/LETTERS.

I've been spending
So much time
Writing letters
To the people that we'll be
In the future,
And I've accumulated a pile
Of letters from the past.

When you're writing my letter,
You'll lace the paper
With *******
For all the self destructive
Tendencies
I've been flirting with
Since my infancy.

/REFLECTION

-There is no reason
To burn the letter
I wrote so many times
To the Orchid.

The time for hurt is over.

My first love,
And truthfully my first heartbreak.

So many questions
I could still ask
That I still do not deserve the answer to.

I only regret the times
When our minds were focused
On malicious intent.

-Daisy got her letter
Probably a dozen times,
So there's not much reason
To spell it out.

There's no reason
That things turned bitter.

There's hardly a reason
For our break in communication.

You taught me about longevity
And trust through hardship.

I cried at your castle,
And I fell on your sword.

You broke me.

Your true lesson was solitude.

-For the third girl I could write to,
You're simply not worth my time.

To leave me the way you did,
To consider you my poetic muse
Would be too much of an honor for you.

Don't consider this poetic,
Consider this me clearing up
Any misconception on how I may feel
About you.

You occupied my bed,
And then validated my views
On dishonest devotion...

If you may be wondering,

*******.

-To the girl formed from
The perfect, highly unlikely
Serendipity of the wind and the rain,
Whose beauty makes the northern lights
Look so normal...
You have no idea how much I love you.

I can't tell you how many nights
I've sat up thinking about you,
Or having my heart broken by the idea
Of you,
But I can tell you
That no one on Earth compares
To the way you seem to radiate.

It was an absolute honor
To share the atmosphere you occupy,
No matter how this life might play out.

/RETURN

If you come to forge my letter
And lay it on my deathbed,
Write to the shell of a poet...
Address it to a man
Full of regret
And hoping the future
Will somehow bend to his will.

It's all I have,
And that illusion
Is all I can create.

I'm looking through at the joys
Which are traveling slowly
On these dim LEDs tonight.

There is eternal love
Behind one of the doors,
And behind plenty of others
There exists a world
Where we begin to dissolve,
But our surface area increases greatly.

Will we luck out,
Or are we destined to call this audible?

I don't know why you
Are coating yourself in this
Jagged exterior of elitism
When you know all too well
How Faust squandered his soul.

Don't tell me I'm repeating my mistakes
Because you don't understand
That I'm bettering myself,
As you glare in to my consciousness
Through your kaleidoscope
Where everything must look like paradox.

Let me think for myself now.

I've weighed the advantages
More times than you have,
And I promise you,
These circumstances are far better.

Love to you is like the Monty Hall Problem,
And you always think there's a bigger prize
Behind the next door.

You aren't increasing your fortune,
And that's not how you win.

I'd say you're not using game theory very well,
And I'd posit that's no way to live your life.

You want to feel calculated and powerful
By approaching love with your Id fully wanting,
And wanting the apex of what it can obtain.

Mad in my envy.
Mad in the irrational stresses of "love".
Mad at all the happiness I isolate.
Mad with the visions of success.
Mad with my prewar publications.
Mad with your gestures of bliss.
Mad in how we can't get carried away.
Mad at how the money always talks back.
Mad when I am making this a monologue.
Mad when I haven't crossed the minds of
       strangers.
Mad when they declare the eyes of reason to
       be obscene for the children.
Mad at the fame that they call existence.
Mad when I see the lackluster descriptive
       lies within their Bibles.
Mad that you became the society we
       ******.
Mad toward the rebirth of the minister's
       daughter who sang for forgiveness and
       love but lied about both,
Wasting our time on useless Norwich
       sonnets, and naming the theoretical
       infants—
Wouldn't anyone be mad as hell?

II. GENESIS.

Beautiful in your powerful gaze, upgrading
       constantly, tossing me aside, casting
       countless new euphoric darlings into the
       void since my dismissal.

Draining each meaningful vein from the
       poor souls who fall under your magnetic
       pull—who want to brave the human    
       castle (floor lined with pitfalls) and then
       you, *** Incarnate! Most perfect
       amongst us! Blessed be your Godly
       word, you execute them with joy!

Holy in your immaculate beauty, dear Saint!
Now it is your time of reckoning.

Happy Birthday.

Don't forget who made you.

I write this from a library under the watchful gaze of Voltaire,
Having read that the future of Earth's water is being debated in Morocco.

Isn't there a Utilitarian part of us all that strives to save our home,
And rejects the notion that we must **** where we eat to make progress?

Gambling becomes dangerous when you begin to stake declining resources.

There is no turning back, and there is little optimism from Millennials who shall inherit the rotting infrastructure.

Nothing is dramatic or blown out of proportion when the President can't acknowledge that there's something seriously wrong with a giant hole in the ozone.

Herr Trump, where is the ice going?
Would you sell the penguins for profit?

Tell the Polish Brigade that legal workers will restore this country's ideal greatness.

Tell them sincerely.

Reagan spouted that it was Morning in America, and I imagine the Trumpites feel the same.

What is morning, anyway, when you can't see the sun for the smog?

Awaken on Friday morning with green hair,
Looking every bit as mythical, out of the ordinary as your personality.

Do you remember telling me in my clouded memory that I was loved?

I don't blame you if you don't,
You were shapeshifting, you were busy.
You had more to worry about than my ramblings and poetry.

///Preamble.

Into the past where I find myself slipping,
Forgive me if you find that I'm trespassing.

I see hurt and heartbreak...
Want to bring you back through the vortex
Despite the physical barriers.

How many thousands of men could not break your enigma,
And how many sincere girls have shattered your heart beyond repair?

Oh, who could have blamed you for reading Nabokov in bed?
The marijuana haze was too prevalent,
You having gone years without joy but not a handful of minutes without self-deprecation,

I saw in the full frame of this seriousness,
I cut my hand on the picture frame,
And looked to the floor out of shame.

This is your story after all,
Is it fair if I exclude myself?

///Submersion.

Born under a black sun,
And drowning in the omnipresent light,

The Pantheon took note of the atmosphere,
Heightened with sadness.

But you're locked up, Melpomene,
I hardly know your name,
Your tragic songs...

What quiet, old voice has led me to write this?
The same morning my anxiety had reached its peak
And I had little reason to think you'd reached clarity,
I sat in the hallway of struggled composition,

Arrived at the reckoning that nothing should cause worry,
That questions either warrant answers, spite or silence.

All in between is dictated by sadness,
Dictated by you, then.

Please, step back from the ledge.

I.


I heard the words of two madmen
Telling me how to move through my recovery
And preaching on how to drink the prophetic nectar
For the cost of nothing but theoretical change.

I am clay in the hands of revolutionaries
Whose only violence was the execution
Of antiquated ideas,
Whose only wishes of censorship
Were rooted in the antiquated lies
Of their fathers before them...
The murderers of creativity.

The sermon I seek to follow
Is that by which the world
Is viewed through thick purple lenses,
And the glory of God is poured
Onto the landscape of life,
And into the souls rejecting the uniformity
Of selling each other for profit.

I'm sitting in the abyss as I claw madly
At the darkness for a companion
To share a hint of my humor,
The same humor I was told I sculpted
Out of invisibility.

Caffeine has become insufficient
For the sort of altered clarity
That my garden is planted above,
And I fear a Californian drought
Is about dry out this east coast.

I pay no mind to the geography
That you do not trace with your footsteps.

I pay too much mind to the geography
Where I last witnessed the lights strike your face,
And the reflection of your eyes
Signaled that I would soon walk out of Hell,
And lose sight of what kept me comfortable.

I am at the doors of eternity.

I must hallucinate you now,
With all your perfection wrapped around you,
While the water we aren't exploring yet
Is pulling you closer to every equator,
And yet, no farther at all from me.

I will define the pantheons above me
And I will blame every deity in due time.

You gave the lecture
That art was what encompassed our being
And you didn't have to convince me.

I know this connection
Better than the strongest adhesive,
But you failed to realize
That you are the pinnacle of art,
And all I can hope to do
Is make a proper interpretation.

Orbit around me while I try to make sense of you.


II.


You are a catalyst
At the heart of my poor decisions.

I should make a subconscious effort
To cast you onto the plane
Where I cannot fathom your existence,
And where poverty will enrich my wealth
As I forget you completely.

I have seventeen odes in my library
On the death of honesty,
How you won't forget the spell she cast,
And how it will always ******* up.

We are the victims of regulation.

You are the poster child
For the sin that is routine.

I am the bearer of standardized hatred,
And I will carry my burden through your castle,
Ruined with all the marble that you spend all day polishing,
And deciding your priorities, so stoic in nature,
I sentence you to burn in my place.

I turn my back on your eyes of monarchy.

I will bomb you, Empress,
By living without spite,
For how you asked me to punish you.
I couldn't comply because you knew not what you request.

I assure you I'm not impressed.

You cannot be placed in front
Of the collective firing squad,
Which inspired my cruelty long before
You decided to give up on me,
But your innate courage and arrogance
Still led you to make demands...

I severed the communication
And realized you never understood a word
Despite how you would mimic my words,
And demanded my affection
Without mind to the physical impossibility.

A clear proponent of solipsism you are,
Which is why you did not care to victimize me,
My executioner.

You tried to be merciful,
But merciful to yourself,
Slicing deeper into my disdain for you,
Sending the love of my miles to the guillotine,
And realizing you were imitating my constructive confusion,
But had no idea of how to contain it.

Perhaps there is a case for experience,
And my years among the madness.


III.


Evil in each of our hearts,
Yet the structure in the deepness
And darkness of your scorn
Has turned into torment for me,
And that's why I declare you alone insufficient.

You were so eager to profess how eloquent I was sounding,
Yet discredit me because I was a vacancy.

You knew I was *** without a body.

We had no rendezvous,
And you lied and said it was okay,
While staring over your shoulder and back at me,
And onto the assembly line upon which you told me I was an interchangeable part.

You alone told me I was free to wither.

There's an old power in my ear
And she knew her sway and influence
In telling me I better not die,
And that's where you truly lost me.

That was the moment where I knew
We had no future.
Elliott would be without his chance at life,
And the irony was enough to dissolve me then and there.

I have another select few words
And not all of them are clever anymore.

I do not aim to make you laugh,
Your conversation would not fulfill me.

I assure you I have a physical being,
Which cracked in half
At the resonance of this foreseen abuse.

You swear that it was the antiquity in my thinking,
The naivety in my convictions,
The loyalty and sense of commitment you had shed,
Yet aimed your flare cannon of ambivalence
Straight into my throat,
Forcing me to refuse my last supper.

I was sitting next to Kerouac,
Not Christ.

The sanctity you hated was a lie,
To clarify my sins.


IV.


You warned against dreams
Of planes plunging into the Willis Tower,
With steel supports weakening,
The hum of death tuned to eleven,
And the separation between us
Finally, finally expanded
In the only way left to do so.

My heart was in your casket.

You died along with endless dreams
Of fermented talent shows,
And the needles at which I cringe
Before they plunge into my eyeballs.

I awoke to your hand reaching out to me,
And distorting the constraints of modern linear time.

I felt your hand on my head
While you were dreaming of a metropolis.

Plotting was the only strong suit in my arsenal
And I had all the reason to believe
That this was the third winter,
And the world would not endure much longer...

Or perhaps it would endure without me,
Through some form of Utilitarian sacrifice...
But you were never a Utilitarian, sweetheart.

It was never in question.


V.

Stolen away,
And silent.
This hammock holds
So much more than my physical being.

I smashed my head
Against the ground
The night it opened up
And took me.

Hell was clean and orderly.

You told me to straighten up,
Without the slightest hint of irony in your voice
When you were trying to sound persuasive.

You are accidental
Down to the root of your purity
And there are canyon echoes
Shouting in both our heads tonight,
Begging to be put into action.

Gold lines my room,
The shimmer will keep me up.

You left candles lining my room
At the very moment you denied the angels
Which are buried inside my desk.

Lies were coating my eyelids.

I had to throw my common sense
Into the noxious dust storm
That you so tenderly termed eternal love...

And somehow it seemed like a holy deliverance,
Like I wasn't just clouded by serendipity
But that the oxygen was only now flowing,
And that this was meaningful.

You had to be the only genuine human
From a state which perpetuated superficial *******...
But for every ounce of encouragement
And tear drop of genuine compassion,
You confirmed that you were no better
Than a parasite, craving blood I did not produce...

The evolved leech you are,
You ripped yourself out
As to let me, Odysseus, have breath.

Very considerate
That you took the time
To throw me into the Thames,

Knowing I cannot swim.

We will all drown in solitude,
The peace is all that is optional.

Brianne will save the bees
In crusade and nothing less,
With sun as holy catalyst,
Her mind is clear as Crystal—
Eyes on the hive,
Ears to the future of ice cold pale urgency.

It's all in your hands,
All of the food and each holy blessing.

Vast scale over the east or midwest...
Don't let me keep you from your breadbasket.

The children are going hungry because I can't stop my rambling...

It's all adding up to the fact that I'm halting production.

My last night at the Moulin Rouge
Was spent coated in heartbreak,
Regret, and tears
Which would have overflown the Seine.

I can never return…
The dead have no need
For cabarets, alcohol,
And the world’s amount of exotic women.

But most of all,
The dead do not pine for
Lost chances
And a fate written in error.

The dead do not have to forgive
And make amends.
The lights will go out…the conflict…
Resolved.

My last night in the Moulin Rouge
Was spend covered in absinthe,
And the other poisons I needed
To remain alive…

If even temporarily.

We all took that vacation,
Coated in nausea
And sleeping pills.

I could no longer feel the pulse
Of all of our November mornings.

You'd grown accustomed to me.

I was ordinary now,
And my acquired perfection
Had turned to rust.

I was stifling your creativity,
And you could no longer see the beauty
Of the world that surrounded you.

Calliope had all the reason
To rejoice and weep.

Like the sun never shines
For very long in the winter,
We only ever wrote an excerpt
To the novel we started planning
During our first summer mornings.

I'll go to Bristol
With love in my heart,
Pure intent on my mind,
And gin carving out new interpretations
Of my reasoning.

And I have no time at all
To make sense of it.

I will see you on the day of the levee breach.
I will see you when my sinful green dreams
       break the fourth wall.
I will see you when every instance of your
       breath envelopes me like an atmosphere
       of ecstasy and poison.
I will see you when your face still hasn't  
       aged, so perfect in your mastery, and
       you'll glance back on me, seeing clearly
       my eyes of penury.

You will see me—veiled until the flood, washing over, just us two, the prophecy completed, and the realm of death finally demolished.

When will we take the time to cry for the time we've wasted, and when will we start spending the time to correct this?

Tell me if you're built on the same lithium and helium that I am, or if I've been formulating you out of my own ignorance.

Deeper now, into my depression.

You. You have the lingering qualities of a ghost, and just as well a ghost that I haven't seen you in ages.

Perhaps there will be a seance to your memory but do you hold it in Seattle? In a Kerouac, run down, for sale bed in Denver?

Don't tell me you wouldn't like the highs of a streetlamp sonata... But still you'd tell me that the good stuff is really highway jazz, and that cool songstress who gave you the first bites of LSD in your throat.

I can't wait until this America looks like rubble, and is exposed for the **** it's standing on, collapses like the Berlin Wall, and we start letting love back in.

Such a drop in communication. Such a lackluster, government barn burner, and I can't get any telegrams anymore. I used to wish you'd write me a hundred times a day, and now I see where all that greed got me.

So sad. Scared to death in your presence! Am I eulogizing you now, or are these my parting words?

Originality—who's buying?
I wish that ***** would forge Picasso or Matisse.
Give me something better to worry about.

Thinking thoughts of honorable ******,
Terrible though—
You can't **** structure,
You can't **** rhyme,
You can't **** the governor,
You can't **** Ayn Rand,
You can't **** Jackson *******...
They're all doing fine.
Vitals stable.
Restored this morning.

Mystic within Catholic depression, holy roses wrapped about a room of adultery. All I could think of was Jack Kennedy, and the irony of how I cried at his tomb.

You disrupted my balance.

You walked like Aphrodite over my fixed set of morals, into my collection of a million words, onto my bookshelf... And had no idea.

Because I was too late.
Because I did not know.
Because the world would consider this all
       immoral, but morals are bourgeoise
       constructs anyway.
Because you have an aerosol heart.
Because you have that face of diplomatic
       change, free of charge.
Because you might be God.
Because you soul walks across Atlantic City.
Because you hold a pen like Whitman.

I'm curious.

Under the pine trees, we'd lie in the shade and make up excuses for why we couldn't return home.

It isn't safe there, spend the night with me and confess that I'm aging like wine and not withering and rotting away.

Take me to your childhood home with your hidden retreat where you feed the ducks, gazing contently into the water and not thinking of the stepfather who with his meatlike hands would drown you beneath the lake's serenity.

Just don't leave me here like I know you're destined to –
As social convention says you should,
As I now in reflection know you will, and always must.

Seeing you walk on mirrored images I dreamt in moments of pain,

And thinking that I one day would hold your hand in meadows and on top of the Eiffel Tower,

Yet I was so far from you,
And that, you could not bear.

There is comfort in our separation, as you've blossomed within love.

No opportunity for me to disagree if you are happy, secure and warm in the gravest of circumstances.

I feel you here with me, God knows your caring hands could still scrape along my face.

Who wouldn't imagine the infinite (nearly laughable now) possibilities that could have spawned out of our seasonal tryst, but let's give praise to the unexpected joys shot out of reality.

All pieces in place of a puzzle carved out of some improvisation.

It was really nothing,
Because we were like siblings
Who had grown up together...
Trusting each other
And believing every word we'd spout.

It was really nothing
When I was happy to finally
Be understood by someone
Who only wanted me for friendship,
And only dealt in the truth.

It was all for fun
When I had no cause
To doubt any word that could ever
Escape the corners of your already
Damaged subconscious.

It was really nothing
When I found out
That you're a living dichotomy...
You're a light switch,
And far beyond my comprehension.

It was really nothing,
Until you lied.

Strange that I sit here now,
Bathroom early morning of same hotel where you once did think to please me, First Love.

Now you sit in Orient soup shops thinking about your life plans somewhere I do not belong.

Have these three years healed any wounds for you,
And are you the reason at all that I'm scared to fall in love?

I'm running out of trips to Louisville, forgotten friend.

Do either of us now think of beauty on Wednesday night teardrop prelude?

Your Marilyn Monroe face is coating me in nostalgia.

There's old school Hollywood appeal about you that's keeping me still and set in my ways, because how could I be mobile looking at the iconic images of you?

For you gave me refuge from my purgatory, I'm stuck here in my bedroom, your scenes each carefully curated by Billy Wilder or God...

I've heard you're a dying breed but you're so full of life and charisma.

Oh, I know it's hopeless,
But it's been remastered time and again,
1080p being the latest format to get my heart racing,
Letting your DVD spin to the point of exhaustion.

It's very consequential and I'm still betting on this,
I can't take your word as gospel when I feel you in my ribs...

I'm painfully asthmatic and respiring on your sighs.

And in my delirium,
I realized it was probably an old expression from a census,
And that I too have an unborn sibling with consciousness surely floating in the ether of what comes after death.

Maybe I will come to collide with what would have been companionship and instinct,
Or maybe I'll meet with oblivion like the dread on the end of a needle,
Quick and not at all as bad as anticipated.

If sin is what bars me from enchantment,
I challenge the legitimacy of our creation by perfect being...

Have we ever considered that God too has made mistakes
In giving us the capabilities of genocide...

They say we are flawed experiments of an immaculate design, in the shape of a flawless creator,

Ruling every instance of ****** as an act of iconoclasm.

Where do the sins ends?

What voice should I let entertain my thoughts tonight?

I've settled on that of unborn souls never guilty of hatred, preconceived bias, elitism.

Tonight, I lend my ears to the innocent
Who will judge me by my merit alone.

Should well have known that I was truly asleep,
Sat next to you,
And you next to my hallucinations of false maturity,
With both of us by chance reading Blake,
And me understanding that both of us were then looking for some romanticized outlook on life.

And the fact that I was so taken back by your taste,

More so how beautiful you were,
Clad in white and for once sitting still.

I grabbed her by the waist in the disco-ball light
And said that we didn’t have to stay here and dance if she had any better ideas.

Everyone smelled like liquor,
Vultures circled in masquerade frowns to listen in on our plotting,
To drag our way out of the party
Toward somewhere more secluded.

But the alone time we made for ourselves was just that,
Alone in the most quiet and heartbreaking ways
That could only ever materialize when you’ve communicated perfectly with someone
By a complete accident of circumstance.

And the balancing act of the words you’ve placed rigidly inside of hers begin to unravel
Beneath the weight of all the questions you ignored to ask.

Leonard Cohen, gone the night before we recited Flanders Field,
And our memory was still fresh with poetic inspiration,
The artistic suppression of dread.

Famous Blue Raincoat,
The feelings of despair and isolation abound.
I felt the cold New York traffic that I was separate from all the bustle
And all the life.

Chelsea Hotel with its twists in compassion,
It's all too human and vulnerable to admit your schisms,
The plight of life when it slips away from us,
Into the city and falls off the roof.

Hallelujah resonates most,
The sound of pure emotion
The feeling of triumph with your chest bare to the Earth.
Let the raw expression engulf you, spread the ashes.

There were innumerable days
Of waiting on my fortune
To magically change
And for love to seem
As if it does
In all the movies.

But honestly,
That's *******,
And I don't have time
To sit and wait.

It's a losing battle
To honestly hope
That my dream girl
Will rehab again.

I'm done playing games.

I'll walk out the door.

Today,
I grow the spine
You swore I never had,
And reclaim the heart
That I swore would collapse
Without you.

If I have to be the one
To break our promise
So be it.

It's time I started
Being happy
For me.

Constant beauty and contract signing,
Steps outside the door to flashing lights,
Cameras,
From center stage:

Her bedroom of anxiety.

Greeted by the sea of paparazzi,
They seem less genuine than a crowd of assassins,

Only reporting on things that will tear down a reputation,

Publicity that weighs on the soul.

Notoriety was never supposed to make it hard to breathe,
But the only soft air comes on the end of ****** needles
That one day will pass too much relief into your veins

And make a pop star that much more famous.

I welcome a crowbar behind my timid brown eyes,
For I hurt with horrible magnitude and I've been shaking all night.

I wish to feel the thunder of deconstruction in my bones,
And to reign upon this lonesome land with guilt free mind.

I'm shifting away
From this higher state
Of understanding
And distorted reality.

I'll be gone by the morning.

When I'm reduced to crawling
Out of the safety
Of these painkillers,
I hope the breeze is subtle,
Your words are kind,
And I slip quietly
Into the great perhaps

I hope the greenery
Can wrap around my daydreams
And cut the psychic pains
Right out of my eyes.

Glad to have made contact.

Loved to intertwine within those blue eyes, months before we'd fade with the particles of our memory.

Plato's spirit saw the snow today.

It purified the Earth again, while I was emptying out my stress.

Insurance and assurance were synonymous today.

It's so quiet in the harbor.

The ships stayed in and we all sang choral melodies against the mast.

The air was crisp and so were you.

Perfect atmospheric conditions on the hell-side of Kentucky.

What would either of us scream tonight,
And why am I so worried about it?
The hypothetical situation I imagine
Is always an argument
Because I keep it realistic.

You wouldn’t come back to make things easier,
Change your ways
Or make up for the past,
But to yell at me one more time
To get thrill that you admitted it gave you.

Because you said you knew I wouldn’t leave,
And you left me wishing that I had.

I.

The road to forgiveness
        is how we will all travel
        through our damaged perception.
The road of our youth-laced mistakes
        began long before Springfield,
        but let us never forget
        that lesson in interaction...
The laughs that would accompany
        our philosophical musings on the order
        by which we all arrive at consciousness,
        regardless of the fact that I would not
        arrive within my allotted time.

I'm more glad than you know
        that apology was even an option.

II.

Unconditional, even.

Burdened now in knowing that I am absolutely
         the beast of sin,
Taking the role of God as I planned to drown  
        the only person I used to run to...
Attacking the "Demon" I've built up in my
        head...

Carly, Carly, I'll just address you directly.

Free now from the paper prison which I vainly
        hoped would absolve me,
Selfishly throwing infants into the fire of tender
        memory,
Throwing down the IEDs, planted all round the
        ballerinas who would listen to my fake  
        stoic cries, mind lined with my own  
        intellectual elitism.

III.

Hypocritical as I read the Sutra in my bed.

Who was I to **** you after we spilled all of  
        that starlight into each other's ears over
        telephone signals?
Who was I to shoot down the look in your eye
        after all the genuine maintenance I made
        under your guise?

"I can't believe you're real"

True with different tone color now.

So thankful you weren't hesitant in returning
        your missiles to the silo.

And now,

Finally...

It is time to live.

Young girl, songs lamenting the American condition,

You are the catalyst of sexuality.
You are the tar on my fingers that keeps me writing.

Clear in your heart, paradox is the word and I am the scar,

You're too afraid to come outside,
Bombs won't break through your kitchen tables and plexiglass.

Far too much shelter, this is a movement I can get behind. Starting to crack. Starting to scream.

The motivation now: breaking out of mediocrity.
///
At least I'm better than those guys, I must continue to assure myself.

I might be the loner,

Underwhelming boy who will never serve his country,

Yet I don't go around breaking things that aren't mine—

Urania may have pulled my strings like a puppet,

But I snapped her sanity.

From the nature of what we ignorantly hail as comparative commerce,
To the stacks of dollars you keep in upscale apartment buildings,
Will you get past your own facade of money and public persona
In looking inward, at calloused soul,
Seeking judgment of what bears true value...

When Shkreli is dead,
There will still set puppet senators,
Spewing the filth which is evil and sponsored—
Regurgitating paid claims from which he too cut his teeth.

When along the life cycle does one lose their soul,
And if that's where you draw the conclusion that you're a man,
I'll conscientiously object from your vision of mankind.

The sun sets of empires, and you do not have one.
I don't have your wealth,
But both of us are sure to die,
Both slaves to fate,
Nothing left to buy out.

On the genesis of your ashes, your sins will not die with you.

In memoriam, only a kid who liked to play devil,
Just not as good at it as he thought.

We are on the path to greatness,
Living now in the full stretch of waiting,
Knowing that something is distinctly different in the shade of our dreams.

How will we lie down and wonder about the human condition with clusters of expensive stars decorating our bodies?

Will the fame change us—

Will I find you buried under your silk and pearls, as you took the pleasantries with you to end your suffering, and the world taking note, being still for a moment.

I hope to never deliver a eulogy on the theme of pale fire that could not sustain,

And I hope to find the means to stay under each other's skin.

Else, there is no point to this deranged endeavor,
And we just as well should be forgotten.

How do you avoid the trap of a cosmic blonde,
Intellect twirling and coated in subtlety?

Has anyone ever existed in more eloquence,
Perfecting all you care for in heightened precision?

It seems you sleep in the studio,
Next to my mind,
Throwing off the perceptions any on-looker might pull out of your air...

Defenseless, no matter, to get caught in your charm.

At the forefront of this new wave of substantial beauty.

Thinking I'd outgrown this sort of nervous musing on my late nights,

How could I have known I'd fall under any spell so suddenly...

Calliope showed up in my window after a night on the town,
A face full of anguish begging for help.

She brought along with her fragments of my past, spewing vulgarities like I had never grown accustomed to,

The night opened up to new possibilities.

New found companions at my side, I went into the intoxicated haze of confusion surrounding the sixth floor,

This is my adulthood, I cannot turn back.

At the end of the hallway is safety, yet in front of me is my oldest and truest friend who I cannot abandon.

Calliope came calling about half past one, August Eleven, No more innocence.

This cathedral was ruined by dust,
Your altar has gone out
And you smell so strongly of the pine trees you rest your head under.

I wish I could bottle you,
Either to have that aroma at my disposal,
Or a shot of you to drown out my hardships.

Each day moves in sequence with great emphasis on the orchards,
Bearing myriad fruits,
Such heavy blossoms in sequence with your arrival.

I'll wish I wouldn't have locked myself away,
Away from the sunlight—
The good sunbeams that grant entrance into life,
Spending all my time lamenting for the world around me.

Seems like no time to feel love now,
Only time to cry for the love I let go to waste.

I want to hear you
Speak in Greek,
For it's the language
In which Aristotle
Tried to formulate tragedy.

Aren't the troubles
We sometimes must endure
More the classical variety
In this age of technology,
Yet the Julian you turn to
Is not the Apostate...

I don't prefer any former residence
That I owned along the rain.
Tribulations will drain our coffers
But I have insurance implanted
By way of teal dream in your eyes,
So I'd like to ask you
To not go looking for pain.

Optimism isn't always wasted time.

I'm bearing down on all that binds us,
And I'd wager we're both cultivating
Our gardens now.

Will you stay up with me
Under the lights of the greenhouse tonight?

Color my eyes in to reflect yours
While you collect your concerns below.

Just don't scavenge the pain out of our fortune,
Like I know you could.

I couldn't bear to hear you speak in Greek
While my heart's on the altar.
Don't you see that I was always
Absolutely a dowry for the taking
And I was tarnished every time?

I never thought that I too
Was worthy of love.

I never knew that there existed
The magnitude you achieve,
Which is why I never want to read
Your magnitude in the context
Of seismologic destruction.

I couldn't bear witness to your holy carnage...
But **** you'd be good at it.
Aeschylus would weep at the fact
That he never wrote it in detail.

You would speak in Greek
With your own added touch.

But it's all in speculation
That I don't want to live to see.

Sent me to the cabinet for some overpriced wine,

Bottles upon bottles, for if we can't sleep we might as well celebrate.

But it was martinis in the bathtub, your throat burning, you thought it would drown the fire...

Your legs would cramp for hours after, and there's nothing I can do to help,

It's typical and expected.

What can I dare to now term creative expression, with your flower contortions now causing you such pain?

Yet I've been called an artist, but it was Sugar who was dancing with such grace tonight,

Either by design or intoxication.

Convenience store where I stopped to buy poison gum *****,
Here I am baptized in the light of the new genesis.

For new life sprang up on the oil rigs
In the industrial world,
We live in a future no one dared to comprehend.

We blew up the old world with new ideas,
We couldn't resist the urge to push the button any longer,

I sit under my bed
Duck and cover Cold War safety,

Safe from communist war criminals,
So when is the bomb going to drop?

No, I don't believe the Earth is going to be reborn as a paradise...
A land of altruistic Eden.

The lost garden is doomed to burn up in the sun,
As is the mausoleum for my memory.

Best guesses say we aren't exactly advanced,
But what if there's exceptions in our numbers?

What if we sat awake in our tombs for all of eternity
And your soul keeps locked
Waiting for the oblivion of the unburnt citizens separated from the material world,

How great were our ambitions if they didn't stretch to something after this course of existence...

Then what right do we owe the Catholic church that was not there at the beginning of our symphony.

I'll show you a great story of illuminated migrations and books about the lights of the pillars of creation,

When they tell me that Walt Whitman's work here is not done,

And so walked into the bathroom to lock the door,

Wash his face before yelling on both coasts of the American Empire.

Our Prime Minister has flawless memory and offers us codeine syrups of all flavors to vote for the Environment.

You'll have me yelling about the importance of taxation,
You can't have me acting like this if I've already bought us tickets to the art gallery...

And can you even now believe that toddler's first reaction was to destroy that giant biblical oil on canvas.

Maybe it was the violence,

And the same God who gave us our nuclear training wheels.

The same God who kills men of euphoria under meteors

And the same God whose name was in the air on Inauguration Day.

When I drove down the rode with you and your new ideas about where to go...

You had words I didn't know,
But we had Prince on the radio,
And that's something I know well.

I have a Wilco CD in my backpack,
I have every reason to just set my alarm
And pass out in the passenger's seat.

When the shadows overtake me
I hope my throat is already slit.

/MERCY.

I've learned by now
That fast and painless
Is a concept of fiction.

It wouldn't matter
If you were to tear out my heart
Or rip out my spine,
It's all death just the same.

If you choose to take my life,
Don't take mercy into consideration,
Because mercy has been long lost
On those already rotting
In the graves dug in their minds.

/CONSUMPTION.

Peace from the darkness
Has taken the shape
Of your hand on the goblet,
With all my absolution taking the form
Of your loving embrace.

Let's build up our legions,
Show them the light in our gospel,
And convert them to our truth...

Such a beautiful proposition,
If we could work it out ourselves.

Wash over me with your holy sermon.

Let me absorb all your light.

Reconstruct all my arrogance
Upon the backs of the broken,
Just for the rare opportunity
For such a picture perfect landscape.

Monarchy never looked so stunning.

/EMPIRE.

Drowning is becoming an art.

Deeper and deeper
Into the depths do I venture,
All the while indifferent
To my lack of oxygen.

I'm plugging in plot holes.

I'm re-founding Byzantium,
And all for the iconography
That has left me
In such a state of marvel.

I don't want compromise
Or pity of any sort.

I just want you in tidal waves,
And to get pulled deeper
Beneath the whole of your personality.

In a modern world
So short on imperialism
Why was it so easy for you
To colonize my heart?

/TRANSLATION.

For the first time in years,
I need no translation.

I speak clearly, openly,
And without filtration.

She both listens and hears,
And that's not even the beginning
Of her infinite positive traits.

She's a modern masterpiece,
So above modern art.

I want to dissolve into her brilliance
If for even a moment.

/RECOIL.

I have nothing to fear.

I am the God of Death...
I am the shadows
That haunt even the deepest corners
Of my recuperating mind.

I'm gaining back the strength
To show the world once more,
That there are better, truer
Forms of evil in our control.

I am the culmination
Of the lives I have taken,
And now I choose to never
Be frightened by fate again.

I am the God of Death,
And now I choose to live.

I stare into your kerosene eyes with great envy,
Knowing I should usurp the gold in your palms, that gold on your wrist,
And the gold wrapped around your deceitful heart.

Only in knowing your nightmares do your dreams taste so sweet,
But, Love, I'm only imagining.
///
I am only imagining, as this concept is foreign.

You are never just a face in a box, you are the reason I'm straining out of my nightmares,
Because yesterday, you choked me until I woke full of life.

I want to taste the ***** on your breath.
I want to feel you give way to constructive reasoning.

But there exists such restriction,
Such impedance to my thousand day cardiac arrest, for which I got no trial,
And holding you back is truly the antithesis of joy,
And if not yours, then ever so selfishly, mine.

Regardless, I'm sick of holding it in.

I'm a heavy philosopher when I'm drugged up, I sing The General Specific in bed with the Elf Queen.

How many thousands of times did we make awkward eye contact,
And then receded out of our shells
To both ponder our crises with Sufjan Stevens sad verses falling out from the ceiling.

I've fallen directly in love with life in the nighttime.
///
I'm sure that there was some cloud of fog when I slumped out from your room.
There was a physical haze I was trapped under
Trying to feed you harmony, melody and restore your confidence.

Reading your signals, it says your words don't match the hurting in your eyes,
And that scares me.

In reading the Russian legend of the Snow Maiden,
Doesn't she have to melt in the summer?

It's the delicate balance of nature that ruins any hope I conjure,
But with the temperature dropping below freezing
I'd just as well preserve my happiness
Until I can't control its thawing out
And imminent disintegration.

That, of all things, can wait.

King Kenny,
Like God on Earth upon mat...
Rising sun in his eyes for rainless morning,
And superkick party, catered and cleaned.

Technician of great finesse,
Not living off technicality,
We pay thanks to our savior
For handing out the wrath.

People only mesh well with kerosene, each and every human so flammable,

It's a wonder we don't all set ourselves on fire...

But yours truly did it last night

Swallowed two liters of lighter fluid and chased it with jet fuel,

Ate the box of matches you keep in your purse

And burnt away the last good parts of my stomach.
///
I slept like a baby for two hours,

Not enough for lectures on the carbon cycle or dada mathematical deconstruction,

So I drifted off to more sleep, and slept to dream of the Six Gallery.

Wishing one or two poets would gain fame in an age of pineapple vodkas that no one is drinking for the taste,

But for gravity to pull through their very thin blood stream and feel at one with the party.

It's monotony—

I'll die and everyone will love me then, so where are they while I'm alive?

That's the joke of mourning,

It's the reason I resort to self-immolation,
It's the reason I dream everyday for fame and do nothing about it.

It's why Frank O'Hara got out while he could, dying with the true images of New York City

And not living to see it destroyed as I now have.

Emperors and Legionaries alike, take up your arms and help me overthrow anyone who dictates verse and meter.

I aspire to **** a fascist with my bare hands.

And would rip it out if she could.

You can condemn me
And think that there's a void left,

But you have no idea.

You haven't been around to hear
These beautiful girls sing or strum
And all you can see from your new outside perspective
Is sink or swim.

Your pretty face and gentle voice led me to try to win you over,
After you assured me there was something there,

And you only call out to those you love and trust

When you're scared.

I should have ran like hell the night you said you loved me,

But you were my miracle.

I know I was selfish.

I wanted to take the little bit of magic left in you
And lock it up for myself.
///
You saw through my depression
And spoke to my ailing heart
That not every girl who sings
Is an angel at all...

But maybe a siren,

Only graceful enough
To get their fingers behind your eyes
And push until something interesting happened.

There you are,
Still singing.

And I still can't tell.
///
Call it like it is.

Don't leave it shrouded in poems you'll know I'll stumble over.

Scream it at me.

It would hurt less,
And we could stop doing this.

I could **** my obsession once and for all.

I'd stop having to meditate to clear my head of you

And make peace with the fact
That you're not a monster at all.

I'm not lonely anymore,
But I'm lonelier to know you like this.

I don't hate you.
Not at all.

I'm confused.
I hate endings,
Especially without proper goodbyes.

I just want to talk things over,

Because one-sided dialogue
Won't get either of us further.

But if it's an ending you want,
I'll oblige.

Where is she, in her impeccable timing and charm?

She's gone to roam the Earth,
And all its great civilizations left to conquer.

She'll sing at the throne to become Empress of African empires

And keep me waiting.

It's shameful to think about the stuff I've cried over recently, and the things I saw of her while intoxicated,
Her beautiful face and the words of a woman who'd grown both petty and sad.

It sounds familiar.
It makes me want you more.
///
Is 1:30 too early to get ****** up?
I have nothing better to do.

Where have you gone,
And have you lost the plot on your journey from Cumberland River to Puget Sound?

I hear you're the Queen of Seattle.

I hear Eastern Kentucky has a long history of intoxication,
Blessed with unbelievable quantities of prodigies and savants.

Shouldn't it be a sign that they all leave?

In loving you I found a philosophy of the human compassionate heart,
Beautiful in her inter-dimensional quest to sit next to me that day,
Or ask me some theoretical question I already had an answer to,

In loving you
It's you who must deliver my eulogy.

Sessile and connected,
I'm sat here to ponder—
To draw the parallels
Of my own roots of understanding
And touch, once more, the slumber
Which heartbreak does not send.

We should only gauge our maturity
By the scope of the circumstances.

All things glowing,
Yet all by ourselves.

Landscape void,
Yet setting all but bleak.

You squeeze the hand of love
Sometimes in thinking
You can teach a tighter grip—
Deciding that carpal tunnel syndrome
Is sure to fade...
That writer's claw grips just as tight.

It does not.

The sonnets, I could not recite,
But sighed at the single fact
That it signaled my memory fading,
And so too might all the flowers.

II.

The buds that haven't grown
And won't.

The dark I've both loved inside and cursed,
The central city which accepted the trade for my soul.

All drifting now.
I hope you cannot relate.

You'll recognize it all in waves of belonging.
I'd bet they'll pass us by.

III.

Where has the plot gone?

Slung the ink from well to wall,
Because this Earth is completely canvas,
And all the Earth will feel it with great objectivity.

From cries of heartache
To cries of triumph,
And extremism in both,
And with joy lying off the spectrum,
All to behold.

Nothing moving forward
As we choose to read in lefts and rights
And restrict the privilege
Moving only backward.

Time travel is simple,
Don't you do it with thought?

Restoration to my smile,
Reduced me to dust.

IV.

Not my call and not in fact,
With strong mind to senses
The world was very teal.

Looked, felt,
The aura,
All distinctively teal,
Just as gentle and forgiving.

No mind to the fact that you've done wrong
And been terribly wrong
Toward the center of judgment.

I'd posit the scales
Are already in balance,
And I'd advantage you greatly
On the weight of your hope.

All in harmony,
Yet the water receded.

I must confess, I'm awful at predictions...
But you broke my calendar stone,
Tolled the bell with no rhythm
And never did you discourage it...

Of course I'm guilty,
I've found it in my nature
And I've been worshipping in your temple...

Excommunication carries the feeling of death.

They say that Angels play the harp,
But I'm coming to realize
That's allegorical *******.

The harp, such beautiful tone color,
(Tied to purity and innocence)
Yet have the Angels no say in the matter?

I've met hundreds of angels shrouded in cacophony.

I'm coming to realize none play the ******* harp,

Each angel marching to their own John Sousa or Joe Strummer, none alike.

Let's throw out the fascist visions of angels and know only that they are strong, and they are numerous...

They may not love you nor serve your God,

But they exist all around you,

And I implore you to know that these are your muses, your goddesses, spirits of all shapes—

Do not reduce them to harp players.

The season has changed
Since I wrote a story of letters
On just how inspiring you are.

But it's been about two years
Since my balance first failed me
And left me breathless.

Suffocating has been an absolute privilege.

/TRUE CONFESSION.

Frozen by the recent cycle
Of all these current events,
I am still and silent
As I revert my mindset
Onto you.

Was it ever really a question
Of where my affection belonged?

Then why does the melody
Sound so wrong now?

/ART.

You look at how I meant to deceive you
And you admitted there
That I was your harmonious blacksmith.

We lied about how okay we were
And we acquainted ourselves
With similar thinking...

I never intended
For this to be so obvious.

/PEARL FISHER.

Our exteriors cracked open
And we pried out the pearls.

The world was built on the backs
Of those meaning to strike it rich.

The lottery is rigged,
And I was never in the loop.

Such a sad state to stare upon it,
As I'm splintered at my spine.

It's never clear where the path diverged
Until you fall off the plain of reason.

I mark my calendar with the date
That I first admitted my thoughts.

I couldn't convey
What I know only in feeling.

/UTOPIA.

Offered up here before me,
Like a sacrificial lamb
To personal salvation,
I must face the demons
I gave way to in the past.

The evils I should have learned from
Now look like philosophic musings
On illuminated manuscripts.

My conscience is void of peace,
And the stress is turning into a disease.

My nervousness exists
Alongside your game of chance,
And I'm not sure if it's a wager
I have the sanity to take.

Luck has never been on my side,
And I know how bad
I can **** this all up
At a moment's notice.

It's encoded in each strand
Of my DNA...

I'm not meant to survive this.

Could I ever write you
A truly holy sonnet
When I was forged
So far from Heaven?

Could you cry for me
While I could gather the teardrops,
With the lone intent
To flood the world again?

Can we ever know purity
Without a little harm?

Must I cleanse the Earth
Of everything
I can no longer care for?

Carly's eyes penetrated Hell
And cast me back
Into sanity again.

I'm standing on my own again
And by only her accord.

Let's make the world
A little smaller...

Whisper to me anything at all
That you could find meaningful enough
To discuss through the cover of darkness.

For the first time in forever,
I'm whole once more.

I'm venturing deeper
Into your enchantment...
This new labyrinth I've found
That I only aim
To immerse myself in deeper
With every setting sun.

I can only hope
To grow like moss
Around your careless daydreams
And take hold of even the smallest bit
Of your brilliant brand of curiosity.

Still so framed as promising
Even as the circumstances have changed.

Universe back in spirals,
Your eyes back in crystal lattice.

There is a particular way that the rain falls, gravity in mind when it does — severe,

When I'm reading rounds in between your lines.

You sit on the throne of the new regime.
Broke the idea the kind to be cruel is true when etched in stone.

De Stijl Darling.
Dutch Babe.

You stage this art-fiend Heaven,
Hypercatalyst blood into reality.

Handful of sudafed,
Your effect is the same,
When we shot through your canopy,
Sun on your hair —
Natural illuminated manuscript.

I hope you've latched on to me.

I've become a slave
To the open road.

I'm a vagabond,
A rambler,
And everything else
You'll tell your daughters
To stay away from.

I'm a heartless gambler,
Or so I've been told,
By the countless girls
Who only knew me
By a passing glance.

The impression I'm playing lately
Looks a lot like the reflection
Of something you've never liked
About me.

I can't blame you.

I don't like myself,
And this time,
The blame is all mine.

I've been thinking to my habits
And how one in particular
May very well
Be rotting my liver.

I'm a cognac ******
Behind the wheel,
And on the open road,
I have no reason
To slow down.

You say I’m biding my time
Here, five years behind you.
Well, love, my world has changed
In pitch and season
Fifty times without you.

The time has gotten lost
Along with the details we had in common,

The spaces between struggled conversations at midnight,
Just 9 o’clock for you,
But always the time where we’d exist,
And exist,
And exist as one unit
Terrified to think that we’ll wake up tomorrow
Under a pocket of uncertainty.