It’s in those hours that flicker between dusk and dawn,
those hours where but a few lone creatures
carry the emotional weight of the world,
that I find myself- with reckless abandon-
pursuing ******* and bards on a one way trip
toward hysteria and decay.
                                            I stand
at the crossroads where the devil purchased souls
back when they were worth something.
‘Cause now the devil has gotten too good;
souls aren’t worth anything if they’re not worth saving.
I shake in rage at how he throws us away,
the ones willing to sell ourselves to him
so we could grasp at the straws of immortality,
and revel in sin for the sake of something
that doesn't matter anymore,
and perhaps never did.

I remember those days, sweating down in Savannah
muggy misery washing over us as we schlepped
across a city that was as hot as hell could be,
yet an angel like you was able to glide
through with no problem, demons all in awe.
Transformed at night into a beautiful disaster
spending all night drinking and dancing,
I carried you home and was by your side,
holding your hair as you hurled throughout the night.

I look fondly back at the cooler moments,
in that air-conditioned museum,
and I remember thinking to myself
the true art walks around the place,
these sculptures and paintings don't know
how lucky they are to be
surrounded by such beauty.

Hands clasped in Forsyth Park,
a sundress simply stunning,
trying to hide weird sweat patterns on my shirt
******* in the gut I've got.
I'm self-conscious, but then get lost
in pale green eyes that chill me.

Nighttime highs of holding you
in ungraceful, crooked arms
are usurped with force by the thrill
of knowing you're safe from harm.

But memories like these are all false,
that trip to Savannah never taken,
all this an exercise in making my own misery.
I have nothing but my realizations,
like realizing that I'm in love with you,
and realizing that I'm thoroughly ******,
for it's agony to fall in love with a friend.

Let this serve as a eulogy for a Love left wanting;
god help me for the pain I've welcomed.

Sitting in the haze of smoke, arranging
thoughts of mine that are so quickly fleeting
and flying from my mind towards my thumbs
as a Dante singing praise of Beatrice,
or a man in black walking the line for June.
With you and misery as my muse, I stumble
to my room, dazed, focused on remembering the words
and the arrangement they first held in my head.
And here I am, a long-haired ***,
a beatnik marching to the beat of his own drum.
This is too much about me, not enough about you,
here’s your spotlight, it’s long overdue.

It’s a frigid night, I peer through the window and
you’re there, wearing ripped jeans, a faux leather jacket,
a punk rocker somehow avoiding cliche.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve
instinctively smiled just at the sight of you, knowing
that for at least a while, in my mind,
all is well.

You reach to give me a hug
and I don’t shy away; I’m not one for hugs,
I don’t even like hugging my mother, but
with you it feels right:
a one-armed hug with a two-armed intensity.
Food is ordered,
seats are taken,
chatting commences.
I don’t particularly like the food; that’s fine,
It’s not the reason I’m there anyways.
I’ll barely remember what you said afterwards
but I’ll always remember how you made me feel.
Even with the brief time we have
we find ways of making it last, after all,
happiness has the longest half life of all emotions.

Like that, it's over, as if a snap of the fingers
is all it takes to lose you. I tell myself
it's better to have loved and lost,
then to have never loved at all.
But that doesn't help in the moment.
In the moment, all I can think of is how I'd ****
to be by your side, for just another minute.

You may wonder why I did what I did,
it was for the many times I've leaned on you,
in my most tortured times you've given me peace,
so it's only right that I give
as much as I can back to you.

Forgive me for lying, but I was afraid
that you might not accept the gift I gave.
Had I kept it, it would go unused,
you have more need for it than I do.

Maybe I'm presuming too much but
whatever happened, I think you've suffered enough.


I hope this world won't
make you jaded and cynical,
that's why I wanted to show you that
there's still humanity left in the world
and if ever there was a person who
deserved the world's kindness and love,
it's you my dear, you deserve it all.

I found heaven on this earthly plane,
it lies in the hours of a gentle night
spent whispering, to not disturb the elders.

A hazy greeting, good food consumed,
A dog barking at the strange people he sees.
A restrained heart throbbing from a rare excitement shown,
A surprise unknown was a sweet green delight.

Returned from the darkness, the haze ever stronger;
for dessert, apple pie, that American treat.
My smile threatening to burst at the seams,
till we bid adieu with long hugs and goodbyes.

It was everything and more than I'd dared to dream,
by far the best birthday I've ever had,
though age has robbed me
of the memories of older ones.

It makes me want to fall to my knees and pray
to a god I don't even believe in
to thank him for bringing you both into my life.

Let these words be your Northern Star,
a beacon in the darkness of night.

Heavy is the head with the noblest of thoughts,
hair laced with forget-me-nots falls
over shoulders that carry Atlas' burden
with a firm and determined grace.

Soaring is the heart
that's lighter than the feather
that Anubis will one day use
to proclaim your worthiness.

Beautiful is the soul
with the purest of intentions;
your soul is truly
god's greatest invention.

Hold on tight when life causes you pain
for it's just its way of teaching you
all the lessons worth learning.

You hugged me once and said
that everything would be ok,
but I'm pretty ******* far from fine
as nothing calms my fragile mind.

Once upon a time we were
as thick as thieves in the dark of night;
now I must seem like a stranger to you,
a forgotten friend you know no longer.

Speaking all in tongues, I land
on the beach of a foreign shore.
where the sand came from the hourglass
that Kronos used to keep time.

Stretched out taut over a drum
is the skin of a dead man
who died at the hand of original sin.
Guilty from his very first breath,
till death he worked to right his wrongs,
only to always fail in the end.

Born a crook, his first steps
were taken in the sand;
left behind and blamed ,
the cup overflows with blood.

Bruised fruit hanging from a tree,
they dance through the flames while a drum
as dark as the night that's about to come
is beaten until it's broken by time
like his forebears' souls throughout the diaspora.

She died drunk as desolation
played her a gentle hymn
with flies crawling from under her tongue
and leaving her to her grave.

My tears made spots in
the dirt on her face,
we were in love with the chase of
highs we no longer attained.

Like sunken bug bites on her arm
with cuts all along her thigh,
I couldn't keep her from harm so we
cried through the nights as our highs
damaged us as much as the lows.

One day she moved no more,
having begged and beaten on the door
for too long till her hands were bruised,
and her soul failed her after so much disuse.

I've hidden amongst the hidden shadows
of a corrupted universe
spoiled by beings that deserve their fate:
to be kissed by flames for all eternity,
ravaged by the hounds of time,
and kissed by demons with poisoned lips.

I say farewell to my future's plans
and fall in line with the depths of my despair,
hoping my offensive death will change the tide
of regression back to the putrid mean.

Waltz upon decaying tile
until you've danced for miles and
find yourself at the intersection of
future passions and past despairs.

Then you have a choice to make,
to continue along the crumbling road,
sacrifice your life for misery's sake,
ration the odds for your salvation,
and insulate your heart and soul
from the whims of wicked winds;

or you can make the turn,
burn what's behind you, build
skyscrapers to fuel your highs,
and go full force, higher and higher,
then your apotheosis will be complete

I silently sit in sin and ponder
how it is I wound up here:
a drunken fool with no promise
of brighter days ahead.
I remember nights spent
awake thinking of her,
replaying the dreams I've had,
like the one where she
lunges into my arms and
proclaims with a kiss that
she loved me all along,
while I smelled the scent of
cinnamon on her breath,
persimmons on her skin,
and lilac in her blonde hair.
Now the clock strikes 2 am,
and misery gains another companion,
as I'm forced to use my sleepless nights
to remember dreams of better times.

I remember the nights spent with you,
under the stars and sharing a blunt,
back when my life was better,
and the **** only used for a bit of fun,
instead of the necessity it has become
as the alcohol was, once upon a time.

I've learned to blunt my pain with apathy,
choke back sobs with determination,
and to go into the bathroom
when my panic attacks come on.

I try and hide the pain from
my closest friends because
I'm afraid my misery will push them away,
and then I'll be alone again.

I've stayed my hand from
the hilt of the blade, for many reasons,
but you're the biggest; the person
I love most in the world
and the fact that I'm not ready
to leave you just yet.

I danced inside the eye of the storm
while winged beasts flew around me,
trying to get me off my game
to stay within the eye.
They beat their wings, in time
with the rotation of the storm,
as the earth stood still and
hell froze over as swine flew
into the twilight of our beings.

In the catacombs lies my love, reposed
in the throes of darkness where demons roam;
dim lights shone on empty tombs
a guilty verdict reached before the trial could begin.
Let the dust mark the passage of time
and make divine the smallest of specks.
The wretched stench bespoke of rotting flesh,
fill our souls with musty cement,
and gouge out my heart so I can feel no pain.

I know what caused the bluebird to cry:
'twas the deluge that necessitated the ark,
and the fact he was forced to fly the entirety
and couldn't seek refuge in the broken trees
he once had as homes.

His love, one of two on the ark,
the second- the winner, of a competition
that he'd never thought existed.

He flies close to it
to still have her near him
and he hears her chirp
with what seems like a smile, at the winner
of a competition he'd never believed in,
because he was taught to think
that love wasn't a thing one
could win or lose at.
Yet there he was, trying to catch up
in a race he'd already lost,
because his mind was telling him to keep trying
for something his heart knew
was long gone.

A tortured heart, yet the body's whole,
the sin of tears my only clue
to awaken the caring tyrant within me,
who won't let me rest
till I know her tale.

A forlorn love, it is, perhaps?
Did he let you down gently
or tear apart your heart and soul,
and take a swipe at your outlook on life
as well?
Is it a venereal disease
from a former love?
Or perhaps it is
a family strife, that splits you open
like a dull knife?
Maybe its just your beaten mind
causing unkind thoughts, like mine.
I pray its not that
but I'd pluck every one,
and put them in with my own.

Regardless of what it may be
this I know to be true:
the next time that I will smile
will be when I see one
emanate from you.

We've all seen your eyes as they are,
redder than the sea he parted
to escape from your path,
swollen like the womb from which we all have sprung-
but you not gingerly enough-
misshapen and bent, and as glassy as the ceiling
you has hoped to break.

But only I've seen your eyes as they warmed by the fire
and caught the fire in a passionate fit
of determined grace.
And only I have seen your eyes
when they are at their peak,
brighter than the sun when the rapture comes,
surrounded by lines from a smile so wide,
and on a head with brightened cheeks,
displayed for the world to see.

Conflate this with the contents of my heart
and hopefully you'll find a
glimmer of what there was for you; you,
the playwright of so much of my pain,
self-inflicted though it was.

Hush your heart and feel
its beats, are they in rhythm with mine?
I suppose they're not, we never got
on the same page, I'm afraid.
I'm scared of the irreparable damage
I've caused by daring to dream
and touch you, my sun.

Now my feathers gleefully flee from me,
and they land in the sea lightly,
where soon I'll crash,
and enter my watery grave.

See dawn & dusk all morph into one
as I bid my friends adieu to
the city encamped below,
make my way through the hills up towards
the shrine of the harlots and hymners,
and feel a release in the blood-red sky.

Chanting,. prancing, panting in the heat
of the desert mountain night, I found love
in the eyes of the duchess whose
temperament screamed into the lake of fire
and whose broken fingernails were the result of
digging into and consuming the earth.

Once returned to the city, never the same
the game has been lost to
autumnal shame in niches everlasting
into the abyss of our future
Let these words serve as a requiem for
the lost lives of our future kin.

Bleak skies foretell of a coming rapture
where bloodless brutes break bones and crush
cartilage in their claws, in awe kids stand
frightened by the thought of the brutes' victims
bled out in the dirt by the temple's graveyard;
a swift death yields an indecorous burial.
Let the children yield to fate's fancies
as we all once did to our lord;
have heaven call for all the ******* and ******
and leave the good ones to the earth forevermore.

Do whatever you want to do:

pick apart my faults to the point
where I can't utter my own name,

free my demons to let them
circle me like salivating vultures,

stomp on my face and all the while
say I'm nothing more than a common *****,

piece together all my hopes
and force me to watch as you smash them again,

grind my feelings to a dusty pulp and
spew venom on my skin,

make me wish I were dead,

tell me I'm not good enough,

make me feel inferior every day
till I learn to do it myself like a dog,

just please don't leave me
all alone.

Standing rigid in the temptress' dream,
Moses is bathed by ragged stone
in the fortress' light at the dawn
of his sacrifice.

She transfixes him with her whisper
and plants the seed of
a needy higher power,
to which she can attach
her sadistic, demonic thoughts
and give him pain
in the name of loyalty to
a nothingness holding its power
over him, like a wind without the chill.

Pearls of protection on a ***** palm,
angst-addled fists seeking refuge in the wall,
we hold on to hope in different ways.

I hold my anger the hope of a hidden heart
and she ties her tears to the hopes of tomorrow.
Our grievances of the past are not forgotten.
Our grievances with the present are never-ending.
Our grievances with the future are not even aired
and already they grow weary with our beings.

Capitalize on the cost of seeking peace
by creating conflict within the conscious
and find out which one will prevail:
the anger or the sadness;
the fists or the pearls.

In the foggy hills of Appalachia,
through thickets of trees and brush, stood
a hidden house that was falling apart
as mold ate away at the wood,

and inside lay the palest being
that had hooks stabbed deep in its flesh.
It had cracked lips and a throbbing throat
that the sweetest water could not refresh.

"Come close cousin, and cry for me,
"I'm breathing my last." It said.
So closer I came, then it opened its eyes
they were colored the purest red,

and dazzled with innocence against the haunted house
they brought forth bright light from the dark,
red and white seemed to contrast well
and created quite a spark,

till the pure red did begin to fade,
and white turned to ashy gray.
I tore my heart from my chest as a sacrifice
but cried when the reaper said it couldn't stay.

It turns out a pale outline is much preferred
to empty space in the broken place
for I see nothing within that simple frame,
and it sticks out as the end of an unjust face.

A freezing of my frigid soul
it has rigid wrinkles etched
like calligraphy put into stone; there's
a permanence to my way, I've debated change
too many times within myself, I know
there's no hope in the fickle throat of one
who cannot walk the walk.

I rest my head at the
rotation of the light,
pray for a reprieve in the night, and
cast my lot with the hopeless youths who've
been lied to by kith & kin, or else
heard their own delusions in
each utterance they were given.
Either way, we've frozen souls and hearts melted
by warm tears pouring from
our own roaring storms.

I am a tree trying to
not waver with the wind.

Each leaf I lose eats away at me,
like their color they turned,
left me bare to the bitter winter wind.

The branches, thought sturdy, are broken by the storm;
it took away my connections to the world;
I thought they'd last, how could I be
such a fool? I'm more vulnerable now.

Looking for my saving grace, I search beneath the dirt
and find my faith in buried roots.
They ground me amidst the hurricane,
turns out they were what I needed,
not abandoning branches and fleeing leaves.

I ask them all these questions
about their lives,
their loves and passions
and pains and promises.

I ask because I love them
and care.
                 But what questions
do they return? A fraction
of what was given;
is friendship now
just a one way street?

Do they dislike me?
Do they despise me?
Do I even deserve their
fraction of affection?
And they wonder why I say
that I feel all alone; I've forgotten
what true friendship is, and wonder
if I ever really knew.

Creep inside the victim's pain
what did the abuser gain by
tearing her clothes and smacking her
across the cheek in a fit of raging lust?

Now she's nauseated and sore,
with a body both bruised and broken
all because he forced upon her a choice
between an immediate or a prolonged death,
the latter filled with self-loathing
and attempts to retake control
from the beast who thought only
of gratifying all pleasures
and left a shell in place
of a life once lived.

Sip the poison with the cherry wine
and find out which one is more bitter,
but never figure out which gets you drunk,
just regret each gulp you take,
then make yourself ***** with anxious hands,
and omit the passion the runs deep within you.
Fashion a mold to sing a hymn to you.

Weeping as they dealt away my hand, there's nothing
in my fingers but the trembling
of my panicked state; I see that
my future holds nothing for me
except the same misery of the past two years.
My first decade on this earth was
bright & optimistic,
as I went along naively
with the misleading world.
The latter half of my second act has been fraught
with the abandonment of my mind and state of bliss.
Now I'm just a broken boy
terrified of what the third act will hold
and if I'll make it till the end
or if I'll abandon the show
in search of a better ending.

I miss the stupor of a drunken night
spent singing softly in a room of dim light,
not even sad, so why did I cry?
There was a plea for help behind every lie
that I gave them to keep it all under wraps
to throw off the stench of all the mishaps,
like when I blew chunks all over the couch
or nearly got caught with a mini bottle in my mouth.
My hands shake while I'm awake all night
comfortably crying in a room of dim light.

The mountain path cuts close to the bone;
I scrape by subsisting on mud & blood.
I've not seen a face in months, I'd guess
memories trickle, they no longer flood.

Where has Eva gone?
Each day she loses her grip on my mind
take me back to her little cottage
where each face of hers mesmerized and shined

to the point where heart & hearth were so moved
they saw certain scenes in brand new ways.
They captured doomed love by the heat of their hands
and separated us till the end of all days.

Now I trod and plod my way
to hell and back on through the path,
content in a way to waste my whims on nothing
as forlorn mountains still show me their wrath.

An apotheosis awaits me in these streets,
from a lost, timid soul, scarred
by the shallow depths his heart can't reach,
to a vivacious creature, that
only a being like me could create.
The lights dance with the crowd, color crumbles calmly
and cuts through the chorus of lovers
all intertwined and tied together
by the sweet scent and essence of the night

Let me blunt my pain with a pretty phrase
the way a disciple of Kierkegaard should,
the way all poets do:

I Panic with the clarity of the night sky,
all turned about like the captain of a boat
leading his ship of the Absurd
through Sisyphus' strait
till I slip away smoothly
on a rowboat to the immortal land of death,
naively thinking I had cheated my creator
of playing the cruelest trick in the book
(and the oldest too).
But he still gets the last laugh;
an Immortal always does?.

Why do I think that
small gifts will curry favor?
I can't give my friends what they deserve.
I'm a cockroach in the dark
desperate for the light of their love;
let me feed off the wreckage of my damaged hopes,
my daring to dream of simple pleasures:
the embrace of camaraderie,
the gentle swelling of our hearts together,
a reassurance of their caring for me,
and the space to let the insecticide to work its magic.

I can't fathom my worth,
what is a star's worth in a universe of light?
Precious little, I reckon.
Their existence will carry on unscathed
by the dying of the light,
and so I go now, wearily,
into the loneliness of that night.

Let me purge my essence
since I can't purge my disgust
with myself; I cannot feel the connection
of my sisters and my brothers,
my parents and my lovers
are they ashamed of my existence,
or my proximity to themselves?

My mind pulled
in opposite directions
dim reflections of my mind
taint the sanity I once owned.
But what was my sanity ever worth
if anything at all?
Please just leave me to my poems,
the eye of this ******* tempest.

Why do I think that
small gifts will curry favor?
I can't give my friends what they deserve.
I'm a cockroach in the dark
desperate for the light of their love;
let me feed off the wreckage of my damaged hopes,
my daring to dream of simple pleasures:
the embrace of camaraderie,
the gentle swelling of our hearts together,
a reassurance of their caring for me,
and the space to let the insecticide to work its magic.

I can't fathom my worth,
what is a star's worth in a universe of light?
Precious little, I reckon.
Their existence will carry on unscathed
by the dying of the light,
and so I go now, wearily,
into the loneliness of that night.

Let me purge my essence
since I can't purge my disgust
with myself; I cannot feel the connection
of my sisters and my brothers,
my parents and my lovers
are they ashamed of my existence,
or my proximity to themselves?

My mind pulled
in opposite directions
dim reflections of my mind
taint the sanity I once owned.
But what was my sanity ever worth
if anything at all?
Please just leave me to my poems,
the eye of this ******* tempest.

Is it too late to go back
to when I declared with a whimper
what I should've kept silent
to release another day, so
I could act like a man:
cool, calm, and collected?

If so I'd wait till
you and I were eye to eye
to ask you out for a drink
that neither you nor I could buy.
Once seated I'd lay down my suit of hearts
in front of my queen;
let sweet dreams retire in the night
full of hopes, and solemn despair.
I'll wait to see if I'm your Erik or Raoul,
Christine I am a fool but,
what I wouldn't give...

I will wait till my patient death
to line your breath, and I
am even willing to be your late-night regret
discarded behind shadows the next day,
forgotten in the recesses of your mind's missteps.

I'd rather be your mistake
that you wish you'd never made,
than be a no one to you;
some weepy wimp in your wake.

Why won’t they set my siren free?
I shake in fury miserably.
Grant me my pain,
you with the two French braids.
I contemplate my grey-zone state
& regret riding with my instant whims
that carried undercurrents
of desires held deep within,
that go against the tide.

Because I'm a **** up
who sees nightmares in all his dreams,
the sun won't come up on the days
that are replete with bleak scenes
of a fleeing dove with broken wings;
poor, tortured thing, all stuck in chains,
acid dropped upon its head
till nothing but its bonds remain.
It whimpers as it dissolves away;
gone from a trickle to a pour,
there's no way to ease its immortal death.
The sweet demon screams forever more.

A beach is roughest in winter
As snow and sand run through my hand
I lie in the dunes
Awaiting Doom and Death
My brethren in fighting life’s last joys
We delight in lighting the ocean aflame.
Lions are tamed in their cages, when
The strings of a harp tighten around their throats.
Analyzing the ragged fabric of my fantasies;
How can they be so dark, when they’re mine?
I’d like nothing more
Than to envision my paradise:
Drinking milk from the ****
Spitting cherry pits out, with
Gregory’s soft voice filling my head. But
The visions and sounds are murky,
It’s always lurking nearby- muddying up the water.
My fantasies instead, are of the beach.

The fire is spreading now
The flames are tinged blue
Doom and Death are collecting my dues
Their fingers leave bruises.
The fire is hungry
And milk will no longer put it out.
Human sacrifice was fine for ancients
Barbaric now, feed to it the sacred cow.

Birds with clipped wings outline her eyes
Her eye shadow is her divine disguise,
That hides the tears that overflow
They pitter-patter on her chest, as her heartbeat slows
Into silence; the violence of her red wine dress
A good merlot, alcohol makes her depressed.

To see her blurred mind in its state of undress
Is to watch genius itself infinitely regress
To the point of pictures that adorn cave walls.
She sees the light flicker in the hall
As synapses lapse and lost are the words
They’ve all gone rotten, solidified into curds.
Exhaustion provides a high in her mind
Though most of her thoughts are quite unkind.

She knows the danger of the man who enchants
Her, and makes her body obediently dance
To a greater demon, with his demonic hymn
He weakens her conscience, makes her integrity dim.

She pursues dusk at a New Orleans café
Surviving on French roast, and warm beignets
A stranger sweeps through the foggy air
Running his fingers through her brittle hair,
Devilishly trying to steal her resolve
Till her past is lost and her future’s dissolved
Like salt into a saturated ocean
Where despair is defined by a lack of motion.
Her notion of life is just the beauty of its rhythm
Its color diffracted by poetry’s prism;
Her head is filled with her loves and lusts
That killed her heart with a thousand cuts
To end the war before it could start
Her captain sailed her home with his outdated charts.

Cigarette butts are put out on her tongue
The smoke and ash remind her of when she was young,
How tobacco evaporates as cigarettes burn
And how pain is love’s method for making us learn,
The lesson of despair contained in every regret,
Best learned when she lets her feet get wet.
Her epiphanies’ are dormant in her single-minded brain
Footsteps catching echoes of the departed train
Leaving the station for some stable place
The mountains and sun conjoined at her face,
A pas de deux she devised at Swan Lake
A heavenly intervention done for God’s sake.

Her mind is warped and can’t recognize
That the warm promise contains the largest of lies.

Fluorescent lights destroyed her poet’s vision,
She recovered her strength at the holy mission
Only to give in and be hypnotized,
By the greatness that the priests prophesized.

The words seem clumsy in the day’s rough light
Their power comes from the isolation of her nights
To go under and not once come up for air
If she dies she’ll realize she has no heir
To look after her fortune of memories and tissues
When her heart shuts down from years of disuse
Because she put up bricks to keep heartbreak at bay
But it ended up keeping those she cares about away.

She’s losing the invincibility that comes with her age
Sacrificing her thoughts for what gets on the page;
But is it worth it in the end? She really hopes so
Otherwise her disguise will fly off when the wind blows
Too hard and fast for her suffering mind
She feels her body getting closer to death all the time.

She prays for a friend, so not to spend her nights alone crying
Indulging in self-loathing and truly despising
Herself. Her tears fall and splatter
Meanwhile her heart’s aching; it’s in tatters,
She puts on a smile to show nothing’s the matter
And hopes that next time it’ll be her heartache that’s shattered.

Her crayons are sprawled out
Across the steakhouse’s table,
Drawing the star they want her
To be. The mood lighting casts shadows;
Their wrinkled, withered faces dampen her eyes.
“Can I show mommy my drawing?”
“…”
“Do you guys like it?”
“…”
She stops trying, they munch on flesh
A cash cow is more tender than most.
She’s hungry, and gets nothing,
Told to smell the sweetness of an apple
And spend the rest of her life chasing its taste;
Never achieved, they empty her of her dreams
Replaced by frauds.
Then the check finally comes, but at what cost?

The sled is overfilled with gifts
Given by friends to friends,
Lovers’ quarrels have begun to shift
They dance in the streets again.

It’s a light fog, not smoke, that romances the air
We don’t have to weep for our sins.
There’s atonement to be found at the local fair
Where today is the day that forgives.

There’s hope in hearts and laughter in lungs
No beasts around to rob them
No longer trying to descend the rungs
To solve a short term problem.

I woke up on my final day
With a cut on my finger;
It’s not enough to be invisibly damaged.

I felt the heat before the light
Out of sight, it oppresses me,
She depresses me, in the distance.

Count down the time till we dine,
The paper cups rattle as the
Manic guy babbles against the **** and Nazis.
A funny mind is rotting, as I begin my departure.

Picked up by parents, carry my things, say goodbye
To the light-hearted detoxers, ending their sleepless night;
They put me in a mood worth having.

Step out into the summer morning air
My hair tossed in the breeze, pale pink and light lilac coat the horizon.
Today, my smile rises with the sun.

It’s faded, my future is jaded and
Is paraded through my line of sight like
A mangled, malnourished show pony that looks
Older than it is;
Old beyond its years, in terms of exhaustion.
It’ll be a work animal soon enough, a day laborer
With nights spent with the moon around it
And days with remembering the sun, imagining Her
Finding some other demented soul willing
To drive himself insane over Her.

Take each step one at a time, and only once,
The detoxers know this well.
Cling to the hope of getting better
And becoming whole again.
It seems so unlikely, I know,
But hope, no matter how slim the edge of it is,
Is worth grasping with every ounce of strength.
Then you can pull yourself up,
Drink from the cup,
And see the sun
Shining Her warmth with a smile.

Love or lust is
The semantics of romantics.
There’s love in my heart and veins
For the two-braided blonde, with the off-color tooth
And the smile that somehow both
Gives me chills and soothes me.
I am the earth, my thoughts- the moon, and She is the sun:
The constant by which my time is measured.
In day I think of her, at night I dream of her.
I cordon off my thoughts of her
They lead to a loss of sanity.
The right dose, however, keeps the motor running,
The eye on the prize,
Puts me to sleep where the thoughts are good
And innocent, instead of the thoughts
Where I’m lying awake
In the dead of night
Thinking of the other options she must have;
Why she’d waste time on a **** up like me,
Who’s confined to this space and can’t escape,
Forced only to think, i.e.,
What got me here in the first place.
I want to leave
I need to get out
To tell her the feeling that courses through
Every inch of me- now, while the fear has abated,
Before cowardice comes back, and I think she has hated me
All along, and the smile was forced,
The laughter, pained
The sarcasm, disguising disgust instead of playfulness.
My body burns
With the desperation of a young man’s desire.
I have to get back to her
To put out the fire from the sun
Or at least tame it;
For she can keep me going
While I’m kept here, tucked away,
Or she could destroy me with
The thought of her each day.

Take a step out of the room-
Its 5 a.m. – ****, time’s distorted.
Sit in the common area and chat with some
Restless detoxer; he talks about women,
How even the church girls are adulterous ******.
We laugh at our pains, there’s little else to do
And the alternative was already attempted,
So laugh we shall try.

Bruises heal in a day or two
But what use are smiles, a simple ruse?
A lump in my throat, I carry
These burdens in all I wrote, and now
As they fade, I wonder:
Will they return with anger, and under I go
Beneath the waves, where the sun is garbled
And its light only reaches so far down? The sound
Is drowned out by ringing, it pounds my head
Spots are red,
Am I slipping into patterns once more?
Is there a route to the surface?
Is there any way out?
Is there a place where I can freely breathe?