Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
  This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
  Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
  Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
  Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard,
  Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
  Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

Always I climbed the wave at morning,
  Shook the sand from my shoes at night,
That now am caught beneath great buildings,
  Stricken with noise, confused with light.

If I could hear the green piles groaning
  Under the windy wooden piers,
See once again the bobbing barrels,
  And the black sticks that fence the weirs,

If I could see the weedy mussels
  Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls,
Hear once again the hungry crying
  Overhead, of the wheeling gulls,

Feel once again the shanty straining
  Under the turning of the tide,
Fear once again the rising freshet,
  Dread the bell in the fog outside,—

I should be happy,—that was happy
  All day long on the coast of Maine!
I have a need to hold and handle
  Shells and anchors and ships again!

I should be happy, that am happy
  Never at all since I came here.
I am too long away from water.
  I have a need of water near.

Saturday.

what a glorious time of week.

laundry hangs on the clothesline,

the ghosts of the week left to dry

as we softly stare out the window, chalky panels

between crusting paint. Attempting to

listen to the silence,

muffled by words, we discussed

a day free of demands, and the boy

in his blue shirt, with his ball.

If I were to wish anything on anyone

it would be a year full of

Saturdays.

It was like camp
But I spent the first night
On a thin plastic mattress with ****** sheets freezing
Instead of encircling a campfire
Singing cowboy songs of the West
And little dogs

My first activity was not making a bow and arrow or a target but instead I was
sitting after breakfast
on a concrete bench
in the Sun
Trying to fill myself with that allusive happiness.
That was my plan.

On the next occasion in the open
I did not get a compass
nor a map
but I sat with a table of girls
And spoke up without being asked
They started to show off their pale pinkish arms
I was at the cutters’ table
Smoker’s edition
Layers upon layers of
Rippling Scar tissue
at the elbows in particular
It is thick.
Bleeding and healing
To be sliced open again
For crusting over.
They were cheerful
Despite hallucinations and panic attacks,
Lost children or tomorrow
Scuttling along a murky seabed that did not want them but
Here’s a cigarette

I did not make a sundial or find my canoe
Or make shoes out of leaves
but let the morning sun stick around
while the smoke issuing from their chatty mouths pinched my nose
I would take their smoking breaks with them.
I claimed two for myself and once lit,
slyly handed them over
As I listened to the chatter and laughed
I feel a faint yellow heat
From up over there.

We didn’t at first hover around each other
Talking about nothing like high school
Girls with braces and dorky pajamas
Or bend over from the top bunk to say
one more thing before lights out
At first I never added more than a informed observation about lipgloss or
a roll over the eyes over the next dumbbell talking about nothing that existed
But I was tolerated
And as their numbers diminished
only to be refreshed again
my comfort grew
I made “friends”
We laughed and co-conspired
Over pills, soda and what’s that on your tray?

There were movies on the tv
But no westerns
With horses trekking through the tall grasses
Nor
Smoke arising in the distance
Imitating a life that we were imitating as well
Yes we were!
Just a slightly different tale about
Endless treks and wandering

On the weekends
The rules relaxed and the counselors,
Had there been any,
Would have been preoccupied with private intrigues and how to make pineapple cocktails
And we, left to our own devises,
Would saunter in and around each other
Braiding hair and reading magazines.

There was a telephone.

When it was time to get into the car to go back home by way of the freeway
I didn’t have a hat that I had painted myself with only three colors
Nor feathers
or a blue ribbon for starting fires
We all said our good-byes
Even the mean one called me by my name
And we shot off like the explosive plumes of fireworks
into a dimming sky.

We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening--
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,

Is wooed into the cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.

They've taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.

Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter

Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They'll never dig coal here,

Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,

Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.

as soon as these blue speckled
socks go, that's it. A new bright black death.A solemn weir on a stark horizon.Give me a reason to wear color. My hueless affidavit
runs me into the Earth, where I sprout up
a pallid keb- brain orf'd, you could drag my etiolated ebon
body through the ovine fold or take me to the theater. When I was just a minor teg, I sheared my mim kip, I fuckinggave it to you outright. In this little
cote my wan mien nigrifying; my calamitous black, quaffed full of congou in demitasse, of souchong & saucers. My atrous wethered body albicantly degenerating in the atrous sun. I'm crusting over with wanness and you, you're fortifying in the cwm where I used to yaff and stray. Your ovivorous hunger,something I never knew, when first you came for my jecoral flesh, just another bot digging through my soft toison. Like Dall's Prometheus being sheared from the flock-you cut me away. In this drab and achromic world, you put the wanness in my flesh, the gid in my heart. Still.
Just these blue socks are left.

Icarus’ sister exists only in living stone,
the watchful daughter of the craftsman
in the middle of his own labyrinth,
once his prized creation, placed in
the prime line of his drafts, design, eye
of his genius, now a relic existing
in a dusty nowhere cobweb corner
stained with Minotaur blood,
watching her fleshy father
falteringly stitch wax, feathers, twigs
to a frame that could not
take the water and sun of every day birds,
not even the weight of a son’s pride
who complacently raveled and unraveled
his father’s clew, half hearing  cautions,  
his mind flapping beyond the planets.

She cried over how Daedalus could
dote over such mortal error
while she exists in perfect neglect,
cried a tear turned prayer that
mixed with the dust, the murderous
blood crusting the rusty teeth of Perdix’s saw,
knowing hence  that men **** their best dreams,
fear the successful  flight of  their ideas, and  
that her faith, trust now forever lived with the gods.

Hephaestus heard her and bellowed her mind,
taught her to seek inspiration in the rejected
metal slivers that littered the workshop
like the sand of Naxos where Theseus
left Ariadne in her abandoned dreams.

In the cry of that other lost daughter
she heard the sound of ascent,
saw father and son in erratic flight
and followed to the top of the labyrinth
to watch two glints align in descent
and one splash into the sea.

Graced with the knowledge
that forbearers would
name the waters below for this fool,
she deposited Icarus in their father’s arms,
and flew away on brass wings of her own design,
wingtips skipping waves, seeking the sun.

The
weight of the world sitting dumbly on
those fructose eyelids.

They, in turn.      melt into the mummified  
morning.

laying in the corner forever like a
favorite-shirt
ruined in the wash.
Every other stripe on you is stained pink
from
some cheap volunteer tee that ******              up
The whole load.

Each ray from the blinds
Takes some life away.


Searing past you- into the floorboards
with
quiet fury.

Time passes_
It shoves us down into compact spaces.
(but)
I thought of you
In a shoplifter's prayer.

(There is something left that evaporates out in the form of you)

I imagined you
Still.
But growing
Like
Crystal salts
Crusting up the pores of the earth.

Vapors fumbling upwards to rehydrate
My dry fingers_


We make decisions . that stick around.

We break off blisters. Rip little things that hang off our lips.
We take breaks before we need them.
Take too long to say
**** this.

Thoughtlessness.



Somewhere out there, they are screaming loud.

Somebody either cares or
Doesn't.


The marks on the carpet know better than
us
How to last forever

We  were    squeezed    from    corruption
armed     with        the  monstrous cutlery
of  rippers and tearers of    rationed meat
    for a day,         for a day,         for a day:
the     butcher    gives   his       best     cuts
to the young       and godless      divorcee
find us, keep us              : a spectre hiding
in the    dark pig iron rust hooks looping
through     your ***    and shopping lists:
smelting                                     your coin
and punching                             your face
          Company is the        full knowledge
of our      protracted,        3  -stage   decay
burn                drift               degradation
             ­                        eyes crusting shut
in doom            and     settling    bomb silt
      palms up,    taking      a    punishment
                              ­     in the mothertongue
    ignoring       lessons     in    the gracious
                            expectancy of departure
We,      A legion of ancient clockwatchers,
in         on       the        joke       of       time
and    folk fetish     of apple-cheek poverty
    [Gasp!] The gruesome romance of class!
              !you cry!     !safe!     !always safe!
in the nuclear hotdog option       , which is
observably, the title of this advertisement
We will never get you[       ]you're awake!
and your atmosphere    is still In Da Black
      We                                        watch you
                                                     watching
the           5            car            pile          up
catch­ up       rolling          down your chin

Years of my tears dry to stale grit
Rusting my skin with crusting corrosions
of Yesterday's emotions frustrations devotions
With time, composting into a dirt coating
Renourishing layers of decomposition
Green seeds in germination with anticipation
Sprouting fresh roots of deeper perception

A Glowing. Growing. Living. New Me.

I decided it was time to get the sponge
find the soap underneath the sink underneath the
garbage bags and start piling on the
lukewarm bubbles and wait for it to reach a
comfortable level before I allowed my hands to grab
this bowl that was stacked side by side, tall and wide along with the plates and glasses
grimy with crusting red sauce, an alarm for the bugs reminding them
spaghetti was made last week. I had to put more elbow grease
into that off-white, lightly detailed, crunchy bowl. the
red stain threatened the credibility, questioned the use of
cereal for breakfast or ice cream at night. So I tried harder to
make it disappear and my arm did not
understand and my bowl did not
relent
I almost left the sink full of cold water, void of soap, floating sponge
and I almost left the hard work for someone else who
doesn't give up
but I was fuming and I was frustrated and I was not ready to
fail
so I picked up last week's spaghetti and made it this weeks
ice cream bowl

If I lay on that big, white bed for along time,
will you help me find my Father?
If I put tubes in my arm
and didn't eat for a week,
would you show me where he is?
Will the robot standing next to my head feed me
coordinates through rhythmic beeps and blips and red flashing lights?
I will do that.
I will shrink in my bed
and let my hair shed off like snake skin
and let my skin wrinkle like I had been in the bath tub for too long
and leave the windows wide open so my children can watch.
My lungs will burn out
and you'll put a mask on my face
and add one more tube to the collection
in the crook of my elbow,
adding more weight
as I lose mass
just like my Father.
And after countless times of being told,
"You have his smile,"
I will truly know what they meant
when my lips become sandpaper
and my tongue becomes parchment
and my teeth hollow out in gradients of pale moon yellow.
The iron from my blood
will add zest to every wheezing hack
and trickle down my throat like the morning dew
watering the growing weeds in my lungs.
I will do nothing but blink my crusting, glazed eyes
when my family cries at my bedside.
I will not flinch as their shouted cries echo the hallway
or look up as they throw their hands to the sky,
begging to a name I had long turned away from.
Would I find my Father if the flesh of my cheeks sunk into its bones
and my face was contoured by the ugly shadows in its
every crevice?
Even then, I would not find my Father.
I would not find my Father
until the white coats stand over my bed,
prodding me with pens and magnifying glasses and stinging needles,
and finally tell my family there is no chance.
I would nto be my Father until I refuse to cry
or scream
or become angered
or say goodbye.
I will be relieved that after countless months of being dead,
they finally declare my pulse gone.

first, make sure you are very concerned with
unlearned or silenced or misread minorities. this establishes that you
are a rarity, a person of charity,
a champion and deity of the small and the voiceless.
you’ve made the right choices
swallowed the right poisons
so now you’re not pointless,
you’re with the top few
of the economic disparity.
do you aver verity?
not so much.
you just make the choicest noises.

second, it is very important that you stud your vernacular
with words like deictic, post-spaciality, and sub-simulacular.
when you, font of knowledge, squeeze out pearls like turds
in twelve-point, double spaced, times new roman rows,
lined up like crows or some other ***** birds,
be sure to write no sentence shorter than thirty words, and
see to it that two thirds of these words have more than ten letters
that even the nerds in their plaid-patterned sweaters have not once ever heard.

when you walk, A paper in hand, from your car to your apartment, past four vagrants, do not look at them.
do not look into the eyes of the man standing in the rain, barefoot, black, green, and yellow toenails oozing and crusting, nodding his head and shouting at no one, and do not wonder whether or not he’d be there had he been educated.

lexicon is not eloquence.

erudition is not wisdom.

intelligence is not a prerequisite for rights.

you have no rights.

take a dictionary and shove it up your *** and
while you’re at it, shove one up mine, too.

Innocent saucer eyes open wide,
Sweet budding lavender laughter.
We’ll all go down-
One by one.
Silence aggravates the wreckage
Of what I used to be.
Into an abyss of false love
I’m falling.
A love that is mistaken,
Shown in the form of tender kisses
In detested secret places-
On a moldy couch
Covered in cat hair.
The crippling angst of your fingertips
Against my cold youthful cheeks-
Tracing the outline of my fatty jaw.
Slow circles of smoke escape your chapped crusting lips,
As chunks of flesh turn to rotting hostility
Against ones own body-
The bitterness of the cold turns to sweet comfort
As a lovely numbness becomes my regularity,
And emotions and physicality become one
Persisting to disintegrate-
my soul has become
a boiling bubble of spoiled milk
With the putrid stench of pillaged skin-
The devastating devouring desecration
of a ravaged--

Beauty is not flowers, given by a lover.

Nor is it meadows and birdsong.

And definitely not the pantomime of Weddings, with their

Hyperbolic declarations and parodies of tailoring on

Bodies too well-fed to house them.



Instead, it is the soft curl of cigarette smoke, blue

And graceful against the grime of a steamed window.

Or in a poky kitchen, the remains of our meal crusting on

Our plates, too absorbed were we in conversation

To even remember the taste.



It is the chuntered breath, just after,

When we are both trying to ignore how bad

We smell, and getting slightly annoyed that our heartbeats are out of sync

And thinking how nice a drink or a shower would be.



It is seagulls beside a river, in a military line, with

White trails of ****, Jackson Pollocking down the wall

On which they stood, and how they all took flight one by one

Like dominoes as I approached.



It is certainly not sunsets.  After all, they occur every day

And can be captured in a photogaph.  It’s the accompanying silence

That makes sunsets special, and that is better found in libraries anyway.

It is somehow more impressive to silence human tongues than watch

The suns tired routine once again.



On a bus full of rowdy, starched schoolboys with filmy faces,

Posturing about experience, Beauty is the one boy reading.

Beauty is not safety.  It is daring and bold.  Or perhaps it is quiet and

Trying to be ignored,  I don’t know.  Perhaps we shouldn’t care a jot.

Beauty is that thing that should be ugly,

But is not.

I still have more to give
                   cried
the rotting leftovers
in the back of the fridge
Desperate to be
used
ripped
snagged

just take me off
this crusting tomb
I
   want
              to
                     feel
what it is like to be
           reheated
just zap me
   :45
ill be tender
    ill be good
                               enough to eat
alive
and the last streams of red can trickle onto
your paper towel
                                                 all the mess
                                                 ****** away
                                              by the quicker picker upper
slip slip slipping
on this plastic plate
   because you dropped all your fine china
                      you broke all the glass
                             you cracked all your chances
for divine dinning
I can watch your eyes roll around
from the inside of my lightening storm
a game of Yahtzee- snake eyes 4 times in a row
scanning everything
                                                      ­forgetting everything
are you feeling lucky?
:10
almost almost
       almost

drip drip dripping
           is the drool from your mouth
you forgot how good I can be
use the knife and cut away the bad parts and ill be
the prettiest picture
               you've ever seen
i'll taste just like I look------ a piece of rotting meat with the corners cut off and the juices all dried with a warm reminder of hot all dumped onto a plastic plate.

delicious

Mascara crusting, drying between tears
Core shaking with every wail
Head pounding, craving a breath of clear air
Right hand shaking uncontrollably needing control
Cheeks turning red, hot, and angry wanting revenge  

eyes closed silently
Memories blast past

His hand, my dark washed jeans, the only barrier between my skin and his
Muscles tense up
Pointer. Middle. Ring. Pinky, on the seam where one end meets another, thumb inside
Frozen in speed staring blankly across the room
Up three inches down one, repeat five times
Higher, higher, higher  
Hand grabs at my zipper
Instincts, do something
Run away

open eyes, back in my room
Still shaking, mascara still crusting, core still breaking, head still pounding.

the world doesn’t stop moving
not for me
not for him
not for anyone

Wipe away my tears
Get up off the bed
Walk over to the bathroom
Stare in the mirror

I don’t like what I’m looking at

Weak
Broken
Worthless
Nothingness

Lean against wall
Slowly slide down towards cool gray tile
Icy cold hits my upper thighs

Close my eyes

Lean over the ground
Hair strands surround my face
Heat rushes over my body

Sleep arrives
Sleep takes over
I let it take control
I give in

Foetal positioned in the womb of her ampersand,
a child to the connected string of unholy clauses,
always adding more and more and more
and,
and,
and,
stuck in the expectation to carry on,
creaked and crusting under the weight of the words
you promise you’d put back after you used them.
It’s getting hard to distinguish between rest and end.








ъ

a million little miracles
standing in a line
laughing at the little man
who chooses not one time.

crowded, there.
elbows and hellos and farewells.
dream
after
           dream
after dream
withering
decaying in a flash of images
of people that will never be
and chances that will never be
taken.
encounters
that will never
                                  occur.

again, a new dream
stands up to take his place.
his place,
and the air rushes in
to fill the gap
where the old dream is no longer,
and the new dream has yet to be.
the air rushes in,
closes in,
fills it all in
and when the disappearing dream
declines all else but its own
                         decay
it blinks.
vanishing into a single point of
                            light
                                   a frozen face
                                                a
                                         fractured
                                                 (smile)
a piece of god
                       of self
                                    of soul
and when it
blinks
it winks
it darks
               and it is gone.
the dream is
                                                                                              worse than dead.
                                               the dream is
            worse than gone.
                                             it simply never was.
it simply                                                                                            never was.

the air rushes in
again
always filling in
and the new dream swells with pride.

i
am the dream
that will make
the miracles
and save this man
from the self he
secretly serves.

the new dream opens its eyes.

the air
          rushes
                       out,
                              grows thin,
                             breath becoming ragged
before it has even begun.
eyes tear.
drip and run and **** sadness
and water and cloud
at the heat
left behind
in the wake of the evaporating atmosphere.

refusing to gasp or swat at tears,
the dream stands straight and tall.
i
am the dream
that will make
the miracles
and save this    
man
from the              
self  
he secretly serves.

one moment of attention
a second’s worth of will
and the air would be endless and free.
the dream would be endless and free.

before blinking
the first
(and only)
time,
the newborn eyes
                                                                         swollen, itching
                                                                                                eyes
grow wide in unfeigned horror.

dream after dream
from the footprint under his shoe
to the ****** horizon
of crimson and death and loss
stood screaming.
                           dream after dream after dream
                                        standing and screaming and
weeping
clamoring to be heard.
a cacophony
                                                               so loud
                                                    
                                                     so very ******* loud

his newborn crusting eyes
saw the sound
through the red tint
of sorrow
and loss, the tint
that in mere moments
had become
the only vision he would ever know.
saw the sound
he
saw the sound
so loud
               the fragile air
pulsed and scattered, convulsing.
the sound so loud, he saw it
before the sensation
                                of hearing
                                                  occurred.
before hearing
before blinking
but weeping, always,
                                                                                                  weeping . . .
he saw the screams of all the dreams
through eyes that leaked decay.

                                                       one instant.

one flashbulb spark
second in time
to give this dream
(any dream
any of these dreams
any ******* dream at all)
breath.

one second to pause
to give
one thought
to give
one chance
to give one breath.
to give. to give.

and the air would be endless and free.
the air and the dream,
both endless,
and free.

                                                    i am the dream
he chokes,
                                                                                              his eyes burn and
                                                                                                              weep,
                                                                                               itch and weep
                                               that will make this man
                                                                                                            he cries,
ears ringing
forsaken dreams
******* screaming
crimson and ****** and loud
                                                 save the miracles
                                                 he secretly serves
he shrieks,
                                                                                                 hands clenching
                                                                                                  into futile fists,
                                                  &

I often begin my poems right here
directly inside of this box
this "body"
and I think that it's really the only way
to put out things I like
It's fresh and raw
and a little bit squishy
but that's okay
some people really like squishy
here I am in this squishy little body
this raw poetry
the only time I will ever like this poem
is when I can still feel the salt
crusting over on my squishy cheeks
and I've never found it so difficult
to type out the word "squishy"
so many times in a row
my face feels so crusty
but at least it will taste nice
to a passerby who may happen to lick it
I often regret poems
but this one is squishy
and some people like squishy
so I guess I like squishy.

Awake! With morning darkness burst
Cracking rich eye crusting sleep
Ignore the strident bell of life
Outward cold warm snuggle deep
Ward against the nagging throng..
Heavy somnus dragging down

Yet buried in the fogged dark mind
Stirs nagging tendril hazy thought
Waste not the day the moment bright
Life much holds more than lazy sleep

So lift mind's eye to misty height
Great life romance spread out before
Adventure waits rich quandary cries
Mountain steep ascend short breath
Summit reach proclaim rapport
Plunging deep crash water roar
Piton ***** stretch rope zing out
Axe bury thud strain upward reach
Snow underfoot sharp crunch give soft
Peace vista birdsong rise aloft
What journey waits?
What dreams?
What Fates?
Agonise decision ........ wait!
Heavy lids snap open gate
Hah! Exclaim loudly joyous shout
Burst upwards throw aside life's wrap
Brush away veil laden doubt
Cast aside all thought save one ....

Awake the dawn of comrades share
Banish prison walls of toil
Embrace the spice rich life before
Lost freedom of existence glory
Live the life few dare to hold
Climb cragged rock - Trek lands far flung
Forge white streaked waters sheen
Cross the desert dry and bright
Brave wilderness dark verdant green
Stand wind whipped face brave peak stand out
We know what it’s all about

So-Facilitate deep need within
Live the life all seek few dare
Complete existence venture far
We pass this way but once - bemuse  
Grasp this opportunity or lose

from between 2 somethings
arose a kind erosion
saying, "your you is a light lie crusting on the tongue of truth"
i could not
find a suitable
vocal enunciation to repeal
this tepid assertion
so i gave
him a measure of myself
laughing

Fingers through grass,
Green.
Stained against flesh,
Guilty.
The water will never
wash away your crimes.
Rip it from the earth,
dirt against skin,
Brown,
Mud,
Crusting.
The water will never
wash away the sin,
Forever marked
against your
Pale
Plaster
Skin.

i wake
starving for a body
he craves flesh and blood and bone
i shake and shiver as he holds me

unbound from this mattress of
seven nights before
when starry eyes and small words flooded
from our crusting mouths
my tongue like sandpaper

They say that psychologically we all got triggers,
but they're just part of the guns to our heads.
A day job requires you to hit certain figures
and in that regard those triggers are all pulled

simultaneously

I don't say it lightly, the lot of us are simply doomed
if we stay here. And truthfully that's what I dread.
The fact that we never move from this ******* room
is a constant testament to our nature.

our divine comedy

Have we become futile? To tell you the truth, probably.
Who did that? Them or us? Who tossed away the toast
and handed us the dry, hi vis laden crusting?
You, my friend. You who tripped. You whose mind

is stripped away

pause

sweat collects in hollows between sound
and vertebrae
salt crusting over against the wall, skin.

i roll words and worlds between my cheeks
dusty marbles under the tongue rattling in
the empty spaces
not right and
too hard
too cold.

i spit them out and look
away before they land.

Lost in flesh
Inside your head You see him again in the Past dripping with so much blood it escaped into the pond from rivers along the length of his limbs
I don’t know his face, still, barely
I remember him swaying like a lightening rod and begging for help, not even that
Gurgling the word, and it took me a second to register how wide open his head was
I didn’t gag, but I didn’t breathe either
I dropped my keys and yelled too
A precious reminder of the tides beneath the foam
There seems to be no desire left
It collapses in on itself like the old barns succumbing to blustery wind out in the yard
Where the wild things grow
A heart made of the soft river stones that shine but shed their soft talcum brill
A young woman is perched on a bridge
Somewhere else but it is happening
Right now
Some kid is waiting for the right stop
Thinking his body is so heavy
And counting the steps to his front door
Outside my honda some kids are loud like a muffled faucet dripping laughter from the other room
Evening feels further away than it used to feel
Everyone feels further away too
I would try to tell you a story now but
Everything seems less important when the mist returns in the morning in this place
It’s a fatal question to dance around in circles of frustration
Watching some others offer it’s existence up for capital
When you can’t pin it down with an arrow or settle it’s parameters with measurements
Or wrestle it down like a bucking bull and a faithless matador doing his duty to his country
It can’t be as simple as the ways in which we quantify
Even the process of writing has become dispassionate, there seems to be no use in what the meaning is
The question looks quaint at arms length
The boy is home in bed, thinking about buying beer tomorrow and if he was hit by a car or someone shot him how long does it take to bleed out and just
So yes, I would try to tell you a story to explain myself better but, I can’t
I’d tell you a story but the truth is I’m confused by how much there is to tell
The intricacies of the truth, the aspersions of summing up the contents after breaking them down
The way nothing always happens for A Reason
The way most things always happen for some type of reason but not A Reason
The way I feel today
The way a fly poops on what it lands but you can’t see that
The way these things are never sold, nor told, nor need to be believed to be true.
You know the way it goes, do we die in our own **** or do we **** before we die
and did the chicken even know the road was a road when it was crossing to the other side?
The man is 65. I remember this because a girl and a guy had seen the man and I
and he told her this. He tried to laugh and
he choked on his own blood. He had wrapped his face in a brown tshirt
And placed his hat over the wound
Covered by that. He looked like Freddy from that movie Freddie vs Jason
but somehow mostly formidable in that he
was soaked in the red, drying in the sun
like glistening crusting paint, chipping away
I don’t pray very much but I did today after the ambulance came, I prayed all Monday
I thought about who that man was
A young woman is perched on a bridge Somewhere else but it is happening right now
And she is suddenly having it, she’s having the truth and she doesn’t say anything but she
Puts her hands in her pockets and doesn’t move
And then does, and presses a cigarette to her mouth and doesn’t move
And the filter gets soggy and
She sits there and decides to light it
And finally she moves away from the murky dark water and walks to her car
The mouth of the maw glistening against moonlight slated shadows
The seeker holds her heart and picks up the stones as she goes, doesn’t look back

Claws,
  wounds,
deep,
   screams,
points
    and
   shadows
     or
     silhouettes
      of past ones;
  blood -
   crusting over your lies,
truth?
delusion,
disillusion,
polluted
  drops
   projected
into the wrong
  cup of sorrow -
further,
pinching
  a little stronger;
how it burns
and spreads -
  those little embers
   scattering like
  a cancerous angst;
claws,
  wounds,
deep,
   screams -

   one on top of the other;

  Raven will
  find no shelter
  for you inside,

               we keep the dogs
                     out back
                 now-ah-days

   much love,
      my sweet

What a kind soul you were
So easy for me to trust
And depend on
So simple for me to talk too,
Taught me to be open
And that people aren't
So bad

What a kind heart you were,
We spent so much time together
Without boredom crusting
Behind our eyes-
With free flowing words
And never a moments silence
Or lull in conversation

What a kind man you were
A gentleman,
A listen to your gut kind of guy-
No wonder,
I didn't deserve you

What a gentle soul you were
Always trying to comfort me,
Or let me down easy

What a ****** up person I was
To let myself become
Entangled in you
And all we could be

What a sad life I was leading
To always need your help
But depend too strongly
Until the breaking point,
Until you turned to go

What a disappointment I am
For me to have lost you
You and your kind soul  
To never touch,
Speak or listen to
Mine again

i don't like nice poetry.
i don't like fancy words,
or tranquil thoughts,
i don't like comfortable or smooth.

i like
R A W

i like poetry that rips you apart from the inside out
shreds your skin,
takes your oxygen and forms it into something else
unbreathable.

i like poetry that leaves you staring,
with watering eyes like whole oceans somehow slipped,
unlocked the bolted door to your retinas late at night
and slept cold, salty and drunk on your bed without an invitation.

somehow the love you made,
sweat staining the soft, greasy thin sheets
meant nothing.
and now the oceans lying beside you,
inside you
salt making you cringe, gag in the safe dark cover of night,
strikes you as positively
irritating;
their breath of tides,
growing small and large with every
step closer they take towards shore.

so you ****** your hands in the swift
raging waters of their
body.
you try to find its warped, used heart,
like a crumpled, empty cigarette package
discarded and wet after a war waging rain;
rippled and streaming in the
transparency of its quaking body.

you seek to rip it out,
and tiptoe to the open window,
vacantly staring at you from across the room,
every inhale it takes
letting more warm, humid air like
dead fishes breath
into the scalding room.

you wish to throw that pulsing,
helpless heart out into the night
listen for a couple of moments
and hear it splatter on the concrete below
the ajar window,
sure that cold,
wet
remains of the ocean floor would be scattered on
the sidewalk in the morning.

but you cant seem to successfully rip it out,
the tendons holding onto the ribs
like wild veins,
stubborn and clingy.
you pull and pull,
aching to tear it from
the body,
but the water around it is too cold so you
jump out of the
waves and weeds of under the sea,
and lie on your back listening to its breath
breathing still in deep sleep,
angry that the tearing on its
heart
didn't make it stir one bit;
just made your hands burning
ice and numb
purple in the dark.

so you satisfy yourself by gently
pressing your lips to its
throat,
sinking your teeth deep below its
vital veins,
stopping the raging rivers in its
soft neck,
pulsating with currents,
glowing with a sliver of silver moonlight passing
through it like a wrenching scar.

you crunch down violently
on its delicate
lifeless passageways
transporting fresh water
to salted sour oceans,
crispy like stringy celery
breaking uneasily in the warm cavern of
your mouth.

then you lie down, fulfilled.
the lack of its vessels
stopping the tide of its breath violently and suddenly,
carotid arteries,
jugular veins
and muscles
spread out,
spurting from its throat,
vast like twisted wings.

you ash your cigarette on the draining
wetness of its tongue,
throw the filter down its decapitated throat
and sit on the white, crusting balcony,
waiting for the rusting sun to rise,
picking sand out from your teeth.

The silence is deafening,
The pain is numbing.
My body, it's bruising,
My blood, it's crusting.

The pain, i endure it everyday,
Try as i may, the feeling just wont go away.
To put on a smile, telling everyone i'm okay,
To hide the truth, to hide my turmoil from being on on display.

And yet from the ledge i peer down below,
Pondering, if my end will be fast or slow.
Without a care left in the world i leaped, i took flight
And as i landed, the world faded from my sight.

But i still endure the pain everyday,
For what i have done, i had a price to pay.
For i was once in colour, now everything is gray,
To forever suffer, never to find my way.

and roused from the back of my mind was
a warm breath of childlike wonder, present
in the twinkling of my eyes
that he called "unmissable," like it was the reason he drew toward me

with a blade called fate to my neck
and promised me escape, finally, since nobody else would.
but he spoke in shimmering riddles, tongue dipped in a persuasive agent.
he did not miss his clarity. he did not miss much anymore.
by his hand, and with God as his witness, he would keep any of that nonsense
far from the equation. he would **** that which once made him feel alive.
walled away somewhere deep inside of him, behind visible ribs and invisible slate
i observed a faraway macabre, and it did not deter me, and it did not want to.
i took his hand, which was good, since mine still trembled.
i let him pull me into the same rank pit
he had occupied for some time now. drawn, quartered.
the skin around his eyes crusting, blackening, oculars submerged in pale.
through needles were salvation; he fully intended to alter pace
and allow himself, for once, something of his doing.
solace, if not brief solace, from wretchedness.
a scarce commodity.
nothing can shine down here.
and i'm surviving on what kills me.

On the days that I can't
even roll over in bed without
an internal sigh so deep
it would rival the heave of
the shuddering earth
and you ask me why
dinner is still cooking and
the drier is fluffing and
the dishes are crusting
and the dust is still lying
and my lashes are bare
and my hair is unkempt
as the sheets on the bed...
On these days when
I go to work anyway
before you wake up and
I get home after you
(you're sleeping on the couch)
and pick up after you
and serve myself after you
and you still think to ask
about the undone things that
your eyes see so well...
On these days with
these questions and that
look in your eyes
it's all I can do
to set my jaw,
smile,
and say:
"I just haven't..."

Can’t Sleep

The heat will not let me sleep. Sweat pouring into my crevices as I move my seat back and down. Twin trickles slide down my temples. The exhaustion tickles my already fuzzy and tingly brain. Thoughts become clouds creating new forms of stormy confusion.
I need one hour to at least regain my rationality. I roll to the left slipping my black shoes off, because I sleep better barefoot. I roll to my right, shifting the keys in my side pocket so they won’t stab me. Still, I cannot sleep. I roll down my window and place a small black jacket up, to block out part of the sun. The white interior reflects some of the heat but not enough to let me sleep.
The weatherman promised rain, but I would settle for snow or sleet; anything to reduce this heat. I close my eyes to try breathing exercises. It doesn’t work. I try making a blindfold out of a shirt. It doesn’t work. I try daydreaming to relax, but it doesn’t work.
Now I have to go to work. I am sure I smell like smelly car. It is a beautiful day and I am sure the night will be quite gorgeous as well but I got a fourteen hour shift ahead of me and I am dog tired. ****, I wish I had been able to sleep.

---------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------

Afte­r I Finally Got Some Sleep

I awake, slightly sweaty. Eyes blurred, sleep dust crusting up. A lump of sorrow fills my gut. I recall arms around someone I loved, holding on to her. I recall love. I recall happiness.
It is all an illusion. That soft skin lay only within the realms of dreams.  Vividly she appears to me. Her smile, her long red hair, her *******, the softness of her belly held gently with interlocking arms. Her voice is only a construct of my memory as it tries to put together the specifics of that wonderful dream.
What a dream girl. Maybe she was that girl from that tv show I used to love. The last dream like that she was a girl I knew fourteen years ago. If I could I would go back to sleep, trade in the coldness of this reality for the wonderful love. But it is too hot, and I have to go to work.