I don't know the rules. If I go looking
for grace and find it, what will grace

be but penance for my past, a silver
sinew-thread wrapping 'round old
            wrongs, gray hair for the
                        fickle.

I've naught but want for sweet release
from this history. The bombs ignored,
            repeating in gramophone static
                        dripping stiff

as wet bamboo. I remember someone
once sang here, once strung together

chords so sweet they rang like peace-
bells beneath cloudless sky. They've
            rang the bell upon my jaw and
                        done no wrong.

It's not so much unlike one's curiously
cold reception at a funeral. The cold
            and rain ****** at the skin
                        during graveside hymnal.

As long as the earth continues
its stony breathing I will breathe.

That which I cannot help but do.
Stuck between boulders, I sing.

When it stops, I will shatter back
into gravity. Into quartz.

Within a forest of gray leaves
Like little flames devoid of heat
Missing their color like a ghost
Just shadows of what once had grown.

Enclosed by trunks and trees so lost,
Covered in twigs and withered moss,
Never been loved, never been found,
Just lonely bones above the ground.

Dead petals dance with ghostly plants
To frozen wind and silent chants,
A requiem of crumbling skulls,
A hymn for all their decayed hulls.

Silvery mists of countless lies,
Swallows all of the forest's cries,
Fog masks the guilt of countless sin
That brush and grass carry within.

Amidst all of this hopeless mold,
A shed stands strong against the cold,
A house so lonely yet so warm,
Held in the forest's dying arm.

The place where I once hid myself,
'tween ****** books in rotten shelves,
The place where I live on my own,
Made of my flesh and crimson bone.

Tell me my poetry won't get me anywhere.

Tell me my talent won't help me succeed.

Tell me my poems can't change someone's life.

Tell me that I'm not on the verge of something great.

Tell me my words don't mean a **** thing.

But just watch as I prove every single one of you wrong.

Time wasted neck-deep in
idolatry, pretty bottles of
pretty liquids, light gold,
amber, charred oak brown
soaking vanillin and wood
which warms the tongue
perfectly.

I pop my pinky finger in
funny ways, relegating
flow of blood to necessary
extremities only, thumbs
or forefingers or whiny
joints screaming loudly for
sustenance.

There are days in my past
I wish I had skipped,
accidentally sleeping past
my alarms and the sirens
and noises of cars passing
past my window in whichever
home I find myself to wake.

There are days more recently
I have skipped, my mind
spending hours drunkenly
slipping from action to act,
poor me and my problems,
always worthy of an award,
a statuette of broken glass.

Think of mole rats,
spiders, mites even,
crawling underneath your
feet without knowledge
or care that you may be
thinking of them.

Think of you, conscious
animal fretting your
mid-twenties or a mortgage
and think of your family,
all blood and genome and
thicker than ******* molasses.

Think of the microscopic
living things which coexist to
make you, animal accident, a
living thing. Bacteria boiling
your stomach, microbes bailing
from your bottom lip. Kiss.

Think of love, in all its
devices, tedium—conquest even.
The smallness of our thoughts,
little whispers skimming the
surface of the pond. Do you
think of what comes after?

dearest
you have constellations in your palm
and galaxies in your veins
the world is a marble in your hands
and you are the ruler
if you wish to sit on your throne.
fret not ; worry not
just look into your soul
see the light within you soar
and shine a lovely gold.

I'm not a poet
I shouldn't claim the like
Because a poet would know more
About struggle and strife
While I myself lay my head on a bed
Some poets stay up all night
Driving home their nails
Into the coffin of conviction
How dare I say I'm impaled.
While others wrote beautifully on social issues or on love
I sit and stare at the wall
I churn out writings on things such as white struggles and heartache
I'll write about the same boy over and over again with a different ad lib.
I'll write about voices in minds I can't reach or begin to comprehend
So tell me how I'm a poet, again?
Because I can write a line and hit an enter key
I somehow think I'm a cool *** thing.
Nah man, I'm not a poet
I'm a wannabe

Well now I am aware
Of the newest anarchy towards your reasonings
An enterprise of not feeling anything
This practise of not making a sound.

Even the hollowest, little laugh, catapulted up
Through the roof of your mouth, and reflecting
Off the top of your tongue, can still be too much.
In earnest, even if it's an eighth of a sound, its apex
Is too much to drown out, I hear it everywhere that

It throws me towards. Holds me by the throat and it
Knows me now like it wants me to find out but then
Hides itself, like the chime of a bell, ringing off the hem
Of the dress you wore on October 30th of 2012, it is a
Sound that'd I'd never be able mute out, that comes
To me unexpectedly, and it takes the rest of me to keep cool.

Now the inches grow, and the moon men climb inside of
My mouth. I want to yell. Scream! But I can't even shout.
The words inside of my hands write, but the ink has dried out.
I wasn't sure but now I'm sure that the time has come and
That time on the clock is now. Call up the whales, undress for
The moon, I'm making Rice Krispies because the penguin girl

Is coming home soon.

poetry is a sin
of its own
and the writer
is its perpetrator

the words were my jail cell
my mind, the judge
locked forever
with the sentence of broken stanzas

there is no end
to this crime
just like its beginning
never existed

(b.d.s.)