I turned 36 today but I feel like I’m 86
and all I want for my birthday is to die.

pain is everywhere/ hell is everywhere
and happiness doesn’t exist.

no amount of love or change
in my life can cure me from the
aching loneliness that lies within

no amount of records could
complete my collection

no amount of words could
finish my poems

I don’t want to **** myself
I’m not a suicide case
you won’t find me at the bridge tonight
and this isn’t a suicide note or
a cry for help or attention seeking

I’m just really ready to go,
ready for decomposition
ready to escape from myself
ready to be put out of my misery
and to be released from total
anguish that life has shown me

there’s nothing more this blue grey
world could offer me
when the sun shines
I want the rain to fall
my feelings are numb
my brain is dumb
my emotions have solidified
depression makes you feel like
a useless blob on the floor and
I know now that happiness
is a mound of decaying flesh
with an empty slit as pretty
as a melancholic smile.

do you think my poetry brings laughter?

am I an ancient jester of poetic injustice?

I sure hope so.

I wouldn’t want anyone to feel
like the way I’m feeling now.

here we are
approaching
closer and closer
towards the deadlines
of our wasted lives
and we have nothing
to show for it except
soul extortion
and we pray that
we may evermore
dwell in expostulated
successions.

I’m surprised
I’m alive
and
survived
the luck of my past
that hadn’t killed me.

the cause that effected me
to trade in my crazy antics
(I’ve mistaken for bravery
or invincibility)
for mental acquisitiveness
(I mistakenly thought was
for personal gain)

and now
there’s nothing more
to complain about
there’s nothing more
to look back on
there’s nothing more
to hold onto
and the most sensible
thing for me to do
is end it alone
with the walls taunting
the final destinations
like a fly to the cat
and somewhere outside
the mares eat oats,
the goldfinch pecks the
dandelion heads and the
motorcyclist revs up the
engine with nowhere to go
and dreams of riding through
the Badlands at night,
never-to-be-forgotten
again.

hypothetically
speaking:

you’re at the 8 hour job
they give no overtime,
no Christmas bonus,
no raise, no promotion
and yet you continue
to bend over backwards
for them only to receive
nothing but grief, guff
and paycheck so weak
you can’t even afford a
studio apartment for
yourself in return

without praise,
without thanks
or that you did
a good job

and after listening to the
the same repetitive music
and mind-numbing stories
from your co-workers
for hours and hours
days and days
weeks and weeks
months and months
years and years
decades and decades
eventually someone
is going to snap

and this is how shooters
are born,
this is how bomb threats
are made,
this is what encourages people
to commit random acts
of violence

these people are not monstrous
these people are broken
and they have been
driven into doing
monstrous things

but upper management’s
only concern is filling the
owner’s pockets with money,
not your mental stress—
they want you to deal
with that on your own
time, not theirs,
although they may be
the cause

and in the end when the blur
of mass murdering happens
from the rampage of the
disgruntled employee
they act shocked
and terrified with
cries of outrage
that such inhumane
things can be
happening
right now.

we’re all responsible
for our own actions
but it takes a sadistic
type of someone to
propel another person
into going berserk,
to start seeing red in
transcending limitations

some reasonable men
are pushed into doing
unreasonable things

as the shadows have stopped
in the circle of dead children.

8 registers open
only 1 cashier
6 other employees
milling around
the store
assisting the 3
remaining customers
while 16 other people
wait in line to check out

their system works
like most systems
I’ve seen before…
backwards and drivel.

I guess common sense
isn’t so common anymore.

it happens like this—
when one person parks
their car crooked
the others will follow
in a domino effect
and that’s god’s reflex
towards an inept species
a lore of ancestry
bequeathed with the
wrath of idiocy like
passing a kidney stone
of subnormal bodies
fermented in the bright lights
of dull boredom and
unknown circumstances
like wasted Sundays
and that’s how it works
we all fall into each other
flesh grazing flesh
played entirely on the chimes
of a pocket watch in the
liquid sunshine
splitting the dividends
multiplying the categorized implements
subtracting accountability
and adding the defamation
in response and reaction
to ******* or bacon
sizzling in the frying pan
but the dishes are *****
and need to be cleaned
the dishes are clean
and need to be put away
the dishes are put away
and need to be used
to get ***** again
the power lines are down
in the 11th hour
the **** never knows
which woman to enter
stale love doesn’t know
why it’s chosen us
the unleashed dog
near the busy street
never knows why
it’s decaying on
the side of the road
so **** the desire,
increase the performance,
change the filter in the
furnace and the fridge
confront the imaginary
killer clown that
hides behind the
shower curtain
because when the carnival
comes to your town with
plastic, sugar and sensibility,
it will leave you behind with
consumption and subtle rain
I say all this as I park my car
****-eyed and like most,
I don’t take the time
to straighten myself out.

electrifyingly and smilingly,
I walk through the red mornings
that bring the rainy afternoons

with the smell of onions, lime
and fresh cilantro on my
malodorous breath
that will tell you so:

there are three things
we do exceptionally well:

a) the ****** expressions
we make have become an
almost artificiality, a dour,
featureless, sun-drenched
look that has pockmarked
and disfigured upon our faces.

b) living has become such a dynasty
for boredom that we find television
and fake reality to be satiated
and thrillful.

c) death before burial has become
so fashionable that we wear it like
he latest trend in the upcoming
fall catalog.

but there is nothing there,
decades are annihilated by dreams
and sleep is the cheapest form of
entertainment we have.

knowledge and wisdom
perforated through a
trepanned skull
needn’t be obtained by
an educational system

but through self-taught
and self-introspection

success is merely luck…
being at the right place,
at the right time,
knowing the right people

and we strive to be there

but devastatingly,
the small space gets
besieged
invaded
capsized
by subtleties
of distractions
and irritations

that what we have
either,
inside of us
or
in front of us
becomes insatiable

and the flimsiness of anxiety
begins to lionize and ascend
into higher sopranos

what’s good won’t last
what’s bad always felt so good
and what was said to be good
that was actually bad
was never forgivable

questions are unanswerable
books are unreadable
resources are unusable
happiness is unobtainable
love is irretrievable
and animosity comes so often
like a teenage boy’s *******

as the raindrops pelt the rooftops
like pachinko machines
as the grey hair sprouts like begonias
of spiraling hypnotism
as the pagodas burn in
sacred libations.

if this poem has reached you
it is because you are seeking
better writing than your own.

always filling

      and emptying

                and refilling

                     again and again

                                   like gas tanks
               to get to our destinations
                          like bank accounts
                 depleting from bills and
                    replenishing from moil
                                 like our bodies
         with stress on the weekdays
                 and relief or excitement
                             on the weekends
                                  like our hearts
          with love in tiny little spaces
   like bottles of cleaning products
                   under our ugly vanities
               like barrels of toxic waste
                      dumping into the sea
                             like porch swings
              on lazy spring afternoons
                like pews of worshippers
               at Sunday morning mass
                   like stuffing our bellies
              with 99 cent hamburgers
                  and draining our *****
                              down the toilets
                        of the unconcerned
                              like spit suckers
                        at the dentist office
                      like pills of seduction
                                   relieving pain
                  like centuries of people
                    and trees exchanging
             carbon dioxide for oxygen

                                                 ...and
     it’s hard enough just to breathe
                           but how lovely is it
             to prattle and wail through
    wasted time and non-existence
        and laugh at our faces hiding
                   behind troubled masks
                   because we don’t care
                        to know who we are
               or what we’re doing here
      just keep on filling and refilling
           our embodiment with a sun
       patch of numbing resentment
      

                     it’s just easier to wisp
                        through the willows
                 than to empirically plod
                       through the bogs of
                                    self-reliance.

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.

the claws of
these poems
scratching into
the eyeballs
of blank faces,

faces holding onto
beliefs and propaganda,
and politicians and positions,
faces holding onto
justice and an outlook and
occupations and opinions
faces holding onto
****** victories and wisdom
and problems and grudges
fearful of losing
what little they have
with their incisive
expression of style and
evacuating their poisons
into conversations
into people.

but someone will be
there to replace you,
sleeping in your bed,
filling in at your job,
preaching morality
while the ******
are singing
in their showers
and someone who
you don’t know
will shovel dirt
2 yards into the
ground onto your
decomposing body
so let it all go
and just be

who knew that these
assortment of words,
arranged in peculiar ways
would save me
and get me this far?

but how much more
am I willing to go?

I’ve been living with the dead
and dead to the living
for so long,
there is
no more
light.

you can’t use the public restroom  
without smelling someone else’s ****,
counting smeared boogers on the wall
and reading poetry written by little boys
who will one day run the country.

use the past as a present
for self education of
caution and awareness
on what not to do
in the future
and then continuously
keep making
new mistakes
and ******* up
as life goes on
in front of
perfect eyes.

you are the itch on my *******
and I have use the razor blades
of cheap toilet paper to get rid
of you

you are the dirt and grime
under my fingernails
and I have to dig deep
with a safety pin
to get you out

you are like fiberglass
swimming in the pools
of my porous skin and
consciously reminding
the hemisphere of my
suffering with every
thread that I’m alive

you are the haughty
paint chips that have
peeled off the wall and
lightly floated to the
floor awaiting to taint
the envenomed mind
of toddlers

you are the popped
**** blisters oozing
down my sun poisoned
shoulders

you are the gummy
white film that has
coagulated at the
corner of my mouth

you are the burning rash
on top of my feet and
there is no soothing
aloe that will cure you

you only provide brine
and lemon juice to the
paper cuts of my limitations

and if the choice was mine
to either have another
conversation with you
or take a beheading

I’d sprint towards the guillotine,
impatiently waiting for the
executioner to carry out
the sentence

and my tilted severed head
will slouch peacefully in the
brightly shining sun, smiling
in the woven basket of relief

but I know you’ll be there
painting a mural of
fabricated stories
of aches and moans
in the hallways of
my ear canals

because after I’m long gone
and I’ve said my farewells
to all the foolish molecules
of easily forgotten pastimes
you’ll just keep coming back
like a thunderstorm of
bill collectors
like a kitten to a shoelace
like ****** to your father
and you’ll bring nothing to
the table or offerings to the
gods except exasperation
to our nerve endings and
disdain to everyone and
anyone you fall in with
like a bear claw to the back

so why is it that
the quiet guy who wants
to be left alone, somehow
always attracts the most
bothersome people
of the world who
never
  shut
the
  ****
up?

it began with the two cats

then the dog trotted in

then enough time past
and unfortunately, so did
one of the cats

then we rescued a bearded dragon

and for a while there
it was just a trifecta
of various species

until the new kitten had arrived

and now the bird is on its way

as the animals keep rolling
into this sanctuary
we call HOME

I spend my afternoons
taking care of our pets
feeding them
watering them
picking up their ****
maintaining their
living spaces
making sure they each
get attention

along with working all morning
and taking care of the kids
cooking dinner
tending to the ignored laundry
mowing the lawn
washing ***** dishes

my wife thinks I’m *******
on my leisurely hours
but not taking into consideration
that *** is no longer
an aching mystery

and as I’m ******* about
common domestic work

those pets bring such
rapturous enlightenment
to my spinning brain

but they don’t pull out
my inane thoughts and
put it down on paper

except for maybe
this poem

the gods have spotted me
in the estuary of dreams
and they laugh at me,
they torment me
with their unresponsiveness
but I must outwit them
and I mustn’t let the gods
decide my fate
and the fate of others
lies in the hands of others,
it’s there prerogative to decide
what to make of it
just as well as it is mine.

if I decide to squander the
rest of my days conspiring
for the words of immortality
then that is my privilege and
if the time comes
when nothing comes
from it
then that is my outcome
but I must write everyday
with assertiveness and
guile as if one day I’m
going to tear this job
down brick by brick
before the dogs from
hell come for me and
tear me to shreds but
if my doing is a waste
then our jobs are similar.

we work hard,
make minimal and
produce nothing
that goes to waste
for a profit and
eventually
transmogrifies
into garbage
and no one even
seems to bat an eye.

someone spent time away
from their loved ones,
resenting the minutes that
are massacred by monotony
during the dull, senseless hours
of moil with the other working
stiffs who are hand-picked by
someone else, having to take
a **** and breathing in the
smell someone else’s ****
as a piece of them dies slowly,
all while barely making a living on
base pay just so the product they
manufacture is conveniently
available at your fingertips
but nobody ever thinks
of what happens to
a crashed car or
a candy bar wrapper or
a half eaten hamburger,
it just gets scooped up
and tossed away
without mulling over
or questioning.

but no matter
how remarkable
anything may seem,
everything has already
been written including
this poem and the next
one after but much like
our lives, it’s a waste,
it’s not as much of a
shame that we waste
our lives but that life
is wasted on us and
what we do with it is
anything but extraordinary
and all this is for nothing,
just another add on to the
heap on Garbage Mountain
so the raccoons that defile
this poisoned Earth
will finally
come
to collect

it
takes
a lot to
achieve
the very
difficult task
of boiling the ocean but if you
self-actualize your aspirations
in the grasps of your fingers
like a feather in the cap then you
will execute plans of success
and it's easy enough to fail
but for those who've never
tried hard enough or at all,
there's always someone out
there wanting to employ you
so they can accomplish theirs.

and when you get there,
they'll have you work
in the sweltering heat
without air conditioning

and next to people with an
intelligence level further
below par than ever imaginable

and for an under-qualified
supervisor with soft hands,
who never did the dirt with
no prior experience in the
managerial field, they
just "know people"
and haven't a clue or any
knowledge to your job duties,
yet they could effortlessly,
write you up for neglecting
the daily tasks

and at the end of every
two demeaning weeks of  
having the knife held to my throat
and being fed cookies with no milk,
they've prodded a piece of my mind
mentally,
they've violated a piece of my body
physically,
they've robbed a piece of my soul
spiritually
and in return,
I've recieved a piece of their feeble paycheck
insufficiently.

it may not be much
but it's worthy enough to be
retrieveable, especially when
you've been walking around
without any heads or tails in
your pockets for some time
from this pitiful low-wage job
and after feeling like they've
******* me too many times
like a hate **** on a blistering
hot summers night,
I've felt like ******* off the cap
of this bottle and it will be the only
******* I'll be doing as I settle up
my accounts with all the words that
end in the letter K
while I'm dreaming of delusions
that somewhere out there
there's another
golden opportunity
waiting for me
at some other
low-wage pitiful job
that I know
I'm surely
missing out on
and you might be working there,
feeling just the same and ashamed
as I and wondering the same thing
about my job and maybe,
we as compatriots
of the common cloth,
who never had a chance,
made pliable in the wind
amongst the stiffened trees,
will one day, cross each other's paths

but my aphorisms tell me that...

I shouldn't kiss a pair of ****
after they've been *******
on by someone else.

it begins with a decanter of Rimbard
add 2 parts Villon
and 1 part Catullus
throw a jigger of Whitman
and a pony shot of D. Thomas
put in 3 dashes of Kerouac,
Ginsberg and Burroughs
add a splash of Cummings
for flavor and a float of Rumi,
shake well and pour into the
Nebauchadnezzar of D.H Lawrence
while intermixing Hemingway with
a kick of Yeats and Keats from the
oar stirrers of Celine and Pound,
drop in a few ice cubes of Thompson,
cold and solid and a bendy straw of
Carruth with garnish from Li Po and a
cocktail umbrella of Fante to decorate
and call this mixology a Bukowski
and raise the drink high
and pour it down fast
to honor the dying light
from the struggles of
writers before us and
to help us get through
the moil and toil that
holds us back from
what we truly want
within our guts because
I find living, drinking,
smoking, *******, reading
and writing to be difficult
as it is but breathing
should be the hardest
thing you'll have to do
under this dead moon night

FLOWERS

pioneering and experimenting
in search for myself,
I stopped looking
after the sixteenth year in life
as I planted a seed in a place
where nothing grows
and blossomed like a
beautifully, unblemished
nuisance of the dandelion.

but, if the world was the
gardner of life, it sprayed
**** killer on my soul and
continously pulled me from
the roots in hopes that I would
one day sprout into an orchid
or a water lily or a daffodil,
trying desperately to mold
me the way they wanted to
but I'm no tulip you could
easily pluck from the
moistened soil, just the
aforementioned ****
deep-rooted into the
hard concrete.

each year after that,
I fed myself plant food
on the compost heap of
jobs, women, *****, madness,
fathering and mothering
two children, cooking
cheap meals and avoiding
religion and fashion and
politics and responsibilites and
marriage just so I concentrate
on surviving while feeling
brutalized and institutionalized
by the roses of society,
until the day came when I stepped
in the bear trap of literacy and
was confined with a typewriter.

and now I'm married with responsibilities,
fathering my two children and
the meals have gotten dainty,
the woman are gone,
the ***** has prospered,
the madness is here to stay
and I'm still impassive towards
religion, fashion and politics.

so why am I clocking in and out
of life for 23 hours a day
for everyone else so I sparingly
enjoy one hour of the day to
be myself and write?

because the world creates chaos
and I take their chaos and
create poetry and just when you
thought they've completely
diminished my soul,
a little piece of ash still glimmers
in the thick gray haze where the
victory garden dances with
burning flowers.

no one in this world,
not even my sworn enemy,
should have to
fight for
or
work for
just to be
themselves.

and if the end of
each day isn't a
5 or 6 hundred page
novel to write about
and bookmarked with
a crushed daisy
then what the ****
are we even doing here?

typing away at the writer;
like a machine gun
lock and loaded
and ready to fire
ink splattering
like blood and
words shot out
like the fusillade
of the ******
hands tied behind
my back and the
fold has blinded
my eyes with a
cigarette lit and
my senses of
unflappability
prevails again
no last words
no last requests
just barrels of this
machine pointed
at my head and
my heart in all it’s
glory like a man
taking a **** and
it could be all taken
away by the trigger
just as quickly as
the turds flushing
down the river of
cowardice gunslingers
but if you
glint towards the
charlatan of brutes
like a dried up
white elk, then
you’ll know what
a poltroon
really
is

however,
the mastery
of the world
are eager to know
how much they can
squeeze out of you
like blood from a
rock before
they stick a
skewer into your
vitals and roast the
ebullience off of
your pneuma like
a burnt kabob
and that’s why my
gutter fingers must
rip sheet after sheet
from this monkey box
like the slightly torn pages
from the loose hands
of madman, and it all
comes down en masse
like four walls meeting
in corners
like the miraculous cry
from the sadist
like 7 billion in existence
and which one am I?
the cat burglar,
the dream alchemist,
the televangelist,
the czar,
the grand master of underlying,
the time traveler,
the creator of happiness
or just another standing
in front of the execution
line for one last time
because we never know
how many seasons
we have left
until the end

you want a religious poem?

exterminate the doctrine

and the being

will reveal itself

once again

my ears have been blown,
like shrapnel
by the elders always
reiterating
their complex tics of
indistinguishable versification

“energy is wasted
on the youth.”

well...

the youth need that energy
to patiently wait on the elders
as they buy an over abundance
of lotto tickets and hold up the line
at the local convenience store
because they don’t know what
else to do with their money
while they’re waiting to die

using his goading wit
and cocksure personality,

he declared to the public
that his physical features
were a chiseled mathematical
equation of perfection
in comparison to my own
unprepossessing attributes

a bit conceited perhaps
but I never give into such
supercilious irrelevance
with my modesty as I left
him soaked in his own
self-proclaimed victories

maybe I was doomed with
the probability of having an
abominable physiognomy
or maybe it was just that he had
a face only a mother could love
and I didn’t have a mother

there’s nothing original about my writing.
I just listen to everyone I’ve ever met
in my life who converse it all away
and have the guts to write it down
with my own eccentricities added
like finding a baby in a dumpster,
a cockroach in the dishwasher,
your car keyed and tires slashed,
a bird maimed on the sidewalk,
a worm in the apple,
your woman gone the next morning

where were the living at
and how were they feeling?
what were they doing and
what were they thinking about
while I was spending those
dreadful days
in tiny rooms
alone,
at the foot of the bed,
with a bottle of whiskey
and my Converse shoes
tucked in the corner,
when the vines of nostalgia
were constricting my thoughts
and I was memorializing my childhood
like an ashtray,
putting out cigarette butts
on the bad memories
too often remembered?

I felt, as if, my purpose in life
was as important
as the mendacity
from the liars tongue.
misguided down a
directionless path,
left astray and forgotten about
like a drifter
playing the part of the rejected
and disassociated

shattering windows of opportunities by
burning through time and space and
jobs and women and ***** and drugs
and brain cells and miracles and
ideas and tenderness and
humanitarianism and morality
and conversations...
lots and lots of conversations,
wearing down my body, listlessly
like matchsticks to flame,

but auspiciously,
I found the lighter in writing,
sparking a new beginning and
regaining myself as I took the
wheel back from driving recklessly
through an impetuous
crash course of life

there’s no reason to tiptoe
around light sleepers and
walk on eggshells or
unbalanced tightropes
without the use of legs
in front of searing eyes
when it comes to writing,

writing is love being hustled
down the dead insides of
the dispassionate,

the unhappier the childhood
I’ve experienced
the funnier the comic book
I’ve illustrated

the more personal tragedy,
the better the writing

our minds at war
and writing is the peace

like watching
the robin and
the cardinal
fighting over
the worm,
as they slowly
pull it apart

indubitably,
the human mind
is one of the most
complex things
known to existence

the fact that
we only use 10%
of our brains
brings me such
exultant and rapturous
sentimentality to the
faculties of my sensory
that I almost feel a sense
of stability amongst this
treacherous
and perilous
society

entertain the thought and image:
a screaming child,
a dramatic teenager,
a juvenile delinquent,
a schoolyard billy,
a *** deviant priest,
a ******,
a child molester,
a serial killer,
mass murders,
psychopaths,
the insane,
the over opinionated,
the miscreant,
the doltish,
the frivolous,
the presumptuous,
the feminists,
our countries leaders
using and having
90% more complexity

all spirit and emotion
would be
completely obliterated
and the world
would be
pulsating into combustion

but then again,
there are other and more
preferable assessments
to contemplate on, whilst
looking at natures goodness
through a bullet hole
in the side of a car,
while bound and gagged
in the back of a trunk
with the final notion
that this might be
the last remaining moments
to be alive

the potential that people
see in me
is the potential
I’ll never be,
like golden rotten teeth,
society setting the bar
with dominating voices
for higher purposes
and the television
had me
chasing city dreams
on the outside,
they want me to be
all skyscrapers,
monumental
and charismatic
but on the inside,
I feel like a conflagration
of condemned buildings
collapsing to the streets
they given me
the grass
and they given me
the graves
but none of it matters
because it’s what
I decide to plant
in the ground

the people I once adored
are the people I no longer
want to be surrounded
by anymore

half the world is trying
to sell you ****
you don’t need
and the other half
is just disinterested,
yet, they feel compelled
to preach about their
new found discoveries
with the best intentions
like blue herons
swimming upstream,
again the current  

I refuse to acknowledge
the aggregation of judgment
from the principals of
prosperity, honesty and integrity
and be measured by levels of
excellence and quality
as I lower my expectations
with beer cans that
lounge like lizards
aloft my bulbous beer-belly
like buoys in the ocean,
encrusted with a layer
of mustard stained
tattered torn t-shirts,
dust on my boots,
mud on my jeans,
hair messy and knotted
absentminded to the
disease ridden impurities
and set forth into the night
with delicacy
to look up at the stars
shining so bright
and enjoy myself
because when you have
no home to live in or
roof over your head
it’s kind of hard,
not to

we are all animals,
dull creatures in the
kingdom of fire,
preoccupied with perfection
and dizzy with the
unnecessary difficulties
that standardized civilization
has bestowed upon us

humanity is the worst thing
to happen to humanity

these hands,

these hands were meant
to melt in the keys of the piano
and not for pushing buttons
to operate complex machinery,

these hands were meant
to climb the plateau’s of New Mexico
and not for spilling a half bottle of
Dutch milk while the tv watches me
passed out on the couch,

these hands were meant
to build treehouses for my children
not to drunk punch lousy bums
on the slum streets and lose,

these hands were meant to
pick peaches in the orchards of Georgia
and not to be holding my **** as it
****** in the linen closets and China cabinets
while in the drunken state of befuddlement,

these hands were meant to
make colossal sandwiches
and not to swipe my card
in the drive-thru,

these hands were meant
to caress my wife and
waltz her through life
and not be defiant,

these hands were meant
for gumption and not for
delusions of grandeur,

these hands were meant
to make my own dreams come true
and not someone else’s,

these hands were meant
to have purpose, talent,
motivation, diligence
and not to be shoved
into the pockets of uncertainty and
suffering from indolent characteristics,

these hands were meant
for bigger indentations
in the world and not to be
tyrannized by simplistic minds

these hands,
these hands,
these hands...

but somewhere down the lifeline
of my palms
I had left behind
my spirit and my soul
a long, long time ago
and it’s never too late
to get it back,
oh no,
it’s never too late
to get it all back.

we were so poor
that we lived in the 80’s
throughout the 90’s
and couldn’t seem
to ever catch up

so we surrendered  
the mechanizations
of advancement
to watch the art
behind the dogs eyes
instead of the snow
from the television set,

it wasn’t pretty
but we could feel it,

careless and free spirited

as we took a step back
into a different era
that we never lived in
and laughed
on simpler times

maybe I’ve changed
maybe the world changed
maybe both
maybe it’s sufficiently for the better
maybe it’s superlative for the worst

who knows?

I don’t

but those days spent
in dilapidated rooms
were ****** in the
otherworldly beauty of music,
that made us feel invisible
in our own little mystical
world of phlegmatic compositions
and we outlawed the vexation
of petty differences and tribulations

under the same pale moonlight,
our hearts were accompanied by
borrowing time from the
misery of tomorrow,
being chased by elephants,
and exhausted in pleasure
until we lost control of ourselves
in the beer bottles of perplexity
we talked a lot,
we drank a lot,
we smoked a lot,
Iggy Pop and Tom Waits,
moonshine and tweeka,
tranced in Susanna Hoffs eyes,
you truly were the
dancer in the dark
and sincerely,
those days
can not be beaten,
outdone
or relived
again

although
my best friend
is beyond the sky
by now
the remembrance of
memories and the
feelings of presence
makes me tremble

you were priceless and irreplaceable
but even diamonds turn to dust,
even diamonds turn to dust

and this is the end
of all dreams
yes,
the end
of all
dreams

it’s gotten so lonely
that it started to rain
washing away this
miserable, hardened
look on my face
as a smile reappeared
the thunder
and lightning
called me back
and showed me
who I was
and
what I could be
and sent me back
better prepared
and with reason
because the coliseums
of the world will fight
***** and unfair
so just sometimes you
have to rip the tape off
a throw a few
bare knuckle punches
below the waist

maybe you’re 24 years old
but the clairvoyance of my mind
can read, in text,
the preoccupation of your own
filled with mad love,
materialistic inadequacies,
heartbreaks,
relationships,
the standard practice
to contemplating suicide,
stewing on the embitterment
of fleeting thoughts from
actions made by chief adversaries,
your appearance,
your attire,
your insecurities,
your petty grievances,
your suspicions of infidelity,
disillusioned to the poisons of life
and the fragments of clarity
the fog of quietus hasn’t quite
reached the imprisonment
of your own creation
and the blue jays of despair
haven’t came pecking on
the crumbs of your viability
you haven’t been through
enough ******* yet,
through and through,
to let that all go
the callow is seeping
out of your bone marrow
and written in scripture
on your 12 year old face

I bedded down with Frankenstein
I bedded down with Dracula
I bedded down with the Wolf Man
I bedded down with the Mummy
I bedded down with the Creature
from the Black Lagoon

and the end results
were a carbon copy
of fundamental flaws

hairy,
oozing with slime,
bloodsucking
homemade monsters
that wrapped me up in sheets
and laid me to rest
upon the catacombs
of their one bedroom apartments

but after feeling ghastly,
my decision making
became quite hasty
and acted
as if
I were the
Invisible Man
afterwards

she looked back and asked, “do we have enough candles?”

“enough to start up the Great Chicago Fire all over again.” I replied.

and she said,

“to watch that whole city burn to the ground would be quite the enchanting piece of captivating imagery.”

we lit the candles,
and danced with demons
like Indians in celebration
upon a pile of burning books
as we sang songs with sirens
under our drunken culture
while the troubadours
and lyricists without hats
played the diabolical lutes
and hellish harp strings of fire
on chaotic imperfections
we piddled on the face of society
and bet against the fixed fight
as the troops of tomorrow
paraded down the alternative streets
like ants in the kool-aid on a warm
breezy summers day
half the neighborhood
was drunk with rage
and the other half was dead
rabble-rousers, blithe and tinkered,
all stood up at once
like agitated cobras and
torched the night sky with incendiary
controversy and we made love
in the streams of submachine guns
that flowed like the cocktails
of Molotov under the arsonists belt
until the ****** of our memories
glittered on the broken buildings
of our minds.

he worshipped his God
more than loving his family
and living life
itself

and his God sent him
to hell for it

I sat back in my lawn chair,
whiskey on the rocks in hand,
sunglasses over my eyes
as I watched the flames
arise in the lenses

I took a nip
and smiled

time is constant
people are not
the skies are gray and
the church is closed
there’s a change
in the air
it can not be
seen or touched
like colors and thoughts
but I can feel it
naturally,
I let it happen
rustling around
in the wind, wildly
and it comes
gushing up
through my nose
and into the psyche
I’ll be ready for it
I am not destined to
live the rest of my life
in the same place
where I was born
but en route for
greater things in a place
that makes me feel happy
I am the way of the future
so hand me the ******* blueprints
you snarling sharp-tooth savage beast

3am
the unbalanced mixture
of that putrid smell
of stale beer and a
myriad of ashtrays
lingers through the air,
revolving records
snarling at me and
impatiently waiting
to play the overtures
six pack of tall boys
floating around in
a bucket of ice just
lolling in the cubes
like a dogs tongue
while the flies fly an
unapologetic patterns
that taunt me
under this dimly
flickering light in
this musky cubicle known
as my living quarters
it’s easier to go insane
than a dentist
committing suicide
and my vitality is depleting
out of me like a ghost
searching for a body
cigarette holes burned
into my favorite chair
that sits in the south corner
where I have wondrous
conversations with
my dead friends...
all one of them
outside those blinds
they think I’ve gone mad
the neighbors think
I’ve been driven to insanity,
the women across the street
who is cheating on her husband
with a younger man thinks I’m insane,
the little girl who swings in the
backyard behind me thinks I’m crazy,
the little Indian man who runs the
corner convenient store thinks I’m mad
nobody calls
nobody contacts
nobody wants to deal with the lunacy
I don’t blame them
in fact, I wish them well
I wish their profiles are all
monotonous and feasible
as they want them to be
it’s safer that way
silence is the scariest sound
I’ve ever heard
so I’ll sit here and have the
raw materials of madness
sit on my lap and share a bit
of laughter together
while we wait for better times
but like the taste of French fries
that have been reheated
in the microwave
its just never the same
but of course,
I never made it happen
either

what’s worse than death
is not living life

we are eaten by the
trifling technicalities,
like rabid weasels
and assimilated into
the void of non-existence

and when the day comes
that our hair
has all turned grey
there will be nothing left
to die inside our hollow shells

death is not the end

but the beginning

our lives are just the preface
and we tend to skip over it
just to get to the good stuff

so when death
comes knocking
at your door with
a singing telegram

she’ll be disappointed

career women
with predatory faces
took advantage of
my incoherence
and haunt
my hazy mornings
filled with shame
and disgust
I felt sick,
not from the hangover
but from the unsightly
grotesque that lay
beside me

so I waited...

I waited for them to
leave the room so
I could follow my clothes
that I had just thrown
out the window

only to realize
it was my place
we were staying at

I’ve done this
so many times
I should be an
Olympic gold medalist
for female springboard diving

one thing in common between
the greatest books ever written
and myself was that we were
banned from the schools

we turned our backs away from this
****-poor attempt at a system of education

and we’ve been inseparable ever since

it’s not that my eyes
we’re wide awake
to the merriment
of misanthropy

it’s that I was tired
of holding onto
one sided relationships

there was a comforting sound
about the telephone ringing

and I knew if I paid off my debts,
the phone no longer would....

five magical days
with no work
five magical days
of *** and laughter
five magical days
of art and creativity
five magical days
of books and spaghetti
five magical days
of mysterious adventures
five magical days
of old cartoons and movies
five magical days
of music
whether we went to
see it live or played
it together
five magical days
of drinking
whether it’s coffee
or whiskey
or coffee with whiskey
a Pabst blue ribbon
for breakfast if you will
five magical days
I no longer want or need
anymore

...it takes guts to let that go
and knowledge to know
it was never mine
to begin with

I was drunk when I wrote it

I was sober when I decided
to keep it

and I couldn’t figure out
who was more insane

either way,
I wanted to
break down
every barrier
and disobey
every rule
to poetry
only to
find out

there is no rules
there is no barriers

and my love for the art
has stretched as far as
my intestines untangle
which was the equivalent
to one CVS receipt

he wasn’t very good at
telling the truth
or couldn’t handle
hearing it
from someone else

so for the longest time
I ran in the
opposite direction
to avoid him

but limitations are violent

until I realized
that the truth
was my only weapon
against him

he runs marathons now...

children are born

parents lie

while Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny,
the Tooth Fairy, Punxsutawney Phil,
Uncle Sam, Father Time, Belsnickel,
Hanukkah Harry, Jack Frost, Gryla,
the Kitchen God, Cupid and
the Great Pumpkin
are passed out on
their barstools

and Krampus
stands alone
in the dim light
and pours himself
a shot and a beer
and calls them
a cab ride home.