I see this boy every now and then.
Every sunset and sundown, he walks into my view.
And what I see is a boy lost in a sea of torn faces.
However, he tames himself and continues with his duties.
Readjusts his tight collar, tune his hat, and sags his jeans,
Because that’s what society clothes him in.

But I’ve seen days where this boy is barely lit.
Like a faded glass, there is little shine in his eyes.
The coal within his chest quietly dies out slowly through his lungs.
And after the smoke rises up, he cries like the heavens.
I endure the flood, but just as I swim forth to him
He takes in the smoke and readjusts his tight collar, tune his hat, and sag his jeans;
Because that’s what society clothes him in!

Locked behind the mirror, my fist bleeds against the glass
And my voice tramples against the edges!
Tearing every fiber just so can preach to his ear
The smiles of those he’s touched deep in their hearts!
I want to him to take in the air that mists around him of confidence!
For I have had enough of letting him each sunrise and sundown drowning under the sea of scars!
Am I tall enough? Am I manly enough? Am I a good person?

Yes, your height is fine, be proud, you’re taller than Tom Cruise!
Yes, you bare the strength of a thousand men in one beat of your heart!
And yes, yes even when you destroyed the girl of your dreams heart,
You fought like no other person to make her smile again!
Deep inside you, buried six feet under, is a man.
A man who you were parading this world as this entire time!

And I press my face against the edge of the glass,
And my voice stretches out to him,
And our eyes cross lights,
But then he readjusts his hat, smiles;
His lips move about with the slightest steps.
Another sunrise and another sunset, he’ll keep walking despite the rain.
He flicks the lights to fade black and gone again through the door.

Enter scene:

A girl sits on a bed in a room.
The room smells like cat **** and Fabuloso
(whatever the name of the yellow scent is).
The black-out curtains are open,
letting the moon shine onto the bottom of the bed.
The lavender fitted sheet has come undone.

The girl hasn't slept in a day.
She hasn't eaten in two days.
There is an empty handle of Jack
that she bought three days ago.
The scabs on her leg were four days old,
But she reopened them three hours ago.

The girl had chestnut hair that flowed,
cascading to the small of her back,
but she cut it herself, drunk in the bathroom.
The girl has chestnut hair that spills
in a mass of tangles to her shaking shoulders,
uneven, moving with her as she readjusts.

February 12, 2016

I lie **** on top of my blankets; praying. Praying. Praying. I am fighting waves of nausea and sleepiness. Medicines I feel sprinting through my veins dragging me downward. No.
The rain slow at first but gathering wrath in the warm night.
Lightning and thunder will come I smell it afar off. Ions heavily scented spill through the atmosphere holes in my plexiglassed window.  
Thunder rolls through my chest shaking deeply my whitewashed plaster cocoon. The cries begin to swell, and echo strangely through the sterile corridors. I am not the only light sleeper, I muse.
I doze momentarily even among the screams of the mentally hilarious; I am called into sleep. They must have doubled the sleeping medication; the storm will be worse than I thought.
I start at a sound. Steady. A theta wave vibrating through my room. I pitch to my side in time to see a lightning bolt slash through the sky. I saw something. The bolt plays hell with my night-vision as I sit upright on my bed.
There. Struggling up the plastic surface of the viewport. It cannot fly in the rain; it struggles for purchase on the portal. I study her. Elegant and slender she reaches the airhole and pulls herself through. Far off the screams wax and wane as the storm intensifies.
Her slender thorax and polished, obsidian, exoskeleton strike excitement through me to a cell. A perfect engine of pain and terror. A great black wasp. She reminds me of a thorn as she rests on the windowsill; unmoving in the air conditioning. Giddily, I shake with excitement nearly overwhelmed. Delicately she cleans water droplets from her abdomen and shakes the moisture from the thin membrane of her wings. I slowly move to my shelf and remove the specimen cup from its placement; silently unscrewing the threaded lid from the clear plastic container. Down the hallway a tired groan and a throaty grunt from one of the other patients. The wind now screams through the breezeport that runs to north toward the cafeteria. A shingle is peeled from the roof of a gazebo and cyclones into a bulkhead. I lick my lips, and consciously check my excitement.
I slide a sheet of crisp white paper from my desk. Quickly, I trap the great insect with the jar and slide the paper over the aperture trapping her between jar and paper. She does not struggle, but looks intelligently at the walls of her new prison. Beautiful, and intricate machinery at work; she readjusts her  wings, observing me with with bulbous eyes. Lightning strikes, and there is a deafening pop as a transformer explodes. For a moment it creates an azure sun outside, and casts curious shadows through my room. In the corridor the lamp light is squelched, and then ignites emergency lamps in scarlet hues as the diesel generator sputters to life and idles. A deafening clackson alarm begins to wail.
I am not aware of this at first; obsessing over my catch. Her form is ******, deadly. Something deep within me stirs at the very site of her. Revulsion? Ecstasy? From my reverie I am stirred by the clanging of doors and staccato laughter in the crimson glow of the storm lights. In a moment I am resolved and I slide the paper from the opening and cover it with my hand. Now footsteps. She senses me and reels in instinct. Without hesitation she draws herself tight as a bow string, poised to ****** the hypodermic stinger into the warm pink flesh of my palm. Quicker than thought she strikes piercing, seemingly to the bone she injects poison. Down the ward doors are slid open and the sound of radio chatter plays toward me. I am engrossed, in bliss as my arm begins to numb. Five times then Nine times she spears me with the barb. My heart beating so hard in my chest that I am sure the orderlies must hear it. Then I hear a burst of static and a sing-song reply of phonetic alphabet followed by my room number. I grasp her delicately from the specimen cup with my thumb and forefinger as she stings me with prejudice beneath the nail bed and cuticles. I cast her through the air hole in my window and quickly lie upon my bed before the door is unlocked. A man in white scrubs and a five o'clock shadow opens my door and pierces me with two steel blue eyes. "You should be asleep." "Get some rest, we will have the lights back on in no time." I smile my head swimming with post adrenal bliss. When suddenly I hear the droning of wings. A sea of raging hornets sounding ominously in the small cell. A black cloud pours through the airhole, countless chittering wings encompass the orderly in a poisonous storm cloud. With vengeance they sting, his eyeballs his hands, his throat. All swelling with purple nebulas of poison. In his mouth they crawl and down his throat. Efficiently suffocating him in mere moments. Then they quiet. All at once they flock to me, walking on my pale naked flesh caressing me with millions of antennae. They do not sting, instead they are still. Their crescent shaped bodies vibrating,  like a cat purr against my cold skin. I put my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing hilariously, and I shudder hardly containing the joy. Then I pick up the radio clipped to the orderlies pants, and pull the 18 inch telescoping  steel baton from the holster belted at his waist. I click the PTT and speak into the radio. Epsilon Wing Cell 005 Accounted for, Over Quintar beep followed by a burst of static and a reply. I cover my mouth to suppress another fit of hysterical laugh. I step barefoot over his body and onto the cold tile of the ward; spinning the heavy keyring on my finger

It bubbles up, emits a high-pitched scream, then dies
It was a thought, a dream, a notion
Cascaded now back into the ocean
Where other unborn dreamers lie.

Life cycles in inner circles
Death crumbles at the edges it nabs
And life readjusts its grip
Trying to give nothing to grab.

Life must spiral
And death must follow
Meeting high up
Under suns that one day waver.

Waver and fade
Into a supernova piñata bang
And everyone rushes to get the candy
And everyone is just trying to be happy.

Today, I found beauty in hairy arms and a receding hairline.

My substitute for my English Literature class was a man. His name is Danny. He's short and a little fidgety, gesticulating with every word he speaks. His voice is moderately deep, strong and clear. He's attentive, though his fidgetiness makes him seem a bit scatter brained. His white t-shirt with a few buttons on the top and brown pants were rather plain. Rather, his attire was practical. Alongside his 5 o'clock shadow and glasses, he's average. He's your average middle-aged man, subbing an American Literature class.

But he isn't average. He's passionate. He knows what he's talking about. He's descriptive, knowledgeable, well-rounded. He's excited to examine and read and understand literature. He's genuinely excited to unearth the underlying meanings of our most recent readings. You can tell in his spazzy hand movements when he gets excited, or when he pushes his hair back and readjusts his glasses when he's in the middle of a thought. You can see it in his thoroughness of his explanations.  He's engaging- he talks to and with us, not at us. He loves his job, he loves his work, and it's very apparent.

So Danny is beautiful. I think he is beautiful because of his passion. It caught my attention and it has me hooked. For this first time this semester, I want to go to this class because I know he'll be there, eager to explain the reading and ask us what we think about it too.

People, I beg of you to be like Danny- find what you love, immerse yourself into it. Your passion for your work will flow out of you and captivate you to your core. When you're that invested, it becomes infectious. Others will be captivated and immersed as well, even if it is more so in you than it is in your passion. Passionate people are alluring and captivating. I think that's beautiful, more so than other things a person could be. It's beautiful to be so passionate about something that you exude and live it, almost as if your passion were the air you breathe.

Things in this house get
forgotten.
Leaves on the stairs,
a cat grows old in the
basement.
The wind sings itself to
sleep and the trees
dance with shadows
across the window.

Things in this house are
hoarded, cloistered,
shut up in
locked drawers with
missing keys and
locked chests with
heavy lids.

He hides things in here,
letters and toys and pictures,
and he leaves his walls bare.

He lovingly locks his memories away,
half pencils, one mitten, lost teeth,
and he can sleep at night because
eighteen years' time has
manifested itself in
tops of baby bottles, plastic bracelets, winter hats,
and now they lie dusty but safe in
his quiet, lonely house.

The light in the kitchen burns out
one day.

He readjusts the crayons
in their drawer.

Why is it................

When you take your car to service center, for a simple oil change, the technician always readjusts the rear view mirror, seat position, and re-tunes the radio. It takes two weeks to finally get them back to where you had them, especially the seat position.

..........  I believe that killing has perhaps always been in my blood. Once out the womb I was forever drawn to the fascination of death. As a kid I'd tend to **** bugs, which turned into birds and other rodents around my yard. My mom thought it was disgusting but could never get me to stop. On the other hand, my dad figured it was just a boy thing and it was good that i enjoyed being outdoors.
      My father was always an outdoors type himself. He enjoyed taking me fishing on the weekends. As well as the gun range to practice my shot for when hunting season rolled around. Now that was heaven on earth to me. I'd never miss any shot i took and my dad was glad to be carrying a legacy down to me.
      It still haunts me to this day that my parents were murdered in my own home. Why wasn't I there to save them? Why couldn't it had been me? So many questions and very little answers. There was only one answer I could ever think of.. Revenge.
       Asking around only made the people suspicious of me. Being an 18 year old kid trying to solve my parents ****** seemed stupid at the time. So i joined the military to learn all the aspects of war. ******* the enemy, traitors, even fellow soldiers left for dead. If i ever had a soul it was gone by now.
   Returning back to my home town was nostalgic. Twenty years older and I had one mission on my mind. My old house was sold in auction to a bank but based on the gruesome murders nobody had yet to occupy it. Perfect chance for me to scope out for clues. Any evidence I could find that could help in the search would be worth it.
     Lucky for me, nothing was touched in that house since that day. Felt off that it wasn't cleaned up and labeled for sale. The realtors had visited the house and left nothing disturbed. Was the bank covering something up?
        It was easy for me to find blood that had never been cleaned up but testing old blood was rather tough. Fingerprints were numerously left by the detectives, my family, the realtors and me. After a few weeks of searching over and over i came across a dusty old bandana. Why it was never in the hands of the cops , puzzled me.
     A few hours later i had found a partial fingerprint from the corner of the coffee table. I picked it up with a piece of tape and put it away. Something about  finding those two things together after weeks of nothing sounded rather fishy. I figured i'd give it to my old friend in the force but I wondered if he was someone I could still trust.  Could it have been a setup to throw me off my vendetta?

     Over the phone I had asked my old buddy from the force to meet me at the Moonlight Diner. From there I had asked if he could return an old favor. I was able to get his troubled son a job at the base and that shaped him up pretty quick.
         " Hey Dan, long time no see, how's it been?"
         " Hell of a lifetime ago, thought you forgot about me."
         " Nah, i'd never. I just got into town and been getting stuff together y'know how it is."
          " Excuses," he says and points to the table to sit.
Our waitress than approaches us with menus and asks us about our drinks.
          " Mm, some sweet tea would be lovely, you Dan?"
          " Sweet tea? Hell nah my diabetes would wake up and **** me. I'll just have a coffee. Black."
  He readjusts his hat and looks back at me.
         " So, what caused you to want to meet up this late at night?"
         " Well, i'm here to call in that favor you owe me."
         " Favor? ****, well what is it?"
          " Well, I've been looking into my parents ******..," and i stare at him awhile to see if he budges. " and anyways i'm pretty sure i found some evidence."
          " Evidence? You must be a **** fool, now you know its been decades since that happened. You need to learn to let that go. I understand it's still tough after all these years but the only thing you're going to find is dead rats and a bunch of dust in that place."
         " This bandana wasn't here a few weeks ago when I searched. Isn't that fishy? And look, I found this fingerprint. Maybe if you can test this on the low we can find a match."
       " The military done got into your head didn't it? You think I can just run evidence like nothing? Even if it was real, someone would catch me."
        " Look, it could probably be nothing. For my own sake Dan, this is all I got to go on."
        " I can't just reopen a case because you are feeling desperate."
        " You don't have to reopen it. I just want some tests , that's all. If nothing comes up I will personally back off and you won't hear about it again."
  He looks at me with discomfort. Shuffles around a bit, and after a long pause opens his mouth.
       Sigh. " I guess I can try and tell  the nerd geeks to take a look. I know they'll keep things hush hush if I offer them some food. Those suckers never stop eating. Got **** endless pits."
      " That's all I ask," and I hand him the plastic bag and the fingerprint entrapped in tape. " Please, guard these with your life."
       " I will," he says. He stands up and grabs a few bucks out of his wallet, tips his hat off to me and walks off.

        Daniel Castillo. Been a cop as long as I was in the military. He was friends with my father but back than he was just a young rookie learning the ropes. Originally, he was from Amarillo ,Texas. Born and raised a southern cowboy he ended up coming to college here in Colorado and ended up working the force straight after.
         He took me in for awhile after my parents died but once i left to the military, i became out of reach. Still, a phone call away, he was the only one I trusted at that god forsaken time. Even had offered for me to join the force once I got out but the law never seemed to agree with me.
         At the time, I was renting out this worn down apartment. It was just temporary so I wasn't worried about living expenses. Not everyone knew I was due back in town so it helped that i remained quiet. I had all my leads scattered over the counter, newspaper articles, names of suspects and police reports.
    Eventually I set them all up on the wall, some with yarn leaking to certain leads.Still, unanswered questions kept me up all night binging on coffee or energy drinks. Reading and re reading until i'd end up passing out. Until, one day I saw a glint of light shining through the curtains and conveniently landed onto a name.
       Charlie Rivers. Female. It had appeared to me that her name was Charlotte not Charlie. Why had i missed this before? Had I driven myself to overthink and overlook simple matters? And if this person was female, why was her prints discovered at my house?
      Pulling out my laptop i searched for a Charlotte Rivers here in town. There were three. One deceased, and one was literally born yesterday. The last one was a 26 year old girl who worked for none other than the famous Glass Industries. My parents never partook in that company so what was she doing at my house?
     I clicked on her name and seemed she was an assistant to none other than Alexander Glass. Clicking on his name gave me his profile.

        ' Alexander Yuri Glass. 35 years of age.
          CEO of Glass Industries.
          Mentored by Professor Luka Glass & Rose Glass.
          New York Times mentions how "innovative and forward thinking", this company is. Ascending to a billion dollars in a matter of 5 years, Alex is the youngest CEO to do so within his own company. Originally transcending from Germany, he set his sights on tackling USA and has done remarkably well.'

        Hmm, seemed he was quite the entrepreneur. Or he just got lucky when his parents handed down the company. Perfect spoiled brat came to make money living off US soil. How lovely. I assumed I'd try to get in more in touch with this Charlie girl so i searched more in depth and found her social profiles.
Seemed her favorite hangout was a local cafe about 15 miles north, so I set my sights on making that my second home.
      My approach was to appear romantically interested in her. It seems she was unmarried and had no trace of a boyfriend ( or girlfriend), so this was my one shot. Looking myself in the mirror i saw a train wreck of a hot mess staring back at me. She might end up thinking i'm homeless, i thought to myself. After a quick shave and haircut, I set out in a fitted suit and headed to town.
     Steuben's Diner was a retro style diner, seemed like an easy appeal. Although, I had come to the realization that i may have been overdressed in a suit. The setting was more casual style, crowded with families and young couples.  Quickly I settled down at the bar and ordered a club soda.
       I stayed doing this every day of the week coming around happy hour and sometimes even staying till closing. Even the waiters came to see me as a regular. After the third week, I had begun to give up putting my things away and turned to see her walking through the entrance.
     So eloquently beautiful. Luxurious blonde hair tucked behind her ear, reached down her back. She had pale skin and a small body frame, didn't look a day over 25. She sat at the corner of the cafe, opened a book , and later her waitress came back with some type of alcoholic drink. Casual drinker.
       I sat and watched for what seems like hours but merely 30 mins. had passed. Figuring out an approach was one thing , getting her to stay interested in the conversation was another. My waitress saw me staring at her.
" You should buy her a drink, and your in luck.. I know what she ordered."
I give her the nod to go ahead and try to adjust myself to seem more approachable.
       I see the waitress point at me and smile. I wonder if she's working me up. She then turns around and raises her glass at me and smiles.
      " If you don't talk to her you're going to regret it," the waitress said to me and left.

so im laying in bed, right?
and it’s like 7 am and
i had totally told myself i was going for a run
i instead laid in bed, until exactly 9:27 am,
giving me 33 minutes to be
out of my dorm and on my way to class.
for nearly two and a half hours
a large blue beast named Depression
sat on my chest,
and smiled a big sharp grin.
he lit his cigarette and said
“It’s all pointless, you know,”
he took a long drag
and blew the smoke on my face.
Anxiety is dancing around the room
laughing maniacally
her hands shaking as she reorganizes
the same shelf for the seventh time.
he shares his cigarette with her
and I think they’re the ugliest couple i’ve ever seen.
he readjusts on my chest,
and starts to list the things that i need to do but can’t.
Anxiety starts listing the things that could go wrong today
and tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day—

when I get back from class
Anxiety will jump me
her long nails digging into my arms
the overwhelming feeling of death
surging through my veins
i struggle to breathe
i struggle to lower my heart rate--

there is a toxic relationship
living inside of my brain.
and i am so tired of being a third wheel.

e.g. rowe

Take a word and mix the letters and the result can be absurd
But an anagram is a word mixed-up that makes another word

Or if you blend a couple words it can be quite satisfying
If the spin-off words are helpful and the result is clarifying

A ‘Sycophant’ ‘acts phony’, which is something ‘The eyes’ ‘They see’
While the ‘Snooze alarms’ too early says wake up ‘Alas no more Z’s’

‘A decimal point’? - ‘I’m a dot in place’ and there are other spots
Would you believe ‘The morse code’ reorders to ‘Here comes dots’

Be cautious when you marry, not of your wife who has no flaw
Don’t forget the ‘Woman ******’ who will be your ‘Mother-in-law’

That one was rather damming the next one’s better I’ll admit
When I become a ‘Father-in-law’ I will be a ‘Near halfwit’

Who would have thought ‘Astronomer’ readjusts to say ‘Moon Starer’
But Knox the ‘Presbyterian’ would have thought he’s ‘Best in Prayer’

The huddled masses may revere New York’s ‘Statue of Liberty’
And shuffled letters also state she was ‘Built to stay free’

Oh ‘I bet the wound's lethal’ the junior policeman will have said
Of course, replied the coroner it was ‘Two bullets in the head’

December comes I ‘Search, Set, Trim’ for the perfect ‘Christmas Tree’,
Kids hiding in a ‘***** room’ which is like a ‘Dormitory’

In ‘The countryside’ ‘No city dust here’ if I’m ‘Silent’ I can ‘Listen’
And ponder my ‘Indomitableness’ or is it my ‘Endless ambition’?

‘I am not active’ in ‘Vacation time’ I will rest and heave a sigh
With joy I watch a ‘Butterfly’, and see it gently ‘Flutter by’

A minor risk? A ‘Slot Machine’, the result is ‘Cash lost in me’
A lethal risk? Revealed too late, ‘Radium came’ for ‘Madam Curie’

The last “surprising anagram” in this poem that I hope was fun
If ever asked what’s ‘Eleven plus two’ reply it’s ‘Twelve plus one’

And here is the face I've spent countless hours, no, countless days straight looking at the past few months. Her face with that fierce intensity in her eyes with which she tells me she loves me more than I can imagine. Her pupils swell and her eyes flicker. This is our attempt at romantic telepathy. Yet, this face, this visage, this construction of subtle beauty may not turn thousands of heads in an instant, but the longer I let the minute hand swivel around the face of the clock, the easier it becomes to see its novelties. Namely her mouth, which she claims is slightly fuller on one side and she constantly readjusts in fear of it setting at an awkward angle. I examine it with my eyes and my own mouth and find it difficult to comprehend this smooth, pastel pink instrument for speech in front of me. Words slip out of it at a reasonable pace but the laugh, when uncontrollable, is some form of music they failed to teach me about in the classroom. This aside, it is not only her mouth that is novel. Though her genes called for a sharp, angular nose like the ones her sisters sport, she was graced with one not severe at all. Her "button nose," as she calls it, fits perfectly into the framework of her soft features and not only gives her a youthful look but makes it that much more difficult for me to resist her. Her eyes, two pools of blue, rest above her nose in a close-set manner. Multiple times I've told her Crayola should make a crayon featuring the color of her eyes, but this would be unfair to the makers of Crayola crayons considering the difficulty of capturing the color. Nor would it do her eyes much justice - they're never just gray or blue. Oftentimes, they are framed like a painting behind glasses that never detract from the natural elegance of her face as they might with others. What gives even more allure to her eyes are her long eyelashes, which sometimes give her that doe-eyed look that fills me with the warmth of a small fire. Its these eyelids I enjoy kissing. Then her cheeks, her jaw. I know she wants strong lines in these areas, but I feel their natural shape are suitable for her genteel features. She tilts her head to the side, yielding her neck to me - it's supple and smooth on my face. I wonder what would happen if she saw what I was seeing right now, what I see each day. If she knew what I was asking myself, "What genius imagined this raw beauty?" She may never look through my eyes, but I hope that by telling her how beautiful I find her each day that maybe she will come to accept and know the loveliness she has amounted to over her 21 years and the more she will amount to the more time passes.