in the midst of everything
anything can happen
while resting comfortably
in your big home
in your big bed
next to your big wife
while you’re playing with her
cantaloupes and peaches
and you’re either too afraid
when it’s right in front of you,
smudging your shoes or
you’re too busy overwatering
your garden of atonement
and foolishly working hard
for everything and living
for nothing to notice it
as where there are people
dying on the streets
like a used q-tip
on top of the trash pile
who are working for nothing
and living for everything
just to get a little piece
of what we take for granted.

between the hat and boots
an old man stands
withered and totaled
with every breath taken
another months rent paid
and every time I blink
another decade passes by

but with each passing year
another candle stands
as the cake burns brighter
in the age of my doing
than the year before

while others await the
next coming attraction

while others rage
and never move on

while others drink
poison and wait

while others hold onto
an extreme admiration
for the total of their deeds

while others are out
walking and mingling
down the streets
and celebrating
their stupid existence

my piano tongue will
cope with the bottle
and write poetry
like taking a ****
it exits my body
and the weight
had being lifted,
but one is excrement
and the other is soul,
essentially the same thing
pending who you are
or who you were

and my two best friends,
loneliness and emptiness
will put on party hats
make some noise and
sing songs for me
under drooping streamers
where the living remain
physically present and
absent minded
once again.

there’s something remarkable
about the magical realisms
between the admixture
of writing and driving.
of course, it’s a difficult task
to literally write while driving
and I don’t recommend it
to anyone but the ideas you
can come up with in your head
become evidently transparent
like a clearing through the fog
and if I was given the chance
with a reliable car, a mixtape of
good tunes, a decent amount
of time to road trip from
Portland Maine to Portland Oregon
and getting lost in the
reverie of elucidation
and neglected dreams
along the countryside
and over the mountains
and through the Great Basin
I could easily write an overkill
of poems in my head and if I
could just get them down on
paper would be a
magical realism
in itself.

doing either one and
we dream of $8 haircuts
and no plans of anything
but watching the routine
of life unfold in front of
prying eyes through
venetian blinds
as singles mothers
prep their child for the
education of death
as dogs walk their masters
as fathers choke on neckties
and stress in traffic
as the mailman makes
his rounds
and someone is being born
and someone is dying
and someone is dead
and worst of all someone
is dead before they die and
money is made and money is spent
and someone is lubing themselves
with comfort and convenience to
make getting ****** by the world
a little more tolerable
and a little less raw
and I am here
eating walnuts and
drinking Spotted Cow
and listening to Sonic Youth
on this delving day
while the rest are scouring
through another day of
intolerable hell but we never
stop and think for a moment
to ask ourselves who we are,
we just enable them to run our
lives and tell us who we should be
because when they got you at
childhood
they
got
you
f
o
r
e
v
e
r

my eyes
like bullet holes
in the side of
car windows
waking up
in someone else’s life
in someone else’s bed
and I dream of escape
but they’ve taken my legs
and restricted my jurisdiction
to four tiny light blue walls
that drive me mad and
imprisoned me
inside a prison
inside a prison
inside infinite prisons
like a Martyoshka doll
with an open door policy for
violence but limiting my
freedom of expression to
cover up these walls with
anything that interests me
but I guess that’s the way
the world works, anything
interesting is prohibited and
beating you senseless is
encourage so may never
know who you are or what
you’re doing or what you’ll
become but if there’s
a little blue sun that shines
on the luck of chance and
it comes to you naturally,
know it, take it and run with it
like you’re being chased by
cannibalize headhunters
because you never know
when it’ll come back, if ever,
and sitting here now
thinking of Havana
realizing that I’m still here
in this reoccurring nightmare
of unnecessary difficulty
I’d appreciate a simple pleasure
like ******* on a mosquito
that’s resting in the ******

eighteen
words
is
too
much
for
this
poem
so
cut
it
short
and
get
the
hell
out.

vibrant colors on beautiful birds
caged in uselessness
and never flying free
when the doors wide open
from the presence of fear
and the absence of dream.

mortared into corners and
clutching onto our terrible lives
and meaningless possessions
with talons of counterproductivity.
terror-stricken by vagrancy and
holding up the dagger to our hearts
while submissively allowing the
beast of prey to cut through with
ease until the blue waves come out
through the tear ducts of depression
and the voice starts trembling
and the feathers start molting
and we start falling apart
at the seams.

working hard for everything
and surviving on nothing.

our lives and our deaths
wouldn’t be so sad
and we wouldn’t be
so terrified of change
if only we had proficiency
and understanding
in our viviparous days
that when we wake up
to face the sunrise,
the reckoning of agony
begins.

we’d be able to
fly free
a little more often
like catapulted
hippopotamuses
but here,
in the swampland
of our darkness
that’s our cross to bear.