way.
Coughing out bits
used only to express loss
and the truer side
of life/time obsessions,
diaphragmic convulsions
leaving my head dizzy
and directions a confusing mess
of the simplicity of four rights,
to end up going the wrong way
down one-lane streets,
falling behind the wake, trying to chase
flashing lights, no way to fast track
to her side, I'm afraid she's been lost.
Unable to attend the viewing,
I missed even the chance
to see her in that
moment of peace
that never was her style.
Snapping in and out,
concentration casting clouds
on concrete I'd not recognized
a failing of reality,
or whatever we're calling this,
just knew that it brought about
imaginary friends and these invisibles
that play their parts, pushing pens
for those whose reality
was too far from truths
and had lost everything,
yet still couldn't
push forward that pain,
expose it so as to be free again,
preferring it cradled 'gainst their breast,
feeding it heart's ache.
Never do they release themselves of truth,
allowing the absence of this intensity
to control their propensity
down to the air they breath.
I got lucky, having her
return to deliver rescue breaths,
for with her,
inspiration died and
in its place came paradise
in invisible's covert creation.

I

broken gasp,
ghosts struggle for breath
in empty-mouthed former selves

II

eyes adjust,
rebelling
against a storm circling
with dust and demons.
blind, but still searching
through the silence for
the rust-locked screams choked
in the throat of this machine

III

resonance ripples softly
forward
babbling over stones
and gravity.
something was always
pulling him down.

IV

tongue tumbles
trying to profess truth
as the river stumbles forward
to those speaking soothe.

I felt the resonance of harmony
while the speaking of the walls
coerced me into a state of calm.
The object of my human side
is to find upon which line I lie.
Is it the one of psychosis
or the excitement of the third line.
Bi-polarity co-authors
changing connection
from subway stations
to the lashed lights
flashing to asteroid induced beats
breaking down into
the words of a typewriter
with transformative properties.
Night time stars shine bright with
knowligious screams from
millions of learnt miles
while oxygen conducts the brazed
grasslands into consymphonies,
leaving each branch scraping
so leaves may be allowed to applaud
the ever changing constants
of retold stories.
Calling to those intangible ideals
to materialize
and bring their followers
to comprehension,
it’s not difficult to see
that it’s there,
that insanity
spinning in circles
as it sings the newest top twenty,
or rather the bottom of the barrel.
The resin’s been scraped
and we’re supposed to breathe in
the words of artists
too plain to be humbled
by their works,
their fame
bred,
fed
and
condemned
by ego’s ever expanding.
Tangents are tangy after effects
of this twice smoked state of mind,
air thick with smoldering thoughts,
mindless devotion have
this current generation clouded.
Branded they’ve been
caught and tagged
at prices far too high
for the product not wanted,
brought by falsely peaceful corporations
which have us foolishly brandishing
dark thoughts,
shining guns,
and the faces of the dead.
When is the price too high,
or have you yet to realize
there is no price too high
for your sanity to relieve,
nor will it take lightly
a candy coating
for the daily vitamins
prescribed,
ensuring a sure glimpse of truth
beyond the walls of your Empyre.
Are your blinders to set to see
that your peace of mind sits in a glass house,
just a thrown stone away from cracking,
shattering what little tie holds you
to what you perceive as truth?
Can you imagine picking up those pieces
that were once your life?
Hard to do when you’re lost to vanity,
noticing only your thousand framed face
while blood trickles from your hands,
wounds winding the course of time
leaving behind verbose trails to aid
in your unbridled return to
the surface of sun-drenched memories
punctuated by foreign invasions
of advertised deaths.
You **** yourself to gain recognition,
but are resurrected by laughing gods
finding humor in your perceived sorrow,
knowing your story just another set of
one wrong placement, they push you
finding your god a benevolent being,
playing your suicide in reverse,
a miracle too large
to be measured on some scale,
the ripple effect of
performing just to flaunt.
Now born again,
you regain your militia’s
malicious status,
rejoining the ranks of an army
unheeded by threats,
torture,
pain,
or empathy.
They care only for members
and will be the truth
by any means possible.
Run along now,
you don’t want to be late.
The Masses don’t care
if you are left behind.
Have fun with
the like-minded “individuals”
as you agreeingly debate
the newest trends,
laughing at the means to your ends
you sit with your bleach-blonde brethren,
your Barbie-doll *******
and your bigoted behavior.
Just make sure you’re still laughing
next time you look out and see naught
but that thousand framed face.

If this is drunk,
please hand me stronger.
This body may be slow,
but the mind races ever harder,
an attempt to out run...

...sorry, caught myself thinking,
can't be my own enemy,
I've quelled this war once
and civility has a strained grasp
of these two pieces,
body conquered mind to conquer body,
failing to see benefactors true checking
the co-op abysmal...
the **** am I saying...

...now where'd I put that drink.

Essence.
Flow beyond a pass.
Pull back,
hold. Lock
eyes, spark
flicker
flame.
Passion?

Smile, laugh,
fall back between the crests
Where was that point,
call it Beginning?
Crashing in,
soaked
sand hides.
Smile, radiant.
Pulling back again
mixing with the next to come.
Just the wet sand, the short smile, the long wait

I once wrote myself a poet.
I once claimed musing my medium
and creation complementary.
I failed in contemplation
and mistook my muse for a replenishing source of inspiration.
My fictitious claims clogged my metacarpels
with mismatched scraps of metaphysics
and mistakes written out and expounded without fault,
yet still incorrect in regards to truth.

I once wrote myself a poet.
Claiming creation was my destruction,
I failed to reminisce with blank pages
and remember our origin,
the original flawed poem posed in prose.
Words met the page before they came to mind,
ink like water,
my vessel was cracked
and I was spilt
before I recognized the filled binders stained,
before I recognized the broken seal leaking.

Emptying my head faster than I could move the pen,
I wrote myself a poet,
the lines were cramped with
messages left between,
I CLAIMED myself a poet,
and all creations were an extension of me.
My destruction was complete.
Flowing like fact,
I was held up by the people
I couldn't help to think of
with the break of every turning page.
Inspiration but desperation to
refill a tank of exhaustion
and minor miscalculation
when hesitation
became the transportation
for that dropping ink.

I once wrote myself a poet.
I once claimed myself a god,
destroying me to find a being
born from the pen
and suckling from a disembodied self
found at the fork of was
and have been,
some body got lost in translation,
the rest
was misplaced during the transition from wrote
to was, and back
to the road I traveled.

I wrote myself a poet,
became one
only to lose myself
to the title.
I rode my self,
a poet to an altar,
though during my final sacrifice
I faltered.

I wrote myself a poet.
I claimed myself creator.
I lost myself to show it,
skirting the opportunity
to prove myself orator,
and now I'm back to
reading between those lines
in hopes of finding
my self.
A poet.