There are two sides to all. Two sides
To the world, and where it may sit
On the wheel. Black or red?

A split of inheritance. Right sided
Dreams, left sided mornings. Mournings
For those fragments of imagination

Left gagged and bounded. Tamed by
Penny-pinching and waist-trimming
And all other concepts that work like

A chisel. Chip away at me, they happen
Like thorns and barbs until I don’t look
In mirrors. And I dare not breathe past sighs.

A split of inheritance. The joy of invention,
A brain for science. New discoveries smash
Like champagne bottles to bless understanding.

It splits. It splits in two. The descendants build
On the used brownfields. Grey matter on grey matter
As if building over condemned land.

The roses of love and star-travel are but one side.
A veneer, more accurately. For in their gift
We would pick apart their heads, our heads,

Forgetting the years of thicket and thorn that
Had grown underneath. In forgetting, they talk
Of surprise at our true nature, though the thorns came

Long before the flowers, and were ever-present throughout.

Each measure of wonder; of love and poem and comedy
Are cruelly tempered. They are tamed by lust.
Lust for power, for vengeance. In-group. Out-group.

Heads or tails? I lie instead on my side.
A fallow state, a false parade. Technicolor masts
To sail lazily on my false knowledge. I speak of compassion

And philosophy. I hope they validate me
In the same way certificates do, for those men in suits.
Their success apparent and substantial, its frame

Weighs heavy on me. Barbs and dead weight,
My breath perishes uselessly I feel. A dandelion head
Caught in a chain link fence or a jungle of concrete,
Full of promise, pregnant with fertility
In a sea of barren saltwater and cigarette ash.
There’s nothing left but to write. There are

Two sides, two sides to all. Two sides to my words,
The hope of a finished poem. The harrowing read-through
By the morning. A mourning for myself

And my inactivity. The breadth of life in other’s words,
Tales of movements, experience; novelties in my
Small-town mind. I dream of Peru.

Two sides to myself. Two sides as there is to all.
One side is a virtuoso. Tuxedo-clad and hair slicked back,
Detaching from its greased trap only through

My movements with the keys. A movement free
Of thought. A meditation of music, a collective
Unconscious of chords. It is a side.

The same side that tells of tales past. Man lived
Before money. If man dies, money is contracted to go too.
It is bound. It is rite. It is truth.

The other side, though. The other side
Begs and borrows. It casts anger at my dreams
And how they lighten my wallet so. It hacks

Away with my lungs. Cigarette tar laced in bronchioles,
The result of a dream unrealised. I fidget in this other side.
It makes me shift in my seat, forever impounding,

Forever confounding. Forever uncomfortable.

There are two sides, two sides to all.
One is the scope of man, the ideal self.
The other is the result. A bulb-lit scoreboard

Above our heads. Money signs and bloodlines
Are a measure of man. Our measure. Two teams;
One competing for gold, the other asking

Of what competition is at all. And so one side
Sees us as animals, our rules foolish and lame
Aside those of Nature (with a capital ‘N’)

And the other tells us it is all there is. At least
All that there is worth knowing. For what good
Is it, to dream of the stars? Or Peru, even?

If you do not have the successes to get there?

Two sides, there is forever two sides.
One is a love for myself and for all.
The other is brain-chatter. It tells me little

But it says a lot.

You
sad angel sitting
again
to remind me of that
day on which you were born
Saturn raised its heavy head.

Any sighted comet would have
been more hopeful
than that menacing globe

Remember the gelignite in your lungs
and cotton bronchioles?
Remember emptiness without melancholy?
Your chin on your palm, your power
lost, lost
in the number thirty

If this is the last orbit
the last revolution
the last whirl of your life’s wheel
hear how my song will ignite your pranas
until the
final wick of your trapped soul
cinders

Constricted bronchioles and anxiety had a baby
Within my father's chest
They named her asthma
And it is him she does possess

Coughing fits and nervous breaks
Are not easy scenes to bear
Stomach injections, lung inspections
Soiled clothes and messy hair

Then the coctails come, one by one,
Morphine, Pulmocort, Seroquil
An IV is the quickest fix
But it doesn't always fit the bill

Long inhilations, short exhilations
It increases rapidly
It's full blown now, she has attacked
Asthma, you're a mystery

Why do you posses such a man
That cares for others more?
I guess everyone has their weakness
But other have it worse, I am assured

My voice shrank and my entire body sclerosed to stone
when you lifted a hand because I was never sure
if this time would be the time
you took it too far.

The air left my alveoli, travelled through my bronchioles, trachea,
and out through my clenched teeth as you walked out the door,
safe to escape from my lungs because fear
had paralyzed my diaphragm and
overstimulated my amygdala.

It was always a vicious cycle:
My limbic system remembered the monster that escaped your ribcage
when the rage inside that was instilled in you to win wars
that was never fully extinguished came through
yet the same system processed the love I felt
when you played peek-a-boo with my niece on the grass;
even my brain wasn’t sure what we wanted.

Four weeks had passed since:
I said goodbye to our cat because he was yours now,
I took the trinkets I had scattered to make it our home
rather than your place where I stayed,
I erased sloppy alcohol-kissed love notes from the whiteboard
where I wrote the therapy reminders you ignored.

My mailbox filled with emails riddled with depression and  
post-traumatic stress and worry manifested as a knot in my throat
that made it impossible to breathe so I searched for any spare key
and drove the twenty-seven miles to ensure your safety.  

I grasped the doorknob hard enough to trigger Pacinian corpuscles
throughout my skin, terrified of what was just beyond the threshold.

I lie in waste again.

I pace the carpeted floors,
with the padded feet of a big cat
so hurriedly cautious to mute
my steps.

The high is dull and repeated,
repeated.
Every day spun out on these
wine stained bedsheets.
My mind

is emptied
like a small town orchestral hall,
dusted and stale.

The lights on the screen
bend and converge into spirals of colour,
and the sounds from the speakers
coo subtly through the air,
soft, soft.

And the moon,
the moon hangs fat in the sky.
A hollowed spectre gleaming
Pearl-like
in the cushioned blue shadow of the night.

My lids fall heavy and dry;,
each blink an effort to keep consciousness
but the resin lines my blood
and holds true
in my bronchioles for just a little
longer.
Please,
a little longer.

A light fix of no consequence
and the return of an appetite long
lost
in the hermitage of depression.

The high is dull and repeated,
repeated
to still the pacing of my mind.

To capture the world within a frame,
and to quieten the thud of my heart.

The dawn is breaking
Bones on its back,
The opposite of odes,
A reversal of a truth
We thought we once knew,
Which we were taught was true.

We cannot feed this whole army.
Not on a diet of skin and bone,
Of ash clinging to the bronchioles
And bullets plucked like
Pomegranate seeds from our skin.
The perimeter insecure.

We **** Papa, maim Mama,
When we strike out the son,
And not so much
As a thank you m’am,
A tip of the hat towards
The floor where we
Kicked our own faces in.

We’re turning this wheel in a frenzy,
So much fury at the sound
Of a full revolution,
Whirling dervish
With time sewn in the hem
So we’re right back
where we started again.

And for what?
To pay a debt
So in the black
We bleed red to cover the ink,
And whitewash over the stain?

The cost is just too costly,
We've penny pinched the flesh
To make it count.

Our holocaust is never ending:

So many tears,
Yet still a drought.

August, 31th 2014 // 7:47 p.m.
I took a left to route 23 and found myself in your lungs. The phrase "Flowers in my lungs" kind of suited you because for me your bronchioles looked like beautiful bloomed flowers and for a moment I just stood there and stared at the beauty. I continued my journey to the 17th street intersection and there I was, in your bloodstream where all the toxic flowing in you. The toxic, the guilty pleasure I was captivated to. I needed to escape this human form of lethal and being the panicky person I am, without thinking, I took a run right down 10th street and wound up in your heart, where all the magic happens. I discovered myself in your right atrium, an escape I thought. While wheezing, who could blame me? I'm asthmatic, I grabbed your C-shaped cartilage and climbed my way up your trachea just to find myself in your eyes. Oh the beauty of it. The way your iris gets smaller as the sunlight hits you, it's just priceless. The allurement of it made me lost my balance and found myself falling through all the junctions and intersections to your stomach. It was like stepping into a garden. Every step of it was like walking on clouds. After a long walk on those flourishing plants, I hastily look for a vein that could lead me to your mind, in hope that it could be my escape route. At first it was just a careless stroll like a walk in a park just to get to know you but the more chemistry I have with your muscles and bones the fonder I am to it and I simply can't afford to find myself attached to you because that would just be catastrophic! Everything changes the moment I step foot in your mind. Just looking at it makes me stutter. No word, nothing could ever describe the beauty of it. Which makes me wonder, maybe I should stay for awhile. Maybe I should reach out a little, get to know your funny bones and get rid of your dead cells for you. Soon enough I called you home. Something I never called anything nor anyone before.

( w . c )

My hands are always cold
with no one left to hold them.
My scars, a little too visible.
My memory, a little too lonesome.
Sitting under a bridge thinking,
about the trainspotting
pipe smokers.
Letting my mind carry me off
tryin' to catch some of that smolder
ed green
that burns in my bronchioles.
That grows to trees in my mind.
Can anyone save us, who can see
in a world that's gone blind?

When i went cold turkey and quit smoking,
my wife was obviously happy and secretly
sad.
Even though my kisses didn't reek of tobacco anymore, it was as if her husband wasn't the same anymore.

Every once awhile, I'd catch her halt doing her chores and wistfully glancing my way
And i could tell she was wishing I'd light up
once again, like old times.
It broke my heart to see her so.
Because, you see, I'd quit only for her sake,
because she'd asked me to.

So one day after dinner, as used to be my wont, I lit up.
He was a Camel.
And he was grinning at me as i put him between my lips in the corner of my mouth
and i struck a match
and lit him up
and dragged him deep
into the pits of my lungs.
It appears he wasn't used to it there
in the dark dingy maze of my bronchioles
So he rushed out sputtering and coughing.

So i jumped on his ****** back
and we started sailing across the Saharan sands.
And we sailed for days on end,
him swaying this way and that,
with me doing likewise,
as if both were buffeted
by the same angry winds.
he wasn't thirsty, but i was,
until we came to this charming little oasis
with its signature palms,
a well, and belly-dancing Bedouin girls
who charmed the wits out of me
with glance-darts from their kohl-lined eyes.

One of them slaked my thirst
and then gave me a poncho
and she giggled when i draped it over myself
but by then , my Camel was gone.
and with him the desert too.
and i was back in my own house
and my wife was eyeing me strangely
she had a question to ask
but instead of being asked,
it just hung there in the air
like a smoky question mark.
so i didn't give any reply
to the smoky unasked question.
I just grinned at her
like my Camel.
and kissed her on her ruby lips.
a long amorous lingering kiss
and she was happy again.
because my kiss reeked of tobacco
like in the good ol' days.

God knows where my Camel is now
but i guess he's thinking of our trip
and grinning to himself.

A word enters my vein,
cornflower-blue and cozied up
to tendons.

A detached one is enough.
Slipped through and careless
it careens and dopamines
a single small heavyweight
that burns low then evaporates
among bronchioles.  

Where you came from, you burn also
and turn over in your sleep as if you know
a word was created and travelled,
and the split-long beam
travels ahead in lurid exposure.

I am waiting for another,
a child
beside all the addicts in the world, in
fiendish camaraderie.