Before we met,
a stone mold held me hostage.
When we met,
you showed me the cup that
I had hidden deep within myself.
But I was not alone,
for your cup was hidden deep within yourself.

When we removed our stone masks,
with hands shaking,
we offered our cups to one another.
Each of us filled the other's with glycerin.
With each sip we took,
our hearts began to listen.
The waters buried deep within us were brought to the surface.

To not drown in our own waters,
the glycerin we gave one another needed to cease.
So we stepped aboard our separate ships, with our own cups,
not yet completely full,
but glowing with a glycerin
that at long last, had finally begun to flow.

some connections can't be adequately explained
freezing wind and gilded ceilings, mousy brown roots
on bubblegum hair
keeping a scarf in place is too hard, and staying inside is too easy
(the bottom has cobblestones)
why is there is only such thing as effortless
when the air is cold enough to burn?
(the best veins are beneath the lids of my eyes)
if footsteps don't echo there's neither point nor interest
menthol, sorbitol, glycerin, xanthan
I exhale mint when I breathe in the world.

my roman nose did not
fit the cupboard womb
as I stared at
the silhouette
of a ketchup stain on  
a breakfast table
raw burger meat,
ripe debutantes
all bathed in
glycerin and
self-destruction
waiting for teeth
or the occasional knife

I pressed
against
the greasy
diner table
arms crossed
to hide my face behind
a promise to be
waiting for it
open mouthed
and mute
chiaroscuro, blind

One day I will meet a girl
Set aside for me
Of all the people on all the earth
I'll know her by her chemistry

Her eyes will shimmer like an allotrope of C
With one of Cu(NO3)2
One of CuCO3
And hair of Cu straight
Or perhaps the deeper hue when Fe2 meets Oxygen
Her skin an alloy of Cu and Sn
Tall and thin like a long chain hydrocarbon
And electroplated in Zn
To steel her on her mission to heal this mad and broken world
Her heart of Au
And Ag tongue
And mind as quick as Si chips in sequence
Resonating on my frequency
Like a SiO4 oscillator tuned to me specifically
She is what happens when H2O meets Na
Or Li, or K, or Cs
Or by adding HNO3 to glycerin
She burns as bright as Mg
As H fusion
Waiting to lift the Pb from my soul
So we can float away like He

‘In the end, it’s the indifference that gets you. You think you’ll have years to get to know each other and, what the hell do they call it, grow “emotionally” together. Relationally. Forget it. That ****’s for the birds.’

Scrtchschrrttchschrttch.

The subject arched his extended index and middle fingers on both hands twice in quick succession as he said “emotionally”. He pronounces “birds” as if it’s spelled b-o-y-d-s.

‘I’m serious. I’ll tell you I’m deadly serious. You think you’re going to grow old with some broad and not cater some resentment? Where the ****’ve you been, kid? Didn’t your old man teach you about women? The times change but one thing remains the same: women. You think that fancy piece of paper over there on the wall really means anything? There’s stuff out there you just got to live through to understand.’

Scrtchschrrrrtschrtschrttch.

‘Well, yeah sure, okay that bit about taxes is true too. Taxes and women. Anyway you got me off track. You marry a girl and sure you feel good. But whatcha don’t know is that a successful marriage is the product of compromise. Love has nothing to do with it. It becomes something you just accept, like gravity. The apex of microdemocracy at its finest. We’re talking respecting and loathing, and I cannot stress enough the irony here, a person too much you wonder why you don’t just wake up the next day and put a bullet through both of your sorry skulls so you both don’t have to live out this day-to-day ******* nightmare anymore. No more waking up and sitting at a breakfast table so quiet the steam rising out of your cup of joe is audible. We’re talking no natural human noises whatsoever. It’s like high-security solitary confinement, but where the schmuck in the straightjacket’s not allowed to even use plastic silverware without the business end of at least three 9mm’s pointing at him by state-appointed officers of the law, not allowed to even ******* feed himself. He’s like almost forced to live like he’s 5 again, kind of like a sick joke, adult supervision one hundred percent of the time. But then at home it’s worse because there is someone in the room with you. You feel this hole in your soul and it’s big. It’s like both of you are looking at the elephant in the room and at the same time looking at each other looking at the elephant. You want to cry but you can’t, you just physically can’t. Screaming won’t help neither because then everyone else but her will hear it. We’re talking about complete isolation.’

There is the sound of cloth across cloth and loose change jingling as right ankle is lifted off of left knee and left ankle is placed on right knee. The subject is visibly perspiring. His face does not have a flush look to it as so much as a sort of the homogenous color of deli ham. An office door slams. The subject’s breathing is audible and moist.

‘What happened? Why doesn’t she give a **** about me anymore? Why don’t I really care? Why do I feel worse about not caring I care than the actual caring? Jesus. Jesus.’

Scrchtchrsctrch. Schtrschchsshtsch.

‘I used to love her you know. That **** I said to her in front of God and Jesus and, like, everyone I ******* knew, those promises to till death do us part and yadda yadda, none of that even came close to mentioning what this is like. I used to love her. I think she used to love me too. I don’t know what even happened, my marriage. One day we’re on a beach in O’ahu and next thing I know I’m shaving in the shower with a straight razor, eyes closed, and hopping on one foot, just tempting fate. I haven’t seen her smile since last May, the episode of my missing glycerin tablets. Heart murmurs.

Sctrtch. Sctrchtrchschtrschtchschtrchshctrch.

‘Of course I’ve thought about a divorce. She’s got to have to considered that too. But here’s the ultimate irony. You go through these pointless gestures every ******* day; every ******* day you get up and wonder just how much more you can take it. It’s like it’s so strong you can feel every second walk on by and slap you on the mouth. It’s so strong that the sight of her literally, literally turns you mute with pressured hatred. Hatred towards the ***** sitting at the other end of the table but sitting there with her head down, complete undivided attention on her toast. Hatred towards yourself for not getting up and chugging every bottle under the kitchen sink right then and there. Hatred for realizing you have nothing in common with your wife anymore and she couldn’t care less that it’s eating you up so bad you get cold sweats. It’s so strong you just sort of freeze and not say a word, just sit there and take it all in, praying for that arterial blockage that will take you to the promised land.’

Sctchschtrch.

'Do you know what it’s like to live with self-contained hatred? Feeling this hate but at the same time just not caring. Hatred that only grows from not a lack of communication but a complete absence of communication, like, I can’t talk to her because I’m too full of pent up depression, loathing, anger, anxiety about actually trying to talk to her, anxiety about failing to talk to her. And these feelings just stew in me and shut me down. No talking. With her. Just sitting there, the desire to communicate just to see if we’re even on the same ******* page, sitting there and wanting to talk but can’t because the loathing and anger towards your wife completely and utterly removes the ability to express any sort of rational thought and the anger over your spontaneous speechlessness just keeps growing making the attempts at even idle chit-chat a prospect steadily receding into the sunset. Just sitting there feeling perhaps the strongest emotion I have ever felt but at the same time feeling completely apathetic towards the current situation.’

Sctrchtrchschtrscrchtrchschtrsch. Sctrchtrchschtrschsctrchtrchschtrsch.

‘Do you know what that’s really like to have to live in this cycle of perpetual hate and silence and the same time indifference toward the hate?’

Sctrchtrch. Scrtchschrrrrtschrtschrttch. Sctrchtrchschtrsch.

‘Do you know what that’s really like?’

SHORT AND SWEET                                
I woke up one morning
Surprised, I was not dead
Found myself in hospital
Restricted to my bed                                                                                  
            
They gave me Nitro Glycerin
In a tiny cup
Then told me not to move
Because I might blow up
BOEMS BY JA 275      
Written in hospital 2014

The first time
that my mother caught me
smoking *** with my friend
in the backyard
she asked me
"Why can't you just
get high on life?"
and I'll be honest
I was ****** at the time
so I laughed
which she said
was the saddest part about it all

I've given it some thought since then
and it seems more terrifying
and less funny
every single day
because I have tasted life
the man on the corner
offered me
two grams of life
for forty dollars
so I went into my room
and had myself a life ******
and I never will again
At times you feel so elated
that if you stood up
on your tip-toes
and strained
you would simply float away

At times it feels as if every cell of your body
is burning with holy fire
everything is a threat
and ******* you want what's yours
and sometimes
what isn't
You feel as if every pair of eyes
should pay a toll
to look at your own
you feel as if
you just chugged
a barrel of nitro glycerin
all it takes is one lonely spark
and then
boom

At times you feel like
your whole world
was set up
just to cave in
when you are at
your most vulnerable
when you have lost all faith
something comes along
and shows you
that you can in fact
lose some more
valleys deeper
than the earth's core
lonely and cold
a hail storm
of knives

The worst times
are the times in between
the ennui
which constantly creeps forward
like the hands on a clock
when all you want
is for that day to be over
so that you can wish the same thing tomorrow
and the next day
and the day after that
hoping to maybe feel
just anything
life users don't have track marks
their cross is one made of
slit wrists and ashtrays
and howls to a God
you're not sure exists

Life
not even once

I place your bones upon my altar,
an offering to the gods.

Stitched and splayed, to your rotting corpse
my devotion shall remain.
An eternal emblem of my love for you,
I make you a relic, for the life that my fallen heart once knew
and let the glycerin seep through.

Breathless, your being lies before me.
Though my tears imbue,
the life has been drained from you.
Yet in your corpse I find a bittersweet comfort.
Like a moth to a flame,
whose greatest tragedy was the reaper who fell in love with life herself.

We hadn’t seen it for a couple years,
The film being a bit difficult to watch
Without dropping a few bucks
To stream it in all its black-and-white glory,
(A prospect which would have brought a grim smile
To a certain white-haired small-town banker)
Our laser disc scratched, our VCR beyond obsolete,
But there have been enough viewings
That certain tableaus
(Flower petals strewn, the glycerin tears)
Remain as familiar as the views out the front door,
And so on a whim we drove up to the quaint burg
Which espouses its claim to be Capra’s inspiration
With a tenacity which belies the season
(Though one look at the bridge which sits astride
A wan offshoot of the Erie Canal
Is sufficient for a startling bit of déjà vu)
Finding ourselves by ourselves in a restaurant
(The times after all, and it a weeknight to boot)
Surprisingly open, even though the town fathers
Had opted hopefully to decorate, as per usual,
The village streets to be as Bedford Falls-esque as possible,
And as we sipped our soup and munched our salads
We mused on how wonder and anxiety
Could walk hand-in-hand
(As we did on the way in and again on the way out)
And though our laughter was a soft, muted thing,
It tinkled in the manner of such things
Which enabled seraphim to gain their wings.

I'm happening in between
The real and the nothingness,
Divided and undecided,
Waiting for the ultimate prove
Of a sure choice.

I'm caught between
The wheels and the leather,
Cotton and glycerin,
Fruits and caramels,
Meats and grains,
Wind and coal,
But existing in all of them at once.

There's pain, passion and desire
In the seek of gold,
In pursuit of patents,
In achieving medals.

There's a unique relaxation
In the void of beings,
In dematerializing that inner voice,
In decharacterizing oneself,
But still self recognizing simultaneously,
An identity stored in the clouds
Like Theseus' ship.

The subtle finding
Is to realize that the actually real stuff
Are the ones that can't be touched;
Everything in matter
Are nothingness, perceived only
Through the illusion
Of the senses.