what's the problem with conditional? the binary, if, then, if it obtains at all then agencies that rage in me are illusory potentially, and free will threatened by the counter-factual? it seems more unlikely than the vat i'm floating in.

too high to get out of a chair

worse than knowing that you are a liar,
is knowing that you are lying.
the former, at least, allows for change...

to know what you are is one half of
this great cosmic **** of physical forces
which inexplicably leads to both
the Himalayas and the Kardashians,
after all.

ignoring the paradox of the liar
who states that he is a liar,
let's scale mountains
and cancel our cable.

i was born in a bathtub,
and i don't have the
distinct privilege
to claim that i ever really
got out.

my life has remained,
essentially,
warm.

i have floated atop innumerable luxuries and opportunities
which i do not have the
distinct privilege
to say anyone
ever
pulled the stopper on.

i will ***** and moan,
on the wrong day,
about a downward spiral feeling,
but it's utter *******
and i don't have the
distinct privilege
to say that i don't know it.

the tub is full.
it's warm.
not even too hot,
and there are even ******* scented bubbles sometimes.

i don't have the distinct
privilege
to say that i've overcome
much more than
slight fluctuations in temperature.

never let me tell you otherwise.
i will try.

egos as round as the vanity mirror's bulbs.
the negative correlation between personality,
and the amount of time spent putting on a face.
now, i don't throw this term around, as it is perhaps
one of the ugliest things you can be, but you are a

i couldn't see the landscape
i was watching how you saw the landscape
you really saw the landscape

the view was less lovely than your company
the awkwardness was better than the ease
i may have had to hold back, i'm not sure
i won't hold back once you are certain, i'll be freed

your pets whispered to me that your an angel
even the cat, supine, admitted you were ok
the pristine state of your apartment was a fright
the only fear i felt aside from my own meddling

dating isn't something i ever thought i'd need
but i'd play any game to win your attention
though i might lose i hope it wouldn't matter
if you glimpsed something desirable meanwhile

i think i'd fall for you if you would let me
i'm really a gentleman through and through
i don't trust myself, however, to read faces
one game i cannot play is your emotions

Stop.
This is no poem.
This is an attack on your autonomy.
The verbs chosen with care,
those awful verbs.
Stop.
You are not human.
The electrical activity of your brain,
that's all there is with you.
Much like every brain, you feel--yes,
and you feel quite human.
Stop.
Unhuman inhumanity in the bliss-pool of ignorance.
Why not raise hands to be lifted out?
I warned you that this was no poem.
Yet, still you persist, and read, "you aren't capable of interpreting this because you aren't me."
Not poetry, despite a sneaky rhyme, no it's a piece of me.
Diary with pink ribbons and a list of all the boys at school.
Diary with lock and key within which I hide that which you can't see.
What if we all spoke in rhyme exclusively?
We would be forced to think before we drooled.
And no one could be fooled about just how ugly you are.
Ah, no, but thinking hides more.
Stop!
I might stream consciousness all over your lovely dress!
Then you would be forced to undress under the unbelievable scrutiny of total strangers
who ought not to give a **** but do
because they haven't tried on enough shoes.
Unlike you, who have tried on too many.
As if perspective were a shoe, mass produced, and inevitably falling out of fashion.
Alas, we are stuck with cliche interjections and archaic pronouns--thou know it!
Stop.
I forgot this was a poem.

i didn't mean to click write a poem
now stuck
for words have
and things are
stuff is
where i am?
is far from
but i have arrived

string words.
sow meaning into letters
with fingertips
trained to lightly tap
the neurotic beat
of a modern schlub's pacing attention span.

it should be worthy of invoking muses
at least be worthy to arrive in your ear
and if it's string you need you'll find some
in the omnipresent

meaning tapped into letters,
meaning,
letters tapped into meaning.

Do discuss the topical,
by reminding people of
it's general falsity.
Paranoia and
insight à la mode,
fit them in too.

Argue with me
if you intend to
alphabetize my
existence itself,
The poet is an
insulting fool.
The poet asks
for others to see
the same words.

considering the consequences
considering the future
considering the past
considering the cost

i decide the title after i have written
predicate properties once they
are revealed
then organize

annihilate self
to melt away
what isn't skeletal
leaving only core

draw taught
until tension breaks
points of moments
which outline

in relief
see the figure
that you want
to try to
be

eke out

i had two years to think about ******* up.
how long did you think of giving up?
what is the greater burden?
to know you are a liar,
or to know you are lying?
Watching you bear it so lightly,
your act,
even in the shade of
my past,
really does contradict.
While the past,
of course,
can only admit,
can only be realized?

was pyrrho a nihilist?
or non-cognitivist?
wise?
or
foolish?
insane?
what's the difference?
go

kindly forget about me for now
and remember only when it is too late
to call me and ask aloud how i've been

i've been trying to define loneliness
though feeling little
and i sometimes go whole days now
with only your shrill laugh tingling down my spine as a reminder

when does anything ever truly sink in?
does life really grant us any such moments?
one second fantasizing about what could have been
next second frantically punishing myself for what should have been
next second fine, calm, drunk, high, gone, elsewhere, reading poems

buy one get two free sales for bread expiring in a day
and we will never be us again
but worse things have definitely happened

taxi driver
you may smell unsettling
and your belly might be closer to the wheel than your knees
but for the next ten minutes I am going to tell you stories
that I ordinarily wouldn't tell some of my closest friends
when I pay, bidding you farewell, I will tip you
and tomorrow I will remember that
your smell and obesity
didn't keep you from appreciating
a decent conversation with a stranger
and that only I was paying attention
to the smell and your obesity
which makes you better than me

i'm sick of not being heard.
no one listens, or perhaps
i'm not saying what i think i am.
though the words sound wrong to me too.
thought, though, that they might get through.
after all it's you i'm thinking of.

thought bubbles not in resemblance

you broke all the promises
why am i blamed for all the hearts?
and don't you think i've punished myself
for not knowing you
enough already?

we are children with maturing to do.
me far less than you.
because you give up,
and i prefer to **** up.

you can't say you know until you've
been it.
been there.

what should i do
while the ceiling
is really the floor
you **** him on
above my head

it's all quite natural
the process of decay
through which
i've held your hand
yet that's no relief

disposed to compose worthless memory prose which
has arose given the ... jesus i ******* hate rhyming

i have a pen which writes with salty tears
it is the only pen i use because i know
it will never run dry so long as i want to write
so long as i still have happy things to write about
which roll up my insides like a tube of teeth paste
squeezing out my tears for dipping parsley in...
self indulgent *******...

How is it that
people whom the most
warmth emits from
are often
so cold within
that their warmth reflecting back
from those they've warmed
doesn't melt them?

anyone else have dreams where they run and jump, thinking and knowing you'll fly if you do this, and you jump so high you think for a second you're flying, and after just a moment of that awesome dream-flying feeling, you realize you're only in a controlled fall?

If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you, or something. You are a powerless, finite, noncognitive human being, and it is up to you to cause effects/affects in your experiences which you are in control of, which are valued/valuable to you. That includes responsibility for those values, and mindfulness of them; really, who else could cause that? Who else experiences value in the way you do? That is our freedom and our prison. And even this is false.

Yes perhaps a while we will sit in silence.
Awkwardly
or...

Believe, though, in bonds.
Two trees wrap around one another,
and don't compete for sunlight.
Yes it might not be quite as easy, natural,
but we grew, then, entwined,
and now some things are inextricable.

Budding branches, green, and reaching,
grow and grow and grow!
Smiling Sun, Beauty,
your growing only more beautiful,
will never sadden me.

I ******* love you,
Is that not enough my poor, poor victim?
You, Queen of Self-Pity,
Who tortures me, the King, all-too-well,
The pain inflicted more excruciating
Than any I have ever loved.
My own hand does hesitate,
unlike yours,
drawing the edge across skin.

Life has peaks, moments,
that begin just beneath the denim.
Neurotransmitters in a frenzy,
every nerve ending buzzes,
wriggles, screams, every nerve says,
"This is all there is. Inhale the smell of sweat and
****** fluids."
Serotonin, Dopamine, "This is your function," they say,
"This is what your body is for."
Testosterone, Oxytocin, "This copulation, this second, stay here."
Hands cannot be still,
Mouth cannot close,
Tongue cannot retract,
And it builds with every inch you feel.
It seeks your spots, your sensitivities, your favorite weakness,
It seeks them and presses on them,
In that slow-at-first-harder-now way,
Until,
You wake up ******* your bed.

a sound, an ear, a thought, a riposte?
too reductive.
are we really thus bound to the
spatiotemporal nature of apperception?

a thought, a sound, movement, vibrations,
light traveling faster than sound,
mind reading,
your thoughts, your ear, my utterance,
your conceptions explode,
and I have said hello.
you have judged me unworthy of
more than the basic civility
shown to passing strangers
before my vibration hit your ear.

that stomach pain lets you know
she means something more
than flesh or time.
as i construct her, surely she is,
because i only want to see.
veils between us
i wish to lift away
gently
and replace with embracing.
only holding back the fear,
can't we just see?

words
use them sparingly
among a healthy diet
of shut lips
your own saliva
the back of your teeth
then
once a week
*** into a microphone
and watch a bunch
of strangers
not really care

The words were all wrong.
I can't say.

The blur of the past
only focuses when
the throbbing pain
of realization thrusts
my mind into that
moment when you
crushed the cigarette ****
so completely.

The almost imperceptible
trembling
of your bottom lip.
As if to punish me you couldn't let me see your pain.

know
just smile
stop
think
love
actually mean
want things
ask
cause talk
write in
another's ink

i do not write for love of words, for you, or for me.
i write because it is possible to do it for its own sake.
art, you know?
independent of you, it is of value to me
outside of me, it disrupts the universe
all on its own
noumenal
only a few thoughts and motions
arbitrarily parsed and collated
randomly encountered
analyzed
and discarded

remembering
becoming a member again
of society and my family,
they have never left me
and despite all these arms opening to me,
i chose yours, and i continue to choose
the absence of your arms

for better or for worse, i vowed
until a for-worse, turns out to be a for-better
i'll be in your arm's absence

i blame myself
though you do not escape blame
and i can't help but ask strangers
would i ever do this to you?
i can't help but ask
would you ever do this to me?
you can see how the unknowns fester
as i re-member with myself
solitude faked well

I want to know I made you smile.
If I could cause such beauty,
life would mean more for a moment.

Why don't smiles last?
Why does the heartbeat slow, eventually?
And can't two people simply enjoy one another's company--
be be here for once, for now, together, right here and just be warm?
Without expectation, just happy.
No hopes, no unstated desires, just togetherness,
and those conversations one has lying on roofs, looking into the stars, on the hood of your car,
looking out on the moonlight stretched in shadows over a lake's rippling surface,
you know in the movies,
but when you actually do it it's better than any movie no matter who you're with or what temperature it is outside, or how many mosquitos are swarming, or what the radio is playing.
And notes written in pencil.
Pens run out of ink.
But why did we...
Why have we...
Why are we not writing anymore?
Can we drag the dry pen down the pages, forever, until paper rips under the pressure?
The story is etched into me.
Let's never stop telling the story.

Anyway, like I said, I want to know I made you smile
so we need to speak of many things.
So that if you want to know you made me smile,
we can know exactly where those smiles came from,
what it meant...
what it means for them
to have meant that
to
us.

no insights
no resounding truths
nothing you couldn't have written down
something i wrote

Wait! Stop! Please. I know it's a lot to ask nowadays, but I think you might actually need to here this.
I really hope you are doing ok. I hope you are flourishing, man, you know?
Just wanted you to stop and take a second to say, "Hey, cool world. Others are out there thinking the same things in their own ways, crying, laughing, growing, and just being, and I get to be a part of that world today too."
I love you, fellow human <3
Now get back to work, you can do it!

She is gorgeous, exuberant, wise, and dynamic.
I think
She is homely, glib, shallow, and static.
She thinks
I will love you even if you are right because I am actually those things.
Is it wrong of me to love you for fearing that you are what I am,
So long as I try to convince you that you are not?
So long as I try to convince you that I am?
I promise it will only be me that hurts because of it.

Who made your shirt?
Was it worth all three cents of that impoverished woman's sweat?
Keep collecting those precious friends like postage stamps.
You vapid, empty shell!
I'll be over here on my equestrian statue.

Written,
this sentence exits my control.
Even I will not make it mean the same thing tomorrow.
You are definitely not making it mean the same thing.
Stop reading my poem, you are ruining it.
I wrote this.

I think I can read your mind,
I think I've been there,
Where you are.
Don't be offended.
You've been here too, right?
Let's just speak
To one another
About it.
Maybe I'm wrong,
But if we talk
We'll know then,
And we'll both be there,
At least.