And it's difficult to remember something as the very name of Eisenhower
Or flowerbaskets
And tired movies made of silicone and
Aftersex
Or sixteen candles echoing out of an imaginary suite with cigarettes at every table
And green lawns
Barbershop conversation
The reflection of the sun in special trees
Or my best friend Jesus Christ
Or the smell of the theater that one day with the cynics who just got back from a tennis match and barbwire still laced delicately around their thoughts and
Nihilism
And automotives
And priestess Jane or Henry's gloomy doppelganger who reads alternative magazines and loves the aesthetics behind broken glass
And fine tuned musical instruments

It's difficult to remember
Lonesome Fridays smoking on a park bench trying to finish the puzzle
Or synagogues you've never been in
Or insurance
Or newspaper articles detailing the misadventures of Mr. City
(Of course of course! Take your shoes off at the door and make yourself at home)
We're tossing all our sewage into the ocean
that's far from clean as it
LOOKS anymore these days
That's anything
And everything except for the glowing mountains seen faded and wintry behind Apartments and the
"Glorious Mexican House of Spices"
Never been in there either

It's difficult to remember
Times of Mr Twin Sister
Or Joan Jett in the hallway
In a highschool who's psychology classrooms have become a time capsule in the ground/
Or the gentle skinny ******
Wearing Broadway makeup and
Kafka tattooed on his shoulder
I like his hat
He looks at me suspiciously
Or the guy who is yelling his order at the counter when it's quiet here anyways
Or the mariner who has a hobby of the saxophone
Or 1970s *******
Or the sheepskin bikeseat fad that's yet to come but I'm predicting it now!
Or two dollars and twentyseven cents at the beginning of Allen Ginsberg's America
"I've given you all and now I'm nothing"

It's difficult to remember
The Oriental
Sacramento flies
Midnight Moon
Quarter to four
"The Immortalization Commission"
Remodelled hotels downtown
Where mandalas on the floor became a
Tiger lily luminous
And the kimono is yesterday's painting/
Dearest Darling
When I was feeling down!
A staircase in reverse (??)
The sound a kiss makes
It's difficult to remember
Colleen's earrings
Or Washington State
Or air conditioners in Bali
The Indian ocean's daybreak hymn
To Seminyak
Or whatever happened to Steve from the Airplane out of Taiwan
On 3 days awake
Hello Kitty nursing stations
****** (Kubrick's version)
Cardboard taking up half my bedroom
It's difficult to remember until I jot it down and then its a sudden forever
Sunshine Superman in a cafe spontaneous
drawings with someone I just met who has some ******* attitude/
Who hops fences and has feral ideas
People! En Masse! Te Amo!
You're all in wolven liberty
And vague postulators
And holy prostitutes for the dollar
Sad eyed intellectuals
With undergarments made of breakfast cereal/
Seaferry poetry is different from
Trestle in August poetry
Or henna handshakes
Or the Napoleonic era
Sweet Cherry Pie
The tulip's tongue
Garabajal
Cloudy first day of July
Was hotter yesterday
But not too hot

It's difficult to remember
Antiquity
The pale horse Studebaker outside the clinic
With a glossy red trim and **** I wish that was my ride
Andy Warhol's exploding plastic inevitable
Nearsightedness
Angels and their ability to shower with a a snap of their fingers
Distant harp music
Better him than me
Bananas almost ripe
Green aquatic
Reclusive junkies
Palomo's appliances
Questions for the next time
How much I like what you like and how I like that you like what I like
Ahh that's not my bus
I'm trying to get to the city!
That one quote Socrates is known for about knowing nothing as true wisdom
Supermarkets being built on top of liquor stores burned down a while back
Monopolies
Tragedies
"No Love Lost"
THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
Your guess is as good as mine
Never tried to eat Asian food in Asia
It was all pasta and good cider that tasted like pineapple
Rain hitting the window and I'm
Drowsy again
God Save The Trees!
Curly hair looks good on boys
Torn up blinds
Queer as a three dollar bill
If Bill costs 3 dollars I'm sure he's caught something better safe than sorry
Sage advice
I'm the very model of a modern major general
Golden yen and international currency
Incense in the bedroom and how good it smells
There's my bus! Applying for a better job than the one I got now
But that's how it always is right?
Chasing satisfaction
1007 apt
Porch ornaments
Unique names
Unique style le style
The extra charge on foreign ATMs
Cordoroy polo shirts
Flooding in New York!
When someone's face screams *******
"Slippery when wet"
Dine N Dash
Grass gone yellow
Confidence in dyed hair and capes as long as wedding gowns
But less expensive
Doors that always seem to be locked and I'm wondering 20 year later what's behind them?
Albino animals
White thoughts as clouds or
Abstractions
Weathers nicer in Florida but who cares
Festivities this early in the day
Automatopeia
Do sad orphanages still exist?
Just like the movies
Midnight in mirrors
That sick puppet at the shoe shop used
To know how to really hammer it down
And now he's weak and forgotten
Never heard the words of a true prophet only Oceania
Or the private temple near Apollo Bay
Like Japanese gardens behind that gate
Will I ever see it
Make a proud example outta ya misbehavior
Form without function
Exhausted spiritualism
*** Kettle Black
negative photographs of dark rooms
And there's laughing coming from SOMEWHERE
Essays on kleptomania
Had a bad dream I became a cliche
Surrounded by other freaks and there was a lovely ***** I fell in love with her
We married in Oregon by the sea her name was rosy
***** rosy
Check your mailbox for nails
And what you don't wanna hear/
If you were a vegetable you'd be organic!
Empire
Satirical bubble gum
Satori
Linda Lovelace and her special party trick
That's someone's fantasy
Diamond in the rough
Mister guy with two black eyes frequents the adult playhouse
Hes fully stocked on fishnet leggings
He's too proud to put them on himself but
Has nobody else around
Boo hoo
Swigs back the whiskey and trips down the stairs getting a third black eye in the process
Marion came by with her dog the other day
Wanted her box of clothes back but he loved to sniff them to remember her
But she wouldn't have it

"Honey I'm going to call the police!"

"Ah they don't give a **** they have bigger things to worry about"

"Yeah you got that right shrimp **** enjoy my unwashed *******"

And she never came back again
He started losing the vertebrae in his spine 1 by 1 and you know where this is going
I won't say he was a poor man because he had it all coming to him the *******
But he coulda had a better start if you ask me.

It's difficult to remember
And even more difficult to forget
After the fact

Seagull opera
Giganticism
Portrait of the artist as a young man
Losing one's pencil when the best idea of your life drops down from heaven and into your sorry head
Signs graffitied to have funnier meanings
Cruelty
Impassive
The Loyal Lioness
And Bangladesh has too many kitchens
And not enough dishes
When I was young I used to say Island as "is-land"  
Which is true it is land
But the Europeans probably stole it from somebody else anyways/
I left my future behind
And objects in the mirror are closer than they appear
Im no illusionist
I'm terrified of the cracken
Father feels the same way about
Hotels
Why bother/
This has been going on and on for a while are you tired yet
Is your patience being tested
Mine isn't because this wasn't an all-at-once kind of rambling
It's extremely important to laugh at least
Once a day
Otherwise you'll find yourself a politician
In no time at all
Rockefeller
(         ) Quaint home to die in
I think
Trains create great music
Float on
Sink into yourself
Roses in a crooked alley
That's people
Busy busy busy busy
Let's describe a situationist
I'm not a fan of bright colors on clothes
Your best shade is blue
Bricklayers transcription of Don Quixote to a skyscraper
Rocket thyme
& Garden
Erratic children's
Insomnia
The doorbell repeatedly
Vancouver riots/ I saw that live on the news!
Pictionary with the surrealists
N Dada TV set MC Escher
Antenna
You're in the Twilight Zone now
Dear Ramona
I'm trying to make it up to you
With a brightness only seen when you're ready to see it so please for the love of God don't blame me when it's not appearing
The tapestry hidden
Keep your blankets clean
And avoid hospitals unless you're fine with fishbowls & the halogen
The water gestapo
Storage lockers full of unacted plays and
Antique microwaves
Emitting the nostalgia of the cold war era
And what a waste of time that was /
Walter Wanderleys presence in Autumn universities
The opening of Vivre sa Vie
Salvador Dali's pluvial taxi
Lightbulb epiphanies
Aquariums and their protestors
Zebras in the shade
Two wrongs dont make a right
Elizabethan theater
Saloon shootouts in a fever dream
I lost and bled out all over the rustic wooden floor
A maiden reached out for me and El Paso did play I woke up and pretended nothing happened/
Funerals for bad People who did bad things
My first memory of a cat beneath the mattress
Hello Dolly!
Auditory learning
Psychotherapy
Lillian the landlady lost her ladle and labeled little Lyle as a lair
The Black panther movement
Reading symposium some years ago and
Making note that Phaedo was still my favorite dialogue/
Zen Buddhism
Xoxo xoxo
The day Gypsies were replaced with
Surface ****** appetite
And not the real thing
Newspaper clippings
Hypnotism when all other options are out
Mystical visions of sidewalks
And the love of your life stepping through a door you've never seen
Maybe Yes No I Don't Know
Creature comforts
Che Guevara's problem is that his beard made him too easy to recognize
(Also that little hat!)
Chinese cough medicine didn't work
For long I still wheeze sometimes
Domestic violence thru the wall
Ceiling fan probably doesn't even work!
Dimpled laughter
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
In skytrains to Commercial
Bermuda in her mind
And courtesy in her voice
I'm no Arthur Rimbaud
But you already knew that
Alcazar of Seville
Filling up the shipbottle
Here's your paradise
Now relinquish it as it is
False!
Hare Krishna
Nowhere Fast
El Diablo and the
Portofino loaf left rotting on the countertop
Latin children speak of the sacred viper
You'll hear of it after this but we'll never see what the ******* meant
Heads alternating round the social current
Of my lively city
There's a dog soaking up the rain
And songs are made in honor of
Recent catastrophes
Trials are dealt
Cards cast to the gutter
New York quiets down for the news of another war
You scratch my back I'll scratch yours
Skeleton key
Ballad of the last wailing zoo
THE ATRIUM
Complexity in simplicity
That's how Brainard got me!
Elderly overcoats
Hiding purest LSD
Is a fan of Hawaiian T shirts
And a communist
What if I was a Freemason
Or owned a tanning salon
Faint crimson
What did Marv look like again?
"You're surrounded by people who love you"
Coffee when one needs it
GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY
Tattoos on the wandering man
Oriental chimes and the people who own them
Bus stop regulars
Vines overtaking power lines
The hypnogogic state
Strawberry light softening
The mind
Sister Ray LOUDLY PROCLAIMING
doitdoitdoitdoit
Passing the graffiti n Pluto neon
Halal wide awake another Saturday
Where's the Karaoke
Flashing by here
Those who find comfort in a bridal scavenger hunt
Or expensive beer
And here comes the hooded clown
Clamoring about his favorite
Loudspeaker
Telling me my time is soon and the noise
Drowns out the drowsy bliss
After hour spirits the perfect time for
Writing and trying to read distant Chinese
Indecision on the tip of the tongue
"NOW WHO IS THAT KNOCKING
ON THE CHAMBER DOOR?
COULD IT BE THE POLICE?"

I'm completely off the topic
And into Apartment lobby photosets
Low battery phone calls
Confessions
Nauseated reverb
Trying to see the attachment people got with bingo halls
And moving companies
Ah no luck again
Eve is at it with her showtunes
Halfway methodology
Triage
Paisley headbands left
Distraught on the quivering
Heater
Dwindling sunsets
We're truly disciples of the moon spirit which grants us more energy
(This is according to a drunk I met one night)
Or ***** old men
When the horizon is engulfed with
A winking cinder
Suitcase at the door
Last time
First time
Magician never reveals his fetishes
(They all have to do with bags under your eyes)
Employment office dramas of my friend the one who blinded a social worker
And the one who blamed Islam
And the one whos philosophy entirely consisted of Spooky Action at a
                                            DISTANCE
Parisian riots
Queer youth
Didn't make the team! Jester
'cross the hall who's beard suggests
Ishmeal n car battery n expired vegetables n rain which crosses the line n
***** cranberry n
Poorly fitted suits n
Harsh pigment n incense shops n
Bocca     secret towns
With churches more beautiful than any you'd find in your own city
n the cultural market
Xylophone ear to ear
Soul cleansing starting at only
$89 (with a 6 month guarantee)
Sophie's birthday and her picnic at Victory Park
The nearby bums trying to sell tea mugs and
Loose wires beside gated convenience stores
I'm an Island away attempting a poem
And never bought a scratch n win
Or heard the same song more than seven times in a row or been in a column
Or escaped the washhouse
Invested in a birdcage for next year
Been to a palm reading
Visited Oasis
Smoked salmon
Told anyone else about Montana
Screamed the things I'd like to scream
** Word of the day
Or kissed a lunatic or swallowed the corpse of yesterday
I keep her on my neck until
I'm too anxious to let go
Counting streetlights
Jeans worn in and faded to be sent off to
A lonely caffeine addict
Christmas Eve I'll be reading a postcard from San Francisco
Asking the same questions
My imagination is made of a different material than last week
Now it's the same color as your hair
HEY that's a good pickup line to use in the heart of the Canadian Embassy
Drinking discarded music resembling a sweater you may have said YES to if it wasn't so unsure of itself
And now Mr. Acker Bilk ascends thru the window of an August home
Like a lazy hornet
I'm still lost without identification
Or a nice belt
As happens when one uses a quality item too casually
How did uphill suddenly seem so downhill?
I'll claim a waterfall
For SALE that inevitable Indonesia
Greyhound O another greyhound O another greyhound
I'm fretting too much about not enough
Delayed the Airport and the yellow question

????

II

What if I knew how to read the curb?
Or translate drunken droll
What if I was never tired again and could
REALLY do anything I set my mind to?
What if I was the first cigarette that cured cancer instead of caused it?
What if I could end superstition
And walk underneath any ladder I wanted?
What if I could make it with a young Audrey Hepburn!?
What if I stopped pretending to be a microphone and got on with "it"
What if the grocery store closed later
And I opened earlier?
What if parking lots werent so sad
All the time?
What if gravity simply had enough of exotic birds and specifics?
What if we stopped trying to recreate what is truly lost?
What if foreign children embraced
Wasting time instead of
Midnight starry bicycles
And the antics of a monk
Disguised as a romantic?

There are those that worship God
And those who worship the Sun
And those who worship nothing at all
But I suppose on the last bus
We're all the same exhausted
Voice who can't wait for next pay day
What is an empty bank?
Or authenticity
What is there to prove anymore?
I hope I don't die tonight and regret
Being impulsive for once
You're a smart shadow
And a dull character
Pushing the last of the daisies
Get the lamp to turn on again
Give the pavement something to look forward to with your walk
Be consistent in being inconsistent
If there's a word there's a ***** and a poem for it!
We all oughta worship
Nothing at all except
Clarity
Compassion with ones neighbor who either forgot the pay the electricity bill or couldn't afford to
We're a swimmin

The riveting heart feels
the weight of trouble
The rebel is like a watchdog
sentinel
Whats in our Bible?
Things change to make the
difference

"Like a new invention but there is interference"

The Castle you hear
a rattle wasn't a baby rattle
Minds settling or quietly dazing
No defeating over the rainbow
It's like running then you stop
You look at his watered fingers
Of the great lakes, he's admiring
your lady's fingers

Lips divine as one like us
The gold rush collection
Just a secret hush affection
A treaty concession
Picking out the candy
          Skittle
The pivoting flying shy like a sky
riddle
Him or Her piloting its time
Two sets of eyes world of exploring
Not to keen
on exploiting

Her dress movie flowing prayers to
be answered so vain
Heads Spin city flaunting
Defeats us haunting
Who loves us
Who will help us
       SOS
Like a delicacy one of a kind
She's the rebel let her guess
Such a rarity smile with
dignity dressed up doll
she is dainty
To many disguises to face the
mirror of vanity
Rebel Rebel David Bowie
He is a genius of music
Shines a world gigantic

Rebel world of cults and sanity
What was heavily Tis
To be blessed
Rebels of hearts of Madonna
Greyhound bus

Our scorched finger heats
Riding the *Porshe Red firehouse
A beat something rare but overly sweet
Robin risque I  need more clues
Braveheart Riding hood in the woods
to be saved in her rebel shoe's

Queen heads up with the Dean
 Her embossed gold letters
Of a spell, forever mean
The heats on rebels defeat over
Modern time the "Dell"

Rebel wish from a deserving well

Computer and devil decipher
Compelled to love her
The Dark Shadows mansion
Angelique scarlet fever
Dark inside her label dress
What did he deliver?
"'Who lives by the standard rule messy is ****"
Rebel rebel look at your bloodshot pupils
taking things for granted

Freakish odd things posted
Are bizarre even her brassiere
Mean as a *Manchette
We are not as one
normal read the Gazette
More rivals and feather
pen of forgery
What a hard act to follow like surgery
Every molecule being
dissected to poke
A love primal no
common ground
This isn't a joke

Everyone tantalizing tribal
Creatures not in direct sunlight
Defeats us like rebels at night
Being inconsistent rebels
lead the way but far away
distant

We are not realizing what defeats us
Endorphin releasing our energy
Lifting our orphan spirits
Moon worshipper climbers
We are the simple people
Nothing too explicit
Or razor sharp to cut us

The Messiah
Solomon Torah of Isreal
Old Testament Jerusalem
Everything is way too ****** red
Like Salem
What defeats us
Voodoo or Christmas Hoo Hoo

Santas gift got stolen and snatched
Having a fight with a door latch
Magic somehow not in our favor to match
Tragic music rock or swing jazz of a glitch
But everything defeats us
Psychic third eye
She is so tragically hurt
So Manic not the
brave rebel flirt

Like the limited edition
So many of us are uninvited
Not the VIP pass
Ressurection new rebel convention
Unique kind of communication

The last time I saw you on vacation
Relic hunters the lightning
Hells Angel rider conjuring
What mouths to feed of thunder
Nazis all  our undivided
attention pictures
They snap having a field day
of paparazzi
Priestesses devil wears the
Prada dresses were out
of designers
I wonder why to travel heretics
Such treachery and butchery
Being grilled like steaks but
not a Dynasty
Too graffitied feeling fried
How loves are taken like the fools

The business arrangements
Foreign exchange groups
Rebelling their way
through college
Time is the essence of
being mutual
beneficial much
higher potential
More spiritual rituals
We need more Gods of top
rank **Generals
General Mills cereal at least
not the serial killer

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
I am assured by my loving mother as a child
I believe her because the beauty in everything flow’rs and flourishes
when you’re young
The world is yours to take, everyone is yours to meet, everything is yours to do;
and I believe her.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
My first friend at school proclaims,
and I believe them.
We’ve tackled ***** training and preschool, now onto the playground and phonics!
We run and run together, taking the world like we’ve
whispered once before;
and I believe them.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
The middle school test scores announce,
and I believe them.
Primary school is in the past and I’m ready for responsibility!
I put on makeup to feel pretty, care about my grades more than the teachers believe and flash my smile to the boys who spit “compliments” at my feet;
and I believe them.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
but.. I don’t believe them anymore.
I’ve gained just enough confidence to smile at everyone in the halls in case they are having a bad day.
Suddenly my youthful euphoric vision is graffitied with hateful words and violence.
I run and constantly chase the innocence of the world,
being surrounded by darkness.
My self esteem has hit an all time low. Why is the world this way?
My friends and I chase what we used to believe and end up in deep holes;
and I don’t believe them anymore.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
And it doesn’t matter.
I have lost all hope of finding that beauty.
My heart is an aching mess of “I love you”’s
But all I hear is “you are meaningless”
Slowly these phrases of deep hate sear into my soul
I hear them every day and every night
You are meaningless
You are not worthy
You could not possibly be good enough
Until I wake up one dismal morning to realize that I have been defined by the ones around me.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
..and enough!
Because even my friends who say I’m worth something turn around and sneer at others like they can’t too be loved.
Because while the world screams “I hate people” I whisper
“but I don’t”.
But that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things
because we’ll find someone who loves us, right?
No.
Our words between just us mean nothing if we spin around and
spit in others’ faces.

And we know we hurt because we’ve been hurt but we don’t stop, none of us stop.

I dream of a world that screams a vulnerable
“I love you”
out into the world instead of a pulsing
“I hate you”
And a world that remembers that we are all worthy of love and not only the kind that makes you blush.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
The phrase I’ve heard since I was in my mother’s gentle hold
can only mean so much when you think you’re crumpled.
Stashed away until you’re needed
always feeling so defeated
but the truth
not told enough
to our weakened souls
We are all worth more than the marigolds

Sit in a crowded gymnasium
on a Thursday.
Basketball is not the point.

Stare at the orange speck anyway.
Silence your phone and his voice from before,
Still inside your head,
words the color of the burnt orange ball.

Find music in the squeak of the rubber soles,
Notice the referee's slanting stripes, and how they blur
when you stare, until even pictures inside your head blur.
Nod to the man wearing the red cap beside you,
whose words dribble across your mind,

They imprinting a message:
travel
next year
last year
time
killing
foul
out
losses
hope.

Maybe you miss that last word,
Or maybe you see the message graffitied on the score board.  
Maybe you close your eyes and open them again,
And notice the white jerseys gleaming in song with light,
The same light that slants up toward you,
Your shirt should also be white,
With the same light shining on those who travel
and on those who foul out.

Sit in the crowded gymnasium
on a Thursday,
and forget about what he told you last night.

I got a couple dents in the fender
Of my ****** car,
A couple rips in my best pair
Of my cheap jeans.
My scuffed up high tops
Are wearing thin,
Imperfection is my
New best friend.
My favorite t-shirt has
A couple of holes,
And my wallet's thinner than
My shoe's soles.
The scars on my skin
Are bright and white.
Imperfection is my
New best friend.
The streets of my ghetto
Are graffitied and dark,
And the knives in our pockets
Always stay sharp.
Though my best has a couple
Of nicks and cracks.
Imperfection is my
New best friend.

I used to always wonder how people lived in New York City.
Where were the homes?
When I was younger I used to picture these rural houses with beautiful green grass and a lovely wrap around pine wood porch adjacent to the Empire State Building. Then I grew up and realized apartments existed, I realized neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens existed and were places where suburban homes and condominiums were.
I realized that not all homes were made with grass and wrap around porches.
Some homes were on the fourth floor of an apartment complex with a musty smell and a view of a graffitied wall in the ghetto.
I realized that sometimes these places felt more like home than any home in a small rural town with a smoke puffing chimney and windmill could ever feel.

Our Father, which art now on Earth, I am here today to introduce you to one of the most faultless ideas that Man has ever come up with: Public High School. I will be your personal tour guide while you experience the magic of learning just as any other student would.
To start your day, you’ll wake up at five in the morning (due to the start times that are framed and super-glued to the walls of the District Office). You should spend most of your time trying to look presentable for your schoolmates. If you’re late and forget to do something, it’s easily fixable. For instance, if you can’t find the time within those two hours to brush your teeth--no problem! Just ask every living soul and their mother if they have any gum.
When you get on the bus, choose a seat in the middle. That way you don’t risk inhaling the tobacco in the back or a friendly conversation with the bus driver. If you see a friend, talk to them really loudly and excitedly, but not next to them! Always in the seat across from them (so the other kids have to sit next to strangers).
At school, we’ll weave through the teenage islands in the hallways and walk to first period. Make sure your first period is an easy subject, because at seven a.m., you’re lucky to get the date correct.
Down this hallway we see some testosterone pumped scholars congratulating each other on which estrogen-laced student they managed to have ******* with. To the left of them you’ll notice a shunned pregnant girl. Don’t talk to her. You should always remember that in high school, it is disgraceful to reproduce after having ***, never mind what the mandatory health classes say.
We finally get to first period to sit down in our graffitied, gum littered seat, and open the textbook---whereon the most heterosexual boys have educated us on the male anatomy. Your teacher is Mr. Anderson, whom all of the children hate because of his politically incorrect and harsh comments. I realize that you created him but really, don’t try to have him fired; he’s got a tenure hanging above his head.
After three classes of lectures and forbidden whispers, it’s mid morning and lunchtime. You’re lucky you own all of the food on your green Earth because if not, you’d have to choose from five different freezer-burned, reheated dishes. Time to scrutinize your identity and decide where to sit. You’re not even a being... well the floor isn’t so bad.
After six hours of violently trying to hang on to the Quadratic Formula, and not Grace's new relationship status, you can get back onto the thoughtfully engineered school bus and involuntarily listen to the sins of the weekend before, until you get home.
Thank you for visiting a little piece of heaven on earth. You’re one day closer to college!

What rarity can acclaim to this elusive title? Where surely
claiming it itself is against its nature.
It might be what our mothers told grubby faced, knee
knocked flecks that dart from graffitied parks
when light turns dark.
Is it in the eye of the beholder, a stubborn piece
of irritating dust? Perhaps those who search
will never be rewarded with a glimpse as
perfection becomes unfathomably further.
Why does the haughty swan rise when the
it squawks more than the pigeon?

Beauty is boxed. It is wrapped in parcels and
swaddled in ribbon until one forgets that it is in the child's
face and not his hands.
Unmeasurable pleasure shouldn't be contained, it roams and commands like a caged tiger. It controls the eye and navigates,
onward soldier. So perhaps it is not rare at all but there
for all customary enough to
anticipate the undeniable.

Running on empty,
Lost luck and fumes,
Choking out victims, with a distinct perfume.
Rub the glass between your palms,
And let it bleed out the toxins.
Litter the house with crude memories,
Like oil churning, polluting possibilities.
Ripping wings from flies,
And the legs from a spider.
One by one, shooting cans like army men.
Bleeding out to start again.
Snarky saints believing they're saved,
Crying blood and burning sage,
To rid themselves of the rage.
Thinking they'll see the graffitied golden gates,
When all they're doing is shoveling their own graves.

You came and went again today even quicker than last time... front door carelessly swinging on its rusty hinges behind you & porch creaking under your feet as you ran down its tired steps; the baby blue paint chips falling to their deaths from the railings to your sleeping front yard. No one around here can vividly recall the last time they looked into your eyes. No one around here can vividly recall the way your voice sounds in the middle of the night. You are the start of an engine. You are the gravel that rolls beneath your tires & perhaps sometimes even a passing smile. I don't question your desire to go and go and go. *I just hope that where ever you travel you're offered more than old graffitied stop signs and broken windows & maybe one day you can show me which exit to take out of this lazy place.

Oh, I am raw.

You knew.
You knew this whole time.
And you made your bid for love and freedom oncemore,
Like you'd never been hurt in your life,
Like it couldn't turn out wrong.
You knew, you knew.
Every single time, the hope wins over the sense,
And it's like you don't even try.
Who are you to march away and leave me here,
Heart?
Who are you to skip away blithely into the night every time I beg you to stay?
It's like you don't even belong in my breast,
The way you leap forth and hitch a ride
With people you see pass near, who shine like stars.
You follow them like gravity,
And every time, I scream inside my head,
Locked in,
"WAIT! Don't go, don't leave me here to feel your space!"
But you ignore me each time,
And briefly I am sure you are right,
Briefly, every single time,
I believe that you are the one I should be following,
Dragged behind you,
And not the other way around.
And then it comes,
It comes and I trip myself just so I will have chosen to go down,
And I am here,
Left
Wretched on my knees
And you never have to take the fall.
You never have to deal with it.
You're only in control when the sun is shining.
When the storms hit and knock the breath out of me like thunder rolling,
You plead you never chose a thing.
You traitor,
I would claw you from my chest!
But you already did that,
And I have no way to take revenge on you for your treachery-
You are me.
Your pain is mine.
(your joy is mine as well)
And so you get to,
Every time,
Abandon me and make me thank you for it,
And I am so sick of it I could scream.
You don't have consequences, Love.
You ARE a consequence.
What ever gave you the right
To turn my life upside down?
To leave me so unable to do anything but watch as I am dismantled by a force I never asked to feel?
I'd be happy, content, perfect,
(no, unfulfilled, empty, lost...)
To just give you up and cut the strings
That she
(whoever she may be, for I never get to choose, do I?)
Saws at with a bow, poison-tipped like a Shakespearean sword,
Plays, like violins singing melodrama.
I'd sever you from me in an instant and let you go
Play your games elsewhere,
Heart.
I swear I'd do it and dance in the streets,
(I'd have nothing, not know what to do)
If only it was possible.
(I am not damaged enough to give up)
I don't believe in love,
(Oh but I do, and sometimes I don't want to)
But I am married to my work, to you:
My job is not to be paid,
It is not to be happy,
(you are my chance for "happy")
It is simply and exhaustingly to survive your choices.
I don't get my life!
I get you.
I get kicked when I'm down, I get holes and hollows in places
I didn't know a heart filled,
Like fingertips and rib bones and lungs,
And that awful twisted spot above my stomach
That echoes cavernously with loneliness in the middle of the night
And sometimes in the lunchroom or on the subway.
(I get to think maybe that sadness will cease)
I get haunted dreams and impulses I can't control,
(sweet relief from a life of restraint)
I get your puppet strings
Jerking me to my knees
Knocking the pride out of me like breath.
(It speaks, but underneath I worship you)
I get your fingers inside my head, on the ridges of my brain,
Digging in like a migraine headache,
Gouging a place for someone I don't even know.
(Replacing the sorrow with joy so intense that I fear it.)
Who put you in me?
You don't fit here.
(you are the only thing that fits here)
You don't belong here.
(I am so afraid you don't.)
Like a parasite, you feed on me
(I need something to take this ache.)
And I am slowly dying of it, Heart.
(cure for my loneliness, arsenic for my mind)
I've tried everything I know,
I even tried to make you die inside me-
(I didn't know what else to do, I'm sorry)
Husk of a soul skittering along the undersides of my graffitied ribs,
But no, no you rose again,
Stronger,
And I... I wept in fear, Heart,
I really did.
(I made the hardest choice and you unmade it.)
Nobody knows that-
That I wanted you to go,
That I wanted you to stop, actually.
Nobody knows that I'd have happily never felt a thing for the rest of my life,
(only in fear, Heart, only in fatigue)
When they saw me fight so hard to become myself again.
(I couldn't beat the part of me that needs you)
But I knew,
I knew
Because the day you stretched and yawned after leaving me for months to rot around your frozen form,
I felt in me a terror I will never be able to explain,
Never be able to understand fully.
(Self preservation was never one of my talents, or yours)
This gibbering, skin crawling agony of panic,
That here you were again to bend me and break me,
That I was mortal, carrying a love that couldn't ever be killed.
It was the moment of clarity,
(of awe, as well, and terrifying vitality)
Before I decided I had to force myself to work with you,
Slap a smile on and go look for my next defeat,
(oh, maybe this time I could keep the love)
During which I saw my life unfold before me like a vast map,
Your destruction burning it to ashes in all the places I'd love to live,
Place by place by place,
Charred path to death over the lengths of decades,
No control, no say, just heat- and me, following along behind
Like a lost puppy
Trying to rebuild something substantial enough to make my home in.
I saw before me a life without rest,
Of this, the constant struggle to find and keep a wholeness I apparently don't deserve,
(I can't stop trying to deserve it)
To catch you and stuff you back where you belong and force you to lie still,
When I know you will only consume me with flames anyway.
I hate you, I really do.
(fear, not hate)
I hate you because I want to live.
(I am afraid you will destroy me)
I hate you because I want to die.
(I am afraid I will destroy you)
I hate you because if it were not for you, I would never suffer,
And I would have nothing to live for-
For I know nothing but the constancy of you,
Pushing me down, forcing me to my knees
And me struggling to rise and find a way to bear your burdens.
(GIFTS)
I hate you because I will never, ever be rid of you,
And I hate you because nobody should want to be rid of
What makes them live.
I hate you because underneath I still believe, somehow, that every single second's worth it,
Because that naive faith in you just won't die-
How can I stand that?
(How can my pride abide a hate for something vital, and a love for something toxic?)

And you've betrayed me every time, Heart,
And I don't forgive you.
(I already forgave you long ago)
And what if you've gone and done it again?
(Let me say I hate you so that I can have some control)
And how am I supposed to know that
For all these years to come?
*(Please don't go cold again, my Heart.)

blurred through the mumbling atomic cafe
i thought i heard you say
i am become deaf
destroyer of words
but you were breath
become butterfly effect
spiraling within the stereophonic white-noise drone
of a static radio station
tuned to the music of the silent colossal rotation
of the planets, stars, sun and moon
behind the drawn curtain of a vanished polaroid

still these beating hearts to a murmur
slow these breathing lungs to a whisper
and attach the cello strings of your bloodstream
to that glittering confetti cloud of satellites
strobing, circling the sphere of our atmosphere
strung out on geo-synchronicity
the turning tunnel of the tides
the aeon-spanning volcanic swirl of magma
subsonically writhing
beneath the magnetic pull of the ocean floor
and just...listen...

can you hear the flaming  crackle
of the fire burning in our bellies?
if we slit our stomachs open
the flames that spill from our hari-kiri'd entrails
will fill the darkness in the corner of our closet
and burn it to ashes

in a dream
i saw us laughing together many years from now

when the blast-furnace of our blood, sweat, tears and acid dreams gapes wide
we will laugh in it's face
at the absurdities
of death and taxes

and as the years push through
we will laugh
as we go blind in our old age
growing brighter than the glow
from within the dollhouse home we assembled
from sticks n stones

and we will grow gray together
and fill the soles in our shoes
the holes in our soles
with the dirt, rust, ash, concrete and angel dust
of these city streets

and we will laugh like pyromaniacs
as we **** on burial plots
soil our own graves
and erase our fingerprint smudges
from the blueprints
of our jailbreak escape plan

flames will erupt from the holes in our heads
consume us
spread in a tectonic shock-wave
and lick the pale toes of angels and dreaming junkies
hovering on ghost clouds of ***** soot
just above the foot of our bed

the outlines of our bodies will liquify, disintegrate
and reform as the jagged teeth of a cityscape skyline
crowned crookedly upon the head of a crippled pigeon
ascending in a stuttering climb
towards a heaven
that does not exist
for us

shaking ash and bone-dust from twisted feather
our flames will spread further
devour prehistoric forests
**** roots and tree trunks to bare bone
and march in a coronation parade
upon the city gates
behind a revolutionary brigade
of angry red army ants

finally, those flames
will surround a broken boombox
lost behind a landfill-mound
of moth-chewed cardboard moving boxes
containing the soft stains of dream and memory
tagged, painted, and graffitied
in white out, in sharpie
duct tape peeling from perforated speakers
the flashlight-sized battery compartment
an empty coffin

i didn't cry the day you died. i'm sorry. the reality that you had passed away at barely twenty-five didn't really hit me, even at your eulogy and that still haunts me. they say that denial is the first stage of addiction but I assumed that you knew that death was a possible side-effect of your prescription. about two weeks after your wake, it hit me like a train. i was riding the n judah to the end of the line at ocean beach when I passed a throw-up piece that you had painted a few years before in the train tunnel near haight and cole. it was a big letter "a" in lowercase with an exclamation point next to it. i once asked you what it meant. you shrugged and said, "i just like the shape of it," and something clicked. it was then that i realized (that)

the flames of our light, love and laughter
move faster than the speed of life
and those flames pass us by in the blink of an eye
if we're not quick enough to catch 'em
and return the letters like stars
we borrowed, typed, stole, scribbled and scrawled across the pages of the sky
back to the sprawling library of the night
where they belong    
where we belong

I ripped our love apart.
I defiled it.
Whatever we had I graffitied all over,
I sprayed noxious fumes over a work of art.
And you're gone.

I ate our love up.
Devoured it.
We had a four course meal planned out.
I ate the desert before the meal began.
And you're gone.

I bulldozed our love.
Destroyed it.
We were architects for not just a building, a city.
I burned the plans, the structures.
And you're gone.

I killed our love.
Murdered it.
a life of
Your pit bull and
hairless cat and
motorcycle
Workbench
-did you ever take that course?
love

Your eyes when they were seventy.
When we were on shrooms,
I hallucinated you at seventy.
I started crying because you were so beautiful.
That was before I went homicidal.
But you are gone.
And I don't blame you.

there were a few (fairly) successful techniques i used

to erase you.

one day

she may leave,

so

let me share a few.



unfortunately,

the whole ordeal wasn't as easy as sending you to my recycle bin

or backspacing your name out of my chest.

i couldn't paint over the dark alleys in my heart that you had

graffitied with your naked body,

nor could i sell any of the useless crap you left inside me on ebay.

what idiot wants to buy someone else's used compliments or broken promises??

whatever,

online shopping is overrated anyways.



so,

back to heart break...

let's begin with the

obvious.

i deleted you on

facebook,

how could we be "friends"

when seeing your name

was like force-feeding myself

a fresh slice of pain?

i erased your number.

i refuse to be the pathetic drunk

who sexts at three am,

reminiscing on all the good times

i thought we had.

"babeee, rememb er thast one

timse, when we madske love

underf the stasrs..."

so not my style,

must always remain classy,

even when the tornado

seems to heading straight for

your heart,

and the flying **** never seems to stop.

yes, the world may be falling apart,

but you always have the power to

smile.

remember that after the storm,

everything will be rebuilt

stronger.



i burned all of the 1,000 letters you never wrote

and all of the "I love yous" i never read (but in my head)

until

the ash of yesterday

became flames that could

guide me into tomorrow

unscathed.

in less poetic terms,

i stopped thinking about every *******

sweet thing you had ever said to me

and started focusing on other people's

words, namely my own.

6 months later, I am able to

hear the sound of your voice

without cringing.

180 days of un-remembering you,

and i finally am free to be me,

the girl/woman who is sitting here

realizing that you are going to learn

from me learning from you.

it's a crazy, beautiful, weird, ****** up process,

right?

this circle of life...





and finally,

i forced myself to

see you.

similar to the

way in which a diabetic child

gazes longingly through the

window of the neighborhood bakery,

all transparency and overly indulgent imagination,

i looked through you enough times

to convince myself you were the perfect

creation,

sweet but not sickeningly so,

**** but not too sour,

a hint of spiciness to aliven the equation and

a little bitterness to sharpen the sensation.

only problem is,

i forgot i was the chef.

seeing you now through clean eyes,

testing your flavor with a mouth sobered by truth,

your taste is still sweet

but a little fake,

Splenda instead of brown sugar.

I detect the artificiality,

is that why she is leaving you?



no matter the cause,

no matter the outcome of this

most painful breakup,

know that one day, you will love again.

you will meet that one person who will

wake you up from the dream

you didn't realize you were living,

that one who will bring breath

to parts of your body you didn't

know existed.

on the blackest of nights, you will walk around

a corner on some random street

in the middle of no where,

and there she will

be,

standing under a street lamp,

smiling up at the midnight sun.

her body will beckon you,

invite you to dance,

and

you must accept the call.

even if you are  scared,

even if your heart is still broken,

even if you think you still belong to the one who

left you,

you must answer to love,

and in return life

will answer to you.

once you allow yourself to fall again,

the hurt will mend,

and your wings will spread,

wider and more ready than ever.



always remember,

you are the only one

holding yourself prisoner.

I took my luggage to you
and you said, “Just check it over here.”

Then we went sailing
as people do when they find one another.
We went fishing
for words and atonement.

I said, “I am this violent thing and
I thrash about like there’s anger when there is not.”

We put together seven hundred and fifty pieces of a
puzzle and it made my heart ache.
You put pieces together of me and I put
a few together of you.

You said, “You’ll leave. I am not enough.
Never was. That’s how it goes.”

We sat in a park, on a graffitied picnic table
and did nothing but talk then sit quietly.
I was once taught the value of silence and stillness
but before that park I felt too raw to practice it in turn.

I carved curves and names into the table beneath us
and bumped my shoulder to yours.

if you are missing him, remember this. remember how cruel he was to you, how every time he drove away the moonlight made your skin look bruised, it made you feel soft. remember that you are not. you might break but you will always heal. think of the nights where he turned away and refused to let you touch him, nights where he moaned your best friends' names into your mouth while you tried to prove how much you loved him, nights where he'd refuse to stop yelling until you put your hands on him. do not think of his hands, or his mouth, or any of the bones in his body. they're not for you. they're not for anybody but himself and you should pity the fact he doesn't know how to love them. you gave your best to him and he crumpled it up until it looked like your worst. don't feel sorry for being emotional, he was a gaping wound in your chest and things like that deserve a good cry. if you're missing him, remember how distant he was, how when you'd sink down on him he wouldn't be looking at your face. how his shoes were always graffitied with the numbers of other girls. how in the middle of a date he asked another girl her name. I know it hurts, it's going to be okay, I promise. remember how unhelpful he was? how little he cared, moving so fast he could never type the 'I?' he blamed you for loving him too much, for being too sad: both things were his fault. I know it doesn't seem like it but I promise there is somebody much, much more lovely, somebody who will treat you like a cloud, and won't throw a fit when you start to rain. you just have to wait.

saw his mother
while they buried him. her hair
--with sorrow as flint--
smoked and caught fire. the world began to
cave in up and around the swollen fist of regret that punched
through my stomach --the fire spread--
speared my gut with blame.
all the while
a cacophony
of strings and trumpets
cried parting and
a soul flew
on golden banners
towards heaven
those stone white graffitied gates.
--the fire grew too much to handle--
in agony I flailed and screamed.
rolled down tall mountains clawing at bone and dirt
and flesh. gilded chariots breaking free. shepherding the beautiful
from the leperous, riddled atrophy that controls the living.
the dying and the burning. how everything burns
dies. fire smoke guilt regret. oh sweet death.
death in the summertime. death in the
morning, the evening, death of
everything. always.

eyes open
--a crisp, cluttered autumn hillside--
fall back upon his mother
reality stricken and grave.
blink twice. refocus.
a tear falls from her face
followed by
one from
mine.

the fire is out.

I'm being ripped at the seams, slowly shredded into a fine paper doll,
then crucified,
nailed to the peeling yellow walls with a push pin,
creased,
stained,
mocked,
graffitied,
ignored,
buried beneath a galaxy of poor paper martyrs,
then finally crumbled - -
and as I fold in on myself,
as I twist, contort, break, shatter, transform,
undergo a tragic metamorphosis,
I begin to feel alive again.

Life is not always what you planned.
We were in the back yard of the abandoned house next door to his watching his two mutts chase each other around the perimeter. House after tiny peeling white painted house line the street “Summerbelle” with roofs covered in crinkled brown leaves. He runs his hand through his too long ***** brown hair. Tall and blue eyed, he could have been handsome maybe.
I had stopped by to pick up my glasses from on top of his coffee table. I don’t remember how they had gotten there exactly but at some point last night roasting-marshmallows-and-a-bonfire had turned into mango-juice-*****- forgetting-your-glasses-party with all the neighbors.
We were talking about fall, how the colors and the smells are beautiful, but foreboding, warning that winter and depression are coming. It’s a problem we have. On my walk over I had stopped to pick up a particularly beautiful leaf to give to him. It was just the sort of thing he would understand.
I reminded him we have to dress up for class on the 6th, and asked if he even had a suit. He then launched into a ten minute story about how he used to work on a senator’s campaign, 18 hour days and everything.
Not something I would have expected.
We gradually shuffle into the house, and I pick up my glasses from right where I had left them. The door is never locked in his house, but no one usually steals anything.  The walls are covered in crayoned drawings and quotes, over the top of it all “Fleetwood” graffitied in orange and red. I remember that is what we had decided to name the house last night. I had been sitting on the couch with a beer admiring the artist, bringing him a new Blue Ribbon can periodically for a kiss.
“Are you and A together now?”
I shake off the hazy memories. “Hm?”
“You and A.”
“Oh. We’re…yeah.” His signature grin never faded but his eyes had dipped to the floor. “How could you tell?”
“The way you spoke to him.” It was all the explanation he offered. “He’s a good guy.”
“He is.”
My mind wandered back to the morning, waking up next to the artist brushing my hair off my face, kissing my forehead. Surreal.
There wasn’t much left to say, so it was time for me to go. Turning to the door I saw what I had written on the wall last night, hidden under the windowsill, part way behind the couch. Under the song lyrics, clichéd quotes like “Be good or be good at it” and messages of peace, love and adventure it was nestled.
*All the same, we are nothing.

ink scratches appear on skin in the
morning as the sunrise falls
into the streets. cars are
screeching and
smoking is rising and
screams are echoing off of the graffitied brick walls -

there's a woman dancing
on the ledge and
she nearly
trips, nearly
dies, nearly
cries out, but her hand grasps
the gate holding her
to the concrete cracked beneath her
feet. sirens are blaring and people are yelling till their lungs
burst and she is laughing because she -

the lines separating happiness and paranoia are faded
when the brain chemistry of a human being
is constructed of hopelessness and oh god why'd he leave me
and the kisses from people who
slowly ruin our bodies, our hearts, ourselves, and -
and -
and -
there is no such thing as black or white; merely grey,
and paintings have no colour when
chemicals in our brains are exploding
chemicals in our brains are spasming
chemicals in our brains are murdering us.

and the woman laughs as she
dances off the edge, the blood
orange sunrise bleeding into
the highways as
black
and
white
and
grey.

everything grey.

i'm not the only battered one here
we've got our separate histories,
but with similar intensity
i, overwhelmed and off-guard, admitted
to you my past intentions, the dread
i felt each morning, because
i wished i hadn't woken, the pain
i felt in each moment, the fear
from feeling trapped, and my
desire to end it all-
i told you, i showed you mine,
and you showed me yours

i was transfixed by the
salmon splotches and white lines
graffitied over your skin, enough that
i wanted to carve myself up again
for the beauty in pain, and the stimulation
because this is more than habit- this
is an addiction

i still bear the marks of your teeth in
my skin, the sweetest agony
to affect me in the past three weeks
i cradle your matchstick bones in
my selfish arms
promise to hold you if i snap again

it's vicious, my guilt
about my mental state, my self-hatred,
about my tears which you
still kissed me through, ignoring my
death-mask and the briny sorrow staining
your only cardigan, my salt-slick cheeks
red from too much despair- i gasped,
thanks for dealing with my ****, babe
i promise you won't have to deal
with me like this for long
i'm getting better

and you repeated,
the words spilling in the spaces
between each lip-press,
don't get better for me
don't get better for me
get better for you

I am from a golden coast,
an opera house of mammoth white sails
and salt for air.

I am from a lush green land
of soiled famine, exiled religions and northern Troubles
boiling in burning peat.

I am from bustling streets,
men in suits pass men in cardboard between
***** soaked, graffitied concrete.

I am from narrow canals,
hustling gondolas and homeless pigeons
squawking for a bite to eat.

I am from the center,
from the crumbling youth of everywhere:
a desolate town of dust and cattle,
a five-shop city of broken words.

I am from the world.

I like looking at the narrow spaces
Between houses as the train passes by.

I like looking at the narrow spaces
Because they remind me of my childhood.
The empty narrow inches of space
Between two enormous brick houses
I'd obliviously pass by while playing tag,
Smiling from ear to ear,
Leaving only a narrow space for my teeth.
Running from dusk until dawn,
Leaving only a narrow space for bruised knees and tears.

And now the narrow spaces I pass every day
Between worn out houses in the city
Remind me of my heart.
So big, yet so full of others' pain
That all I have is narrow spaces
Reserved for my own joy.
And now the narrow spaces I pass every day
Between graffitied houses in the city
Remind me of my brain.
So tagged with useless information,
Yet so little space to paint true knowledge on.

And so I stare at the narrow spaces
Between houses as the train passes by
While I'm on my way
To waste the tiny chunks of time I have left
Hoping to widen the narrow spaces
Of my soul.

We only just met
But I felt a tugging of my heart, forever in search of a friend
It was brief
Yet an unforgettable warmth still lingers after our passing
In my striving to remain honesty to myself, I always thought myself alone
Despite the eyes that casually yet constantly peer
They watch
Unknowing the truth of the damage inflicted
Yes, I am newly awakened
But the reality claws it's way with such strength
Exploding from my new found uncontainable mind
And continues its attacks on my body
My fragile and peaceful body

I am tired
It seems that the timelessness of this world I so recently discovered
Is nothing short of eternity
This battle I wish no part in has taken a toll so great
As if a lifetime
I am searching
Evreryday and night I search for comfort of a friend
I have found but a few
And their comfort teases me, as they so naturally delve in and out of light and shadow
As I lay my trusting head down on their shoulder offered
Temptation brushes it away
The tide pulling its victim back out to the treacherous sea

I am tired
No
I was exhausted
As a cool breeze washes the scorching dessert, so did you
Just a few words exchanged
A few minutes shared
And yet I have known you a lifetime
A sister, a friend, a long lost kindred spirit finally found
You understand this world
Full of hands untouchable
Graffitied with words unhearable
Parading love unattainable
So you offered no hand to hold, nor shoulder to lean on
As I have grown to understand the impersistance of form
I would never be permitted to maintain my grip
Instead you gave a piece of your tranquility
Finally
I can rest.

since you don't know me
here's something to help

I leave wood splinters in my hands
so I can brag about not crying
when I clench my first

manly, yes I know
because you told me

the scales slithering
through my spinal cord
tell me many things

like when you
bit my long hair
and said it was gay

I spent years dislodging your teeth
but I think I learned my lesson

build cradles from rusted nails
sew them to your skin
so you never have to leave

I forgot the next lesson though
and was caught swallowing pencil shavings

sneers rattle from the tail in my ribcage
hissing that I'm too skinny to be a boy
the jokes hard to get at first
so I l graffitied the punchline on my mirror

my heartchambers gasping for breath
is the sound they make from
draining blood for gun powder

a strong proverb really
I'm glad I learned how
to blow up ghost sailing to my head

now my shadow walks to the store for me
because
I'm still learning how to crawl on my belly

I'm not brave, never was and never will be
any scars I have are hidden in deep dungeons
somewhere in the vast open spaces of my mind
They are too deep to dig out and analyse. Even try.
There are no medals blistering my breast pocket

No  name shouted from pulpit or podium
No one cheering  academic prowess
scars of poverty or pain or orphan splendour
at tender twelve Christmases
all those scars buried under the skin, and swept out of sight
on the watching life. There were many watchers.

Not brave pushing boundaries
I learnt my  visual language off
graffitied walls and bart simpson.

No I was not brave, when I arrived here
with a shirt on my back and a two dollar back pocket
bus ticket. Come on you got to be joking,
for switching countries, continents and communities
to earn a square meal.

See what I mean? I'm not brave, riding morning evening traffic
with ten thousand automissiles coming at me daily
I'm not brave when I scoff a whole chocolate
cake without counting the calories or checking that waistline
or watching Dr Oz rave on about nuts fruits ***** and berries.
Its on the rare occasion I get brave and take notes!

No Im not brave at all. I'm a coward that hides behind brave people
who have 9-5 jobs, wear white skins to work, white collars
and smile behind white sparkling teeth with red ties
dripping in  ****** racist jibes of inequality.
No I'm not brave being 65 and hiding 65 thousand racist comments
under scars covered by moisturisers
white shirts and dark glasses
in the searing heat of society.

I am brave when it comes to using
words that hide behind lace-like feathery
curtains of verses and rhythms
that sing along to everything I write.

Author Notes

A critical look at society and how it functions between the layers of immigrants. Look under the skin to understand why we write poems, like we do. The harsher the social climate the more rugged are the desert rats it produces. History is full of such examples. This hierarchy will never change.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Teddy bears, crosses, burnt candles,
wilted flowers, faded ribbons,
rain washed love notes to a child
taken too soon from these
city streets burdened by stray
bullets exploding on unforgiving
empire is a litter no one takes away.
It is only added upon.
Next to graffitied bus stop,
across from alarming firehouse,
in front of and attached to
weakening iron fence,
surrounding church of boarded windows where prayers have ascended too late,
is a mother on her knees,
feeling the burn of hell cooked pavement.

do you remember
that one time in the summer
when we were in your old, smelly car
with the windows all the way down
in that ancient, forgotten town
trapped in the 60's still
and we rolled slowly through it
laughing at the sunshine
smiling at the old people
strolling in the heat
tights chafing
sweating through their baseball caps
fans winking
merrily at us?
and when we came to the edge of it
with all the blossoming trees
and green grass
the railroad lights flashed
and we stopped
and that one song about boogie shoes came on -
my favorite...
and as we watched for ages for the train to racket by
graffitied and dusty
you turned the sound all the way up
and all the bikers and walkers and dogs
waiting for the train to pass as well
danced to our music
the way it blasted through our bodies
washing us in exuberant waves...
i can still feel it.
i remember how you dragged me all over that town
even though i had something important to do
that afternoon...
i loved it all the same.
that day still remains
the feeling of summer
along with the hay rides we used to go on
permeate me on these winter days
that are so full of despair
i can't help but
cut.

there was an arrow that shot into my rib cage years ago
i haven’t been strong enough to pull it out
the poisoned tip sunk deep beneath the alleyways of muscles
until it latched it’s teeth onto my bones
the street lamps burned out two years ago
i haven’t found the strength to replace the bulbs within
the street signs all point to “Hell”
my brain hasn’t stopped feeling like a night sky
a soulless vast nothingness
my heart feels like a bucket of water kicked over
nothing in me will let me replace it
what do you do when the map inside you has been painted over with black spray paint?
the graffitied walls of your being cant be recognized anymore
a whole ghost town of whispers and no where to turn
where do you go when the compass inside you has broken?
you etched a new map into the dirt but the wind blew it away
what do you do when the whole world is against you?
maybe being lost is the new way of living
feeling nothing
barely breathing
what do you do when you don’t want to fight anymore?
how do you escape the deep downpour?
blocked off streets and no detours
stuck in the middle of endings
where to turn to?
sit and watch the sky darken to pitch black
phantoms sitting hand in hand
staring into you like they’ve got something to prove
or choose the ending
choose the unfathomable
choose to leave
what do you do when you’re too scared to choose?
dark alleyways and nothing to lose
broken windows and a little bit of smoke
what do you do when it all feels like too much?
what do you do when you can’t get it to end?
what do you when you can’t stop the voices in your head?
what do you do when the words all blend?
and what do you do when you can’t leave your bed?

before the sun sets, and i end up writing... i end up laughing; but you began revising the body with Abraham attempting circumcision of Isaac, thus you encountered the anti of your shepherd practice, in building a pyramid, since the two revisions met in Egypt with female genital revision, an what feminism called: a soft cushion naked **** readied for kept ******* of *****... you were already revising your bodies before science came and allowed you transgender orientation and plastic surgery... unlike the mandarins who wrote from the head down, you wrote from the genitalia up, but because you didn't start at the feet, you wrote from either sunset to sunrise, or sunrise to sunset of arousal or limp... limp or arousal... monotheism is so ******* disgusting... it precursors darwinism, a historical analysis that should have not emerged had man not revised the inadequacies of his genitalia... and left the disharmony of the sexes to accept an ethnic population of an excess of 1 billion: puberty riddled man, menopause riddled woman (e.g.); i've failed, i know, now the talk is of pseudo-******, anti-globalisation, global warming... hardly any revision to mind to resurrect a historical past.*

listening to the Boss,
bruce "the boss" springsteen,
" or the acronym a.k.a. or simply
the word alias, or dub-slang,
but then the sweet return of the Celtic Odyssey,
reminding sweet Dublin sirens
of their song rather than my Aegean drowning
pain... in such nights such laughter
as mine be given to an unheard
comfort of a woman's breast,
a truck-drivers' fable in stance against
arabian playboys... the hyphen of dislodging
caring for us men hardly internalising
a woman's deed of internalising violence
should the greek testimonies be true for Byzantine,
for such a man of supposed status
have internalised his peace with violence
as did Buddha with two billion of Chinese
and Hindus... no conquering of status...
but my life laughed at in the night...
the hyphen is a dislodging for us,
cowering before both Madonna and the Magdalene...
to incubate the ring of Belgian entrenching
in a war... so if in womanhood only a duality
why in man the sole precursor of Christ,
namely Oedipus, to one saved from the fates of BC
the sole inheritor of AD via birth 19 centenaries late?
if duality in woman why then a trinity in man?
why no resurrect something more revealing
than what 19th century allowed with Freud?
i once said that a loss of ******* made man warring,
then come unto me in Eden's form, wholly
dressed, and wear the clothes i wear as intended,
or succumb to St. Paul and other visionaries -
or go into battle that Napoleon in graffitied optometric
said to overcome awaiting St. Helena for stupor ******...
or as that Roman girl daughter of a centurion who
first did encounter a missing ******* in the pagan
world worthy of "casting out demons" as the lover of jeruslaem -
thus the revisions of monotheisms with censored
foreskins of prior Abraham the Pharaoh's brides executed
to a skin-cut... later then the male, competent
in boxing the other dead... indeed what apple
is in metaphor is merely ******* in reality,
of either genitalia... that woman came first in Egypt
and man a wandering tadpole later is true to Genesis;
and the story goes no further,
for all are now entrapped in an exodus of nations
with the genesis of globalisation.