Vast, empty, midnight hour,
hunchbacked lampposts glaring over parasitic black earth
choking its host.

A parking lot,
an ecosystem’s blemish—
hot tar seeping into the pores of the earth
like a stubborn blackhead in a lip line.

When no cars burrow into the blackened hide
like lice
the great absence of life
is an atrocity.

I imagine myself skateboarding across the tier
as the small town cops
watch languidly with vague interest—

A skateboarder’s paradise
where wheels and accomplice minds roll across celestial barriers
blasting infinite pulses
into the microcosm.

What greasy punks have their mother’s van parked here,
huddling by the heat vents
and jerking off into a Pringle’s can?

Empty parking lot
looks like a cemetery
filled to the brim
where headstones meld
over a mass grave—

delineated by white lines,
the apparitions of vehicles and their hosts
haunt the frozen space.

Another horrible excuse
to waste land,
a wasteland in and of itself
where Tom Eliot saunters aimlessly
and buries the dead.

The saddest sight to behold,
this vacuous parking lot
littered with stray shopping carts,
phantasmal plastic bags,
gum splotches,
***** stains,
candy wrappers,
cigarette butts,
used condoms,
lonely cops
and patient drug dealers,
ambulant skaters,
tired punks,
bored teenagers,
somnambulists,
stumbling drunks,
hunchbacked ***** lights
prying for life beneath its sallow gaze—

The air encapsulated within the perdition
stifling,
the pavement below stifling,
a constriction only visible
when emptied of its contents.

A cop wakes from their choking nightmare gasping
to find themselves trapped,
****** in this parking lot
where the walkie-talkie buzzes
with the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The warehouse store
looming above the waiting room
lifeless, silent, dark countenance—
Big Brother sees all in the gaping maw.

Cascading before me,
stretching towards the highway passing by,
waiting for the panorama to finish scrolling,
the treadmill to cease its cycle—
all the while lamenting life’s absence
and reveling in the potentiality it possesses.

BOY #1
his eyes were as blue
as the deepest sea
his touch
exciting
his voice
as beautiful as Beethoven's symphony 5
the things he said could make any girl
believe that he loved them
only thing is
he didn't give a ******* ****
about me

BOY #2
his hair was as puffy and soft
as a baby bunny's fur
his words touched me in ways
only hands should be able to
his lips fixed wounds I thought
only doctors can fix
a moment with him was never dull
the stories he told me made
me want him more
"i had to jump the wooden gate
the cops were after me"
I couldn't help but smile
I gave you me
and you gave me you
but did you give yourself
to me like how I gave myself
to you

BOY #3
the height of Mt Rushmore
the style of Skateboarder's new model
your jokes were funny
but the way you treated me
after you got what you wanted wasn't
we laid in your bed and you held my hand
I rested my head on your shoulders
I trusted you
but I wasn't anything important to you

BOY #4
skin
dark as night
innocence
like a child
you were different
I wasn't attracted to you
but you liked me
so I let you give yourself to me
and before I knew it
you told your mama I was "a mistake"
we were the talk of the school

BOY #5
his hair was as puffy and soft
as a baby bunny's fur
his words touched me in ways
only hands should be able to
his lips fixed wounds
I thought only doctors can fix
and by now you would assume I
would've learned already
but this boy like no other
this boy excites me
I cant help but want his attention
****** allure maybe
whatever it is
I need him

(not done)

Waitress carrying
Table in from sidewalk smiles
At a skateboarder

She wore a windbreaker as red
as her parents voting habits,
and smoked American Spirits
as rough as the next-door
skateboarder's hands.

At 18, she was bored by
teen-aged touch,
and looked towards the
thirty-five year-old avant-garde
painter, who meandered in his
sun room, like a soul
pretending to be lost.

At 20, her parents told her
to go to college, to go to
'some place other than here'.
So, she went and had skinny,
Greek fingers with chipped nail-polish,
dip down and inside of her, without
judgement, without thought, and,
with this touch, she felt free.

At 24, she was an undergrad with
an apartment and a guy named 'Blake',
and Blake said Brown and she said State.
And when Blake left, she felt complete
despite losing something meaningful.

And when her story started to go on forever,
her body spread across the pavement like
seeded jam on burnt toast, scraped thin,
without image and without future, lost
inside crevices and cracks, a memory
or thought, wandering nothingness.

I open my window
and let strangers' breath flow through the screen
just hoping your exhale would be carried
from miles away through my window and onto my neck.
But I already know,
I'm going to be cold in the morning.

I leave my door open
so I can watch the shadows on the wall across the hallway
smear back and forth past my room,
just hoping your silhouette would walk into my doorway
But I already know,
the door will be closed in the morning.

I turn my music on
to drown out the quiet
to block the sound of plastic wheels on the pavement of the late-night-skateboarder
to slur the punctual tick of the clock
to wipe away the sounds of tears upon my cheeks.
But I already know,
the same sad song will be repeating in the morning.

I turn out my light
and pale in the absence,
hoping that when the sun rises in the morning
and its blinding blaze slips through the slits of the curtains
that your smile with be the brightest thing I see.
But I already know,
you wont be here to have your back turned to me.

I pull up my blankets
all the way up to my chin and past my forehead
baking myself in the smells of the sheets
trying to find the scent of you left in my fuzzy blanket from the night in the field.
But I already know,
I lost that months ago.

But I also know,
that I haven't lost you yet.

And I don't plan on it.

I realised too late
That I should not have
Tidied us into separate picture frames
When we could
Perhaps
Have shared one between us
Like those other lovers
Who sit together on swings
And giddy themselves
And that I should not have
Scribbled over every thought
And possibility
And guess
I should not have hemmed back
The inch of romance
I once set aside for you
Because the only thing that stopped me
Was fear
You remain my one love story
The sole great un-requited affair
The unspoken words
Between each conversation line
The coffee stains on the pages of my novel
That will forever anticipate a you that is past
And you remain my one love story
You are the love story that I told myself
Was not love
And we were never anything other than silence
And holes in the conversation
Like dropped stitches
When we were twelve
You asked me out via someone else
And I stamped ******* your offered palm
Never stopping to learn
Whether you meant it
And I hope now that you did
Because then it is not so foolish to call you a love affair
And I still do not quite believe that I love you
Only
I saw you today
And my chest
Ceased to be that glacier it chooses to be
Pinned under the lining of every coat
I own
And you said
Hey!
And I hoped I wasn't imaging it
That you were pleased to see me
Because I know that the
Global Warming
Of my world had to be worth something to you
And I have always been something of an
Introvert
And you have always been something of a skateboarder
But you are immortal
In my
Sort-of
Maybe-not
Half-way
Down-trodden
Hold-back
Confused melting
As I paint the pavement
With the contents of my
Ribcage.

Concentric dancer on
Rolling stage
Great surfer of solidified
Waves

Spins like a hula hoop
With his rollout group
Then pivots on a concrete
Mountain

Observe Cygnus on a beam
Statue of perfection -
Momentarily
Jumps off the trampoline

Where he does 'The Walk'
A flip
Snake surfs on the waves

King city ballet finale!

be dumb if you dare stare into the center of a career, be smart but not wise, fall into the abyss and call it a life. today will be the same as tommorow a business suit and tie to strangle yourself with if you cant wait to die. never did i stop to see the point, always above this position lookin down and sayin **** this aint right. stop killing your soul with such a torture, society is no ******* use havent you heard chi pig's slaughter. So look at it like a skateboarder in a concrete jungle, no right way to move only obstacles to ponder, or better yet, dont even bother, do yourself a favour and keep your energy free to wonder.

The Children With Dreams, Once So Ambitious.
He Had A Dream. He Wanted To Become An Artist. They Said No, So He Lay Upon The Torn Canvas And Secretly Caresses The Broken Brushes And Bathes With The Paint Once So Vibrant - One That Once Spoke With A Voice Ringing.

She Wanted To Become A Pilot, They Said No. She Breaks The Model Aeroplanes And Puts The Splinters Upon Her Lips And Kisses Them Softly, Never To Be Seen Again - To Be Spoken Of.

She Wanted To Become A Professional Skateboarder, But They Said No. So She Sleeps With The Shattered Wood And Bruised Wheels And Hides Them Under Her Bed When The World Comes And Checks On Her.

We Had Dreams, They Said No. So We Ran. We Ran Towards Our Own Ambitions, Our Own Plan. We Slept On The Bus And Bathed In The Rain. We Hold On To Our Perfect Ideas Because No One Is Wrong When It Comes To Perfection. Our Plan Is Perfect. Your Plan Is Perfect. Don't Shatter It Upon The Rocks Of Society Just Because They Say So. Be Free, Because You Are.

you can count yourself out of the picture
once you've visited a brothel...
   oddly enough: never came an easy girl,
i remember at university
we sat and watched a soft core belly dance
with a few girls
   (with some Sheikhs jerking off in
the background)...
     so one invited me back to her flat,
we smoked **** for a while and then
I started to kiss her...
     borderline necrophilia (metaphor)
given her reply: do you think I'm that
easy?!
    so I replied: can I at least sleep
in your bed? my feet feel like lead.
and so I did... went home during a fresh
morning, had a shower,
                ate some cornflakes and
never met the girl again...
    I thouht that teasing foreplay
while high want about poking
the course 18 times...
                  no big deal,
   it's not that I can suddenly be in
the mood either...
                         too much blood
to the head, very little to the private...
until I stumbled into a brothel
and bypassed the madonna-*****
complex with my genitals and
thought about...
    anything other than emotional
gambling en route to scented candles,
flower petals, a warm bubbly bath
and a cinema date...
   the cow was dragged into
the slaughterhouse,
               the butcher was waiting...
because "they" think that by
infiltrating the university,
they can subsequently infiltrate
   the brothel...
     I agree, tuition fees are an extortion!
can't exactly find **** CULTURE
in a brothel...
                    and always with a good
intention, every time I walked
in I had to check whether I was a *******
or even Quasimodo himself!
       talk about looking behind your
face in a mirror... some sort of
autistic-narcissism...
    just before the mentally ill leave
their childish games of seeking attention
(as, according to a Hindu yogi)...
sure... anti-depressants?
   on my prescription is says:
FOR INSOMNIA...
         apparently not all pills fit one
size...
                 and then back into
radio music, and POP music infatuation...
mmm... LOLLIPOPS!
    candy-floss... and pink unicorns...
before we get on the topic of
clowns... ha ha... imagine
   a fear... of DRAG-QUEENS!
               yes, before the pop pushin'
a last resort of the unsure insane
abusing a metaphor...
   like any politician might...
                             I can almost feel
solidarity with women in their early
30s... I too am going through
an existential crisis...
    spaghetti in the head of a Mintour...
who, once upon the time,
had a map of the labyrinth
in his mind...
    what biological clock?
      I almost hate democracy in the form
of the lessons attributed to
the autocracy of nature...
     and when the people raised their voices...
see... once it might have been much
more intuitive,
    now there's this nagging narrative
behind the whole affair...
    we already know the Beatnik
poets of America desecrated
temple of mescaline by "inviting"
god, of symbols, into what should have
been left, undisturbed, unwritten about,
no need for the tourist in these
parts... one poem on mescaline =
1 hectare of chopped Amazonian trees...
***** is a cheap *****...
all the time in the world to bash
her about, having inherited
such notable predecessors of the art...
just today I spotted a genuine
drunk, red as a beetroot
   dancing a shadow tango with
***** Dionysius... hardly happy
on wine...
                        and no pen in sight...
a drowning man: clinging to
a razor...
               me? on my birthday I have
a moth for company....
      happy birthday me...
                     and me, escape artist in
a brothel, escape from this almost
pointless courting game:
    profiles on dating websites like
disembowled hangmen...
     short-cuts to where?
                       might as well be the one
who always asks the anaesthetian
before an operarion: quo vadis?
       the moth will spend the night
on a curtain, tomorrow i'll **** a lemon
and forget to wash my teeth
scratch my *** and wave at the sun
telling it I'm far from squinting...
           and and and...
     whatever happened to
the punctuation protocol?
       the eyes must have about
six pair of lungs...
                   no... England is a nunnery
and...
      it wasn't exactly giving 110 quid
for an hour of subjectifying a woman
(objectifying a woman during
*******?
what?! with a phobia of a limp dice?!
you have to be kidding,
*** isn't objectification akin
to a pole dance! ribbit...
    kisses a ****** that becomes
the cheapest imagery of a floral
pattern of rose flesh)...
       and if only english language
graduates wrote books or poetry...
we'd all have to be **** by their
standards of having written
essays for the dead...
   but we'd recycle... burn the libraries
which would dwarf the fate
of the library of Baghdad under
the 'ogols, or... whatever the hell
happened to the library of Alexandria...
come to think of it...
    the old testament is such
an unremarkable text....
     but that's expected,
  given the spectacular undercurrent of
events...
       the Koran? a spectacular text...
but the life behind it so generic
that Muhammad looks like
a gimp in latex compared to Genghis...
just another camel jockey / *******...
not to mention the *** note of
the repetitive rhyme during
the salat...
        sheep
     jeep, keep...
      not exactly a bunch of bookworms
with these jihadis?
what do you expect:
    a pyramid like a library consists
of more than one brick / book...
     ******* better start
scribblings something on the Kaaba
and praying for another meteor...
   unlike a woman in her early 30s...
god forbid I have an analogue
budging unconscious motive...
            to leave this joke...
               yes,  and irrelevant 100 years
from now and then...
could have been a skateboarder,
a chess master,
    a footballer or a cobbler...
           or a butcher or a tree herder...
       i'm suspect to a cognitive clock
running dry on me when I hit 35...
after which nonchalance will probably
kick in...
              the spaghetti will become
a sheath of lasagne...
    flat and boorish as far as the eye can see...
never having infested in
the monopoly of fame akin
to Madonna being desperate having missed:
better die young, than to fade away    
       train...
        Rasputin genes me...
     can't, as some people in my life
already said: ****** just won't die...
                             for 5 years have been trying
and yet the locomotive keeps ploughing
on...
              imagine the other glorious heart
akin to Caesar's ideal of sudden...
    ethereal, from a broken heart....
             and I'm sue you won't find people
jealous of those who's necrologue reads:
died, peacefully in his sleep...
   no one is jealous of those who die
in their sleep...
                 refrigerator noise / ambient
music worth of life...
                shallow graves...
                   perhaps the people
who have died in the sleep are the mentally
ill in the afterlife, having lost
touch with the reality of death...
   returning as moguls of ***** bedsheets?

four years -
it's been four years since I fell apart for the first time over just a boy..
i don't even remember how much I hurt.
but I remember feeling I wasn't good enough.

I remember hating my body and hating everything about myself.

four years later I wouldn't say I love everything -
but I would say I can look in the mirror and like what's looking back.

because of you I fell in love with another skateboarder.
because of you I took time to listen to the quiet ones.
because of you I learned patience, and to keep fighting for what you love no matter the pain.

I mean maybe I didn't need that last part-
Considering I've been chasing the same young boy ever since I stopped chasing you.

He called me one night - years ago..
after reading the poem about you , and a few I had written about him.

Crying because he felt the love fading...

it faded.

Was that to welcome you back in?
Do things happen for a reason?

Maybe the boy I used to watch skateboard by the grocery store on clairmont is the one I've had in my heart all along...

But I must warn you:

My heart- its much colder now.
There are thorns around it - and if I thought I couldn't get to yours all of those years ago, how would we get to eachothers?

Your love is the strangest I've known.
No one talks of me higher,
but no one has so little to say...

If that makes any sense at all.

I'm excited to see you tomorrow.

You're the one who got me writing these.

You're the person who sparked Shauna's journey into herself.

Thank you.

Can't wait to see you.

I hate the bodies of skateboarders -
I am only watching from a distant window wishing
I looked as good as
a carcass to a hundred starving crows.


The naked day
sunbathing  -
I see from the shade,
cool and remote.
my chest is filled with cobwebs,

And I'm
thinking only of biting into an orange
or being the orange
some skateboarder
would bite into.