Leaves of a branch sway.
Onto the ground it falls.
Venom engulfs its veins.
Instinct tells it’s wrong.
Neurotoxins overflow.
Grounding my feet deep.

Intoxication wraps my throat.
Seizures follow through my soul.

Hope remains still.
Awaiting despair.
Roses bleeding out.
Death hastens.

Our words weave between us like spider's webs,
Beautiful traps,
Delicate,
Hostile.

Strong, silk like sinews
Threading a dangerous lace

And I am caught
In the web of your promises,
Hanging helplessly

Whilst you spin ceaselessly
Around me
Preparing to **** out

Every last breath,
Every last protest.

But you needn't imprison me,
I have been yours from the first
Smile I saw pass your lips,

From even before your lies of love.

Perhaps it is only neurotoxins
That make me quiver and shake,
But you course through my blood

Like moonstruck tides
And I am yours, willingly or not.

Lukewarm coffee and the cat,
[not my cat, the cat, a cat]
is making the bathroom floor
look cozy.
I haven't had a terrible nightmare or a beautiful dream
in what feels like months, not years, but close.
I have an odd fascination with light bulbs,
sources of light, man-made fountains of brightness.
Not the sun. Rarely the moon.
I don't sleep well.
My father learned about my suicide attempt and thoughts,
because my sister told my mother, and she waved that banner
like a parade float far above my head for everyone to see.
Above his head as a symbol of his failure.
I couldn't pull it down.
Like Snoopy between two large buildings,
it was just inevitable. A matter of time, really.
My past curls up into a ball and waits,
like a cat on vacation from eyes being open.
The eyes open.
We're standing at the kitchen table.
You tell me that it wasn't your fault.
Not directly, of course.
You tell me about my bass teacher,
my ex-girlfriend.
Insinuate I was depressed about these things.
These are the materials to make the cocktail I drank,
full of not bittersweet poisons, but neurotoxins.
You tell me it's not your fault.
Now you don't have to apologize.
You were wrong.
I didn't "discover" these venoms in some fresh cabinet
waiting to be torn down, you, you [expletive],
I grew up next to them,
an IV drip in my jugular,
direct feed to my brain.
[expletive].
[expletive].
I learned how to sincerely love cursing because you wanted
to censor my emotions. I learned to hate myself from you.
I learned how to look at myself as
not enough
because of you. Surely, daddy the great doesn't owe me
an apology, the selfless man who tore us across the country
broke all the way. Surely, if his intentions were noble,
his actions were pure.
Just like Elvis Costello,
your aim was true.
Depression is like trying to find a light in a room
that is full of dark corners.
For a long time, I had no light.
Eyes closed.
I bomb the parades and smile in a hotel window at the chaos
in my mind-world. My other home away from home.
I ask my girlfriend how often someone should think about suicide.
The floats lift higher than the eye should see.
They become a string of dots in an otherwise empty sky.
Amorphous shapes in clear blue water.
Splotches of paint on a manilla canvas.
Something geometric with the fingers,
turned into a sound, then a sample,
then a symphony.
There is no remedy, no cure,
just placebos and snake oils.
Birds chirping.
Silence.

Last night you handed me glass to swallow,
shards to choke on,                       and I did.
I choked.
Blood immersed my lungs.
It flooded around my kidneys, my bladder, my colon,
brimming the muscular tendrils near my nerves.
Slivers knife the tissue enclosing
a once-pounding-for-you heart.
The soul I sold to you, for
you, is polluted beyond preservation.
It’s the extinct ***** in my body,
a hearth of life no longer there.

You yell at me for something I cannot help;
force me to ignore beliefs when I must deny.
I understand you see no room to budge.
I accept that it’s hard to grasp.
But if you call for me, I’ll run         run         run             to you,
and I can’t help that I love you:
the way you coerce my body to throb
and pump blood               through and through
though sometimes you clot it.
Your lips, magnetic, lure me near,
forcing an opening to suffocate
me as spidery limbs finger my veins
leaving traces of your web to tangle
me whole.

You’re my stonefish gliding
towards exposed skin, preparing
to attack with neurotoxins.
As ashamed am I
that only you are the antidote, too
even in great blue waves swallowing me
like I once did glass
in the end
                                                            I­ still sleep in your sweatshirt.

We have no time to sit and wait,
Our incumbents already procrastinate.
What will it take for them to understand,
We can not act this way towards the land.
The skies cry polluted rain,
Those neurotoxins dance in my brain.
Our governments think they know whats best,
But how am I differentiated from the rest.
They do not know my personal needs,
My wants, my desires, my worldly dreams.
They are but that to infect decision,
To enter the brain with a quick incision.
Not to control, but to inform,
The world we live in is finding it hard to perform.
The things so many take for granted
have become a product of disenchantment.
Those that have noticed have started to yell,
To Rachel Carson's pen critics fell.
But to what end did it serve?
We want more than we healthily deserve.
With the end goal being money and power,
We have approached upon her final hour.
We have no time to sit and wait,
The problems tend to exacerbate.
What will it take to mitigate the masses?
While our governments feet are stuck in malaises.

Venomous
As you poison me
Intoxication at best
Sickiningly sweet
Surprisingly sour
To differentiate between the two is impossible, drugged by your painfully soft

Lips that inject me with these
Salivating neurotoxins
Numbing mind, body, and soul
Penetrating deep layers of

Skin so comfortable as my form molds against yours
Feathery whispers surrounding my ear while

Kissing slowly, silently
In a sublime fashion as darkness forms to daylight, and daylight turns to midnight

Time means nothing here

Love is a disease
it starts with a carrier
unaffected by the pathogen
it knowingly spreads

Love is extremely contagious
so much as a single look
is often enough to infect

The carrier finds a victim
unaware of the danger
as eyes meet, hearts palpitate
spreading the venom quicker

Pheremones flood logic centers
neurotoxins inducing insanity
the jade wasp walks its prey
towards the regrettably chill flicks of net

That compel roaches to walk off cliffs
carrying flowers and chocolates
seeking a rainbow bridge of hope
finding no more than pretty-colored moisture

Nurturing parasitic demon babies that burst out of a scooped clean chest
a dine and dash leaving their guest
to pay the unsettled romance cheque
and the hotel room? left a wreck

Befouled by graffiti on room walls written
in what smells like Odin's *****

Roses come in more hues than red
Violets are violet not blue
There's more to romance than what's said
On some card conveying love to you
~
NM
2/19/17

what's the problem with kneeling?
where's the right hand posited?
you know that there's
the disgraceful middle-ground
position? right?
    it's called... SITTING DOWN...
what's up with these Americans?
am i supposed to not kneel
in church?!
                     aren't these "suckers"
bridging a gap by
the stature of, over-emphasis?
       it's enough that i have to stand...
but kneeling? kneeling?
  isn't that a hefty summation
of the subsequent enterprise of events?
it's not, sitting down...
SO WHAT, IS, THE ******* PROBLEM?!
you know that kneeling is
an indicator of shared interest,
a veneration gesticulation...
the man, "in question"
is not sitting down...
       kneeling before an anthem is:
TWICE as much effective of
conveying the message, as standing up!
Bolognese sauce...
Retards R Us....
   kneeling? kneeling?!
the most humbling gesticulation bound
to the practices of the church...
and yet, YET... these athletes are somehow
dishonoring the flag?
   what's the difference between
kneeling, and standing up?
erm... sitting down?!
trick question!
                why is it somehow less,
if not more, patriotic,
to kneel, rather than stand,
while digesting a national anthem?!
the **** are you talking about?!
          i never like American football,
one quarterback throw,
some idiot runs the field, catches the ball...
and so many impromptus,
"sport" built for the advertisement
age...
       too many interruptions...
rugby?
        even soccer,
with its 22 ballerinas...
           the day might come when
squash replaces tennis *******
tournaments...
                     so... kneeling... kneeling?!
you have to be ******* kidding me...
that's a source of collectivist commentary?!
not buying it...
         *******, and turn that **** off!
i'll be correct and proper about this,
proper red-skin fashionista styling...
kneeling, given church manners...
is not an offensive statement, pose...
between kneeling,
and standing up...
there's the sitting-down
  mitigation...
now.... that's offensive...
    most of these men are probably
thinking: thank god for America...
my great great great grandparents
came from Nigeria...
all this white *****?
  don't worry,
i'm not bothered,
i know the responsibility aligned
with owning a dog...
having a relationship with
a woman?
   you keep one....
i won't complain.
i have this "thing" for phantom
a troll-she, derived from Norse
mythology...
   you do the window shopping for me...
point being:
at some point,
the copper-beauties will come through,
mixed race...
  and i'll be like...
    ah, now i see the particulars!
******* retards...
   down syndrome looks clever
at this point...
   so there's a problem with kneeling?
rather than standing?
  ******?
    but there's no problem with,
sitting?
        THEY'RE NOT SITTING!
what's the problem?
   kneeling is a preferably
generous offering of
a variant of genuflection...
what's this, the anti-Catholic
sentimentality of the Kennedy
assassination mentality?

       no... i'm not joking...
ask me, and i'll start enticing
a hammer into the current
schematic of imagery...
a skull, and a nail...

         i'm done telling jokes,
don't even know if i even
began telling them...
i'm after tarantula-esque
   neurotoxins...
                 i want a language
that surrogates
a momentary immobility
of the reading specimen...
   shock-value...
  not worth the tabloid strategy...
i need grit...
a supplement of an ego,
still worth
  implementing and originality
of a non-original idea
for a changeable focus,
and subsequent implementation
validity.

We are all just colors
flying in the solar
system of the dollar
if you care, then holler
at the high and lowly
the beautiful and homely
what's real is more fantastic
than any fiction is

We are seekers guided
by an outrageous deity
from Him we are all hiding
His voice booms and we quake
in fear that we're releasing
like neurotoxins kissing
creating warring babies
that rob us of our bliss

Freedom comes with loving
love repairs our hatred
what we hold is sacred
in cabinets of time
empty them of garbage
of sad and forlorn longing
that always leaves us hanging
to life unsatisfied

Death comes with a price
no kidding, look around
and take some last advice
from every plotted ground
harsh like violent crimes
hideousness hides
and scares a soul half-blind
until courage is found