stars and stardust fall to freedom
from the press corpse,
from the incessant demand of chemical crises.
crowds ache for love or a substitute
and false amore is what they have.
love is folie a deux-
[the shared madness of two.]
attachment is an affliction,
infatuation is disease leaping from remission,
with deadly symptoms.
red roses lead to black coffin doors,
roses dropped on floors
from vases shattered,
and life is the water spilling from the stems.

golden hair won't keep me docile-
blue eyes and a smile
are weapons of mass destruction-
cities sunk and flags risen
from the depths of inhumanity.
it's all for you, Helen, and humankind will never
perceive its aftereffects,
its hangover headache
sprawled over the world on a bad day.
little city partylights and shiny beer bottles
broken upon the concrete
covering the grass.
reflections of insanity upon the glass.

devilish, the temptress,
the succubus, a mistress
sent by Him, to spin doubt into
the spiderwebbed life of family trees
split in two by axes, divorces
to fifty percent, no-
no wedding band-aid will stop this flood.
abandonment.
neglect gets to a child's head-
can't help but wonder if
they were the cause of this.
little anchors,
keeping the heart in one place-
an anchored rubber band that demoness
stretched and snapped.
the relapse gave her whiplash, and
the stepdad whipped the boy's back, and
the boy grew up and
found a girl to take his pain to.
she gave him five stunted children,
with eyes hollow and glazed,
a mechanical response to a command.

lack of emotion only seems cruel
to those on the other side.
lack of flourish means nothing
to those who grew up to grey skies.

chains and handcuffs keep stardust grounded,
remains from a nebula which
birthed a black hole.
straight razors and pinky nails
teach fledglings to reach for the sky
and never fall back down.
glass ceilings never seemed so
breakable- tiptoe upsidedown
and reach the other side
before you fall back down to the real world.

angels have no eyes.
angels have no souls.
angels judge and leave the helpless for below.
cliffsides crumble and clouds dissipate,
and the devil lends a hand-
he is helping sinners make it up to him.
in his face sit eyes gleaming brightly;
there are teeth grinning, off-white-
he is human, though sadistic
and he understands your plight.
the devil is forgiving,
and you understand nothing, because you
are nothing.
you are nothing.

stars and stardust fall to freedom, and the devil takes in all.

I have a friend,
She jumps hurdles.
For me,
She seems quiet,
In her zone,
Eyes focused on what's ahead,
I stand at one end of the stadium,
pretending to read a book,
But with eyes behind dark glasses,
I enjoy watching her in a different realm.
She runs up and down the field,
And stops to chat with different people,
Which I find encouraging,
Because she seems to not care who those people are,
Or that they have a past,
That may be filled with secrets as dark as my t shirt.
When its her turn to run,
She stands at the blocks,
The man says "ready"
But she treats it as if its a question
Because she goes down on one knee
And flips her hair over her left shoulder,
Pulls each leg of her spandex down,
As if it'll make them grow in length,
Which I find amusing.
The man with the gun says "set"
And she rises in the air before it goes off
And as it does,
She explodes outward like ocean mist
Hitting black cliffsides
And I wonder how she seems to bring her own sunset
Becasue as she runs,
The colors never leave her face
Even when she crosses the finish line.
The other runners must see it too,
Becasue they seem to slow their step
To watch her set out in front of them
Which I think is funny,
Because they don't even get to watch the clouds break
When she smiles after ******* In a few gusts of wind.
I like to watch all people do the things they love,
But maybe it means more when you're watching someone
you truly wish to be happy
No matter the cost of yourself.
I was Sitting underneath a tree
That was raining pieces of bark down around me
Maybe to try an make the scene more poetic
As if it could change itself into water.
I was deep in thought,
Which annoys me sometimes
Cause I think too much,
But anyways,
I was thinking about how the hurdler
Doesn't just run races
On harmless school fields,
Jumping tiny tables laid out for her.
She also jumps hurdles in her own life,
Which are usually much bigger,
and scarier.
But just like the start,
She seems to crouch down at the sight of the people and their guns,
And springs forward,
Pushing against the ground, not running away,
But conquering everything before her.
And when she gets done with her race,
I can't help but swell with pride,
Because even her running,
seems to create poems of her life.
She handles each hurdle with such grace,
And respect,
a sort of beauty.
My eyes seem to always smile,
When I stand where I always am,
At the finish.
Waiting.
I stand at the end and not the start
Because just like in life,
I can't wait to see her conquer each hurdle
And meet me at the finish line
where ill always be,
With a smile,
Waiting for the hurdler.
Waiting,
For her to win.

heard the mountaintop
be scraped clear of snow this morning.
some angry man
shouting up the cliffsides
he said:
"take it all and quickly.
before my hands find the strength to close.
take me into the calm
this thin air carries my tears too easily."
he said:
"you were right about my legs
standing for the sake of looking down at you
scared of laying things bare"
he cried
"i was wrong about you
that the words meant something more
and that things get better in the end"-------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-------------------------------------

"that things get better in the end"

smothered in something icywarm

the anti-siren alarm song
collapses the dimensions of the oneiric realm,
fidgeting infinitesimally,
the tangled engine of acidic tubes
combusts last nights pepperoni bacon chorizo pizza

all of sparta trembles
stalagmites shake loose and dust the bedclothes,
cemented eye-lashes decalcify and split,
as two stumbling gargantuan steps
off the promontory of your bed
lead an unguided hand to the light-switch

the florescent hum gnaws at you
a singular parameter in the speaking mind's running mouth
“caffeinate me”

a hill, no, a mountain, no, a sheer abyss
'the stairs', a godly ascent
an ascent for winged creatures of light
creatures with legs for arms, zeppelin-like centipedes
legs whose construct are Dalían,
nightmarish vaulting apparatuses,
whose step is a bound and whose bound is a flight,
as if all of the thirteen foot-tall steps become cliffsides
and all of the cliffsides become interdimensional worm-holes
as the distance between two mustard seeds grows
and exceeds the circumference of the universal ellipse
we see our premonitions are of infinite potentiality.

resignedly, we take the first step
the next twelve follow succinctly.

we reach the ochre chamber of caffeine
only to be halted by a question
a sempiternal question,
a question of mythic, unverifiable stature
a plaguing question,
a question rooted
in our achey-breaky hearts and nigh-arthritic bones,
rooted in the seeping pathos
of our ritualized morning zombie-shuffle:
but it doesn't get asked today, we drink coffee
the world is right-side up again.

Excuse my drifting-
I didn't mean to kiss you like that,
I was just trying to swallow the space between us somehow
because I think tonight the moon was stillborn.
All the tides seem broken.

The space is dragging with plaintive collectibles=
complacency in yellow-teeth cliffsides, and all the empty shells
in which we'd listened for the corners of our ocean
and heard it ebbing, relenting, reaching.
It rippled on our skins and made us twinkle then.

Now I'm missing you, the grating bottle-glass shards
are what my headaches are made of
and are what fill up my shoes.

When our spines unravelled, I heard rain-
letter-writing weather, bathtub weather,
knitwear-perhaps-on-the-beach weather-
but the puddles were coming from the sun.
I don't know quite when summer blew in.

We would have found canvas chairs in the park.
You would be taking pictures of yellow daffodils
in black and white with your big heavy camera,
and laughing at each sneeze because I'm allergic.

There's really no need now to listen in shells
for the clutter leftover in elegy-
platitudinous phrases, photographs, plenty more fish in the sea.
Words couldn't ever weigh the depths of it.
Only abrade and erode it.

Yours is a world that, for immeasurable gaps
and for whirlpools and whale sounds,
I am not a part of anymore.
But please excuse my drifting.
I will always love the echoes
and walk along the beach in search of shells.

I think the sea will welcome you
For I've seen it in your eyes a hundred times,
And heard it crashing through your voice.
I think it has much to teach you in wildness
For you hold in you the same immense, awesome power
It wields when it crushes ships
And batters cliffsides smooth,
And the same silvered grace
It sways with when the moon trails her fingers through the waves on clear nights.

It does not apologize for its savagery,
For the way it rakes its fingers across the shore,
The way it takes.
It cannot be small.
It cannot be meek.
It cannot be silent.
It cannot be
Tame-
Its gentleness and its violence are lovers, ever embracing
And it has never wondered
Why.

It IS, and it is
Exquisite in its rawness.
It can be smooth as glass, murmuring its great hush to the sands
And yet it can within a moment
Rage!
With no shame, no restraint,
Uncontainable and
Unignorable.

I see all of this beneath your skin when your face darkens and you think no one has noticed.
I see your vastness, pressing out,
And I see you soothe it back into silence.
I see it and it moves me toward it like the tide
With its feral beauty,

Yes-
I imagine the ocean will rejoice to rise around you and hold you up as a part of it,
For there are some people- I've said as much-
Who belong to the earth in a special way.
People whose feet the ground worships
And whose face the wind kisses
And whose fingers the grasses reach for.

People whose eyes
The sea lives in.

I imagine it waits for you.

What should you do with a second-hand muse--
inspiration spent, and by his mistress abus’d?:
Feed him some grapes under cliffsides and clouds,
sit him under a tree;  read him verses aloud.
Make him a spectre of love unrequited,
tell him of enemies that you’d like smited.
Recount  transgressions, and triumphs and losses;
ponder Cruel Fate and the luck of coin tosses.
Tell him of all of your sins now excused--
how the Judge and the Jury have been recused.
And that any dream, urge, or whim can be used--
but you simply cannot go on as a-mused.

deep below the crashing waves
that crush the apostles into cliffsides
and way past underwater caves
inhabited by mysterious sealife
somewhere below there are fools' graves
drowned by invisible riptides
And the ocean consumes their remains
indifferent to their demise

and though the living die
the killers still make their living
Even stealing tears from their eyes
the cold depths have no misgivings
And without a chance to say goodbye
The heart of the sea is unforgiving

What a fool to be afraid of falling
Asking for reassurance as though I needed more
than response, a hand held, a kiss planted
drunken nights and sober days
"If love is not passionate, do not participate"
What a fool to not have trust in yourself
a foot hovering above a pool or
Pacing thoughts trying to ride a skateboard
Trust yourself, but do not trust him just yet
but what a fool
To be say it is as though I haven't fallen already
18 flights of stairs, each individual bump
From every single height we have watched the world from
The cliffsides of the Appalachians
The 1800s towers of Bowman
the landscapes that connect beach to sea, wondering when we'll reach over there
An abandoned building east of the city enamoured in fluorescent light
A skytop birdsnest of an arboretum
from the back of old Reggie staring onto pavement in warm summer rain

I fall from such great heights
clamored on each step,
I do not know if there is a bottom
but I surely hope not

When the wind hits the sea,
The sea hits back,
Crashing against itself,

Sea spray carries in the heavy breeze,
The sun watches from behind the clouds,
The unsettling water climbs Cliffsides,

When the wind hits the sea,
The God of the ocean strikes the sky
With his trident,

Clouds fill with rain,
And let it go,
It meets the wind and fills the sky,
Side by side,
Perform a storm,

When the wind hits the sea

The reflection of grey light from the sun above the clouds reveals a greasy film on my arm.
A mess I made.
I can smell my stink and it turns my stomach.
You probably still have grains of my dandruff under your fingernails
despite how much you’ve tried to wash them off by now.

I clenched my fists in the chocolate cake loam trying to cover the smell of me
in something forgiveable. But
it didn’t work, and now the soil reeks
of my wretched sweat.

I picture the rings of Saturn.
Concentric circles in the silent dark.
They are perfect and I am filthy.

I picture the umber canyons just before dawn. I picture
cacti living on cliffsides beneath the infinite stars.
They are perfect. And I
am filthy.
Just by living I am filthy.
Every breath I take carries the noxious odor of me.
Diluting the perfect blue sky.

Purifying fire unmake me. Break the lattice of my flesh. Swallow me up.
Make me clean.

I stand amidst blue eyes.
Hearts, flowers, life, tower around my soles. Creation obeys my pattern.
Unending hills in the cliffsides of my sights' peak silence my dreams, blinding my imagination's capacity. Blinding my livlihood's achievments. Blinding me.
Wind throws growth off coarse. I feel the cold air stain my scars. I feel the life dissipate through my eyes and arms.
Never-ending hate drowns my guilt, proving the impossible to be impossible. Ice, fire, gravel wounds me. Their wounds fuel what remain.
You stand amidst brown eyes.
Ashes, thorns, death, tower around your souls. Creation obeys your pattern.

The power of the sea is air born,
its force snapping in my face.

Invisible waves whipping through 4 layers of clothes.

Thrashing Pines.
Shearing limbs.
Natural pruning.

Solitary phantom bashing cliffsides,
spinning leaves, contagious dervish dances overtaking the mountain.

A thousand Rumi letters taken flight
burning atoms, spilling longing.


Moaning captains, ship less,
praying for strength,
fighting night swells,

the power of the sea is swirling sky
kidnapping forest litter
no ransom
an icy thief
cracking lips
piercing skin

howling like the ache
of 80 million prisoners
who wish to be as free
as it sounds.

The endless flying whooshing
happening beyond walls,
sloping through the curiosity of
an entire world,

penetrating dreams like a cosmic ghost.

whales rise from the sea like blimps,
soaring,
we see them from rooftops,
plainly distorted,
through unclean high-rise windows,
in cars, gridlocked and craning
our fragile human necks,
inhaling smog,
blowholes struggling,
against the urban skyline—
they pop

there are no more whales anymore,
more and more, we wanted,
until there were no more
oceans, forests,
plains, only rocks, cliffsides and amenities
in which we churn, keeping our
heads down,
chins tucked safely,
never looking up, lest we see
the exploded whales raining down
on us, a final rain
of guilt and consequence

Little thing,
Reading in the corner
Isn't it more comfortable in there?
Little thing,
Complaining about the cold
With no jacket on
It's a cool morning
And I'm taking you out today
We’re back here,
The empty page should feel different,
But still, no-one seems to know
What we’re doing here?
I’ve climbed 50 cliffsides to get here,
These thousands of pages,
Like a book,
Like a room,
This is a hub of my mind,
I've always seen this -
Messengers running around,
Like mice, navigating a labyrinth,
We are all labrats here
In this
distortion
Of our own world -
I wonder if you'll see it that way
One day
Little thing,
Not yet quite aware
Of how much bigger the world is
Than you might have once thought,
Little thing,
Reading in the corner,
I bet you think your book is more interesting
Little thing,
I don't blame you for thinking that
Little thing,
It's not that I don't trust you in this world,
I just wish I could trust this world with you.

years believing the world was wide enough,
lost to April fog.

I'm reaching back to tell you what I know:
mountains hold more majesty in clouds
shrouded in a dying winter rain
and their smallness holds warmth
within the wet.

you'll never feel as strong as stone
supporting feet beneath a forest floor:
but two vines climbing
entwined as lovers' fingers
touch sky with pride enough to bloom.

you want so much to be enormous
and take up space like we deserve:
but we fade like flowers in the wide expanse,
Scattered and lonely, small and frail,
who breathe joy into the cliffsides by the sea.

you need to catch the world on fire
in the hopes of a vengeful burn,
but when wildfires frenzy the fields
from them grow the gentlest blossoms
outlasting what had once consumed them.

I know you have wanted to feel alive,
but I have never felt as real as when I see the stars above me,
And feel the daggers of cold within me
shaking in my bones,
and feel the pull of a lover's hand to ensure I do not fall,
And watch with peace, inseparable,
The purple cliffside by the sea.

You and I are movable as April fog,
Blown about, weeping,
and yet the sun has not cleared us for good.
Always we return, cold and damp,
soft and exhilarating,

take a moment to breathe,
the world is wider than you thought,