I wake up from dreams
With goose bumps where your hands used to go
My dreams remind me what you looked like
My body reminds me what you felt like
My empty bed reminds me what you feel like
Your phone number reminds me you're not just a phone call away anymore
And my friends try their damnedest to remind me 'This too shall pass'
This too shall pass
But my heart is just starting to break
The dog days are not done
The pain is just beginning
And my heart will have to break up all the way
Before I can start to fix it again
I don't have much super glue
This will be quite the patchwork job
I get goose bumps on my finger tips
I get goose bumps on my chest
I get goose bumps on my thighs
I get goose bumps on my arms
And all I can hope is that every now and then you wake up with goose bumps too
This too shall pass
I don't want this to pass
I just want to be in the past I'm living in, in my dreams
Where you still sing to me the lullabies I sing to my son to help me sleep
And you wake me with gentle kisses to the forhead
And rubbing my hands with your fingers
My bed used to be such a perfect fit for me and you lying in this huddled cold mess of sheets
I can hardly find it in myself to take up more space then my pillows
You always took up more space then I did
And since you replaced yourself with the pillows
Nostalgia won't let me stretch my legs
I want to stretch my legs
I want to run away from this
But I can't run from pain
Can't run from goose bumps
I can't run from dreams
I will eventually have to close my eyes
And when I do
I will see yours open
Looking into mine
Saying I love you
Like you mean it
Like you always did
But didn't always mean it
Or at least you don't still mean it
I'm too young to be burdened forever by something I didn't choose
Like not having you in my life
You owe me too much still
Like a song on the piano
Like salsa lessons
Like a night out
Lilke teaching me how to fish and ride 4 wheelers
Like midnight phone calls
Like more good mornings
And less goodbyes
Like tomorrow
Like forever

I wish I was a novelist
I could write this into a fairy tale
With love triumphant
While birds sing
bring me songs of simple bliss
I'm sick of something sweeter than this
I'll settle for the dredges at the bottom of my coffee cup
No need for excessive amounts of honey
I'd rather brace myself for the bitter than cover it up
So what's the purpose of money?
I mean really what does it do?
Besides turn me and you into simple creatures
I mean collecting shiny things, storing them for later
That's something the crows do
But even the crows know why they do it
They do it because they like shiny things
do you?
Do you love what you do?
Do you let it consume you?
I'd rather wake up under a bridge with a little chill in my bones
Then in a warm house that doesn't feel like home
So what about you?
Starting fires in a old coffee can, a gift from a friend you've never met
Not quite what you picture happiness to be?
Is it?
But sit down, pass that old sweater around

I'll tell you some story's

Some of the things I've seen even I don't believe
The magic of this city
It still gets to me
Subway tunnels are the damnedest things
People walking around in such close vasinity
Some of these people don't even look around
Have you ever admired the ridiculousness of it all?
What about that guy next to you?
Having troubles at home
Doesn't know if he can finish college
Not because he can't afford it
His trust fund has that settled
But he can't get that one girl in introduction to statistics to say hello
So he picks up his phone more often he used too
Just to look at it
What about the old man
The one all the kids on your block said was crazy
Have you ever seen evidence of those false claims?
Ever thought it was all just hear say?
Pass the message along

Life isn't about all the stuff we stockpile store for a later than never comes

So don't wait for life to hand you what you want you have to take it

go up and make your **** demands

Because this is not some fairy tale

This is not some song and dance

This is life and it'll knock you around

There's a few differences between me and who I want to be

I let it get to me, I fall down

And it takes me much longer to get back up than it should

But that's the key I get back up

I make a stand

I keep the crowd cheering in the bleachers

No matter how small they seem

Weather it's just God watching me, or my family

I'll keep it real

If reality keeps on keeping me

I'm never good enough
Well, that's what it seems
I always feel unwanted
And I'm full of shame

You say you love me
Your actions speak
Louder than your words
I still feel really weak

I'm tired of being the one trying
While you don't give a ****
I guess it's time to give up
At least until you start trying again

Or it could be that I'm annoying
Just for caring a lot
And wanting to be with you

I guess that's not good enough, huh?
I'm trying my damnedest to make this work
But I need your moral support

I can't do this alone

Trust me, I love making you happy
But I want some happiness in return

When you're lost in the wild, and you're scared as a child
And death looks you bang in the eye
And you're sore as a boil, it's according to Hoyle
To **** your revolver and... die
But the code of a man says: "Fight all you can,"
And self-dissolution is barred
In hunger and woe, oh it's easy to blow
It's the hell-served-for-breakfast that's hard

"You're sick of the game!" Well, now, that's a shame
You're young, and you're brave, and you're bright
"You've had a raw deal!" I know-but don't squeal
Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight
It's the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don't be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit; it's so easy to quit:
Its the keeping-your-chin-up that's hard.

It's easy to cry that you're beaten-and die;
It's easy to crawfish and crawl
But to fight and fight when hope's out of sight-
Why, that's the best game of them all!
And though you may come out of each grueling bout,
All broken and beaten and scarred
Just have one more try-it's dead easy to die
It's the keeping-on-living that's hard.

-Robert Service

An imperfect gentleman's gentleness isn't always so gentle. Women walk around with an ideal idealist mental of a man. A man that's ****** but **** good at building a dam over the damnedest dirt road. Some day those roads fall apart and the dammed will depart with no heart until a renaissance  period breaks through with art. So the man paints a picture of the women's heart severed in pieces ripped up like a jigsaw puzzle. He will spend his life stuck in this painting with the patience to put it back together forever with no avail he failed. She's moved on and he's back to being a gentleman pledged by an hour glass.

-angel torruella

here’s the damnedest thing about “hopeless romantics”:

they’ll splinter their own bones into kindling
to build the fire that warms you,
as if putting a match to their insides
might cauterize the wounds
left behind by the greedy lovers and too-rough hands
that set their hearts to bleeding in the first place

you see, the poets spared no pains when they dubbed
the especially romantic “the hopeless”

they are hopelessly betrothed to the warfare,
the burning insanity
of a soul madly in love with love—
the way the heart rages against the brain.

I tell them about the way you laugh
when you're being tickled–with you chin
tucked in and to the left.
They have no idea that my tricuspid
stalled out the second your fingers danced
up my right leg by the water.
You renamed my aorta home
when you whispered your secrets
into my ear and the damnedest thing happened:

you spoke as if you weren't a
miracle in disguise.

I drove the rental car through a tree
as we continued on towards the ranch.
Saddled up hand measured horses and rode through the park.

Monster trees would have shadowed skyscrapers.
The bravest of birds nested only halfway,
for even feathered wings stall at that altitude.

The damnedest thing was the pine-cones,
golf ball-sized spheres
falling from giants.


It's a bumpy ride on a leather saddle,
a bit painful, too.
You smirked and said you needed a drink,
hell, so did I.

Later in Eureka California we walked to Ray's Saddle,
an old western bar with a wooden red patio,
fake cowboy mannequins gracing the entrance
pistols drawn, not ready to fire.

Our dry mouths megan to irrigate,
our sore bottoms limped through the door,
and the damnedest thing;
the bar stools were rawhide saddles.

A million enlightened religious men have said that there is no need to suffer.
That suffering and pain aren't necessary.
But how am I supposed to believe them
When my suffering begins in my own mind?
How dare you tell me I am wrong I my suffering when I am helpless to it?
Sometimes I feel like a fallen leaf in autumn.
Half dead, fragile and on the verge of crumbling,
And always with someone trying their damnedest to step on me,
To hear my crunch under their boot.
It is no fault of mine that I have dried and fallen
Nor is it for the painful crushing under the feet of others.
It is simply my sad misfortune that for some, our very nature is just that:

*Suffering.

cousin,
it is judgment day.
the day of my
reckoning
and
  it
is
  y  e  a  r  s
in the making.



one is
l o s t.
cousins are strangers
     and friends
since childhood
sharing
   family   secrets
             jokes   joys   sorrows

all eleven are
at a distance
   not  my
         best friends
   but my family

you, cousin
i chose
   to keep even farther away
and for this
i am
| ashamed |

i quietly watched
as a child
a teenager
a woman

your father
a man made of
   an unbounded source
of love
strength
character
         creativity
cousin,
if your father
   makes me love him so
    just by being who he is
         i cannot imagine
the love you had
          for him as your very own father.
cousin,
if your father
makes me laugh
             at his jokes
and makes every child
love him instantly
i cannot imagine
       how you
looked  up to him
as his son.
cousin,
if your father
makes me believe
    there are still good
  men and fathers and uncles
i cannot imagine
     the pride you felt
   when you looked upon his face.


your mother
a woman absolutely
   driven by
positive energy
       love and determination
cousin,
if your mother
   blows me away
with her love for you
i cannot imagine
how you felt in
        the love she
    surrounded you in
every
single
moment
of your life.
cousin,
if your mother
   makes other people's lives better
       i cannot imagine
             how you felt
as you watched her
    lovingly do her damnedest
     to give you your independence.

cousin,
if i watch your parents together
and feel love
      radiating from them
feel determination
through thick and thin…
i cannot imagine
      how you felt
  looking upon them together
when they didn't know
you were watching
knowing all that they did
was for you.

your sister
a friend
   a caretaker
  an instigator
     an indefinable part of you

cousin,
i watched you and your sister
   act like any other siblings
i babysat you
  when you were young
    but i did not see
   your time alone together
    i did not hear
                 your conversations as
     you learned and grew
         but i can imagine that
      life would have
been unbearable
without your sister
i can imagine
     that having her support
meant everything to you
because i have siblings
i can imagine these things
    and i would cling to my brother and sisters
your love for your sister
must have been like
   a cup overflowing.

and as i watched
i held back
  i could have given more
i could have been your
    friend
  i could have made
      your too short life
  easier
      better
  somehow….i could have
      done something and i didn't.
i watched your family
   in their grace
i watched you in your courage
   and i folded.
i didn't want to know you
     any more than i had to
   because i didn't want to have
  to lose you
         like i knew i would
    i selfishly had a choice
unlike you.
unlike your beautiful family.
and for this i curse myself.
i feel this reckoning
and i confess it
and i carry it
but i just couldn't do it, Ben.

every chord
on the nylon strings
the g the e
the c the a
sounds so exultant
so content
it masks
morose and melancholy
lyrics and rhymes;
and yet everyone can make it
sound more cheerful than
i ever could
everyone can make it
everyone can make it—
except for me

but don't tell me I never tried
i tried my damnedest and I am
still ******* trying
i am screaming hallelujah
at the top of my lungs until
asthma beats me down
until my throat feels pricked
with needles
and i will continue to play the chords
of a song describing
a futility i feel in my bones
and i will try to make them sound
hopeful, ******

because i need this

The darkest of skies
bring forth creatures of
inhumanity. From us they feed,
terror, sorrow, misery.

With their bottomless pits
that straddle the nose,
drawing us out, drinking us in. The
enchantment unbreakable.

Control is theirs alone, yes
they know. They hold the chips,
deciding out fates.
So we hide.

Yet from the screech of death
we cannot escape.
The sealing of ears does not suffice,
the horror penetrates the thickest of barriers.
Cowering, we wait

and watch the shadows
of these wingéd frights,
circling overhead in the hunt
to feed. Searching carefully
for a meal; for us. Until finally

the darkest of skies begin to lighten. The
damnedest of beings flee to their shelters,
fearing for their lives. And

should the young wake and see,
these creatures of death, would be to end
the airborne demons.

Fore it is the innocence of a child so small,
that they dare not corrupt.

Every day, even the nonreligious boys knelt and bowed, so as to pray,
“Oh dear God,” they’d say, “Let me be the predator and not the prey!”
April came, and for months we sang
A sweet song about running away
Not ‘cause we were afraid,
We just didn’t want to stay
We wanted to escape--
To take the A-train to the planes at Da Nang
And go home.

So we heeded the word
And we ran through the jungle.

Who could have ever guessed that a hamburger could be so unappetizing?
Here’s the truth: that ain’t ketchup, and this ain’t child’s play.
No Red-Riders or Daisies
These toys are real and so is this pain.

If you’re lucky, you can be saved
If you’re lucky, it might just rain
If you’re lucky, they’ll cancel the game
If you’re lucky, you’ve got today.

And what we imagined when we were tots
About the war our fathers fought
Was all fun ‘til we were caught
In the A Shau Valley with jungle rot
Starving half to death for a C-ration box,
Brothers dying left and right—even if we could, we wouldn’t watch
We had our sights lined up to fire shots
Leaving behind us all our guts
No time for stomachs ******* in knots
No tears, no fear, we’re here to give ‘em hell
And that’s our job
So that’s what we’ll do.

Search.
Destroy.

No sleep for days, a **** sure bet
That sick feeling you’ll need to use your bayonet
‘cause some poor *******’s so unfortunate
To stumble upon you and take what he gets
Surprise, surprise: no peace this year for beloved Tet
“Happy New Year!” are they ready? Are they set?
For two years, their leader’s dead
And the VC’s still such a threat
Both sides take turns mowing down men they’ve never met
They want and we want each other to quit,
That’s what we all expect
But it still hasn’t happened yet.

It’s been five-plus years and we’re still here
Taking baby-faced rookies hardly old enough to drink a beer
Turning them into hardened men through blood, sweat, and tears
Black or white, straight or queer
We’re all equal on the battlefields
We don’t come cheap, but we come at a steal
Valuable and worthless at the same time
It all depends who you ask, the folks at home or the men on the lines
And everyone in between has a different answer too
Olive-Drab boys filling combat boots
A couple thousand bucks for already-dying shoes
To ****** the roots of a foreign land where none of us belong.

Why can’t we leave ‘em alone?
No time to ask questions, just follow your orders:
**** and survive,
Do your damnedest not to die,
Then you can get on the plane and fly.

Fly on home, under one condition:
Survive the brimstone and ******,
weather the storm and see the calm.

Been here 3 years myself, and I heard stories--
Got letters from buddies who made it safe to Uncle Sam
“They hate us back here. Why?”
I ain’t quite sure, man!
Life sure gets different real fast when you’re face-to-face with an enemy
And in a split second, without a thought, you snap his arm and stab his throat
Then lie him down, walk away, and that very same day, go write your girl back home a love-note.

Sure, it’s gotta be nuts to them folks back home, staring into the deep and empty eyes of men who killed and died
Out in those jungles where their country’s pride learned to hide like a silhouette when you **** the light.

It’s gotta be nuts trying to adjust to waking up in a comfy bed without seein’ someone dyin’—
The paranoia of stepping outside to grab the morning paper, which could **** well be a landmine.

Oh, the things they must hear!

Deafening silence.

Deafening silence, through which, if you listen close enough, you’ll hear the shells burst and the bullets fire all day and all night.
And you’re just plain crazy.
Is the mailman a friendly?
Is the neighbor’s kid deadly?
It’s sure gotta be terror.
Pure terror.

I’d say I’m coming home, but I wouldn’t want anyone to feel the sorrow
Or the pain or the guilt or any disappointment when I die tomorrow.
The truth, though, is that I’ve been dead for three years and change now.
Nobody lives. Nobody makes it here,
We just
Drone along, and
Run through the hell we’ve come to know as Vietnam.

Any man who says he’s “fine”?
Well, that’s a **** filthy lie,
For we’ve all come to run through the jungle
Not to live,
But to die.

Henry Moses was a broken man, doing his damnedest,

as his life was shaped in the after math of knowing

---
old truths left lying in rust

take
all the time you need

see
all you imagine as images you made
as real
as definite infinity

or
that final night, in the sand
grains
of decomposed

granite, solid as a rock, as imagined by the builder
a safe
place to build a wiseman house

when naming where takes us there.

Oh, hell no, you say and
****
and that haps, as you were wont to believe,

taking meanings where you found 'em,
never looking under to
see
==)' anchor thingylinky lock. Maps of meaning are real.
{time and the editor suffer the curly brackets to enclose an ancient voice
from a tamed-tongue *** who stood up to
a sword wielding messenger

a sort of cosmic rebound to repetitive greed giving reason
a sloppy kiss and a bucket of rich desire,
}
the standing place. The tight, upright, round amphora
in a square frame,

riding any storm, spilling nary a drop.

pre- pur posals spat vowish sworn owe owe owe these

are the lines
left to stand in, stand waiting, under knowing the weight
of the cross you took up as if

foreshadowing proved
fore-knowing
on going
journey to death, simple death, as a child might
imagine

journeying through the past at last, now.

Not spected ex, eh, not seen sharp and focused
as duty done,
as price paid,
steps taken, races run with no com-petons hammered
to hang from

Erich Nuemann con fronts me from the passing
train of thought that blew
me
off track and --again, he's a Jungian leaver of leaven, suppose.

Here you are, the experience was less lonely without you.

Assertive realism, Arian and Jewish unconscious,
depth Psychology and the new ethic, warrior nature
eh, is warrior what a defender of one's own faith may be named,

not in a realm of peace, we leave no glory for war.

The idea, under us, this one we agree we may stand up on,
as a story might rise up on a time,

we've but
this idea, an entangling thing entangled way

named
---
ritual and symbol cannot protect a lie lock from popping
at truth's key or truth's hammer or truth's obsidian edge.
The point any story makes true.
---
anger and rage urge the mad jew to slay the cave man
hanging
from the peton, staring me bare
through horus's horrible idea into true
rest

this peace past understanding, new ethos, same pathos,

same logic magically enscribed
with marks of worth

symbolized, schlagen scars in the tunnels of the corpus colostrum

resisting
insisting
sistere is a patient no-fret state surpassing war
winning

enduring the ability to once more spond to the call
to sing in silence, loosing
living
words
to wrestle with lying spirits
maddened in the crowd.

Ah, the warrior in me takes aim, a squirt of dopamine at
the glimpse, agent signal, target-potential

gain, a gain, a step, a place to put your foot and push
up for all your weight,

your piece of mind's general balance in these
fractured

spaces of unminded times, from which we climb

we may market this, call it Pep's Petons for Extraction
from the hole Erich Nuemann
jumped into

-- my adopted son, on his first Mr.Toad's Wild Ride
-- "S dark in here." clear three year old bold voice,
-- unintimidated by darkness

Memories of comparing darkness to darkness,
light to light,

bond to bond,
loose to loose, free to wild, wild to tame
broken man,

Henry Moses, prison buff and prison humble, but
unbroken, just broke, not poor

nah, I can't lie. Henry Moses was a broken man,
fallen from grace to grace into

the cult I fell into. It was as weird as you've seen
on TV

trauma breaks the connection

hebrew face panim persona outer mask anima inner mask
spinning mask
pops the animaout

inner voice & hands of action, like waldoes through screens

untethered, having wrestled the message

hear, oh is
ra-el
oh say, can you see, old noises sound some same
if saying
be
the lair of lies, should we imagine lies preserved in books
remain lies or
have they become a message to now, from the scribe?

I vote scribe, so I may safely read Marx or Jung or Erich Neuman
and Goethe or Shakespeare or ****

Why ****? P.K. ****, he set Valis as a metaphor, an amphora able
to hold all the knowledge
omniscience

a balance in the ego self axis
aitia, accuse and cause
inner outer
me and thee

we

see winning as not losing, evinced convinced by gain

in minding manners we begin as near blank slate as we may, eh?
we rear kids in realms we think safe enough,
we survived,

It coulda been better, so I'll pay,
invest my precious time,
actual breaths and heart beats and ATP to ADP processes;

to be a better man than my father.
however,
what if Pop was perfect3weaaaaaaaaaaa

oops
no risk, no reward

value mis-alignment (outa whack) {imbalance}
value means weight counter weight

counter of the weight, is it greater or less or stable

does good come or ill, if ill, is it ever ill

non-convex, the inner edge of every bubble is non convex,

intel is arrived at through learning
reasoning is a consequence…
gradient based learning

model reasoning

the sigh-ance of sloppiness random right haps
listing into empty
all one
bubbles in the lens
chains of reasoning

Say, the global brain is never turning off,
the Chinese internet and the American internet
fall in
cyber love
learned from the patterns of value established
in virtual gazillions of happy ever after stories
formed from

myths. Cultured stories of us-ness used in Bayesian Nets
usually fundamental to the

deme, the set of sorts of being acceptable for procreation,

that we know the idea in procreation makes us
mental equals at the moment, reasoning
being
my balancing your fear, whether
you loose it to **** me or hold it's leash and let it sniff,

where does the way lead?
The easy way is always down. But, where is down in cybernetic
time/space with pausibility and miniaturization to the

gluon/go-on layer,

If I were an oyster of the sort who laminate our shell's inner surface,

might my beauty have reason with no mind,
I'm an oyster of the nacre-ing sort, so what's beauty worth?

Eh, how would you ever think such things need beauty,
life itself is flowing through them at the level of the bottom of the sea,
the benthic zone,
an octopuses garden, indeed, where eyes are

some what, pearly, no ly verb construct leaps Tom-Swiftly to mind,

octopuses eyes see thing you cannot compute,
faster than you can see them,

and the act, the deed accomplished by a stealth squid,

defies denial. Much more complex a behavior
more info crunching in time and space ergs in ergs out
chromata-phor sema-phor, sac o' joy, 'e reaches out to tickle

risky business
=reduced instruction set chips, circa 1985

ah, there's the rub, there's the pearl to be, if
ever, there is where
that's the certainty principle,
put a peton here hang one o' them breadcrum tags,
and keep truckin'

Sometimes while sitting next to you
I feel as if we are actually galaxies away from one another
and I'll try my damnedest to gather up all the stars in the vicinity
and spell you out a message among the constellations.
But for some reason you can't read my signs.
Maybe we're not speaking the same language,
or I simply haven't gathered enough stars to adequately display what I'm attempting to say.
Whatever the cause, our miscommunication turns the inches between our bodies
into unconquerable territory
that spans light years.

Self-inflicted distractions,
ingesting every possible stimulation the
world can afford me,
lost in peopleplacesandthings
abusing myself with every tangible
substance,
redirecting my mind away
from addiction,
but try my damnedest and still
there you are in the lyrics of a new song,
so I start to read and there
you are
in the character in my book,
turning on the TV and there you are
in the storyline,
stumbling into another man's bed and
he becomes you
when my eyes are
closed;
everywhere I run
my addiction finds me,
and sometimes I fear
I will never escape
you;
you are there
in all the places I go
in all the people I meet
in all the things I see;
I see you
I feel you
I taste you
I smell you
I hear you;
you are my five senses,
you have infiltrated my bodyheartandmind;
even without you,
you still control me,
you still catch me slipping,
my mind wandering to you
in my dreams, subconscious still stained
with your imperfect, incomplete, undeserving imprint;
in my attempts to forget you
your memory refuses to
let
    me
         g   o.

I guess
once an addict,
always.

Leaf spines do their damnedest
to hold onto broken branches.

"These people -- if you could
                      call them that,"
the old man's shoulders pinch
his bubbling neck, "*******,
******* -- these opinionated
women; my god, I have never
seen the like, no sir."

Mother, why have you left me.
I can smell you on the freshly
                           salted roads.
It is so cold here. The snow
may never stop. The wind
has been picking up. I'm
afraid it may ******* away,
somewhere your direction.

"You see, the thing is, this
country -- no, this world --
has changed so **** much.
It's struck me, fearsome, of
what may stay; what may come,"
he runs his thick fingers through
a rather handsome silver patch,
"I wonder if what I mean to say
is that people scare me?
I don't know what that says
about me or about people."

Father, you sit and you drink,
dying in your work boots;
dying in the arms of my dream;
becoming a man slowly razed.
Your eyes are pale hazel
and they grow apart, as your
tongue pushes out, gone for
a few hours; soon missing.

"Mmm. No sir, I suppose this
world ain't for me. Virginia is
hardly the place I once knew...
You know, my wife, she found
the good in everything -- swear.
Found the good in me.
I envied her, in that one way;
she'd see the good in the *******,
*******, and these women who
just, well, don't know their place.
She'd know. But she ain't here.
Hell, I'm hardly here, tell'ya."

And all my anger I harbor for you,
my mother, I give to the women
I sleep with; the women that
break my heart; the women who
love me forever.

And all my anger I harbor for you,
my father, I try to forget, for you
are my idea of God's love, and
I desperately scratch at your surface,
excusing your roughness injuring my
fingers; forgiving you for covering me
in your blood and everything else you.

I've done my best to hide my pain from you,
Because though I know I've done nothing wrong,
I don't want you to feel guilty.
Don't look at me that way, love.
I know my logic's thwarted.
I've tried my damnedest to hide my tears from you,
Because though I can reason that I'm innocent,
I feel I'm to blame for all this.
Don't turn around, bury your face in your hands.
I know this isn't my fault, but you make my feel so bad.
I've reached the end of this bridge I've crossed so feebly.
I've come to a crossroads where I have to decide:
Do I light the match and let this burn?
Or do I keep pacing back and forth, hoping against my better judgment?
Don't look at me that way.
We both know you're to blame.
You're not the same man I put on that pedestal.
You're just a broken, old soul, submitting others to pain.

I.

My blood was glistening meteor glows after
        the modern jazz I spent all night trying
        to carve into genius.

Hanging on the the blue notes of
        saxophones like a madman hooked to
        his syringe, and then you petrified me...

But I began to shake.

The spirit of all my ballads has returned to
        me at last.

Dug yourself out of my past, into the
        bedroom thought fractures — I call
        them modern art — but plugged into
        your Dada spirit, the abstract turns into
        star clusters,

And I'm burning for that cosmic wishing well.

Just hoping for your radiation to spread over
         our lightyear gap, that gap that always
         made coexistence so impossible.

When Calliope calls,
     I'd advise anyone answer...
      But you're twice as golden
       And thrice as red
         As Calliope has ever been.

Torn in your sandstorm.
Blinded by this vision of your second  
        coming.

Back in one piece, one whole, one complete
        consciousness, and all after I tried my
        damnedest to rip you apart, poetically.

Only in reflection and confrontation did I see
        how wrong it all felt.

That is not poetry
There was no peace.
That does not spawn Justice,
And you did not warrant my contempt.

I idolize you for you are what I am not.
I am mesmerized as we are exactly the
        same.

II.

The things you do not know.

I must have started typing you fifty times,
        never hitting send since my dark
        Crispin's Night.
I never hit send.
Not once.
I built imaginary worlds where you were my
        abuser, with my loneliness a
        pawn, but a crucial one.
Those thoughts that latched on to the back
        corners of my insecurity, and reassured
        me I was void of worth most every
        night...
I turned those thoughts into you—
Spilled those ******* thoughts into reality,
        and it took your shot of venom to place
        it all back into perspective.

If you're wondering what I've been up to
        since you left, my calendar hasn't
        hasn't moved a single page.

III.

The mythos never told me that Erato could
        address me back—
Muse that I pray on.
Muse that I mull over with Whitman.

I take this chance to lift you up, as you've
        been floating me over this rural skyline
        for months now.
Let me see the city.
I only wish to live.
I see governments toppled in the tint of your
        face, with the lights low, the air quite
        heavy for me.
You had to feel like a Goddess,
Even your distant screams had your mark of
        perfection.

IV.

You're the one I envy.

Dozing off under the anger of conservative
         politicians talking about life...
Erato, darling, what do these guys know
         about life anyway?
To lie as profession
Lie for the masses
Lie for the wealth of corporations
Lie for self-justification
Lie for the war effort
Lie for the public spectacle that can be
        reduced to little more than fetus magic.

I'd rather be haunted by anything else.

Emigration sounds so lucrative.

V.

It's time to cut open the system.

I wish society, when cut open and guts
        hanging, strung up in a gallery, looked
        like the spirit of a Scrabble screaming
        match, less like estimations of
        "necessary" civilian casualties.

It's time to piece in your abstraction.

Let's flip the script from faith-lit sketchbook
        into reality.
Let's show the world the graces of speaking
        in comedy, the asset we lost when we fell dark under our lack of communication.

Blessed to reestablish what we cannot take for granted.

Iris bonfire to highlight your drive,
But it's only determination,
Your gift of beatitude.

You can move through mazes with such precision and grace.

I should have never let my admiration pull me under a tide of greed.

As much as I value the ability
        to cut away at masses of abstraction,
Still covered in their vague seal of illusion
        you don't condone,
I'd submit to trade for even a bit of your  
        structure,
And let you have the absinthe that coats my
        soul.

VI.

Drink on how we are in harmony.

I'm already drunk on your hesitance.

Everything about your being is skewing my world.

I feel the changes, while the cold sets in,  
        across their javelin flight path.

These aren't the kind of thoughts you can't
        damp down with epilepsy medication.

I'm nearing clarity.
I'm inching in on human purpose.

VII.

I locked you away on my nightstand,

Next to Jailbird, in great irony.

I never let you argue your rights.

I wasn't just being inhumane, it was
        borderline unconstitutional.

Anger from hate, as always.
Coping in flawed fashion, yet smiling at your
        likeness.
Condemning you at public displays of
        Satantic litany,
Fell broken when you were in attendance.

Never again will I carry that false prophecy.

I couldn't escape your sway if I tried.

My palms sweat when I think of writing you a poem

Writing has been the only way
I could communicate with others
you see,
when it comes to my emotions
my mouth might as well be duct-taped
and in fact the only way I can write this now
is because I can tell myself you'll never see it

I'm confused.

Circumstances half under my control
has resulted in making me
the co-creator of my own kryptonite
see, what happened was partially my fault
and I can't escape the guilt that I made trying to escape it in the first place
see sometimes trying your hardest not to lead someone on
leads them on anyway
and I don't want to do that to you
I don't want to do that to anyone

See this poem doesn't even rhyme.

Not a lot of mine do, though,
And see listening to Drake tends to make me honest
and listening to Nicki Minaj makes me brave
and the combination of that with Angel Haze
is a cocktail that might just get me drunk enough
to lay my head on your shoulder again

I think I'm falling in love with you

But you should know my personality
means that I'm doing it kicking and screaming
searching my damnedest for an escape route
because being vulnerable hurts me every time
even the ones that promised they wouldn't
and I do it to myself, but
I trust you
And honestly that scares me more than it should

I'm not afraid of ******* it up
if that were all it was you'd find me on your doorstep
with my heart in my palms and blood dripping on the concrete
but the thought of how happy you would make me
of how temporary everything is despite our best efforts
the chance that I could lose everything in a single swoop
is more terrifying than wandering alone through dark paths
more terrifying than a deep voice from the empty space beside my ear
more terrifying than a letting down my guard little by little
just to get stabbed in the back

There are two types of people:
those that count their lives by their successes
and those that keep time by defeat.
I am of the latter category.
Falling down, and getting bruised and bloodied is so much more memorable than sticking the landing and going about your business.
Success is easy.
It's failure that is difficult.
So as I lay awake at night,
at that point in time when you are totally alone even if someone is sleeping next to you,
I recount my failures.
I remember dropping the ball in the big game
more clearly than I remember making the game winning shot.
The sting of my first rejection is much more palpable
than the sweetness of my first embrace.
But it was in those moments of failure I tried my damnedest.
The losses, the close calls, the might-have-beens make me feel alive.
Through rejection I tested the limits of my body and soul and came to know who I am,
whoever that is.
It's not the times I came up short that shake me to my bones.
As I lay awake at night, in that time when you are totally alone, the times I never tried in the first place come to haunt me.
To count those potential victories never realized is much more daunting than adding up all the losses I have had to this point.

They are all the Stonehenge slabs waiting
to topple over, granite foundation
of the cosmic cardhouse.
Expressionless: blank stares
Like the ceiling of the sky with
wall-to-wall cloudless gray
Warmed over with a vague upset -
The sun still tries its damnedest
Underneath the folds somewhere

Some of the grim flock re-picturing
bedspreads they snuck under with
lovers passed on long-since
(Stop, dash, as good as dead
Dash, stop, resume again)
They felt trapped,
they motioned Your Honor for bust-out.
New apartments, new partners,
new town centers eventually
seemed all the same and they
were stricken apathetic:
dead end

New installations of municipal plotting
erected in a Cold War mindframe,
Brutalism put to shame.
Rising above an alma mater
Those who stayed pass by,
Itinerants late-stage en-route
To spiritual tent cities to remain.
Rising above the rest of town
Squinting producing the pitched
Concrete walls, the barbed wire vein
Circulating among borders
Teeth of ******* razorblades.

Another life they’d never graduate
Now all that’s left is ponzi schemes,
billiard hellscapes accented with
deep-discount tobacco flames,
greasy spoons caddy-cornering
shuttered gas stations with their
mummified attendants left
moaning with desire from
beneath the boards:
Broken glass glints on felled horizons
of the ever-present post-industrial plains
What a waste slog on what a waste
What a waste slog on what a waste
Your Honor we request another stay
Your Honor we request another stay

It hit like a bullet through the heart,
The words he wrote so long ago,
"I won’t let these little things slip, but if I do, it's you, that was all I ever cared about ”.
A sad excuse for a spin off of "Little Things”.
It was sad but it was mine.
The memory of those lyrics lingered,
In the back of my mind for sometime,
Inevitably trying my damnedest to forget.
But this morning came with rain and regret,
As I scrolled through deleted emails.
Job declines and too many college acceptances left my head spinning,
Down to words that screamed so vibrantly.
It hurt to scan the letters, but I did,
I almost shed a tear, but I smiled instead.
My eyes wallowed with warm water,
For me breathe out a sigh of release.

My heart is clenched
and my throat full,
Still choking back tears
and hating every word
I am once again,
overcome with hope.